My two years spent living in small town Sicily afforded me the opportunity to learn something of the local language. After the meteorological horrors of Bogota, where I had lived previously, I was more than happy to break as many local traditions as possible by way of sitting down to drink my coffee, doing so outside when sunny even in (the shock!) winter and, worst of all, ordering cappuccinos whenever I felt like it, be that before or after the universally respected cut-off point of 10am. Those many hours at cafe tables were well spent and I had soon got a grip on the basics of the language. It wasn’t long before waiters were complimenting me, un’inglese, on my use of the conditional when requesting the bill, which might or might not have been the only context in which I could have produced such a verb form. That fact did not stop me feeling quietly proud of my language prowess.

Given that this was only five years ago, it seems somewhat shocking to realise that technology played literally zero role in my learning. The school where I taught had wifi but that was the extent of my internet access. I didn’t have a smartphone and neither did any of my students or colleagues. If apps existed, I didn’t know what they were and if other people were using them for language learning, I certainly wasn’t. I had a dictionary, various phrasebooks and textbooks, notebooks, index cards and pens. I also had multiple classes of small children, who spoke to me in their native tongue regardless of my instructions to the contrary and the fact that, initially at least, I couldn’t understand them. Additionally, I had the pressing need to communicate with shopkeepers, ticket-sellers, waiters and the like.

I returned home and it seemed entirely likely that my Italian studies had reached their natural conclusion. At that point, I did not know that I would meet a partner with Italian heritage and a keen interest in re-learning the language of his childhood and that this would bring about a renewed interest in those studies on my part too. Unfortunately, I am no longer surrounded by the language, nor do I have endless mornings to spend at sunny cafe tables so a different approach has been necessary this time. The partner in question being much more of a natural technology-lover than me, our attempts so far have centred around experiments with the various technology-assisted learning tools available.

We started, as so many people do, with duolingo. The daily goals, celebratory jingles on reaching a milestone and that wide-eyed green owl seemed to cast a spell over me – the example sentences fabricated with such scant regard for authenticity or usefulness did not escape me but I was somehow motivated to press on regardless. This is disturbing. If a person who is familiar with what SLA tells us about how languages are learnt, who is paid to facilitate the learning of others can become addicted to a piece of software which has learners translate the sentence the penguin eats fruit, this is cause for alarm.  Fortunately, it did not last long. Somewhere between the fruit-eating penguin and the lesson on clothes which elicited the translation the man has the leather, the spell was broken.

I have not investigated what duolingo has to offer to English language learners, but it would have to be a vastly different product before I could come close to recommending it to my students. But times have changed for them as well as me since my days of drinking afternoon cappuccinos served by disgruntled waiters. Whilst the paper based resources that were the extent of my learning materials are not obsolete – or not yet anyway – today’s learners expect to make use of technology in their quest to learn English. In many cases, it would seem that they are not even aware of this expectation. When everything else in their lives can be accomplished using a smartphone or laptop, why would they assume language learning to be the exception? Clearly, I’m not the first or only person to recognise this and amongst those responding to this state of affairs are my employers, whose response takes the form of moodle. On starting in the job, I was sent to learn how to maintain the pages which would be set up for my courses, which I persist in doing despite the depressing reality, observable to administrators of course pages like me, that learners barely use it. I work hard to fill its pages with useful content – board notes from our classes, links to extra practice exercises or reference material, topical videos, articles or podcast and so on. Never once have I posted anything so irrelevant, so unlikely to be useful, as the penguin eats the fruit. But my best efforts cannot counteract the clunky user interface, the lack of integration with social media, its counter-intuitive nature and how SLOW it can be. The only spell that is being cast over my learners is one of disenchantment.

This situation is summed up neatly in the phrase the ed-tech disconnect which Nick Robinson discussed in his webinar on Learner Experience (LX). His opening statement that ‘so far, technology has done more harm than good in ELT’ might generate strong feelings of disagreement from some but would anyone argue if the reality of duolingo & co. with their facile content coupled with the horrible design of moodle et al. was presented as evidence? Robinson turns to Sachin Rekhi on the topic of what makes a compelling design, and comes out with the adjectives useful, usable and delightful. Duolingo ticks the last two boxes but can hardly be described as useful. Moodle, on the other hand may be useful and potentially usable but is far from delightful.

How to move on from this situation is one of the questions Robinson ¹ addresses in his post which accompanies the webinar on LX, a question which he phrases as ‘how are we going to improve the user experience of digital language learning? In answer, he notes the contrast between the experiences of learners in traditional classrooms and those attempting to learn digitally and suffering from the effects of the ed-tech disconnect:

‘At the classroom level, ELT can have pretty great UX. That’s because good ELT classrooms are communicative, learner-centred, social spaces, all of which combine to create a positive environment for learning a language’

In his webinar, Robinson explains that he sees design as referring to more than mere aesthetics, rather it is the solving of human problems. He puts the success that classroom based language teachers have down to the way that good teachers apply the principles of user-centred design, which he describes as consisting of three elements.

1. Understand your users and their context deeply.
2. Figure out what they want to achieve and why.
3. Map a journey from where they are now to where they want to be, eliminating as much friction as possible.’

When looked at in those terms, this starts to sound familiar. Is this not what McGrath ²  was talking about, when advocating the lengthy process involved in the selection of a course book? Is the first task, of understanding users and context not what McGrath’s ‘learner factors’ sets out to do? And is the second task, figuring out what they want to achieve, not the goal of his ‘learner needs’? The mapping of the journey and elimination of friction could be seen in part as what the teacher does in the selection of the most appropriate materials.

We as teachers are fortunate to have hours of exposure to our learners and so, arguably, it should be straightforward for us to gain the necessary understanding. Robinson claims that if the elusive ‘delight’ factor is going to be achieved, the emotions of the learner must also be understood and advocates a technique he calls ‘the five whys‘ to drill down to the underlying motivation. The question this presents to me is whether what McGrath suggests is enough? Did I do enough in my context analysis and survey of user needs? Or do I need to do more to understand the emotions of my learners so I’m better able to map the best journey for them? If this is what ed-tech is trying to achieve, as designers and evaluators of traditional materials, we should surely be trying to do that too.

The second question Robinson asks is put ‘how are we going to get to grips with digital pedagogy?’ Or in other words, how can we move on from the place we’re at now, where if I made a habit of writing decontextualised, meaningless examples such as ‘the penguin eats the fruit‘ on the whiteboard as an example sentences, I would find myself out of a job but that they continue, somehow, to be acceptable in the realm of digital pedagogy. As Robinson ³ puts it:

‘Whether right or wrong, at least some form of consensus has built up about the pedagogy of language classrooms – broadly communicative, built around a grammar syllabus, a focus on skills as well as systems’

Having fallen out of love with duolingo, I cast around for alternative resources to help me in my Italian studies and what I came across was Italian for Beginners Language Theatre from news in slow Italian, a language course / radio play featuring beginner student Connor and his teacher Sylvia. Learners listen to their conversations, which begin mostly in English with a few Italian expressions thrown in but are held entirely in the target language by the final episode. Just as with duolingo, I was hooked. This time it really felt like I had found something that was going to help, but I was keen to subject this instinct to some critical thought, the kind that my infatuation with the owl and his encouraging sounds would have crumbled under. In a post for ELT-Jam on how SLA research could inform ed-tech, Scott Thornbury ⁴ suggests ten questions that we should ask of an ed-tech product, some of which I have discussed below.

COMPLEXITY: Does the software address the complexity of language, including its multiple interrelated sub-systems (e.g. grammar, lexis, phonology, discourse, pragmatics)?

YES. This is achieved, which for a beginner-level course, I think is outstanding. Each episode consists of a recording of a conversation between Sylvia and Connor, a transcript of this dialogue, online grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation exercises to consolidate what Sylvia explains in the ‘lesson’ and a set of flashcards of key words which can be used before or after listening. There are also notes which further expand on pragmatic matters which she addresses, such as the implications of common idiomatic expressions which could easily be misunderstood by a non-native Italian speaker.

INPUT:Is material provided for reading and/or listening, and is this input rich, comprehensible, and engaging? Are there means by which the input can be made more comprehensible? And is there a lot of input (so as to optimize the chances of repeated encounters with language items, and of incidental learning)?

YES. This is a huge strength of this material for me. The input is rich in that it has been designed to ensure the essentials of the language are covered but more importantly, it is rich in that this is achieved through dialogue and there is so much incidental language to be soaked up too. The material is made comprehensible through the gradual introduction of the target language and through Connor’s returning to English whenever things get too complex. The transcript, which has that episode’s target language highlighted, and the flashcards are further sources of support. As Connor’s lessons with Sylvia progress throughout the episodes, his story unfolds, we learn of his motivation for studying Italian, his plans, his struggles. Language is repeated from episode to episode, where the conversation allows or necessitates.

OUTPUT: Are there opportunities for language production? Are there means whereby the user is pushed to produce language at or even beyond his/her current level of competence?

NO. Sadly not. Whilst the opportunities to acquire an understanding of the basic structures of Italian, to expand your vocabulary, and to practise receptive skills are there, the chance to produce language is not.

INTERACTION: Is there provision for the user to collaborate and interact with other users (whether other learners or proficient speakers) in the target language?

NO. Although the conversations between Sylvia and Connor are very engaging, the learner is cast in the role of eavesdropper. There is no facility to join in, nor are there opportunities for interaction with other learners.

These are only four of the ten questions Thornbury suggests we should ask, but they shed enough light on my question of whether my enthusiasm for Sylvia and Connor was well-founded. The answer is partly so – the benefits of exposure to the language and of the structure of the course being illustrative of language as a complex system are immense. But the limitations are also significant. Can anyone truly learn a language without someone else to speak to?

It has been fascinating to think about some of these issues from the other side of the coin. What I have realised in so doing is the position of privilege I am in to be able to. Most learners – whether of English or Italian – aren’t well versed in SLA theory and would struggle to identify what good teaching or learning materials look like. It’s all too easy to be distracted by jolly-looking characters, bright colours and the like. As teachers, we have a responsibility to our learners to guide them through this process, which means we ourselves need to have a solid understanding of how to make the right choices.

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