Re: [tlug] Corona and schools in Japan

[Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@example.com>]

> On Apr 29, 2020, at 11:40, Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com> wrote:
> 
> If this is some sort of consulting business, then besides the technology, training on how to use the tools better would be helpful, I guess?

There has been a lot of discussions on the "teaching language online" front and the issue is not the tools so much as, what Christian properly guessed, what can be done online and what cannot. But also, if online is the only solution, what can we do to help learners.

In my French classes (and Japanese classes too) I *ask* the students to use all the technology their environment allows. That includes automatic translation, voice dictation, automatic reading, of course, web searches and I help them make sense of what they see and build useable patterns from that.

The amount of language material we have now, compared to what we had when, for ex, I started Japanese 30 years ago is staggering. And it is definitely not hard anymore to just use technology to learn a language anymore. Of course, that's very decentralized learning so it does not fit the traditional teaching business model, but it looks very much possible.

Jean-Christophe Helary
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http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune