7.1061, Qs: Survey: Language courses on the Internet

Tue Jul 23 01:27:53 UTC 1996

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-7-1061. Mon Jul 22 1996. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines:  163

Subject: 7.1061, Qs: Survey: Language courses on the Internet

Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. <aristar at tam2000.tamu.edu>
            Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at emunix.emich.edu> (On Leave)
            T. Daniel Seely: Eastern Michigan U. <dseely at emunix.emich.edu>

Associate Editor:  Ljuba Veselinova <lveselin at emunix.emich.edu>
Assistant Editors: Ron Reck <rreck at emunix.emich.edu>
                   Ann Dizdar <dizdar at tam2000.tamu.edu>
                   Annemarie Valdez <avaldez at emunix.emich.edu>

Software development: John H. Remmers <remmers at emunix.emich.edu>

Editor for this issue: lveselin at emunix.emich.edu (Ljuba Veselinova)

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---------------------------------Directory-----------------------------------
1)
Date:  Mon, 22 Jul 1996 09:17:29 -0000
From:  Claus.A.Steiger at tzm.uni-giessen.de ("Claus Steiger")
Subject:  Survey: Language courses on the Internet

---------------------------------Messages------------------------------------
1)
Date:  Mon, 22 Jul 1996 09:17:29 -0000
From:  Claus.A.Steiger at tzm.uni-giessen.de ("Claus Steiger")
Subject:  Survey: Language courses on the Internet

Dear subscribers of the LINGUIST list,

As a part of my doctoral thesis, I am doing some work on Internet
tools used to teach and to learn foreign languages.

In order to contact as many as possible providers of such teaching
tools I would like to ask you, if you would be able to send me all the
Internet addresses of any online language course you may know of.

I enclose the questionnaire which will be sent to these providers, so
that you can fill it in, if you yourself are a supplier of online
courses. I would also be very grateful, if you could forward this
questionnaire to the online providers you know.

If anybody out there knows something about a similar inquiry, please
let me know about.

Thank you for any effort taken.

Here follows my questionnaire:

	-------------------------------------------------------

It would be a considerable help for my current work, if you were so
kind as to answer to this questionnaire.

I will send the same questionnaire to many language course providers
on the Internet and my offer is to provide you all with the analysis
of the feedback which I obtain. Perhaps you are also interested in how
"successful" the suppliers of other courses and other languages
are. You could integrate the wishes of the end-users into your own
applications, and I would be able to write the respective part of my
scientific work based on this survey...

The aim of this work is neither to evaluate the interesting work which
you are realizing nor to publish your details. The results of this
survey will be used ANONYMOUSLY and as such will be sent to anybody
interested in the statistical analysis of your answers!

I would be very grateful to everybody who answers the following
questions. If you do not want to answer all questions (some of them
 may not even seem suitable for all contacted providers, but must be
maintained in order to compare the answers) feel free to choose the
suitable ones. Please do not hesitate to add further comments!

Since when have you been offering your language course on the
Internet?

Is this the first/second/third... version of the course?

If you have updated your course, have you realized a technical and /
or a didactical change?

Was the change rather an intuitive decision (in order to improve
something that you considered not to be "perfect") or was the update
due to the wishes / the feedback of your learners?

What kind of "experts" were engaged in building up the course design?
(programmers, language teachers, didactic specialists...) What is
their mother tongue?

Do you analyse the demographic data of the persons who are using your
language course? Do you know how many regular learners you have? Do
you know how many persons have consulted your offer and how many of
them continue to use it? Where do they come from? What is the age /
the gender / the educational background of your learners? What is
their motivation for using the Internet instead of traditional
teaching?

What kind of feedback tools do you offer to your learners?
(i.e. technical / grammatical / didactical support)

What is the teaching language of your course (it seems to be mainly
English)? Are you thinking of offering other teaching languages than
the current one?

What kind of exercises do you offer? Who has built them up
(technicians or rather language teachers)?
Do you change them regularly?
Is your course designed in teaching units?

Do learners have to use your course online or are they able to
download it?
If they can download it, do they have the same functions on their own
PC when they are "offline"? Do you supply other language teaching
software?

Do you use "real" texts / "authentic" texts of the target language or
do you use specialized grammatical instructive texts?

Do you offer / will you offer a tutor support for the teaching?

Do you or will you offer sound files of native speakers in order to
explain the phonology of the target language?

Do you or will you use real sound applications (i.e. through the
Internet or by the "traditional phone")?

Do you intent to expand / change your teaching offers?
- technically (i.e. offering language teaching through
  ISDN-connections, videoconfering, etc.),
- in terms of quantity (more or other teaching / target languages,
  more exercises, etc.)?
- Will you individualize your offer for special target groups?

Would you accept a link from the Webpage where you offer your language
course to an interactive questionnaire for your learners on our
Webserver (at an institution of University of Giessen, Germany, where
by the way no language course is offered through the Internet)?
Before I do the work to create a suitable questionnaire which will
store the answers of your learners in an ACCESS database, I would like
to know, if you would support such a survey.

Do you want to add further comments?

Are you interested in obtaining the results of this survey?

Thank you very much for answering to all these questions!

Yours sincerely,
Claus Steiger
email: Claus.A.Steiger at tzm.uni-giessen.de
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