Poorly Designed, Broken Websites Are Costing Canadian Corporations Millions - <AUTHOR> http://factore.ca/on-the-floor/116-poorly-designed-canadian-corporate-websites-are-costing-them-millions

<comment><USER2> The problem is widespread. Lots of businesses have horrible sites. It's what I call the "cousin web-developer syndrome".

What's worst is that if you bring it up, more often than not, you get a response like: "We don't get much business from the web anyway".

Duh!

<comment><USER3> I notified Pizza Pizza many times over the years. The few times they bothered replying they were nice about it and provided me with coupons. But they never really fixed the problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let me guess, he used a WebKit based browser?

I always get that session expired issue when ordering from Pizza Pizza online during busy times using a WebKit browser. If I use something besides Safari or Chrome, I don't have any issues.

Also, the number one reason I get when I ask others why they use the phone over the Pizza Pizza site? The site sucks. Not "it's inconvenient" or "I love explaining to an uninterested rep the exact specs of my order" but, "It sucks". Keep that in mind when insisting that nobody wants to use it with no evidence.

</comment><comment><USER5> One of the OP comments is on how conservative Canadian companies can be. Ten years ago I worked for a major financial services firm in Toronto and was involved with the launching of their web services, which at the time was already five years late. They had a "five-year plan" for internet development, all of which then was years behind the then leading competition in the country and could have been done in three months, with no overtime, with the current staff in place and not neglecting our normal roles.

Despite the entire team supporting an accelerated timeframe of three months, the SVP decided our customers weren't "ready" for the changes. Within six weeks almost the entire team had left, including myself. That company is still going and they ended up doing that plan in a little over two years. They have had several new web designs in the last decade, but all seem rather dated, broken and basic.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm willing to bet that Pizza Pizza isn't missing out on much money over their website. It is far more common for someone to place an order for pizza by dropping by the establishment or making a two minute phone call.

What is more likely is that the majority of their customers really don't care about the website and so Pizza Pizza has little incentive to improve it. Why spend time and money on something that virtually no-one uses?

You're an exception to the rule. Businesses aren't as stupid as you think: they're simply putting their resources elsewhere. Online accessibility is not a priority for many businesses and the poor execution that follows should not be mistaken for anything else.

<comment><USER7> IBM made a similar argument about microcomputers. "Our customers aren't interested in microcomputers. They want mainframes. We'd be better off optimizing our mainframes than investing in microcomputers."

That's the nature of the innovator's dilemma. If you listen to your existing customers, you lose out on the ability to win a nascent, but growing market that ends up being bigger than the market you're in right now.

I wouldn't be surprised if in the next decade or so another pizza chain came along with a better website and ended up with a more dominant marketshare than Pizza Pizza. As more and more people get ubiquitous internet access, the competitive advantage of having a web-based order form will grow.

<comment><USER8> Does IBM really apply here? They seemed to do alright with the PC.

'web interface' is not the first or second thing I think about when ordering pizza. Here is what I care about:

1) Taste 2) Time to door 3) Price

Everything else has little or no impact. Now if I could say 'Siri, order me my usual' and siri ordered my usual from the closest Pizza Pizza and had it delivered to my determined location? Gold!

<comment><USER9> In the end, the PC market almost killed IBM. Remember, they ditched the PC during their restructuring, and have been doing much better ever since.

I don't think the point is "web interface", it's basic points about access and usability. I agree that the taste of the pizza is paramount, but as companies like Amazon have discovered, even a slow website, or a challenging ecommerce transaction will turn off many potential customers.

<comment><USER10> What nearly killed IBM was (1) their devotion to their 'mainframes' and (2) Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Sun, HP, Oracle, Gateway, Dell, Cisco, Juniper, Micron, Seagate, Western Digital, EMC, AOL, etc.

In particular in three years near 1994 they went from just over 400,000 employees down to just over 200,000 and lost $16 billion. Their Research Division went from 4500 full time employees down to 1000 plus about 500 'contract' employees. They thoroughly cleaned out rush hour traffic in NY counties Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess. There were suicides.

Why? One of their deepest analyses was "God ceased to smile on IBM". The truth was that IBM had their head in the sand, and Andy Grove, Bill Gates, Mike Dell, etc. ate IBM's breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bedtime snack and took their house, car, shoes, suits, ties, and shirts.

In 1984, IBM had everything in computing -- X-ray lithography, microelectronics, circuit design, microcode, computer architecture, virtual machines, mass storage, various operating systems, middleware, programming languages, productivity software, system management software, packet switched networks, marketing, and customer support, in the US and around the world. Nine years later they were nearly bust. One of the biggest extractions of defeat from the jaws of victory in all of business history. Main reason: Head in the sand. Actually, internally from various sources, both internal and external, they were always just awash in accurate and deep analyses of just what was going on. It's just that the top management had their heads in the sand. Dumb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I work for a software company that is owned by a parent company from Canada (but the company I work for is in the US), I can say this doesn't surprise me, management from Canada seems to place a low priority on spending to keep things modern</comment>


Nobody Knows How to Learn a Language - <AUTHOR> https://blog.usejournal.com/nobody-knows-how-to-learn-a-language-f5e042e73af8 <comment><USER2> The answer is no secret but it's hard to achieve. The fastest way to learn a new language fluently is to speak it, constantly.

Yes, it's easier for children to acquire a new language but they learn it because they are constantly forced to use it.

I've known a number of people that have lived in a foreign country yet they did not learn the language. Why? Because they could get away with using English most of the time. They were never forced to speak it. They could get away with only speaking it a little. And if they got in trouble they could always ask someone for help.

The stress caused by having to come up with the proper word combination helps immensely. We tend to remember what caused us stress. Also, repetition will always help in acquiring new words.

So, basically, start a learning program but make sure you practice every day by speaking with someone that's fluent in your new language ASAP and let them correct you as needed. Also, NEVER speak your native language with that person. Only use the language you want to learn with him or her.

Do not start book studying, grammar and such, until you have a good grasp of the language. Reading a new language will reinforce accents since we tend to read with our language in mind.

The more you have to think in the language you are trying to learn the faster you will reach fluency.

<comment><USER3> This.

The author of the article says:

"If there were someone who knew how to learn new languages, we would all know it. They would be uniquely and unquestionably skilled at producing new language speakers. They would be very visible: everybody would be flocking to their doors and imitating them."

He seems to be confusing "learn" with "teach". All of the above would be true if he said "if there were someone who knew how to _teach_ new languages...".

Lots of people know how to learn, but no one wants to hear about it, because the answer is: work really hard.

"Everyone wants to be a bodybuilder, but no one wants to lift no heavy ass weights."

<comment><USER4> Unrelated but not everyone can be a body builder.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myostatin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myostatin)

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure what you wanted to point out in the link that you shared, but it seems to me that being a body builder is like being a painter or writer or skier or marathon runner, you just get the tools and do it. There's no need to be at a level where you can make a living from it to participate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > In theory, formal language instruction is precisely the right way to learn a > new language.

Surely that's not true: otherwise, children wouldn't have learned their native tongue(s) the way they famously do.

Not sure what kind of theory the author's been immersing themselves with. When I was studying for a language tutor, along my linguistics program, the context was put forth as the most important part of learning anything, let alone a language.

> I studied French in elementary school — supposedly the "ideal" age to learn > a new language, according to some people — and somehow continued to get As > and Bs while retaining almost no ability to speak the language at all.

Perhaps they haven't because language acquisition, like most any mental skill¹, requires an interest to maintain, let alone improve. My suspicion is this is also why people dislike maths so much: because it's a tenuous process that requires considerate effort to develop. Without a passion for it – often gained either through a natural aptitude or an inspirational teacher – it might be difficult, in those two fields, or in any other of similar requirements, to obtain and retain the skills necessary.

¹ I have a sneaking suspicion – and might well be wrong – that, in physical skills, muscle memory or related mechanisms may affect retention. There've been studies suggesting that writing things down helps memorization, which is a rather "muscle" activity. Perhaps the latter is related to the former?

<comment><USER7> It's also not how most of us learn the much simpler computer languages, I can pick up a language much quicker by playing with it rather than learning it formally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Less than 1 percent of American adults today are proficient in a foreign > language that they studied in a U.S. classroom.

Is this really as notable as the author suggests? Are there more people proficient in other subjects learned in the classroom? I don't think more than 1% of people from my classrooms are proficient in maths / chemistry / physics to a "fluent adult language" degree.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you're saying that statistic isn't notable if the entirety of education has less than 1 percent effectiveness... yes, I'd say that was notable.

<comment><USER8> It's notable, but not in this context. If we're talking about effectiveness/usefulness of education systems in general, sure, that's an interesting point. If talking specifically about language learning - I don't think so.

Similar: It's notable that I've got 2 legs - as a living creature, due to adaptation, etc. It's not notable in a town of people - they all have 2 legs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The first four paragraphs water down the title's claim to the more comfortably defensible: "Nobody knows how to learn a language... to native fluency without significant effort."

</comment><comment><USER10> Figure out the most common 3000 words and memorize those. Practice the grammar. Read news papers in the language and try to summarize the articles in your own words. Watch YouTube videos in the language. Start speaking to native speakers. It's not too crazy, school really dated your time. It's funny, early on, in school you learn words like "apple" but these words don't come up all that often.

<comment><USER11> Any resource on how to get these types of frequent lists ? I am big fan of "learn words and consume media" method.

<comment><USER12> I think for some languages this might be problematic. I am trying to learn some Russian and the word endings changes based on how each word interacts with other words.

For example :

"I know" : Ya znayu

"We know" : My Znayem

"He/She Know" : on znayet/ona znayet

"You know" : Ty Znayesh

"They know" : Oni znayut

etc

Knowing that 'znat' means 'To know' might not be enough to place a word in a sentence

Some suggest that it might be better to memorize sentences or phrases instead

<comment><USER13> Finnish is similar with the various suffixes based on context. The rules are reasonably regular, and in a classroom with a list I can make the right choices.

Doing it in real-time when speaking is more of a challenge though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Over the past several years, I've been fascinated with what linguists do in the large: not the narrow, tight study of particular language aspects, the broad understanding of human languages in general.

One thing I _think_ I got from this: languages are _spoken_ not written. Once you start writing a language it becomes something else. In some cases, you even end up with an official language. A standard.

Human language is the use of sounds to negotiate meaning. So yes, immersion really is the only way to learn because with immersion all you really care about is whether meaning can be transferred around, not whether it's "right" or not. All of that correctness stuff is a different thing entirely than language. Perhaps the author's goal might be "speak language X well enough that others don't realize it's their second language". It's a laudable goal. I'm just not convinced it qualifies as learning a language. (In the colloquial sense, sure.)

People are actually experts in creating and learning languages. They take what they know, extend it a little bit, and work it into some pattern of speech that conveys meaning. Any time you hear somebody who's new to your country speak in a way that half their old way, half the new way, you're hearing somebody create a language.

But if you want to start fooling people, to invisibly blend into a society and not give anything away with your speech, I think you're going to need stressors, either internal or external. Otherwise your brain is going to learn just enough to get by, just like it learns everything else.

</comment><comment><USER15> In college we had a program where you studied in the country of the language you're trying to learn. What was interesting was the "pledge" where no matter how bad it got, you didn't revert to English. It sucked at the start, but eventually you just pick things up and it just works.

You don't quite get the grammar and native speakers will notice that, but so long as they correct you, eventually you'll just pick up the rules.

</comment><comment><USER16> The hardest part about learning a new language is maintaining motivation.

Learning a new language isn't a hobby you can just add to your life like knitting or cooking. It's more like an ambitious diet and exercise program, except the payoff is even less motivating. If you look good, everyone sees. If you can speak Japanese, nobody cares but other people you talk to whose English is worse than your Japanese. Like exercise, if you invest anything less than four hours a week, you won't make meaningful gains, and it's often months before you get anywhere. It's a slog.

The trick (if you can call it that) is to find something you really want to do, badly, that you NEED your L2 to do. For Japanese learners, maybe maybe wanting to watch anime is enough. For English learners, maybe it's watching American TV and movies. For Americans learning an L2, immersion is the pretty much the only viable approach.

Immersion is just a hack to motivate yourself by making your life almost unbearably difficult, with learning to speak your L2 the only way out.

Looking back on six years living in China and learning Chinese while working (borderline fluent in some topics but woefully inadequate in others), if I could do it over again I would:

1\. Spend a few months getting the fundamentals down: learn pronunciation, drill it with a patient native speaker, go hard at 10+ hours a week book studying. (I did this)

2\. Move somewhere to either work or study only in your L2, and where there's barely any English speakers. Live there for a year or more. (I didn't do this; I lived in a large city and had mostly English speaking friends and my work was in English)

There's no way to fluency without spending hundreds of hours talking with people in your L2: ~500 hours for Spanish, ~1500 for Chinese or Arabic.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't support the argument here that Fluency == Knowledge of parts of speech.

I don't think of English as a formal structure except for when I'm editing a written document.

Fluency is the ability to carry on an uninterrupted conversation with another fluent speaker.

Immersion (true immersion, where you don't try to cheat) is the best way to become fluent.

You've gotta be Daniel Day Lewis.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm going to skip my usual really, really, long explanation. Long story short: TFA is wrong. Many people know how to learn a language. Many people learn several languages because after learning how to learn one, they realised it's not that hard.

Main problem people have: they have unrealistic expectations. Children don't have a magic ability to learn languages. They take 10-20 years to learn up to adult level proficiency. They take 3-5 years to learn fluency up to a basic level. If you learn as fast as a child, it will take you 5 years to be able to speak like a 5 year old.

Technique is important, but it is late and I don't want to write a massive post about it (again). Here is the short version. Study every day. Don't miss a day. If you study 3 times a week, you will plateau at a very low level. If you do less than that, you won't get past baby level. You will eventually have to "study" at least 1 hour a day, but you can start with any small amount you want (even 5 minutes is enough) -- but don't skip days. If you miss a day (or several), you can't make up for it. Don't miss days.

Only study language you understand. If you can not understand a sentence at least 95%, you will have troubles (the 95% number did not come out of my ass... it is important). Always aim for 100% comprehension. Whether you study grammar explicitly or not is up to you -- do it if you enjoy it, don't if you don't. However, do _not_ practice constructing sentences from "first principles" using grammar. This will mean that you acquire non-idiomatic language. Only use grammar to check that your grammar is correct, not to produce sentences.

In order to learn sentences, it is enough to expose yourself to them (as long as you understand them). I found it faster to memorise exemplars. YMMV. If using flash cards (with or without SRS), always practice from your native language to your target language. _Never_ the other way around. It is important.

You must also practice forming sounds. You can "mirror" recorded audio, but sometimes it is too fast. To combat this, get recordings of songs and learn them. Try to perfect them. Record yourself and check to see how close you are.

Always try to practice with native language sources. It can be a live person, TV, radio, or written language. Reading written language is usually best for the bulk of your learning. This is because you can easily get a lot of it and you can easily go through it again and again. When reading, make sure you understand 95% (there's that number again). If you don't, find something simpler, or find out what the content means and read it again. If the latter, repeat the section every few days until it seems like your native language.

Take every opportunity to speak the language. However, beware. Most people go through a "closed period". This is a period where you can understand a lot more than you can say. Often you can't say _anything_. This is normal. It means you are around a 2-3 year old native level of speaking. Congratulations! Don't let it bother. Keep going and you will definitely break through it. Most failures happen because people quit (duh). Most people quit at this stage.

There is a _lot_ more, but that's probably enough to get anyone started. Many languages share a lot of grammar and vocabulary. If your native an target language are related, you can often "learn" a language (to a child level of ability) pretty quickly (say a year or two). If you are choosing a very different language, it will take you longer (3-5 years). No matter which you choose, you won't get adult level of fluency and proficiency in less that 5-10 years. Anybody telling you differently is selling you something that doesn't exist. Languages are _huge_ \-- you have to be in to for the long haul.

<comment><USER19> If someone wants to learn a language just to enjoy its language & literature, and not necessarily be conversant in it, then would it be okay to never speak it? Or is conversation an essential practice?

<comment><USER20> Of course. For example, while there are a small number of "living latinists" who actually want to speak the language, the vast majority of people studying Latin just want to read it, and the teaching material reflects this (focusing on interpreting text rather than composing it or speaking it) Same with other classical languages such as Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Ancient Egyptian, and Babylonian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > If there were someone who knew how to learn new languages, we would all know > it. They would be uniquely and unquestionably skilled at producing new > language speakers.

The thing is... There are people like that. They may not know how to teach that to others, but if you look at simultaneous translators, they don't just know another language. They know 4 or more fluently. And maybe pick up another one over summer holiday just for fun. (At least the ones I know did that)

</comment><comment><USER8> I got curious about the CIA notes. When I was at uni, a GCHQ person tried to recruit people from the class. One of the things he mentioned was that they want people to pick up new languages and it's common to learn them during your career. I wonder if it's the same as in CIA (we can now claim we have an X-speaking analysts), or if the situation there is better for some reason. Does anyone know more details?

</comment><comment><USER21> My problem is I can pickup the grammar and theory while learning, but poor at speaking the spot. I don't really have anyone to practice with. Any ideas?

<comment><USER22> Find a local Meetup? Skype with native online teachers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I grew up with four languages around me and am currently learning another, having also added a couple of others before. Here's my take on it:

\- For a child, every lesson in everything is a language lesson. Everyone you come across will correct you. Everyone will add to your vocabulary. Say you're cooking, or going to the zoo. You'll learn what pots and pans are, all the animals in the zoo, some verbs that are relevant.

\- English is very relaxed about its pronunciation. If you're British, "scarf" and "giraffe" rhyme. In American English, they don't. Yet nobody meeting someone from the other side of the pond considers either to be wrong. When English speakers go and learn another language, there's a lot of these close sounds that are wrong. In fact just yesterday in a Mandarin class a guy asked the teacher what the difference between "车" (car/vehicle) and "吃"(to eat) is. He couldn't hear it until we tried a few times.

\- English is everyone else's second language because pronunciation is not a big deal. You can often tell if someone is a foreign speaker from their accent, but it's still understandable and nobody complains. By contrast most people in Europe will just swap to English if they hear you say something slightly wrong.

\- Institutions are bad at teaching languages because they're not geared towards teaching, they're actually just indices. When you learn something like Linear Algebra or Data Structures, you don't learn stuff in class as much as you learn that they exist. So you go to a DS class and you find out there's a thing called a hash map. You go home, fire up your toolchain, and play with it for a few hours until you get it. Everything you need is out there on the internet somewhere, in English. Same with just about everything else, you learn on your own what's been mentioned in class. If you sit in a language class, you can't do that. Nobody can hear if you are pronouncing things correctly. Also, there's a minimum amount of structure and vocab you need to be able to say anything useful, and you're constantly running into missing ideas, eg "how to I say 'used to' in this language?".

\- I suspect the real reason people find it hard is economics. Contrary to this article, I don't think it's actually particularly valuable. This is why immersion doesn't happen. Kids have low opportunity cost, this is why they are able to spend their youth learning a bunch of things. If you move to a new country as an adult, chances are your livelihood depends on some specialist skill that is supported by English, and the rest of the time you're taking care of your family. So you're not getting immersion. You also don't get cultural immersion from the language class. I'm not talking about the fact they eat baguettes in France; your knowledge of France as a culture requires you to access umpteen levels more information than people normally do. How many people are going to know what the French think of secularism, or the Dreyfus affair, from just studying French? I don't think I'll be coming across essays about the cultural revolution in my Mandarin class, either. And then add to that cultural items that every local knows, but isn't considered historically/politically important. The most popular Danish song of all time?

<comment><USER24> > If you're British, "scarf" and "giraffe" rhyme. > In American English, they > don't.

They don't rhyme in British English either. Maybe in one of the regional dialects - I think that you could probably force it in a scouse (Liverpool) accent.

<comment><USER22> Perhaps they do in old-style Received Pronunciation, like wot the Queen speaks.

But yep if you go oop North then A's become short and giraffe will rhyme with gaffe (like bath and laugh will).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> -

<comment><USER26> Which is perfectly fine and has a long history in English.

<comment><USER27> Based on author's name it seems we came from the same country.

I used "came" and not "come" since it just feels more appropriate considering it's two different countries countries now.

I don't think I've ever heard about "split infinitive" before.

Perhaps I did - and it's just that the "school way" of learning foreign languages always confused me.

My first foreign language was German and at this point I basically can't have a conversation using it - at best I can kind of understand what someone is saying.

Though to be fair living in The Netherlands Dutch kind of highjacked it.

The way I learned English was simply pure interest. Watching Hollywood and British movies and TV series, reading computer/programming books and other "stuff on the Internet".

Teachers were equally confused by the fact I have had problems with recognizing/naming different tenses and grammar forms - and still getting it (mostly) right just by "gut feeling".

And actually I've been able to "think in English" for a long time. So long that these days I occasionally have trouble coming up with idiomatic way to say something in my native/mother tongue (Serbian).</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon: Kindle Is Most Gifted Item Ever - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/185508/amazon_kindle_is_most_gifted_item_ever.html

<comment><USER2> Gifted? Like a child prodigy?</comment>