Tech for Teachers Technology Review: LINGT Editor
by Thomas Braslavsky
NCLRC/The George Washington University

Many teachers have encountered challenges in assigning oral homework. Some have difficulty ensuring that students indeed practice, while others find they have trouble evaluating students’ progress. Having students use tape recorders to record their pronunciations can get bulky and inefficient to grade, and few easy-to-use alternatives exist in aiding the process.

Enter MIT graduates Scot Frank, Chris Varenhorst and Justin Cannon, who formed the company Lingt Language in order to create online tools for language teachers and improve the classroom dynamic. Their first project, Lingt Editor, is an online program found on their website (lingtlanguage.com) that tries to make it easier to assign, complete and grade oral homework.

Currently in its beta stage, the Editor is free to teachers willing to try it out in their classes. The Lingt website mentions that what the company currently wants is feedback about the tool, including suggested improvements and ways to improve its use in the classroom. With this in mind, I decided to give the Editor a try. I signed up, got my password by email and got to work.

After you enter the website and sign in, the Lingt Editor demo front page comes up. On this page, you can “create” a class and then assignments for that class. When you click on “create assignment”, you must first configure your microphone (just by clicking twice on a dialog box that comes up) and then move on to designing the assignment. The pane starts out blank, and there are various features you can add including text, voice recordings, images and YouTube videos. For student responses you can add written prompts and voice prompts. The layout is incredibly easy to use; just click the clearly visible feature buttons or drag them over to the section of the page where you want something to appear.

Voice recording on Lingt Editor is simple, as well. There is no need to install any programs, and all you need is a microphone. You click on the “Voice” bubble, wait for it to load and then speak into the microphone. When you’re finished recording, click on the bubble again and it stops. After this, you can listen to the recording and redo it if necessary. This simple, digital layout beats the constant rewinding involved in using a tape recorder.

Teachers can use the Editor to create all sorts of assignments. On my assignment, I gave written and spoken instructions, asked students to translate written words into spoken form and a spoken passage into writing, and gave a poem to be recited aloud and recorded. From pronunciation practices to spoken dialogues and readings, translations to cultural interaction, the Editor is quite versatile in its uses. It seems to fit one of Lingt Language’s core values: “Technology is an enabling tool.”

When you finish creating your online assignment, with a couple clicks of a button the assignment is assigned to the class of your choice (teachers of more than one class can rejoice; Lingt Editor allows you to have multiple classes under your name). The assignment then goes up on your personal teacher page, which has an easy-to-find URL. Students can then access your posted assignments on this page.

When completing assignments, students follow the teacher’s provided instructions, watch posted videos, write in dialogue boxes and record their own voices. Recording for students is the same as for teachers – students click on a speaking bubble, record and then listen and try again if they don’t like it. This feature allows students the opportunity to keep practicing their verbal skills and to submit only the pronunciations they feel are their best.

After students finish the assignment, they submit it and then type in their names and email addresses. Right after a student submits an assignment, the teacher can grade it. The online review tool is very easy to use. It shows all the questions and a particular student’s responses. A teacher can listen to the student’s verbal responses and read written ones. Then, the teacher can make written or oral comments on each response, giving the student feedback on what s/he has done well or can work on. Once a teacher is finished with feedback, a copy of the comments is sent to the student. This is a great system for giving students constructive criticism, and it still allows you to determine your own grading scale and standards.

Another impressive feature is Lingt Community. This is a section of the Lingt website on which teachers share assignments with each other. You can add your own assignment to the public database, or search for others in the database. Teachers who like an assignment can add it to one of their classes. Lingt Community can build interaction and cooperation between teachers and allows for free exchange of ideas.

For all of its advantages, there were a couple of areas of concern in the Lingt Editor. The right technical settings are key to using the online tool. As I had a problem with my Flash settings, Lingt Editor crashed once on my personal laptop. Also, the Editor requires a good microphone in order to work well. I used a headset with a mic and it worked perfectly. However, a lack of such hardware may make it more difficult for students to complete assignments at some schools.

Overall, I found the Lingt Editor to be a very helpful and user-friendly solution to the oral assignment problem. You can view the sample exercise I created on Russian Personal Pronouns: http://lingtlanguage.com/takeassignment/4424111772488/ With no big hardware like tapes needed and no major software to download, it is an enticing tool for the language teacher who is concerned about students’ learning of oral skills. Although it’s necessary to ensure that all students have the right technical settings on their computers – and it also may be necessary to train students before actually using the Editor in order avoid confusion – once they have everything, the Editor is a very useful teaching tool.

In March, Lingt Language was selected as one of Inc. Magazine’s “America’s Coolest College Startups” of 2009. The Inc. website had a poll for its readers’ favorite startup from the list. As of publication date, Lingt had over 180,000 votes – over 100,000 more than the next highest company. It’s not hard to see why so many people are receptive to Lingt’s idea of improving language teaching. Once the Lingt Editor becomes more widely known, this tool has the potential to improve the success rates and simplify the lives of countless language teachers.