Tutoring

Language courses on CDs are useful even when students have tutors. Often tutors meet infrequently, for example, only two to three hours per week. It is safe to say that children would not learn their own language from their parents if they heard English only a few hours each week. Language courses are important because they provide many hours of instruction and learning between language lessons given by tutors.

High School Credit

Each level of The Learnables® courses counts as one year of high school credit. Children who start early will have an advantage over older children. The Learnables® courses are appropriate for young children and they can achieve high school credit before entering high school. Each level that they complete counts as one year of high school credit regardless of the age at which they complete the level.

Acquiring Fluency

To acquire successfully a foreign language you will need to hear the language used in many different situations, such as visiting a doctor, having your car repaired, applying for a job, reading history etc. Most language courses are beginning programs and, therefore, provide minimal vocabulary and few conversational situations. Investigate each course to determine how much language is taught by inquiring how many words and situations are presented.

Voice Recognition

Voice recognition does not teach or improve pronunciation because speech wave patterns are different for men, women, and children and for individuals within these groups. We are not aware of research that demonstrates that viewing and imitating speech sound waves will produce good pronunciation. Some companies advertise that speaking is taught through voice recognition systems giving the buyer the false impression that voice recognition teaches speaking in addition to pronunciation.

Meeting National Standards

To advertise that a language course meets national standards is misleading. In the United States there is no agency that sets national standards for foreign language education. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages is an independent professional association that suggests guidelines and procedures for teaching foreign languages. It makes available to teachers new educational findings, current educational reports, and the viewpoints of its membership regarding language instruction. It does not evaluate or review specific courses and programs. When a language company states it meets national standards by making reference to The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages only the language company itself made this determination without stating the procedures it used to come to this conclusion and without a review by a neutral language agency.

Picture Immersion System

Guessing
The Learnables® pioneered the picture immersion system and conducted basic research to test its reliability and validity as early as 1970. In the testing phase, the students were presented with four pictures on each screen. They were instructed to click on the correct picture of one of the four pictures when they heard a word or sentence in the foreign language. This system was found not to be effective for a number of reasons. It encouraged guessing, produced boredom and inattention, and diminished learning. The Learnables® revised the instructional system. Each screen now contains a series of pictures to view. No guessing is involved. Some language programs continue to use the four-picture guessing approach. Examples of The Learnables® non-guessing approach are presented on this web page.

Linguistic Sequencing
The Learnables® developed linguistic sequences taught through the use of story lines. Whereas other courses use random sentences without conversation and stories, The Learnables® research found that grammar and vocabulary are effectively learned through the use of story lines containing conversational situations.

High Retention
There are two kinds of language courses. A translation course uses English translation. The English translation approach reduces retention and often causes considerable confusion in the learning of the second language because the learner interprets the foreign language vocabulary and grammar with respect to English. A picture system uses pictures to teach the meaning of foreign language sentences, enabling the student to think in the foreign language. The auditory and visual senses also provide for high retention in language learning.

Visual Sequencing
The Learnables® courses provide visual linguistic sequencing through the presentation of thousands of pictures. For example, a restaurant story will portray exactly the experiences you will have eating in a restaurant, in sequences, such as: The waiter comes to your table; He gives each person a menu; He takes the order; He serves the food and fills the glasses with water; He gives you the check; You pay the check etc. Visual sequences are similar to the kinds of experiences you have in a foreign country. They are easy to follow and ensure rapid learning.

Conversation
Many language courses contain few, if any, conversational sequences. The Learnables® research program led to the conclusion that conversational sequences along with the presentation of pictures insures the development of good conversational skills as long as the student has the opportunity to listen to a large number of conversations typical of everyday situations. The Learnables® contains hundreds of everyday conversational sequences.

Results published in Scholarly Journals

The results of The Learnables® research are published in a variety of applied linguistic journals. A description of the research also appears in two books: Comprehension and Problem Solving as Strategies for Language Training, Mouton: The Hague, 1975 (authors H. Winitz and J. Reeds) and The Comprehension Approach to Foreign Language Instruction, Rowley: Mass., 1981 (editor H. Winitz). To our knowledge among publishers of language courses only The Learnables® has conducted educational research to evaluate the effectiveness of language courses and materials. 

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