Korean Job Discussion Forums

Manner of Speaking · Joined: 09 Jan 2003

Face-to-face teaching of a second language may eventually go the way of the dodos.

Here's an interesting project, for Spanish, not English. Speak Shop is an online tutoring model that helps Guatemalan professionals to have better incomes while providing a comfortable platform to learn Spanish.

According to Cindy Cooper, co-founder, ��the site was created to provide more job opportunities to impoverished but expert Spanish tutors in Guatemala and to harness videoconferencing as a tool for learning languages and for cross-cultural interaction��.
��It's a fair trade marketplace where tutors set their own rates and hours and students choose freely among the options of tutors, prices and schedules –she says-. Tutors also get free training from Speak Shop to learn how to market their services and teach online. This is the first website to put tutors in control of their livelihoods, and it is changing lives��, adds Cooper.

The company was created after Cooper travelled for an immersion program in Antigua, Guatemala to learn the language. There, she saw Spanish teachers often struggled to earn a decent living: students were seasonal and when hurricanes hit, visitors stayed away. Plus, the number of teachers often outstripped the demand for lessons. When she got back, she thought things through and came up with this web-based marketplace where teachers became entrepreneurs.

The system is very simple: students and teachers set a date and time for a meeting and they interact via web cam and chat. Monthly membership is $9.99 and rates per hour go from just five dollars.

http://www.speakshop.com/

forgesteel · Joined: 30 Aug 2005 Location: Earth

The outsourcing of education generally (not just EFL) is a good topic. The internet has potential, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

The outsourcing of Math and Science teaching (from India for example) is a little more likely than English teaching, in my humble opinion.

Manner of Speaking · Joined: 09 Jan 2003

What I mean is, if data handling capacities keep going the way they do, learning a language by the Internet or virtual classrooms may eventually feel pretty close to the real thing. Native English teachers will work from their home country and teach English in Asia; Chinese teachers will work from their home country and teach Chinese, Spanish, etc.

I don't know if I would call it 'outsourcing' as much as I would call it 'tele-exporting'. The Guatemalan teachers are 'exporting' their teaching expertise via the Internet while remaining in their home country. They're not replacing US or Canadian jobs (to any great extent, anyway), and given the growing popularity of telephone teaching in Korea, it might grow to be a significant 'telexport' from English-speaking countries to Korea in the future.

crazylemongirl · Joined: 23 Mar 2003 Location: almost there...

I'm a bit skeptical on the role that teleconferencing will make. It takes a high level of learner motiviation to be able to do this. It might work alright for highly motiviated adults but for everyone else having a teacher to give immediate feedback and motiviation is really important. Also having people of a similar level is of benefit to everyone.

Basically I feel that the new technology should be used as a tool, not the be all and end of language teaching.

Manner of Speaking · Joined: 09 Jan 2003

lastat06513 · Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 6:45 am Post subject:

I think teleconferencing will do wonders for the businessman on the go, but what about the children?

The average attention span of the average 10 to 12 year old is about a minute or two. To keep them in front of the computer screen for some kind of educational purpose would be very difficult unless the course included some kind of interactive game that would help reinforce what they learned. And that would only add a minute more.

You must realize that the true market for language learning in Korea (I'm using Korea as my example because simply, I live here) is for children.

If you gain the trust and interest of the child and the parents, the potential would be without bounds...

crazylemongirl · Joined: 23 Mar 2003 Location: almost there...

here's why it will be different. Because how we percieve human beings and other living things is way different than how we look at non living objects. We have the technology now for education to be mass distributed in person in real time since the advent of the television yet people still go to school and varsity because you get to interact with people rather than screens or images.