https://diigo.com/0cnus8 This paper is part of a doctoral thesis focusing on the study of language learners and the effectiveness of their strategies in two online tools, Livemocha and Busuu. In both cases, these tools provide online workbook-like activities which can be corrected by native-speaking peers and allow the creation of an online community between groups of people who speak English, for example, and want to learn Italian and groups of people who are native speakers of Italian and want to learn English. Learners establish a sort of social language exchange. Sounds really fun if you're a language nerd like me. Having used Livemocha when it was still in existence, I know that I could earn "coins" or points for correcting the work of English learners and then use those points to "buy" the services of more skilled Italian-speaking "friends"...maybe qualified Italian teachers offered by the site (I believe I could pay for those with money if I remember correctly) or just members who self-identified as language instructors or grad students, for example. I could also just connect with a random Italian speaker and try my luck! In this study, three types of learner were identified: those who just do the online workbook activities, those who just use the social network aspect, and those who use both the static and active learning functions. It is no surprise that those in the third group were the most successful and that the randomness of the language-teaching skills of the partners that learners connected to on the social network side was demotivating. What this article lacked was a complete description and comparison of the two sites and a description of the type of people who were on the site (language instructors? beginning learners? advanced learners? language or linguistics majors?) and a more objective measure of learning than surveys and interviews of language learners.
This paper is part of a doctoral thesis focusing on the study of language learners and the effectiveness of their strategies in two online tools, Livemocha and Busuu. In both cases, these tools provide online workbook-like activities which can be corrected by native-speaking peers and allow the creation of an online community between groups of people who speak English, for example, and want to learn Italian and groups of people who are native speakers of Italian and want to learn English. Learners establish a sort of social language exchange. Sounds really fun if you're a language nerd like me. Having used Livemocha when it was still in existence, I know that I could earn "coins" or points for correcting the work of English learners and then use those points to "buy" the services of more skilled Italian-speaking "friends"...maybe qualified Italian teachers offered by the site (I believe I could pay for those with money if I remember correctly) or just members who self-identified as language instructors or grad students, for example. I could also just connect with a random Italian speaker and try my luck! In this study, three types of learner were identified: those who just do the online workbook activities, those who just use the social network aspect, and those who use both the static and active learning functions. It is no surprise that those in the third group were the most successful and that the randomness of the language-teaching skills of the partners that learners connected to on the social network side was demotivating. What this article lacked was a complete description and comparison of the two sites and a description of the type of people who were on the site (language instructors? beginning learners? advanced learners? language or linguistics majors?) and a more objective measure of learning than surveys and interviews of language learners.