Volume 4, Number 1                                                                                          Spring  2008
                                                           IN THIS ISSUE
                   CURRENT RESEARCH                                       TEACHER To TEACHER
            Does anyone finish the Berlitz tapes?                          Some Reactions to a TPRS™ Fluency 
            by Jeff McQuillan .................................2           Fast Mandarin class
                                                                           by Stephen Krashen............................24
            Beyond the Monitor Model                                       Interview with Jim Loewen
             by Hasanbey Ellidokuzo!lu .................6
                                                                           by Karen Rowan  ................................ 26
            Anxiety is good for you.                                       How Not to Travel in Europe
            by Stephen Krashen ........................... 19              by Karen Rowan ................................. 31
            Free Voluntary Reading and the                                 Facilitating Professional Development in 
            Acquisition of Grammar by Adult                                South Korea
            ESL Students                                                   by Martin R. A. Duguay .....................36
            by R. Joseph Ponniah .........................20
            Research Paper Submission Guidelines                           Links and Resources ........................ 39
            ............................................................ 23
                 IJFLT: A free on-line, peer-reviewed quarterly journal 
                  dedicated to communicating research, articles and 
                helpful information regarding language acquisition to 
                  support teachers as they endeavor to create fluent, 
                                                multilingual students.
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         Page 1                            The International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching                   © Spring 2008
          Does anyone finish the Berlitz tapes?                         popular types of self-instructional media available on 
                                                                        aggregation software such as iTunes, even warranting 
               A novel measure of perseverance for                      their own category.  A typical book in this genre, 
                   commercial language courses                          Spanish for Dummies, had an Amazon.com sales rank 
                                                                        of 2800 at the time of this writing (November, 2007), 
                                                                        more popular than the sales of a former president’s 
                                                                        memoirs (Clinton, 2005).
                                                                        Despite the popularity of these commercial products 
                                                                        aimed at the independent language acquirer, there 
                                                                        as been little to no evaluation of their effectiveness 
                                                                        or use.  An exception is Harris Winitz’s Learnables 
                                                                        (2003), which have been subjected to several empirical 
           by Jeff McQuillan,                                           examinations (Winitz & Reed, 1973; Winitz, 1982, 
           Center for                                                   1996). 
           Educational 
           Development                                                           Reaching the Promised Land: Perseverance 
                                                                                         as a Measure of Success
         Jeff McQuillan (Ph.D., University of Southern                  Certainly one measure of a language course’s success 
         California, 1997) is a Senior Research Associate               is perseverance  or resilience in study.  Do students 
         at the Center for Educational Development in Los               make it to the upper levels of language proficiency, or 
         Angeles, California, and co-producer of English as a  even the later chapters of the book?  Dupuy (1998) was 
         Second Language Podcast.                                       one of the first researchers to look at perseverance as 
                                                                        it pertains to university-level foreign language classes.  
                                                                        She monitored the number of students who reached 
                                    Introduction                        intermediate and upper-level language courses, and 
                ethod comparison research in foreign language           determined what the characteristics were of the 
         Meducation has typically focused on classroom                  “survivors.”  Her results showed that only a small 
         instruction, with relatively little attention paid to a        percentage in fact make it beyond the early levels 
         large number of the foreign language acquirers who             of language instruction to what she refers to as the 
         are self-taught (but see Krashen, 1991; 1996).  Many           “Promised Land” of upper-division courses, and those 
         of these acquirers attempt to use self-instructional           who do make it have usually benefited from extensive 
         language courses popular in the United States and              exposure to the language outside of school, such as in 
         other countries, published by companies such as                a study abroad experience.  It seems reasonable, then, 
         Berlitz, Pimsleur, Living Language, Rosetta Stone,             to expect that a foreign language education program 
         and others.  These courses usually consist of tapes            aimed at beginners be effective and motivating enough 
         or CDs, often accompanied by a book of transcripts,            that its students actually reach the intermediate level.
         readings, and exercises.  The courses are aimed at 
         adults who wish to pick up a foreign language for              One difficulty in measuring the success of commercial 
         travel or pleasure, and are organized in a sequence of         language courses is that, by their very nature, they 
         lessons designed to take the acquirer to progressively         are used by independent learners where experimental 
         higher levels of proficiency.                                  or even simple observational research is much more 
         While no sales figures are available, the popularity of        difficult.  To identify and survey individuals who have 
         such courses can be attested to in part by the number          purchased and attempted to use such courses would 
         of titles available in bookstores, libraries, and on the       be a difficult task for researchers. Short of purchasing 
         Internet.  Independent courses in the form of language         and distributing the course to a sample of students, 
         podcasts (McQuillan, 2006) are among the most                  measuring these courses’ success will always be 
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         Page 2                            The International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching                   © Spring 2008
        problematic.  Fortunately, there are unobtrusive  or           Both erosion and accretion measures can be used to 
        “non-reactive” ways of examining the behavior of               indicate the extent to which library books are read and 
        independent adult acquirers, precisely as it bears on          studied.  The amount of dust on a library volume can 
        the question of student perseverance.                          be used to test whether it has been removed for use, 
                                                                       especially useful for reference or reserve volumes.  
         Non-reactive Measures in Research: The Wear and               While circulation records can tell us how often a book 
                                Tear Index                             is checked out, only erosion and accretion measures 
        My own attempts at using self-instructional materials          can reliably indicate the extent to which the book 
        to acquire French and Italian led me to see that a             itself was read.   Moestller (1955, cited in Webb), 
        “Wear and Tear Index” might provide an indication              for example, looked at the use of the International 
        of the average progress of commercial language                 Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences at three academic 
        course users.  Most of the books I checked out of my           libraries by examining the number of finger smudges, 
        local library had well-worn page edges, indicating             dirt, and underlining in different parts of the book.  
        heavy use, but only for the first sections of the text.        From such evidence he determined which entries were 
        This “wear and tear” was an                                                                  the most popular and more 
        artifact of the general use                                                                  widely read. 
        patterns of previous library            ....it is difficult to escape 
        patrons, indicating in effect the       the conclusion that many 
        perseverance of the average                                                                            Method
        user.                                   commercial language                                  Public libraries provide 
                                                courses do not appear to                             free use of a variety 
        The use of something akin               be utilized by independent                           of materials, including 
        to a Wear and Tear Index of             acquirers for very long.                             language courses.  
        behavior is not an original                                                                  Drawing from Moesteller 
        idea; it was advocated by Webb                                                               and Debois, I used a 
        (1966) as one example of an                                                                  combined erosion and 
        “unobtrusive measure” of                                                                     accretion measure, the 
        human behavior in a public space.  Webb describes a            Wear and Tear Index, to determine the extent to which 
        class of non-reactive “natural erosion” measures that          library patrons actually used a sample of commercial 
        can indirectly indicate patterns of use and behavior           language courses.  If erosion and accretion measures 
        by a target population.  The greater the “erosion” of          correlate with actual use, then it should be possible 
        the physical features of an object used for a certain          to determine, on average, how much patrons used the 
        purpose, the more use that object has had.  From these         courses and the extent of their progress through the 
        observations one can determine how people behave by            use of these materials.  If students complete the entire 
        looking at the artifacts of their actions, much like an        course, or reach the final steps of an instructional 
        archeologist would do for an ancient civilization.  For        program, we should expect to find wear of the book 
        example, museum officials interested in determining            extending to the later chapters, especially in sequential 
        which exhibits were most popular could examine the             language courses.
        rate of tile replacement in front of different exhibits, 
        since the “erosion” of the tiles would be a likely result      For the purposes of this study, I created the Wear and 
        of heavy foot traffic.  A related class of data analysis is    Tear Index for examining the library materials.  The 
        the use of “accretion measures,” where some deposit or  Index consists of noting the last page where any one of 
        residue indicates unobserved behavior.  Debois (1963,          the following three indicators were found:
        cited in Webb) cites a study from 1934 on the use of                   1. The separation of the pages on the binding,  
        fingerprints and smudges on a newspaper to indicate                    2. Fingerprints or smudges on the pages or the 
        which advertisements were read by readers paging                       corners, and
        through the publication.                                               3. Worn or wrinkled corners likely caused by 
                                                                               page turning.
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         Page 3                            The International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching                   © Spring 2008
         Ten courses found on the shelves of a Los Angeles            texts, regardless of the topic covered or necessity of 
         Public Library neighborhood branch were randomly             review.
         selected from the shelves for analysis.  Although 
         circulation data was not available for the materials, all    Second, it may be that more appealing or effective 
         had been in circulation for at least one year, and all       books and tapes are in constant demand at the library, 
         had covers and bindings which showed the likelihood          and hence would not likely appear on the shelf the 
         of frequent use by numerous patrons.                         day we conducted our analysis.  A survey of the Los 
                                                                      Angeles Public Library catalog revealed, however, 
         No direct measure was made of audio 
         materials, although all but two of the        Table 1
         courses that were examined contained           Use of Commercial Language Courses by Library Patrons
         either an accompanying CD or cassette          Course Title                Last Page       Total        Percent 
         tape.  There is no easy way to detect the      (Publisher, Year)           Used            Pages*       Read/Used
         extent or frequency of CD use, other 
         than nicks and scratches to the back           E-Z Spanish: A Begin-             35           328           11%
         surface. Although cassette tape usage          ner’s Course (Barron’s, 
         can be gauged by whether the tape              2001)
         was stopped at some point, there is no         Teach Yourself: Spanish           86            318          27%
         way to know if more diligent patrons           (McGraw-Hill, 2003)
         rewound the tape.  Also, no phrasebooks        Learn Spanish the Fast            37           264           14%
         or “traveler’s” courses were examined,         and Fun Way (Barron’s, 
         since they are designed for reference          1997)
         use, and are organized by theme or topic       Rush Hour Spanish 
         rather than sequentially as a course.          (Berlitz, 2003)
                          Results                                                         21           104           20%
         Table 1 shows results of the analysis.         Spanish Now! Level 1              80           505           26%
         For each course, the title, publisher,         (Barron’s, 2005)
         year of publication, last page used, total     Portuguese for Dum-               20           304            7%
         pages, and the percent of use are shown.       mies (Wiley Publishing, 
         All ten courses were examined in a             2006)
         single afternoon; audio-only courses           Learn German the Fast             15           252            6%
         were excluded from selection.                  and Fun Way (Barron’s, 
                                                        1997)
                         Discussion                     Chinese for Dummies               38            314          12%
         A number of objections can be raised           (Wiley Publishing, 
         concerning these results.  First, it could     2005)
         be argued that the situation is not unique     Teach Yourself Begin-             44            193          23%
         to commercial language course, that            ner’s Italian (NTC/Con-
         the first chapter of most instructional        temporary Publishing, 
         books are the most worn, and that few          1999)
         users “complete” their instructional 
         sequences.  Users may also need to             Teach Yourself Canton-            56           254           22%
         review early chapters more frequently.         ese (NTC/Contemporary 
         While this may be true, it is still not        Publishing, 1995)
         very encouraging that patrons don’t                                                        Average         16.8%
         move beyond the first chapter of such          * =  excluding glossaries or bilingual dictionaries at the end of the volume
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        Page 4                            The International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching                   © Spring 2008