In small steps to success
Practical example: How micro learning and personal coaching complement each other perfectly
With a trained hand, Hamid lets the squeegee glide over the window surface and takes a final, scrutinizing look at his work. The glass façade glistens in the sunlight. He shouts to his colleagues, "Have a nice evening" and heads for the train. Hamid has now been in Germany for three years and works as a window cleaner in the building cleaning business. He likes his job. He likes Berlin. Only the German language still causes him difficulties sometimes. "We used to have German lessons at the headquarters, every Tuesday and Thursday. But that was difficult because we travel so much." He finds the new solution better.
The train is coming in. Hamid sits down on a window seat. He connects his headphones to the smartphone and opens his mobile German course, part of the LinguaTV app. His ride takes 15 minutes - just right for a little practice. Hamid likes to learn best with the scenic videos, but he also likes the learning games. Today he has an important grammar topic on the agenda: "Konjunktiv II". Hamid has already understood most of it, but he has a question. So he switches to the chat function and asks his coach: "Hi Stefanie! Is it ‘Wenn ich ein Haus hatte…’ or 'Wenn ich ein Haus hätte'? He does not have to wait long for the answer.
Stefanie also gives him a few good tips and praises him because he has been studying very hard in the last few days. In her data she can follow Hamid's learning progress closely. She has been mentoring him for several months now and has been able to work with him to design a learning strategy that is perfectly compatible with his everyday work. "Everyone has slightly different needs," explains the language pedagogue, who is a coach for learners at LinguaTV. "We set a learning goal together and then look at how we can best achieve it.
The idea of LinguaTV is actually quite simple: the learning content must be either relevant or entertaining (or preferably both), then it will attract the maximum attention of the learner. Once interest is aroused, learners learn more often, longer and more intensively - as several studies confirm. The highly modular learning program can be easily integrated into any working day.
The small learning units such as a 5-minute video or an interactive exercise of 30 seconds have one thing in common: even with this small amount of time, they already enable a learning effect that cumulatively leads the learner in small steps on the learning path to the desired learning goal. A significant advantage of the LinguaTV app is the possibility to download individual lessons and entire courses for offline use. As soon as the user is back online, the learning progress is synchronized with the server. This means that coaches and teachers can also use this data specifically for supervision and needs-based teaching.
Particularly exciting for Hamid is the industry-specific vocabulary and pronunciation trainer "Deutsch in der Gebäudereinigung" (German for building cleaners), which his employer, the facility management specialist Gegenbauer, commissioned from the Berlin language course provider LinguaTV. In this way the young Syrian learns the most important terms and phrases of his profession and their pronunciation.
When Hamid leaves the train, he has a satisfied smile on his face. He has made good use of the trip home and has already reached his learning goal, level B1 - almost four weeks earlier than planned.