Apps for ESL/EFL

English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) have been a focus of instruction internationally for many years due to the importance of English as the language for international trade and commerce.

Schools, colleges and institutes offering ESL/EFL have proliferated over the past two decades as globalization stimulated international commerce, and as the cold war wound down allowing a greatly expanded movement of peoples across the globe with English now also the lingua-franca of international travel.

In Canada and specifically British Columbia it wasn’t until the mid seventies that private enterprise began opening private language schools to cater to this international demand.

As demand grew in subsequent years, private schools proliferated to cater to this international student clientele, and subsequently public institutions became involved in what had become a lucrative market. ESL instruction was and is front and center as the foundation requirement for further studies at English speaking institutions of learning. Now there are well over two hundred such schools teaching ESL in the Lower Mainland alone.

Schools and colleges with deep pockets or public funding were able to spend royally to promote their offerings, while smaller entrepreneurial schools could survive only through innovation, joint-venture funding, or niche marketing. The use of the internet for both program promotion and content delivery has become almost mandatory for these smaller schools in order to compete successfully.

Literacy expanded.

Publishing houses and independent software developers have begun to recognize this need. Cambridge University Press is now promoting a complete package of online cloud resources for ESL/EFL instruction called English 360, as a blended learning resource. Creative Commons and Open Source communities have joined in to offer free applications  often targeting niche services. Athabasca University in Canada offers a Creative Commons License app. that is cloud based and called Mobile ESL. Permission is given to freely download source code, permitting application modification and adaptation.

As cloud based applications become more sophisticated and cost effective, overseas language training schools and institutions will be able to bring native speaker language and professionally developed syllabi into their programming. Access to quality teaching resources online will level the competitive playing field for program delivery, and competitive advantage will return to schools that deliver added value through attention to individual needs and ancillary market driven services.

A need for added value, offering niche services and proprietary system management:

If the past in a market based economy is anything to go by, the proliferation of quality online content should continue to improve and will eventually be dominated by several larger publishing houses causing mainstream online content to become a commodity as textbooks have been in the past. Future competitive advantage for smaller institutions of learning will be in adding value to such content by personalizing the delivery of “plug and play” applications.

Niche content or proprietary delivery systems will continue to depend on independent app. development, but with such content and systems often kept off the cloud for proprietary security reasons.

Opportunities for developing apps for ESL/EFL study will be influenced by the cost and availability of cloud based core content produced by major publishing houses. As in any market-place there will be winners and losers. As mentioned above, moves to meet demand for high quality content is already in evidence by such applications as cloud based English360. However, even such professionally produced content has its limits, and as noted by Cambridge University Press the application is in support of a blended learning environment, probably recognizing the limitations of such a structured approach. Value in language instruction often lies in the social dimension and spontaneous person to person interaction. Apps that can tie into this need for relevant social and task-based discourse and niche content delivery as well as proprietary systems management will continue to demand app development skills.

Educators with app development skills and an ability to read code and modify code will be able to custom adapt and modify open source content and content delivery, as well as produce their own custom designed applications.

Resources:

• Thomas, Michael and Hayo Reinders, eds.Task-Based Language Learning and Teaching with Technology, New York, Continuum International Publishing Company, 2010
• English360, http://english360.com, Cambridge University Press, 2010

• Mobile ESL, http://eslau.ca, Athabasca University, 2007

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