Population Served:
22,250 Project Contact: Julia Gregory Project Title: Learn English and Spanish with Rosetta Stone Project Description: With the funding from the American Dream grant program we expanded our ESL resources to include the Rosetta Stone software for learning English and Spanish on all our adult public access computers. |
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The goal of the library's American Dream project is to provide a reputable program to assist patrons with acquiring a second language or improving proficiency in one already acquired. The American Dream Starts @your library funding will also be used to expand our language learning collection for English and Spanish, enhance our online language resources, and positively impact our community.
Notable accomplishment, promising practices, or human interest stories: A local community college has an English as a Second Language class that meets at our library a couple times a week. We thought it would be a great idea to reach out to them and let them know about the new software we have right downstairs to supplement their learning experiences. After giving flyers to the teacher, we were asked to sign up the whole class. We created logins for everyone and gave them cards with their account information. By offering this opportunity to students we are furthering our presence in the community as a modern resource and relevant partner for education, technology and accessible information.
Key lessons learned: By helping patrons one on one we can effectively assist them in becoming more comfortable with technology as it helps them learn a new language. New technology can be intimidating, however, Rosetta Stone's intuitive interface coupled with active encouragement, persuades more patrons to take advantage of this service. Word of mouth is one our best marketing techniques. We've noticed that people often bring their family members and friends to sign-up at the Reference desk for a Rosetta Stone account. These lessons remind us to be more creative and non-traditional in trying to convince people to use new software.
Advice for other libraries serving adult English language learners: Provide a variety of resources in different formats, not only to accommodate those who have different learning styles, but to provide materials that will be adaptable in many different lifestyles. We made Rosetta Stone available to the public on the computers at the library, but we also expanded our ESL collection to contain updated books, software, kits, audio-books, and DVDs with emphasis on math, literature, career resources, and life skills.