How I Would Teach Languages in a Classroom - Steve Kaufmann

A language teacher should first and foremost be a motivator. I don’t believe you can teach a language to someone not motivated to learn it. Motivating learners is, of course, easier said than done, but it should be the primary goal of any teacher.

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A good friend of mine is a Russian professor at Reed College. Right now, I am doing Romanian, but she is nonetheless very curious about my experience with Lingq. Reed is one of the most academically advanced undergraduate institutions in the US, and Reed is the kind of place that might adopt innovative language-learning methods. If I can break through with her, the sky’s the limit.

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This is probably a good place to ask how does lingq classroom work or I know of teachers on here that use lingq with all their students how does this work and what kind of permissions are they given etc and what is the price?

I have done tiny bits of Ukrainian, be cause it’s free, not becasue I have a practical use. This and Steve’s ideas make the think of a possible role for a teacher as being one who encourages the process of learning - being active, etc.
I also wondered about a person sharing what they are doing in language learning. Experts in Lingq can be interesting to listenting to. You should encourage them to make more videos.

If creating lingqs is a key performance indicator, please fix the highlighted statistics as it is 0% if you bascialy don’t know many words but created loads of lingqs. This means you can’t tell how difficult the text is.

@Hagowingchun Can you please reach me by email * support(at)lingq.com * and I will provide a file and all information you need. Thanks.

I think Kaufmann is expressing an opinion that is based on Canadian classrooms where, if I am not mistaken, French is mandatory for the English speaking majority. My opinion, therefore, is based on schooling where foreign languages, when they are offered, are electives. I think there is a tendency for some teachers to feel that they must motivate in order for the students to want to learn. I suggest that there are a few problems with this strategy. First, for those students who are already sufficiently motivated (They did select the course after all), such an emphasis on motivating them can generate the opposite effects on them by wasting their time and undermining their own internal motivations. This strategy also presumes that a teacher’s efforts must be directed at those students who want the least to do with the subject material. This can further alienate the students who want to learn and sense that the teacher is less concerned with them than with their slacker classmates.
I also think that lessonplans which separate the motivational elements from the content and skill building undermine the core features of an educational environment. Every bit of effort spent motivating students represents energy that could have been directed at guiding students to acquire a lifelong skill. Honestly, if a teacher struggles with making a topic as central to the human condition as language acquisition interesting, then the student doesn’t belong in that classroom or the teacher ought to assess what is lacking in his own pedagogical skillset

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I just started watching this video. I loved Steve’s English accent when he told the story about the British dude teaching French. He needs to make a video entirely in this accent.