Page 20 - ELG1601 Jan Issue 432

ELpeople
Page 20 January 2016
of you as the smiling Meet the smiling boffin of ELT

drian, I always think
Aboffin. You are an arti-
ficial intelligence expert with a
PhD and a tendency to tweet in Melanie Butler asks ClarityEnglish’s Adrian Raper about his path into language learning
programming language. You
seem to be almost the polar
opposite of a typical language uptime, which is about the same successfully into the wider com-
teacher. Yet for over twenty as YouTube and better than most munity, you need to produce this
years you’ve been involved Yahoo services. Our servers are language as well. Practical Writ-
in designing software for lan- handling over four million ses- ing helps you do this.
guage learning. How did you sions per year, so even a small Clarity has always produced
first become involved? mistake can result in hundreds material that complements
I certainly didn’t take the of support emails. In my view, the classroom teacher. Do you
classic path to ELT publish- the key to successful software foresee a day when the com-
ing. My PhD was in vibrational development is to make the puter can replace the language
engineering, and I started by developers handle the technical teacher?
applying computer solutions support. That way, they really No. For all sorts of reasons, the
to vibrations in helicopters. understand the importance of most effective way of learning a
But I didn’t like working in a reliable and elegant design. language is with a teacher, and
big organisation, and in 1992 Your latest product, we design our programs primar-
I decided to get out. My friend launched in November, is ily to support what the teacher
Andrew Stokes was teaching Practical Writing. It seems a is doing in the classroom. But
at the British Council and felt little counterintuitive to use we do need to recognise that not
the same way. So together we IT to teach writing skills. How everyone has access to a teacher
started something small — our did you come up with the idea? or has the money to spend on
own publishing company, Clari- We started off by research- language lessons. One sign
tyEnglish. Perhaps surprisingly, ing what students actually write, Courtesy ClarityEnglish of this is that over the last few
I found that the very exact tech- and came up with a list that starts years Clarity has done more and
niques you require for modelling with essays and short reports but more work with public libraries
helicopters were quite similar also includes texts (obviously!), – we now have our programs in
to the skills you need to design emails, TripAdvisor-type reviews POWER IN YOUR PALM Adrian says it’s logical for students to use their phones to develop writing skills almost a thousand public librar-
sensitive and robust software for and online profiles for job appli- ies around the world. Research
language learning. cations. All of these – except for interactive activities, model games. This works well because actually a pleasure to navigate shows clearly that students are
In 2014 the judges at the the occasional essay – they write writing on paper and a phone you can pull out your phone and around it. more motivated and learn more
Hong Kong ICT Awards on the computer or on their phone. app. The first challenge was start learning discrete items of What I like most about Practical effectively from the computer
described Clarity programs So it seems only logical for them to match devices with learning language straight away, even if Writing is that it doesn’t just teach than from a textbook, so making
as ‘robust and elegant’, and to use the same devices to help behaviours. So, for example, we you only have five minutes. the traditional stuff. It also helps these resources available free of
awarded you the prize for them develop their writing skills. found that people like to learn The second challenge was to students with the writing they charge really does open up learn-
SME companies. What did What was the hardest chal- on their phones, but only in integrate all these media in a have to do day to day. If you are ing opportunities that wouldn’t
you make of that? lenge you had to deal with short bursts and through fairly form that is both attractive and an international student in an Eng- otherwise exist. So although the
Yes – it is critical for us to when designing Practical straightforward activities. As a intuitive. Our fabulous design lish-speaking country, you really computer can never replace the
keep our software delivery Writing, and what is the fea- result, we decided that the most team managed to do that very do need to know the meaning of teacher, it can become an alter-
engine purring. We have aimed ture you are most proud of? suitable activity for the phone successfully, and we have had IDK (I don’t know), ATM (at the native. My job is to make sure
high, and our stats for 2015 We wanted to integrate the was pre-teaching vocab through a lot of positive feedback on the moment) and OMW (on my way). that it is as effective and reliable
are on target for 99.95 per cent full range of media: videos, presentation and a series of look and feel of the program. It’s And if you are going to integrate an alternative as possible. n