There are three teaching methods that dominate the business of language instruction: the Direct Method, the Grammar-Translation Method, and the Audio-Lingual Method. Deciding which is the best method is difficult because each has strengths and weaknesses, and the nature of a student’s goals will determine which is best for that student. Although many language-training sources may speak about exclusive or unique approaches, with few exceptions they are using one of these three methods. We conducted extensive research on the subject of teaching methods for our online language training programs. Here is a description of the three primary language teaching methods along with our analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each one:
For Beyond Words readers who know ALTA primarily as a translation company, it may come as a surprise to learn that we are national leaders in the Language Testing sector. Since ALTA does not develop academic language tests (like the TOEFL & SAT, which get so much attention) it’s not surprising that our services might fly under many people’s radar. Our leadership in medical, government, and corporate language testing, however, keeps us busy with interesting projects for clients and partners who you’ve definitely heard of: Kaiser Permanente, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the City of Los Angeles, major US airlines, financial institutions, and non-profit organizations throughout the world. We test nearly 100 languages, but just as our top translation services provide an interesting glimpse at language trends for business and government, the top languages we test reflect much about current political and economic conditions, and the importance of valid and reliable language skill verification for business, health care, and national security. Here is the data on the top languages we tested in 2009:
Top 10 Languages Tested (2009)
Rounding off the list, the next 10 most-tested languages after Russian are: German, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Somali, Turkish, Cantonese, and Sorani.
2009 proved to be a successful year for ALTA despite the economic conditions. In the Translation Services division, we managed thousands of projects that ranged widely in language combinations, scale, and complexity. As we noted in last year’s post, 10 Most Requested Languages for Translation in 2008, geopolitical events and economic trends are often reflected in interesting ways by our clients’ requests. This year, we’ve expanded the report to include the top 20 target languages, which we thought may be of interest to some of our Beyond Words readers:
I was first introduced to Erin Mckean through her 2007 TedTalk on the work of lexicographers, and I’ve been a big fan ever since. Her sense of humor, wit, and effervescence when writing or speaking about language are contagious, and although she is playful, her work is attempting to do something serious: to change the common perception that people have about the relationship between authority and language. I was reminded of this yesterday when I stumbled upon her Boston Globe article on Sweet Tooth Fairies, three word phrases that contain separate two word phrases such as, periodic table manners, victory lap dance, and unrequited love handles.
While many linguaphiles would simply revel in the wordplay for a bit and then move on, Mckean looks more deeply at the pleasure we take from these fun word combinations to make a point about the elasticity of language — it’s ability to wiggle out of the rigid categories that authoritative figures attempt to prescribe to English speakers and writers. As she explains, “by putting words into an unaccustomed double role, they let us see ordinary English words for the truly versatile actors they are.” For our part, many users of the English language have been conditioned to look towards the authority of linguists for the right answers to every grammar, spelling, or usage issue. Recent popular works such as Jack Lynch’s The Lexicographer’s Dilema, and Mckean’s new innovative online dictionary, Wordnik, are making strides to change this perception.
A recent study conducted by researchers at The University of Granada’s School of Translation and Interpretation attempts to analyze and evaluate the results of machine translations done with popular online tools such as Google Translator, Promt, and WorldLingo. The study was published in this month’s issue of Translation Journal, and it raised interesting questions for me about the possible uses for online machine translation.
Looking at the findings, it should come as no surprise that all of the machine translation tools produced poor results in terms of the number of errors, or that after the translations passed through a round of human editing, the number of errors were drastically reduced. What is interesting, though, is that certain online tools performed better than others, and specific language combinations produced varying results. The graph below shows results from German into Spanish (the researchers used EvalTrans Software). The best translation machine is the one showing the lowest word error percentage (WER). Check out the study for more charts and an explanation of the sentence error rate (SER).
Doctors Lola García-Santiago and María-Dolores Olvera-Lobo do a thorough job of laying out the methodology that they followed, and of acknowledging the difficulties inherent to such studies. They write that,
Evaluation of machine translation is an unresolved research problem that has been addressed by numerous studies in recent years. The most extensively used assessment tools are classified into two major groups: automatic objective methods, and subjective methods (Tomás, Mas & Casacuberta, 2003). The objective evaluation methods compare a set of correct translations of reference against the set of translations produced by the translation software under evaluation. The units of measurement most often used work at the lexical level, comparing strings of text.
The following video highlights the longest words in the English language, from supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and antidisestablishmentarianist to some impossibly long chemistry terms. Enjoy!
Since earning recognition for Innovation in Multicultural Health Care, Kaiser Permanente’s Clinician Cultural Linguistic Assessment language testing tool, which is administered by ALTA, has been receiving a lot of positive attention from people in the medical community. ALTA receives a mention in the following article from the California Healthfax publication: Read the rest of this entry »
As our nation’s policy makers and health care providers debate the future of health care reform, ALTA and Kaiser Permanente are working together to improve the quality of care for ethnic minorities and multilingual patients.
Having recently been recognized with an award for Innovation in Multicultural Health Care from The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), ALTA and Kaiser are pleased that their language testing program is making a positive impact. The award recognizes the Clinician Cultural and Linguistic Assessment for, “effectively and compassionately addressing race, ethnicity, and language proficiency in the delivery of quality, cost-effective services,” (Robert Ross, CEO of The California Endowment).
The Clinician Cultural and Linguistic Assessment (CCLA) is a tool developed by Kaiser Permanente and administered by ALTA to determine the level of target language proficiency of bilingual physicians. The CCLA is designed to assess target language communication (speaking, reading, and listening comprehension) between doctors and patients in a linguistically accurate and culturally sensitive manner without the use of an interpreter. The CCLA is the first and only validated and reliable language assessment tool of its kind, and sets a standard level for effective communication in a medical setting. The results are used to match patients with physicians who are fluent in their language. ALTA, a national leader in language testing, has administered the assessments for Kaiser Permanente since September of 2007.
Recognition of the ALTA-administered language assessment comes as U.S. health care providers increasingly face the challenges of linguistic diversity. A study conducted by The Institute of Medicine recently found that ethnic minorities tend to receive lower quality health care than non-minorities, even when factors such as insurance status and income level are controlled. Kaiser developed its language assessment program to remedy this situation as the number of ethnic minorities in need of health care is likely to increase in the coming decades.
According to NCQA president Margaret O’Kane, “one in five Americans speaks a language other than English at home…it’s imperative that health care reform efforts address the impact of disparities on the quality and cost of U.S. health care.” In addition, a 2005 study conducted by the National Alliance for Hispanic Health found that the number of elderly Spanish speakers in the U.S. will climb to 13 million by 2050, even as the U.S. Census Bereau reports that latinos 65 years and older are projected to outnumber all other elderly minorities by 1 million as soon as 2030. The CCLA is offered in Spanish and 13 other languages.
In her recent lecture on dictionaries, Erin Mckean likened the task of the lexicographer to that of a fisherman dropping an enormous net into a sea of language, and collecting with wonderment the words that surface. If that is a good analogy, then surely one of the world’s most interesting and eclectic fishermen is bestselling author Adam Jacot de Boinod.
In 2005, after a chance encounter with an Albanian dictionary sparked his curiosity, Jacot de Boinod combed through nearly 300 dictionaries from around the world to compile his bestselling book, The Meaning of Tingo: And Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World, which was featured in an article on the BBC News, here.
It’s particularly exciting that the author has opened up the research for the book with a call for submissions through a new Twitter account, Whiffling Twitter. So, if you have a favorite rare English word or phrase, drop it into the net.
In a 1983 interview with Musician Magazine, Elvis Costello said that, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.”
The quote has since been attributed to a dozen other artists, from Thelonius Monk to Steve Martin (I’m surprised no one’s given Churchhill a nod). The sentiment seems to have lived on as a challenge to writers, especially in this era of the blog, so here’s my contribution. Musicians may be designated as such for their mastery of instrumentation and sound, but they do plenty of wonderfully creative things with language, and often the first indication can be found in the origin of bands’ names, which can reveal thoughtful word-play, allusions to literature and history, and foreign language associations. Here is a list of 20 band name etymologies:
