Language Lab in Montreal's Akiva School Models Beneficial Language-Learning Program

Students in the Akiva Language Lab. Retrieved from https://akivaschool.com/academics/francais/akiva-language-lab/

The Akiva School in Montreal, Quebec has unveiled its new foreign language lab, which they are saying is the first of its kind in North America. This lab allows students to practice French using technology either in small groups or one-on-one with the teacher using technology.

Cindy Warren, the assistant head for school advancement said, "The Akiva Language Lab is a unique learning space that enables students to explore languages at their own pace [...] Research tells us that the only way to truly learn a language effectively is through immersion and practice. Statistically, in a traditional classroom setting, each student speaks for less than 20 seconds for every hour of class time."

Warrne and the Akiva School share a huge point, and it's one that all schools should focus on in relation to their language learning classes: students need to spend more time actually practicing the language for it to stick. Anecdotally, I remember spending a significant amount of time conjugating verbs in Spanish class in high school, but I don't remember much of what we leaned (except, of course, for asking where the library is...why does everyone seem to remember "¿Donde está la biblioteca?" anyway?).

I would be curious to see a follow up in 5 years and in 10 years to see how much students' language has improved at the Akiva School and would love to see other schools following suit, spending more time on students making meaningful conversation during class to help make their learning stick.


Source:
CJN Staff. (2019, November 6). "Akiva School Goes High-Tech on French Instruction". The Canadian Jewish News. Retrieved from https://www.cjnews.com/news/canada/akiva-school-goes-high-tech-in-french-instruction

Rosetta Stone’s New Enterprise Options Show Exciting Future for Classroom Use

This week, Rosetta Stone announced their new enterprise option of their language learning program made specifically for businesses that deal with international customers. This new program provides tutoring from real people, feedback catered to the user, writing and pronunciation activities, and mobile activity options. Rosetta Stone’s Enterprise program allows users to focus on language and “content that meets [the user’s] needs, such as travel, healthcare, manufacturing, etc.” so that the users can learn and focus on what is most important to their field, rather than learning language that is irrelevant to their position. 

I found a few features of this new version of Rosetta Stone very impressive and I am hopeful to see these features make their way into the classroom version of the program if they haven’t already. First, their “TruAccent ® Speech Recognition Engine” which uses AI and machine learning to compare user’s pronunciations to “thousands of hours of recorded speech data.” This data is compiled through the machine learning to recognize what natural language sounds like in the language being learned. In the classroom, we want our students to be learning their desired language without the frustration of trying to perfectly match the pronunciation of the computer (something I dealt with and was frustrated with when I used the program in high school). Another feature I could see great use for in the classroom is the “Seek & Speak” function which tasks the user to find everyday objects with their mobile device and point the camera at the object. Seek & Speak then uses augmented reality (AR) and object recognition to identify the objects, translates the name of the object into the desired language, and then has the user practice speaking using the new vocabulary they learned. I’m imagining how memorable this would be to our students using this activity--it would get students up and out of their seats, making real-world connections, and then immediately practicing (GlobeNewswire, 2019).


I really am impressed to see how far Rosetta Stone has come in the last decade. It truly can be a huge asset to businesses and districts that do not currently have the resources to teach a lesser-spoken language (there are plenty of teachers who can teach Spanish to English speakers, or vice versa...but how many English speakers who can teach Bulgarian?). The program has also made huge improvements in how it teaches, providing a learning experience curated for each student individually to give them the help they need the most. Rosetta Stone is a wonderful resource that can and should be used to help assist in learning a second language.



GlobeNewswire. (2019, September 30). “Rosetta Stone unveils new enterprise language training solution for companies worldwide”. Retrieved from https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rosetta-stone-unveils-enterprise-language-110000800.html