Vista Higher Learning’s Sentieri Supersite

As I studied many of the commercial online language learning providers, I kept reminding myself to go back to reexamine the “supersite” we had in my elementary Italian textbook Sentieri. I had taught Italian 100A and B using Sentieri for about three years. The textbook was good, but the supersite was a spectacular use of online instructional technology as well as a repertoire for linguistic and cultural content.

So, I contacted Vista Higher Learning and they agreed to provide me with a 30-day examination of Sentieri’s upgraded supersite. Sentieri is a 12-unit textbook that covers a two-semester or three-quarter elementary Italian program. It uses a blended model providing online as well as face-to-face instruction.

Vista Higher Learning (VHL) was founded in 2000 as an independent, specialized, and privately owned company. Its mission is to “raise the teaching and learning of world languages to a higher level. This mission is based on the following beliefs:

·     It is essential to prepare students for the world in which learning another language is a necessity, not a luxury.

·     Language learning should be fun and rewarding, and all students should have the tools necessary for achieving success.

·     Students who experience success learning a foreign language will be more likely to continue their language studies both inside and outside the classroom.”

Given this mission, VHL has taken a fresh look at traditional language teaching materials and decided to revolutionize language teaching and learning through the creation of the supersite, which is a huge upgrade from traditional language laboratory materials. VHL integrates text, technology, and media to offer learners a host of contemporary, authentic materials. VHL makes learning “exciting, relevant, and effective.”

So, how did VHL’s supersite compare with the commercial online providers in the use of instructional technology and content?  You would think that through tens of millions of dollars in capitalization commercial online provider such as Duolingo, busuu, Babbel, Fluent Forever and others would offer superior online instructional technology and content. They don’t. There is no comparison. VHL’s supersite wins hands down in both technology and content.

Let’s first take a look at comprehensible input. Comprehensible input, an expression coined by second-language acquisition theorist Stephen Krashen, is the availability of real-life language taking place in authentic speech acts between native or near-native speakers. It, not grammar, should be at the heart of all language instruction.

VHL’s elementary Italian program Sentieri offers learners a bevy of authentic listening input. Sentieri features Fotoromanzo, a mini soap opera, which consists of 24 dramatic episodes. Sentieri follows the tradition of using a soap opera to provide comprehensible input. French in Action, pioneered by Professor Pierre Capretz centered around a young French woman who shares her Paris with a young American man. French in Action included 52 episodes for a total of 26 hours of real language use. It was the ideal vehicle to solidify one’s knowledge of embedded grammar and vocabulary. Sentieri has the same mission.

In Sentieri’s Fotoromanzo, the soapish storyline revolves around the adventures of “four young college students who are studying in Rome. They live at the Pensione Marcela, a boarding house. The video tells their story and the story of Marcella and her teenage son, Paolo.” There are six main characters: five Italians and one American. For example, in Unit 6’s Sbrigati, Lorenzo! (Hurry up, Lorenzo) three Italians fight during their morning routine over a single bathroom in a typical Italian apartment in the five-minute video.

Fotoromanzo, entirely shot in Rome, is the heart of the instructional package: textbook plus supersite. It provides authentic language, cool characters and storyline, key vocabulary and grammar, and tons of culture. Authentic language, cool characters and storyline are features that are absent in nearly every commercial online language system. Plus, Sentieri always has one real-life TV commercial to watch and analyze. It also adds comprehensible input from social media, a feature my Italian, ESL, and French students have always loved. None of the online systems take advantage of social media for comprehensible input

Let’s look at what the online providers offer. Rosetta Stone in its rigid platform continues to offer single-sentence utterances. Duolingo, which mostly operates off of single-sentence utterances as well, recently added a new feature “Duolingo Stories” which is a step ahead of its commercial online competitors, but they are contrived and won’t help the learner understand day-to-day discourse. Babbel and busuu offer some good dialogues, but they are less than a minute in length and operate without video. Fluent Forever seems to think its massive focus on pronunciation is more important than offering authentic communication via videos.

One last word on comprehensible input. Fotoromanzo is combined with instructors who speak mostly Italian in their classes. Instructor speech in Italian and other languages is absent in most commercial online providers. Let’s say that an instructor uses Italian or another language 50% of class time. That equates to 25 minutes per class X four classes per week X 15 weeks of instruction. That totals to 1,500 minutes of comprehensible input. That’s about 1,000 plus minutes more than most commercial online systems provide. This is one reason (among many) why busuu’s claim that 22 hours or Duolingo’s claim that 34 hours of instruction is the equivalent of a one-semester elementary language course is bogus.

Now, let’s take a look at the teaching of culture in VHL’s Sentieri versus the commercial online providers. In Unit 6, the author introduces a host of different cultural topics related to health and the daily routine. Sentieri’s Unit 6 alone offers more discussion of cultural topics than the learner will see in all the lessons featured in all the commercial online providers combined. In my Italian 100A class, we discussed the following cultural issues:

1.    The concept of government-subsidized Italian health care versus the American health care system;

2.    Life expectancy in Italy versus the U.S.;

3.    The Mediterranean diet versus the American diet;

4.    Smoking in Italy versus the US;

5.    The growing need for weight loss in Italy;

6.    The importance of dress for Italians;

7.    The morning routine (the role of breakfast and personal hygiene among Italian families; and

8.    Italian versus American coffee culture and the emergence of Starbucks in Italy.

Sentieri also introduces the perspectives of Italian speakers within each chapter via its Italia autentica and Panorama sections. Perspectives from native speakers is mostly absent in the commercial online community. Commercial online providers act as if culture plays no role in language acquisition and communication.

 In comparison, Duolingo’s Medicine is the closest unit to Sentieri’s Health and Wellness. Duolingo’s unit contains 100 sentences of translation from English to Italian and Italian to English. Here are 10 examples, my favorites:

1.    Is she nude?

2.    A man without skin is like a garden without flowers.

3.    He has a girl on each arm.

4.    This body has no life.

5.    He is like his dog; he always needs to show his teeth.

6.    I have an ill cat.

7.    Where are the bodies?

8.    It is bad for the head.

9.    I took the body there.

10. Those elephants do not have eyes.

As you can see from the 10 examples, Duolingo prefers mind-boggling phrases to culture as a key to communication. The reason for the mind-boggling phrases is simple. Duolingo has volunteers, mostly untrained in language pedagogy and applied linguistics, creating all their activities. Sentieri is carefully crafted by language experts.

Busuu’s Lesson 4: I am not feeling well is the closest equivalent to Sentieri’s Health and Wellness. Busuu introduces the parts of the body (10 in all) accompanied by pictures and each word’s pronunciation. Comprehension checks are embedded within the activity. Next in busuu’s “Memorise,” it asks learners to memorize and recall words. Designed to strengthen a learner’s acquisition of the 10 parts of the body, busuu mostly uses a multiple-choice format, i.e., picture, word pronounced. Learners choose from three options. Next, there is the “Quiz” with the following directions: “Test what you have learned with fun quizzes.” Five items make up the quiz. The cycle reminds me of . . .

Wash clothes

Dry

Fold

Put away

Repeat

Busuu then starts a new cycle of vocabulary (I don’t feel well, I’m hot, cold, sleepy, etc.), drill and quiz. To end the unit, busuu adds a listening and writing/speaking section. First, learners hear a dialogue (no picture or filmed scene) between two people talking about one not feeling well. Learners then place the correct phrase in the empty slot within the dialogue. “Dialogue” represents the first occurrence of comprehensible input beyond word or sentence level. Finally, busuu offers “Conversation.” The directions are as follows: “Complete an exercise by writing or speaking.” Theme: “You’re not feeling well. Tell a friend how you are feeling.” (10 words). The oral or written output is graded by other busuu users who are native speakers.

There is no culture featured in busuu’s lesson.

In my last comparison, let’s look at learning platforms. I am surprised by the rigid platforms the commercial online language providers adhere to. For me, and probably many learners, the routine within the rigid platforms is tiring and boring. With Rosetta Stone, choosing the answer from four pictures, gets tiresome after a few thousand items. And who wants to spend countless hours in pronunciation practice using Fluent Forever? Most platforms are chained to the busuu-type or Babbel-type cycle:

Wash clothes

Dry

Fold

Put away

Repeat

Conversely, VHL’s Sentieri offers a variety of activities for students to practice language and culture. In Unit 6: La salute e il benessere (Heath and wellness), here are the number of activities in each section:

Part 1: Contesti (contexts)--16 different type of activities

Part 2: Pronuncia e ortografia (pronunciation and spelling)--5 activities

Part 3: Teleromanzo--10 activities

Part 4: Cultura--5 activities

Part 5: Strutture--Reflexive verbs--16 activities

Part 6: Strutture Reflexive in passato prossimo—7 activities

Part 7: Strutture Ci vs ne—9 activities

 Here are four of my favorites:

Le Coppie (Couples) strengthens reading comprehension and vocabulary building skills by having students match a series of descriptions with the appropriate word. Example: La usiamo per parlare e per mangiare (We use this to speak and to eat). Possibilities include le dita, la bocca, l’orecchio, il naso (the fingers, the mouth, the ear, the nose).

Scegliere. (Select). Choose the part of the body used in the following statement. “Bacio la mia ragazza.” (I kiss my girlfriend). The answers include le labbra, l’occhio (the lips, the eyes). Scegliere isn’t just another multiple-choice format; it requires students to understand input and make the correct semantic answer. Scegliere is another example of great listening comprehension activities that online systems could add to current systems.

Logico o illogico. Logical or illogical is an offshoot of true or false. It is an excellent reading or listening comprehension check and it forces students to think semantically in order to answer an item correctly. Here is one example. In the sentence “Maria puts on lipstick after showering.” Let’s hope so.

Trova l’intruso is a good lower-level comprehension activity for vocabulary building that is not used in any of the online systems. It asks the learner to pick out the word or phrase that doesn’t fit with the other three in the group. Example: bocca, naso, gomito, occhio. In this collection of words, elbow doesn’t fit with mouth, nose and eye.

In summary, here are the components that make VHL textbooks like Sentieri superior to commercial online language providers:

1.    The use of real-life language situations to provide a focus on communication;

2.    The quantity and quality of comprehensible input;

3.    The focus on practical high-frequency vocabulary for use in real-life situations;

4.    The use of social media and the perspectives of native speakers;

5.    The teaching of everyday culture;

6.    Grammar descriptions to facilitate learning; and

7.    The variety of self-graded online activities to test listening and reading skills;

These are the mileposts commercial online providers could adopt, especially since most are equipped with millions of dollars of investment capital to make changes. (It makes you wonder what they’re doing with all that capital.) Studying VHL language courses could definitely help to upgrade their online platforms.

Unfortunately, commercial online providers suffer from tunnel vision. First, they are focused on out-advertising their competition by making excessive claims to a largely ignorant public. Fluency does NOT come fast and there is no static fluency as the provider Fluent Forever claims. Nearly all of the commercial online language providers, except Transparent Language, have rushed to show how many hours it takes to match an elementary college foreign language course. It is misleading to claim that “22 hours of busuu equals one semester of an elementary college course” based on one un-replicated study using Spanish. It’s what I call the phenomenon of “fluency in five minutes.” Second, many commercial online language providers are in love with their platforms, which look more like the organization and battle plan of old-time textbooks. Surely, commercial online language providers could be more creative. Third, the commercial online providers seem focused on each other and not on textbook publishers who could enter the commercial online language learning market. McGraw-Hill recognized the opportunity to enter the commercial online language learning market, which is why it decided to partner with busuu. I am surprised that McGraw-Hill, in its partnership with busuu, didn’t do better in using online technology.

Conversely, VHL could benefit from adopting some of the strengths of some commercial online providers. First, I personally like Duolingo’s language community where it pits one language learner against another in competition for points, lingots, crowns, and other prizes. Duolingo’s competition pushes students to study language through intrinsic motivation, to outshine the competition. For example, this week I have compiled 8,130 points (1 point per correct answer) versus 2,430 for my nearest competitor. (There’s no way I’m going to let someone outwork me in studying a language.) There are close to a thousand competitors in my group. VHL should consider a points system that would pit students against each other from around the country. Imagine Sentieri San Diego State versus Sentieri users from across the country. As a language professor, I would love seeing my students work even harder through competition with students from other colleges and universities. Imagine if VHL offered a national prize for the student who compiled the most points.

Second, I love Babbel’s instrument to teach writing. VHL has to depend on its language instructors to correct students’ free writing. Babbel proposes dozens of cool writing assignments even though it doesn’t have instructors to grade them. Instead, Babbel uses a collection of sample sentences for students to use as a guide syntactically and semantically for its writing assignment. Students compare their answers with the samples Babbel provides. 

Third, Transparent Language’s Four Square is a fun activity to enhance vocabulary acquisition. Each box with a word(s) flips one after the other to reveal the word or phrase and then flips back to a blank card. You choose the card that matches the prompt. It requires close attention to get each item correct.

Fourth, Transparent Language offers a series of “tests” that can serve as final exams. Their final exam component could help VHL users to prepare for the actual final exam anytime during the quarter or semester. Currently, a student in Sentieri Unit 6 has to way to review other chapters as easy as Transparent Language’s final exams. When I studied Swedish during a 14-day trial, Transparent Language tested all 426 words and phrases I learned. On the visual multiple choice test I got 425 out of 426; on the listening multiple choice test 417 out of 426 or 98%; and on the unscramble the words test I only scored 138 out of 163 or 85%. Adopting the use of “tests” could motivate students to prepare for their final exam throughout the quarter or semester instead of waiting until finals week.

Finally, some bad news for commercial online language learning providers. VHL, with its singular focus on language learning, is coming after your customer base. A company representative told me VHL is planning to offer its textbooks and supersites to learners who are currently using Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, Transparent Language, busuu, Babbel and the rest. Of course, VHL will not offer instruction in 100 languages like Transparent Language or Duolingo, but its language offerings will compete with the commercial online providers in languages like Spanish, French, Italian, and German. If VHL can price its products to the commercial online language learning audience, it will be interesting to see how the competition reacts. My prediction? VHL will siphon off users from Duolingo, Rosetta Stone and others and if more textbook publishers enter the online market, some of the current commercial online providers may disappear.