Learning to learn a language online
And what it taught me apart from the language itself
It’s 9pm on a Tuesday evening and I’ve just closed the Blackboard Collaborate window ending my Level 2 Hebrew course. Tuesdays have been long days over the last ten weeks but they also brought a sense of purpose and systematic progress when I needed it the most.
Prior to this, I had completed the first set of Level 1 classes in person at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and I’ve been reflecting on my journey of learning a language online *on a programme that is almost exclusively designed for physical interaction*.
And like all reflections, they take you all the way back in time.
During the course of my lifetime, I have learned six different languages, including my latest adventure with Hebrew. I started young, preschool to be more precise, where you’d think I had a strong connection with English from the get go — but you’d be wrong. I just really didn’t like the silly songs. Cue primary school, where admiration for my English teacher or perhaps her accent sealed the bilingual deal for me. That, and the sheer amount of American TV (subtitled, not dubbed!) including my beloved Cartoon Network, that I was exposed to growing up in Romania.
At home, Lucia, my wonderful grandmother, was on a mission to win over my new found English enthusiasm with French lessons. She was tirelessly trying to convince herself and her friends that my first word was le lait (milk; still dismissed by some as “probably just a baby gurgle”) and that my following into her footsteps as a French teacher was written in the stars. I was a fool not to fully immerse in this advantage but I did catch up even after we lost her — learning and speaking French will forever be about her and therefore carries this immense nostalgia.
My third language affair was German — I know. How could that be?! Yet again, an instant connection I made with a wonderful teacher would make two+ years of private tutoring during busy high-school really rather joyful. I don’t master German at the level of other languages I’ve learned earlier on but I get by. Turning off subtitles intermittently for Deutschland ‘83 or managing a survival conversation in a café in Hamburg counts, right?
Spanish is a funny one. One of the most quintessentially Romanian things about me is that I have consumed many a telenovela streamed endlessly on designated channels bringing Latin American love, lust and drama to post-communist nations — just imagine the appetite. I may have come out of it with a very unrealistic vision of love and life premises but hey, at least all those hours watching Marimar, José Armando, Ivo and Señora Lucrecia weren’t fully wasted on me. I have since participated in meetings and presentations in Spanish using a head full of vocabulary built on telenovelas. Not hi-tech but definitely alternative!
Fast forward to University where I dipped into Italian and Portuguese optional courses, all of which reinforced my gratitude for having the Latin base running through my veins (scientifically proven via 23andme, too) to enable the smooth sailing of all these language journeys.
In all this time, I have never really studied, learned or practiced a language purely online. So it’s no surprise Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) have yet to grow on me.
Learning Hebrew from scratch as an adult is a wildly different journey. No more Latin-base advantage and significantly less time on hand to learn and hone those skills. Attention span is also reduced but there are also plenty more ways to practice outside a classroom in 2020 — I live in a super multicultural city where there is no shortage of opportunities to practice, I use Duolingo albeit infrequently, I’m an avid watcher of Israeli & Middle Eastern series on-demand and I fool around with the Hebrew keyboard in WhatsApp conversations.
Whilst this is all fun, it also feels very informal and my legacy in language learning tells me performance won’t *really* be achieved in the absence the traditional techniques: teacher in front of the class, textbook in hand, homework revision with red pen.
Lockdown has added a layer of complexity — taking a course mostly designed for physical learning and interaction onto an off-the-shelf online platform begs the question: how, if at all, does it impact the learning experience, from both a competence and personal development perspective?
On competence
It’s hard to measure how much more or less Hebrew I assimilated week-on-week since we’ve adopted the virtual classroom. After all, each lesson closely follows the curriculum in sync with recommended textbook chapters, in the same way it would in-person at SOAS. The teacher’s expertise and feedback is as accessible, now just via a screen. We used a ‘back-up’ WhatsApp group for circulating audio files for listening comprehension, homework and other ‘for fun’ material in an attempt to make our group interact and socialise more.
Moodle, the ubiquitous VLE, is there — although I’ve never really logged in other than to submit course feedback. It’s clumsy at best and has a very old school interface. Plus, I still enjoy making notes in my notebook as opposed to scribbling on PDFs (a manifesto for calligraphy in the digital age to follow separately.)
I definitely wrote less, which is my preferred way of learning. But I did listen to more voice clips which I found equally impactful on day-to-day language practice.
On personal development
This is where it gets pretty lonely. Learning a language is almost never just about the language. It unlocks a range of abilities, such as speaking and presenting confidently, expanding general knowledge of geography, cultures, and etymology. It is why it this part of learning a language feels most suppressed in an online-only context.
There is also something amazing about people with different approaches and connections to a language coming together, united by the unique interest to learn it. Magic happens in conversations during and after a class — which I didn’t find easily replicated despite the rise in popularity of virtual break-out rooms. When one of the girls in my class and I were randomly assigned in a break-out room we realised it was the first time we spoke 1:1 in seven weeks. Turned out we made a really good pair for practice.
Teachers have no doubt been pivotal in my commitment to learning languages not just through their knowledge, but also their demeanor and capacity to guide me along the way. Without a good teacher to orchestrate interactions, it is very easy for students to take a back-seat — and I guess that applies both offline and online. Our Hebrew teacher has been fantastic at using any and all features on BB Collaborate and WhatsApp to have us interact with him and each other during the session.
Saying that, reviewing homework (completed in the textbook, annotated pdfs or in notebooks), building vocabulary and learning the convention of infinitive verbs via Collaborate took some getting used to; it felt slower and not short of obstacles. Not to mention the attempts to conjugate in virtual chorus… painful at first, but I kind of miss that silly fun already.
Do I fully embrace learning a language exclusively online? Not quite there yet but keeping my eyes peeled for tech developments that provide as holistic an experience as possible. There is also a case to be made for the student’s attitude to making it work: some days I felt really into it whereas others I just preferred to miss the old ways, and perhaps not taking advantage of what was in front of me.
It is said that technology is as good as the people behind it. I would take it one step further to say that in some cases, tech is as good as people make it for themselves.
Progress doesn’t happen without growing pains and as much as I will continue to advocate for social learning experiences, particularly for languages, I remain open to exploring and testing new tech that makes online learning as smooth as possible.
For that to get as good as it gets, user feedback is instrumental — would love to hear about more similar or different experiences and how your experiences of learning a language have changed with time.
