Hours Do Count When Learning English Online

Online Instruction, online learning, Online Teaching Practices, Reflective Teaching 0 comments

Panama City, seen from Old Panama, Panama

Photo by Jonathan Acuña (2017)

Hours Do Count

When Learning English Online

A bit of feedback for the self

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Sunday, August 11, 2019

Post 336

Have you ever been to Panama City? If you have, the city today has turned into a maze where one can easily get lost with countless skyscrapers overlooking you every step of your way. This same kind of feeling is what I have been experiencing when finishing piloting an English online program with local students over here in my home country, Costa Rica. However, when being in Panama City, it was much easier to use Google Maps or to call an Uber cab to find your way easily in the city. But, when thinking back on learning English in an online context, what is the map that must be followed to see how the CEFR language proficiency levels actually work in an online learning context?

I have often been asked if learning English online is easy when compared to a F2F context. When learners ask me this question, I often recall my former boss’s insight into language learning in a virtual environment. “Distance education is not for everyone,” she said while stating her disbelief and skepticism in developing language mastery without coming to class with a teacher and other students. Her viewpoint did not match mine, especially after being able to achieve serval associate degrees online through English but not linked to studying a foreign language. What I concluded was that all this is not about being tough; it is about being different. Online language learning is possible, but it may take longer than a full F2F program.

English language mastery is a process that does not happen overnight; it requires time for a student to develop his foreign language and in turn its mastery. The question over here is “How long does it take an online language student to develop his command of the target language? And this has to be clearly stated that any amount of hours of language exposure is difficult to calculate despite the number of hours publishing houses claim a series of theirs can help develop a foreign language. Any random amount of time only adds uncertainty when one is looking for studies (the map to cross the maze) that can help you match language development and time needed to achieve a given CEFR level.

What I have been able to experience with several online groups of language students of mine is that each phase is different; time constraints are not the same for each step of the CEFR way. Since every step of the CEFR ladder, or as the inverted “so-called” pyramid included below states, it is important to divide each level into a base one and a plus (+) one as already done by the Global Scale of English (GSE) created by Pearson Education (2016). GSE can help us “improve the quality and relevance of [our] English classes” (Pearson Education, 2016). This toolkit can help us visualize the real learning objectives students are to master at a given point in their language development, along with “grammar and vocabulary to help [teachers] plan lessons that are at the right level for […] students (Pearson Education, 2016).

Based on very empirical evidence taken from my ethnographies and reflective journaling and trying to match them with Pearson Education’s GSE, to have language learners achieve a B1+ level of language commands, some 600 hrs are needed. Adult learners who participated in four 45-hr courses for 15 weeks (totaling 60 weeks) of a four-level program could not make it to B1. And why not? The reason has to do with the time needed for consolidation and for internalization of the new content covered along the program. What was witnessed is the importance and relevance of dividing CEFR levels into two (A1 & A1+) to help thee adult students work on course content and achieve language mastery.

As stated above, with just empirical evidence and reflective journaling, 600 hours of language work is necessary to achieve a B1+ for an online student who has a platform and synchronous sessions with an instructor and a class. The way our courses were constituted included 45 hours of synchronous sessions to work on the content that students previously worked on the course language platform. On the other hand, this online asynchronous work is meant to be self-regulated by the learners and monitored by the instructor. And though students probably work some 120 hours on online course content in the platform, they barely have “real mastery” of that content. Autonomous study must be done along with online videoconferencing sessions where they can really get to work the course content in meaningful ways.

To conclude, it is a must to revisit the program structure to modify it to really herd students toward a B1 level. Many more hours of class practice are needed even though these hours are just dedicated to practice. Practicing extensively in tough content for the students is also mandatory to make these hours true learning and CEFR level achievement for all students.