About teaching and learning English/ Spanish with Livemocha.

          First of all, I'd like to say that I am a French teacher and I'm very interested in new methodologies, in computer tools to practice a language, and in this case, “Livemocha” is an interesting resource to be commented on.

       I won't describe this site  http://livemocha.com/ -I know that a lot of you have already tried it- I will talk about my feelings in using it as a Spanish assistant or helper with English learners ofthis language.

        I liked the experience of giving explanations in English about Spanish structures. I think I'm better at this that the other way round, that is to say, to give Spanish explanations for English structures.

         That is the difference between a native English speaker and an always learner of English like me.

         The point is that I sincerely doubt I will ever be a good English teacher -perhaps it's my own lingusitic limitations, perhaps it's that I've learnt English in a somehow artificial way (watching tv series, reading lot of novels and studying “Estudios Ingleses” at the UNED, but not in contact with natives) or bacause I'm too old to learn a foreign language. But, I think that my English knowledge helps me to understand the common mistakes of native English-speaker learners.

          Hence, I hypothesize that it's essential to know the learner's native language deeply in order to understand where their strengths and weakness lie. Because, we like it or not, most learners –myself included- specially if they are teenagers or adults, translate from and into our native language most of the time, despite the modern advice from new theories of foreign language learning and teaching methodology that claims that the native language must be completely avoided or forbidden.