Learning Esperanto on the Internet
During the
past year, the Esperantic Studies Foundation commissioned a report on the feasibility
of Esperanto instruction through the Internet. As a follow-up to this report,
the ESF brought together a group of sixteen interested Esperantists from
The purpose
of this exceptional gathering of Esperantists at one of the world’s premier
computer-assisted language-learning conferences was to lay the groundwork for
an ESF-sponsored project aimed at making Esperanto learning resources available
on the Internet and, where necessary, creating learning resources appropriate
to this electronic medium. To this end, the group included Esperantists with a
wide range of experience in computing, linguistics, language teaching,
pedagogy, multimedia, and computer-assisted language learning (CALL). Adhering
to a very busy schedule, the Esperantists attended CALICO sessions during the
day and met in the evenings and on the Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning
following the conference to discuss the ESF project and how what they had seen
and heard in the conference sessions might be applicable to it.
The
experience and interests in the group ranged widely, from older members who had
created successful Esperanto courses to younger computing enthusiasts who had
created web sites of interest to Esperantists. The media with which the various
members of the group had worked ranged from print to video to CD-ROM and the
Internet. These widely diverse interests and experiences both stimulated
animated discussions and complemented each other so that the group met the
generally accepted requirements for a CALL development team: expertise in
pedagogy, computing and design.
After several
days of being immersed in the world of CALICO, CALL and the Internet, the group
held two intensive work sessions to sketch out the general outline of the
Esperanto project and assign specific tasks to various group members.
Accordingly, it was decided that the project would take the form of a web site
providing various learning resources, including self-study courses for various
ages of students and levels of language skill, online dictionaries, games and chat
rooms. It was further agreed that the learning materials would emphasize human
interaction, effective communication, the priority of comprehension over
production in the language-learning process, and deductive rather than
inductive reasoning for the learning of grammar. To achieve these aims, the
site will offer a wide variety of learning aids and materials, apply the
principles of the Total Physical Response methodology wherever possible and
permit the pairing and grouping of registered learners. Team members assigned
specific tasks will present progress reports at the fall, 2002 meeting of the
ESF Board.
The project is ambitious, but is
already well under way. Through judicious use of existing materials, including
course materials already available on CD-ROM, and the application of the
group’s collective expertise to the creation of required new materials, it is
certainly realistic to expect that the projected web site will have a
significant impact on the number of those learning Esperanto.