Language Education Innovation Forum Conference Report Boston 2015
TABLE OF CONTENT 04
Introduction Dr. Christopher McCormick
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Participant perspectives
INTERVIEWS WITH SPEAKERS 06 From bilingualism to big data Dr. Dora Alexopoulou 07
he Finnish model: T Excellence through equity Dr. Pasi Sahlberg
10 Play saves lives and motivation fuels learning Dr. Enio Ohmaye 11 Testing the world Yerrie Kim
SESSION SUMMARIES 12 The language class as a skills incubator Dr. Paola Uccelli 12 Preparing language teachers Dr. Alexey Korenev 13 Languages without borders – the policymaking perspective Dr. Denise Martins de Abreu-e-Lima 13
lended learning at EF B David Bish
14 Globalizing the curriculum Dr. Yujin Yaguchi 14 The importance of teacher development Dr. Beata Schmid
Introduction
As global society becomes more connected, competitive, and cooperative, the need for shared communication grows more urgent. Learning languages empowers individuals and communities to participate and shape their futures. Language educators, researchers, publishers, and policymakers all share an interest and a duty in making this happen in the most efficient, effective, and engaging way possible. Today, insight from diverse fields, such as cognitive science, applied linguistics, and educational measurement, are being drawn together in educational research and practice to provide a way forward for innovation and better learning. EF Education First convened the Language Education Innovation Forum in Boston and Cambridge, USA, to spark a conversation around language learning solutions that can make a difference in the classroom and beyond. Leaders from a wide spectrum of fields, from government policy to digital learning, were brought together to share their experiences in a lively and interactive program. With speakers and participants from over 30 countries, the Forum
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provided a truly global context to discuss issues in language research, learning technology, assessment, policy, and teacher development. In the pages that follow, we share highlights from the Forum and some unique insights into the future of language education. Every strand of inquiry and practice has the potential to make a positive impact on language proficiency, and we hope the Forum, as well as this paper, will help drive those important conversations. Sincerely,
Dr. Christopher McCormick Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs EF Education First
Participant perspectives
For a snapshot of the state of language learning and language policy around the world, we asked LEIF participants, representing more than 30 countries, for their views on a few key questions.
How important do you consider language skills to be for the future success of your country?
100% Very
Do you expect your country to significantly increase resources dedicated to language education in the coming decade?
24% Don’t know
12% No
Do you expect language education to be a priority in your country in the coming years?
59% Yes, major
41% Yes, but not top
Do you think bilingualism should be the norm in your country?
12% Don’t know
64% Yes
76% Yes
12% No
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Interview
From bilingualism to big data Dr. Dora Alexopoulou, Senior Research Associate, University of Cambridge What happens to the brain when it learns and uses a new language? Neuroscientists and psychologists have studied bilingual brains and minds and have found that bilingualism affects the brain in a way that shows clear cognitive and medical benefits. Bilingual kids, for instance, show greater cognitive flexibility and have better attention and pattern recognition skills - all transferable skills that can support analytical thinking. Speaking more than one language also delays dementia significantly more than the best drugs available, up to 4-6 years, while drugs only delay it by half a year or so. Stroke patients who are bilingual also have an advantage in their recovery. Having said that, we don’t know what exactly happens to the brain during the process of learning a new language. It’s an open research question, but an educated guess would be that these cognitive skills and benefits start developing as the person starts learning the language. What advantages are there to speaking a second language? In addition to the cognitive benefits, bilingualism brings specific linguistic and communicative advantages. Bilingual children, for example, are better at picking up sounds and structure, both of which support the development of literary skills. They also have stronger communication skills and tend to outperform their monolingual peers in mastering conversational principles, codes of politeness, empathy, and other essential skills. It’s also important to remember that language offers an analytical and critical tool that provides a window to another culture; another way of looking at the world. There’s immense intellectual value in that,
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beyond the cognitive benefits. The big problems of this world require us to understand each other and the cultural understanding that languages can facilitate is vital to fostering that. Is it ever too late to learn a language? No, and interestingly, older children can actually learn some aspects of a second language, like grammar, faster than younger children as their more mature cognitive abilities make it easier. Adults can also be fast learners, although the effects of the mother tongue are harder to get rid of at that stage. What promise does big data hold for language education? We hope to be able to use our database to understand the language acquisition process better and eventually influence methods of teaching, closing the circle from input to language production. Our EFCAMDAT database (EF Cambridge Open Language Database) is uniquely global in scale, representing 177,000 learners, 172 nationalities and more than 1.2 million writing samples. This kind of big data is great for analyzing how people from different backgrounds and at different levels learn languages, and how they progress over time. We aim to create learner profiles through this database, which can then be used to benchmark learning and build models that predict the learning trajectories of language students. We hope to eventually combine these learner profiles with cognitive, psychological and socio-economic profiles that will help us personalize the language acquisition process and provide learning materials that address specific challenges.
Interview
The Finnish model: Excellence through equity Dr. Pasi Sahlberg, Visiting Professor, Harvard University What is the foundation of Finland’s educational success? It sees education as an essential public service and is focused on providing equal access and a high quality education to all children. How did Finland get to where it is today? The foundation of Finland’s educational success was laid in the 1970s with a comprehensive educational reform package focused on making a previously unequal system more equal. This bold push to reform the system was born out of a realization that a small country couldn’t afford to waste its human resources and needed to act decisively to strengthen them. The reforms put a more comprehensive primary school at its core, mandating that all students had to complete nine years of schooling. It also strengthened the teaching profession by mandating that all teachers – now with expanded responsibilities – had to hold a master’s degree. It’s important to note that, although there was broad support for these reforms at the time, especially among educators, not everyone agreed with the changes, and some felt the primary school model wouldn’t work. The reformers were only proven right when the first PISA results came out in 2001 and Finland came out on top. Looking at some of the international trends in education policy and reforms, what worries you? Merit-based pay (for teachers), more and more standardized testing, increasing privatization and excessive central control, for example. It’s worth noting that Finland went in the exact opposite direction on almost all counts when it reformed its system.
The Finnish system places a lot of faith in great teachers, but what makes a great teacher? A great teacher is passionate and considers teaching a calling, just like a doctor might. A great teacher also puts him or herself in the student’s shoes and approaches teaching with empathy and dedication. The philosophy that drives a great teacher – rooted in ancient Greece – is that education should produce students who are smarter than their teachers. This, in turn, ensures that the world becomes a better place almost on its own. What would your perfect school look like? Although I think that the Finnish education system is very strong overall, there are some challenges that need to be addressed. Young people are still not that happy at school when you look at survey results: many don’t find school meaningful and relevant to them, and too many out of the 60,000 who graduate each year leave primary school without knowing what they’re good at. To use an apt analogy (given that we’re in chilly Boston): it’s like heating a house while keeping the windows open – simply a waste of energy! My perfect school would address this by taking elements of the US system, for example, and focusing much more on inspiring students and helping them find their passion, and therefore, help each student, as Sir Ken Robinson puts it: “understand the world around you and find the talent within you.” What are some of the specific strengths in how languages are taught in Finnish schools? Educated and well-trained teachers are a great starting point – all teachers have a master’s degree in the language they’re teaching and in pedagogy. Finnish language teachers are great teachers, full stop. That’s a core strength many countries are looking at, inside and outside the language classroom.
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“EF was proud to host the annual Language Education Innovation Forum in Boston. We look forward to building on this year’s success by fostering international dialogue at next year’s Forum.” FRANCK BRANDIN ACADEMIC RELATIONSHIP DIRECTOR EF EDUCATION FIRST
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Interview
Play saves lives and motivation fuels learning Dr. Enio Ohmaye, Chief Experience Officer, EF Learning Labs Why is play so important? Animals don’t survive – or rather, learn to survive – if they don’t play. The absence of play has tragic and very real consequences for them. I can’t think of a more basic and at the same time more meaningful argument for the fact that humans also need to incorporate play into life and learning. Play and the need to play are wired into our very being, actually. Although animals stop playing when they’re around three years old and when their brains also stop growing, human brains continue to develop throughout our lives, so play and playful learning should continue, too. Play fosters holistic learning, and because it involves an element of risk and fear, allows both children and adults to find out what they love. It’s also important because it develops two of the skills most important in today’s knowledge economy: creativity and the ability to solve problems. In the language learning context, our experiments at EF Labs have shown that play is extremely important for the sustainability of language learning efforts. With one group of learners, a schedule made up of two weeks of learning and one week of play resulted in activity rates of 90 percent – way above what we’d normally see. What about motivation? Although learning happens largely in the head, motivation fuels it and is important to consider alongside play. Motivation in this sense equals passion – a carrot, if you will – and is a key indicator of success in terms of learning outcomes.
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We’ve done some experiments at EF Labs on motivation and how to foster learning by testing some of our online English learners. What we found out was this: for behavioral change to happen, the learner’s context needs to change. In this case we needed to put our online learners into a “school setting” that provided a social experience and a clear structure, as well as lots of positive reinforcements to keep them active. Have we taken learning too seriously until now? Has the focus been too narrow? The past decades of research on learning and education have been heavily influenced by the advent of computers, seeing humans as cognitive engines and learning as a purely cognitive process. In the last years, researchers have started to focus more on the noncognitive elements of learning, including the impact of stress, being observed, etc. This is an important development – learning happens in the whole being and is impacted by interpersonal, social, and economic circumstances. Where do we go from here in terms of the science of learning? Brain science is still in its early stages – we can increasingly see what goes on in the brain, but there’s still a lot of innovation to come, especially in terms of this sense of equity in learning. And while the brain is a central part of this story, it goes way beyond that as well, and I see play as a vital component of a more contextual understanding of learning.
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Interview
Testing the world Yerrie Kim, Executive Director, EF Education First What was the thinking behind the EF Standard English Test (EFSET), launched last year? EF teaches English to all types of learners all over the world, both online and offline. All of these learners need to know what their English level is. Until the EFSET, there was no cost-effective testing solution available to all learners, regardless of their level, geographical location or financial means. The costs associated with traditional tests – often taken in order to get certified – are prohibitive for many individuals and for institutions like schools that can’t afford the cost of certification tests at scale.With EF’s history and expertise, we saw a niche here that we could fill. Philip Hult first had the idea about 10-15 years ago, and we started actively researching and devoting resources to the project about four or five years ago. We had three key criteria for this project when we started: the test had to be built to the same high standards as certification exams, it had to be cutting edge in terms of the technology behind it, and it also needed to be free and easily accessible online in order to reach as many of the approximately 1.7 billion English learners as possible. What drives this project? We try to look at everything from the learner’s perspective. The starting point was, of course, that we identified this need for easily accessible, free testing of English levels online. Existing tests simply didn’t meet this need – the best analogy I can think of is that the testing industry was “trying to kill a fly with a canon.” We believe that for the vast majority of learners, the EFSET is a better, more suitable tool. It’s also centered on the learner in the sense that it is flexible. We know that no two English learners’ needs are the same, so the EFSET was developed to be useful both for advanced learners and beginners. For advanced learners who are looking to get certified and want to test themselves very reliably – we have the longer EFSET Plus. For beginners who are not ready to test their level with an expensive, certification test but still want accurate measurements, we have the regular EFSET.
What are some of the biggest opportunities going forward? We’re really excited about our partnership with LinkedIn – being able to showcase your EFSET score in one simple click on your LinkedIn profile is very convenient, and we know that people want to show off their skills in this way. This reflects a new way of thinking about certification, and I find this really exciting. There’s also scope to develop the online side of the EFSET. It’s particularly fascinating for us as a company because the internet is both a learning and an assessment medium for us. EF is really well positioned to pioneer the marriage of English learning with assessment online, and to provide more tailored and cost-effective education solutions. And some of the biggest challenges? It’s a challenge to make sure that the customer journey is truly seamless and that the tech stays in the background, as it should. It’s a service, so people expect it to work flawlessly. We’re always tweaking and improving it, of course, while focusing on the quality of the overall experience. What will language testing look like in 2020? Our goal and hope is for the EFSET to be a household name by 2020. We want to build a global community of people that use it in dialogue with us, so that we can keep learning and improving the test on a global scale. We also want the test to have a real effect on the English language learning experience and to inform research in the field. In other words, we want to make a real mark on the industry and help move it forward. We’re seeing some early signs of this already – I recently got an email from an Indian non-profit that wants to test 10,000 students yearly. Established certification tests are simply too expensive for them, but the EFSET meets their needs perfectly! www.efset.org
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Session summaries
The language class as a skills incubator Dr. Paola Uccelli, Harvard Graduate School of Education Dr. Uccelli’s session focused on how language learning can help young people prepare for the future and make them active participants in our increasingly complex world. Dr. Uccelli emphasized how sufficient time and resources in the language classroom can support the development of important cognitive and communication skills. Language, she argued, should not simply be seen as a global proficiency but as a repertoire of skills that allows people to communicate effectively in different situations and with people from all over the world.
Preparing language teachers Dr. Alexey Korenev, Moscow State University Dr. Korenev’s session focused on how language teachers can become more effective and successful in their jobs and how teacher training can support that. He noted that the vast majority of language teachers around the world are non-native. Dr. Korenev also highlighted the fact that a good level of general English doesn’t necessarily translate to good teacher’s English, and that there’s a real need to structure teacher training so that core skills are developed effectively. These include listening, error correction, and presentation skills, both inside and outside the classroom.
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Session summaries
Languages without borders - the policymaking perspective Dr. Denise Martins de Abreu-e-Lima, Ministry of Education, Brazil
Dr. Martins de Abreu-e-Lima’s session focused on effective language policy, drawing on the Brazilian example. She highlighted the fact that through a program focused on raising proficiency levels among university students, the importance of foreign languages has been recognized across Brazil. She also noted that both policymakers and the public now understand that there can be no international future without foreign languages. She stressed the importance of implementing policies that are scalable even in countries as large as Brazil, and noted that student motivation should be at the core of language policy: teaching for the sake of teaching will be a waste of time and money – students have to see why it’s important.
Blended learning at EF David Bish, EF Education First David Bish’s workshop highlighted the key elements of introducing blended learning into a school’s curriculum. He shared the cyclical design approach taken by EF in adopting and gradually enhancing their blended learning model through hardware updates, teacher-led enquiry into classroom usage, and the introduction of new software. Participants shared information about implementation in their own contexts, highlighting challenges such as problems locating software, dealing with suppliers, and getting stakeholders, including teachers, on board. David also discussed how staff react to changes brought on by technology and how an institution can be expected to progress with such technological advances in mind. He concluded by sharing how EF has involved teachers in taking responsibility for their own progress in learning and using new systems.
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Session summaries
Globalizing the curriculum Dr. Yujin Yaguchi, University of Tokyo Dr. Yaguchi’s session explored the potential and challenges associated with implementing a global curriculum within the context of a new program established at the University of Tokyo in Japan. “The Programs in English at Komaba” (PEAK) was set up in 2012 to bring in more students from abroad and offer an undergraduate degree taught in English. While PEAK has thus far managed to attract talented students from all over the world, it has also given rise to many questions, including: Given that a curriculum is contextual and must meet the needs of students with a variety of social and cultural backgrounds, is a globalized curriculum a contradiction? What should its outcomes be, and should they be the same for all students? How does the use of one language over another impact the culture of teaching? And how does this choice of language impact the cultural needs of each student?
The importance of teacher development Dr. Beata Schmid, EF Education First Dr. Schmid’s session focused on the benefits of ongoing teacher development and its importance to teachers and students alike. She noted that motivation levels in particular are tied to the development of teachers’ skills. She highlighted the importance of addressing the different needs of both novice teachers and more experienced ones in teacher development. Dr. Schmid also argued that all good teacher development programs include elements of the following: varied lesson observation sessions, including peer observations and self-reflection, reading groups, conferences, guest lectures, and further study.
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“The networking was excellent and the presentations were, on the whole, good and relevant. The social program was outstanding and all the staff were efficient and very helpful.” NEUS FIGUERAS CASANOVAS (PHD) VICE PRESIDENT OF APAC, ASSOCIACIÓ DE PROFESSORS D’ANGLÈS DE CATALUNYA, SPAIN
“The Forum was very interesting and informative. A personal highlight for me was the dinner at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston – it was a real pleasure to enjoy the evening and network in such a beautiful setting.” GISELLA LANGÉ GENARAL MANAGER FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING AT THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, ITALY
“I found LEIF to be interesting and enlightening, with a great exchange of ideas in the workshops in particular.” JIANFANG XIAO VICE DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF ENGLISH AND EDUCATION, GUANGDONG UNIVERISTY OF FOREIGN STUDIES, CHINA
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Organizers: Dr. Christopher McCormick Franck Brandin Alisa Taiturova Conference Report Editor: Kaisa Schreck Designer: Sabrina Theumann For any questions about the event, please contact: franck.brandin@ef.com and alisa.taiturova@ef.com