Acquire foreign language with content you love

Thoughts on language acquisition EdTech

Razmik Badalyan
Nov 5 · 6 min read

Problem

No sustainable motivation for acquiring a new language.

Solution

Acquire language with the content you love.

car-repair by Luis Prado from the Noun Project

More on solution

Imagine this. You open a site and the first thing you are asked about is — What are you into? You write down what you like. Be it as vague as football, or as specific as the 2010 FIFA World Cup. For a more realistic example, for me, it would be Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga). Reading this in original is the main reason I want to know the Japanese language.

After specifying your interests you are asked about your language level. For English, it would be choosing your CEFR level. In my case, I would choose from Japanese N1-N5 levels. Well to be honest in this framework my level would be N6. I can read with hiragana and katakana but don’t understand what I read. From my experience of reading NHK News, my vocabulary didn’t go beyond ねこ, ひと and a few more words.

The site uses the information on your interests and language level to give you content to acquire the language. I didn’t say content for learning the language on purpose. You get content to learn about the topic you are interested in and you acquire the language in the process. I will get back to this distinction later; to put it shortly it’s about Stephen Krashen’s Language Acquisition Theory.

There are two different options; two different processes that would go under the hood of the site to get you the content. First, a more realistic one in the sense of existing technical solutions is a search option. Second, is AI-generated content. Well, at the end of the article you might think that both could work together, yep, I just distinguish them to make it easier for me the description.

Search by BomSymbols from the Noun Project

Search for content

The site knows what I like and knows my level in a foreign language. With this info site searches for relevant content and filters out content that is beyond my comprehension level and gives what is left. With text content, it would directly do the analyses of its readability index and with video or audio, it would first get the transcript of the video and then do the same thing. For example, it would get articles on the topic of Nausicaa’s manga. In the case of the Japanese language, the situation is a bit tricky. Especially for the lowest level of language knowledge; I can’t read Kanji. The solution is to use furigana for text and similarly for video subtitles.

Besides this mane search feature, there are others that help with the comprehension of the content. To name the few that come to mind:

  • Text-to-speech for articles. e.g. I like how this Natural Reader extension highlights the words as it goes on reading the article.
  • Playback control for video/audio speed. e.g. Video Speed Controller this one has a neat feature to choose the rate of the speed change.
  • Generate subtitles for videos, and transcripts for audio that don’t have one.
  • Dictionary, both translation & definition. e.g. eJOY extension.

I’m cautious about mentioning any learning features like saving words to learn with cards (e.g. Anki). The focus should be on content; on comprehending the information about stuff one likes, not the words, grammar or other usual suspects of language learning.

Machine Learning by Trevor Dsouza from the Noun Project

AI-generated content

First of all, I’m sorry for using buzz words. But using AI for content is not just hypothetically plausible in the future, it’s a given reality, although on an experimental level.

For me, perfect AI-generated content would be Nausicaa’s manga with furigana written next to the kanji. All necessary technology exists:

  • kanji OCR
  • match furigana to kanji
  • rewrite manga text bubbles with new text.

Plus, text-to-speech and dictionary functionality mentioned in the previous section and I will be fully equipped to fulfill my dream. This, so to say, furiganization of the manga is not AI, but it fits more in the context of the AI section than the previous one.

AI-generated content might be rewriting articles to fit one’s language level and adding images for context. Also, creating videos — generating script, searching relevant visuals (images, video clips), making a voice-over from the script and finally making the videos. For example, there was a news about Nausicaa’s manga being adapted into a kabuki play. This software would find a Japanese article about that news, rewrite it in a simple style, or write a script and generate video with visuals to help with comprehension. As an example of existing AI that can do similar tasks check out these two videos (1, 2). Both are from Two Minute Papers YouTube channel. I must mention watching this channel’s videos was a great inspiration to think about AI’s role in language acquisition EdTech.

dialog by lastspark from the Noun Project

Language acquisition & language learning

If you are familiar with Krashen’s theory you probably noticed that the features described above are based on principals of language acquisition. Well, at least I hope you did and I haven’t misinterpreted the theory. If you haven’t heard of Krashen’s theory then this video might be a good place to start.

How to Learn a Language: INPUT (Why most methods don’t work) | What I’ve Learned

To specify the acquisition-learning distinction, as far as I understand by language learning Krashen means conscious learning of language grammar, more specifically part of the grammar that is easily learnable and usable as a monitor. I won’t go in more detail of learning, it is a big topic and it’s better if you read it in the original work if you want to learn more — Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. The main point is that we acquire language and not learn it. And acquisition happens when:

  • Input is comprehensible;
  • There is a lot of input over time;
  • One is not in a stressed situation when acquiring the language.
English class by ProSymbols from the Noun Project

In schools

I also want to describe who this software can be used in the schools’ context. Foreign language teaching is one of the main subjects in schools around the world (e.g. in Georgia, English is taught on every grade level). The main thing I want to highlight in the school context is that it’s mandatory. From a student’s perspective — there is a motivation to learn a foreign language; it’s something he has to do. What the student has to learn for the next lesson might be the third type of information he writes down on the site. So, that the content he gets (be it threw search or/and AI-generated) helps him with school homework.

If a teacher decides to integrate this software into the teaching process the effect might be higher. Student’s learning motivation is one of the main issues that teachers face.

Why English

I used the Japanese to give a genuine example. But for the conclusion, I want to mention how this kind of approach to language acquisition EdTech can help with acquiring English.

The importance of knowing English derives from two assumptions. First, every person is interested in something. Second, no matter what you are interested in it is very likely there is content on that in English. I guess the first assumption does not need any proof. The second one might also seem like that, but I guess not for everyone. To get the point across here is a graph on the usage of content languages for websites.

Here bit.ly/english_data_v2 you can find 70+ more reasons why knowing English is helpful. To get back to the software, these 70+ data points also answer to how to acquire language. No matter what you are interested in you can learn about that if you know English, and you acquire English when you read, watch, or listen to content that you are interested in.

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