The Trouble with Traditional Language Learning Content

The problems:

1. The Content (Traditional Method)
2. The Busy Student

1. The Content (Traditional Method)
Teachers and students typically use a textbook as the medium for lesson preparation, and this usually has some type of multimedia component (usually a 74-minute CD of conversations stuck in the back). Homework assignments usually focus on reading grammar explanations, doing writing drills, memorizing vocabulary, and perhaps listening to a short conversation performed by native speakers. While these exercises are useful in reinforcing certain secondary skills, they fail to prepare students for the the oral and auditory experience of a one-on-one conversation class.

Other issues we've heard regarding traditional content: outdated, uninteresting, not in digital format, not preferred content, and very different than "real language" (as in, everyday spoken language).

2. The Busy Student
At the same time, students are busy. Language study competes with higher, and lower, priorities in their life. They don't have time for inefficient practice exercises, and they don't have time for a lot of textbook language, which takes a normative approach to grammar and expression that does not reflect real, everyday speech. Furthermore, the large majority of language learning textbooks were written many years ago. The content is dated and dry.

Students deserve, and now demand, a fun, engaging, up-to-date, yet structured approach that they can fit without inconvenience into their busy lives.

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