Just came across an interesting (and short) blog entry by linguist Steve Kaufmann, of LingQ fame:
http://thelinguist.blogs.com/how_to_learn_english_and/2009/04/what-we-need-in-language-learning.html
In this article he states that those interested in improving the language learning climate need to do the following:
1) Convince learners that they need to leave the learner content behind as soon as possible. i.e. within 3-6 months.
2) Stop wasting money on text books, schools, conferences, linguistics research, language teacher training, and spend the money on transcribing all the wonderful content that is available free of charge on the Internet.
3) Show learners how to find content of interest, and how to learn from it, meaning mostly listening to it in a concentrated fashion.
Bravo Steve! To this, Free Language would add that any resources created by learners and teachers would benefit from remaining Free and Open in the public domain - protected for future learners - by empowering the content with the GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL), the same license chosen by Wikimedia for all of their projects (Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikiquotes, Wiktionary, etc.).
It is important that we move collectively on the Web towards truly Free and Open language methods, resources, materials, etc. A recent article here overviews some of the existing Free and Open language learning materials.
Let's make sure access to language education materials is free for everyone, learners and educators alike.
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