Steve: Yeah, and I think people perhaps, um, may invest more, for example, in their dining room furniture, but for a lot of the practical, sort of utilitarian furniture, the Ikea furniture does the job. And they have a, I think an attractive style which this sort of light Scandinavian, functional, not overly minimalist, and yet not completely bland. I mean you can buy some sort of chipboard furniture which basically has no design and doesn't look nice at all, where as the Ikea stuff does have a nice design. And so again, as I was assembling this thing, hoping that it would all work out, buy the way I should point out that the desk that I bought was a very, the screws and everything were of good quality. In other words, if I put my screwdriver in and turned the screw, it actually, the screw turned. But I also, well yeah I'll tell you where I'm coming to. I bought this tray which I screwed into the underneath of the desktop to carry the cables and the power bars and all the stuff that's related to all the computer equipment, and that came with screws that was made in China. And one turn of my screwdriver and, the screw is a wood screw so you needed a little bit of force to actually have it get into the wood, right? I mean I had a little drill and made a little hole first of all, and then I went and screwed in my screw. But, three turns of my screwdriver and the screw was finished, it was toast as we say. So then I have to go rummaging through my supply of old screws to find screws that I could actually use. Because the quality of the metal in these screws was so poor that you literally could not turn it more than three, you'd get the screw about halfway into the wood and then you're just going around and round and round in the hole you had made in the head of the screw, so it's just terrible. So, how, I mean, you can't make, whoever supplied that in China, I mean you can't make the screws cheap enough to make it worthwhile. Charge me, whatever, five cents more, so that I have screws that work. And so I ended, imagine that I couldn't find wood screws at my home. Now, I've got to go all the way out, I've got to drive, it's, you know, it's twenty kilometers from my home, drive all the way out there just to get four wood screws. So, it's an indication in terms then, that this is a criticism of quality control. I mean they should, and I had two of these. And the first one I somehow managed to get four screws after, it took me longer than anything else, 'cause I had to put so much pressure on the top of each screw and hold it absolutely straight to turn it. And then with the second set I said, I'm not going to do this. I went and looked for some proper wood screws of my own. But it's just, you're only as good as the lowest or as the smallest link in your quality chain. Mark: Yeah, for sure. Like, I remember, uh, maybe it was a chest of drawers or something that I put together for one of the kids from Ikea. And, everything was great. It was going together great, and it was sort of almost like the last thing I had to do were these, the little rails that the drawer slides in and out on, and you talked about before the little centimeter long screw that had to fit in the right spot, so I had, there was one screw that the thing that, the hole that it screwed into in this bracket, uh, for some reason it just didn't fit, like it just wouldn't stay in. So here's this one screw, you've got, and there's no extras, right? There's no extra screws, so here's the one screw, either the hole or the screw, something's just not right, so now I've got a choice. I don't have, you know, half a centimeter long screws sitting around at home. Those are hard to find. So I now either got a choice to, and it has to be the right size, and Ikea has used a European type sizes which are harder to find here. So, am I going to drive the forty-five minutes back out to Ikea for one screw or part and not leave the thing unfinished in the middle of the room. I mean, I didn't. So now I just constantly have this one thing that's just a little bit off in my wardrobe thing. Every time. So it's annoying, it catches every time. But that, that does happen.
Steve: So, but still. It's a tremendous success. And what is, I think, remarkable, is how they have suppliers all over the world. I mean, just the logistics of organizing any of these components. I mean, it's conceivably designed somewhere in Sweden and I gather, or in Europe somewhere, or somewhere else. But I think a lot of it is designed in Europe and I think they produce all of their brochures and all of their PR material in Europe. And then the wood might come from Poland, or it might come from the far east, and a lot of the metal components presumably come from China. And they're assembled somewhere, and for every one of these products and components they have to negotiate with different suppliers, and they have to try to control the quality. And they have to try to control the delivery. And they are constantly looking for, you know, presumably less expensive places where they can assemble these products. It's a tremendous enterprise. And, it's remarkable when you drive in Europe or you drive in North America, particularly on the outskirts of big cities, you'll see this great big blue and yellow box, which is the Ikea store. So, it really is an amazing success. And I think in terms of recognizable international brands that have a positive image. Like, I don't think that McDonalds, the golden arches, necessarily has always a positive image. Nor does Coca-Cola. I don't know what the other recognizable brands are, IBM or you know, Nike. But Ikea is right up there. Mercedes-Benz perhaps, you know. But Ikea is definitely right up there, and I think by and large it has a positive connotation because it really satisfies the needs of say young families or people who need something practical, well designed, that you know, meets a specific requirement at a specific time. So, I think it is overall a tremendous success. And that's of course where we want to get to with The Linguist. And that's where I was talking about what I see as a connection. Because what we would like to achieve in The Linguist, is that the energy of the learner, and the willingness of the learner to be independent, to not be relying on the teacher. Much as you know, if you go to a store, you pay a lot of money, you buy a piece of furniture that's already assembled. With Ikea you go there and you have to put something of yourself into it. But it makes you, I think, A it gives you a sense of achievement. Uh, I guess we would hope with The Linguist after having listened to a few of our content items, because it is essentially fun to do, that our learners want to do more. I must say, when I finish assembling an Ikea desk I don't necessarily want to assemble another one the next day. So, to that extent there is a difference. [Laughter] Mark: Plus, I guess, with regard to pre-assembled furniture. Um, given a choice, you're going to go for the pre-assembled or have someone assemble it for you. Whereas, The Linguist, you're better off doing it our way than you are sitting in a classroom, so I guess there is a difference there. That in effect, our way is the better way. [laughing] Now, we may be a bit biased, but uh, we genuinely obviously believe that. That even if you could go to a school, or spend all day in a school, you're better off doing our thing. Steve: Yeah, I think this is, you know, with now, I mean, my original experience was of course in the lumber business, and to that extent I have some affinity what logistics that are involved for Ikea, but there's no question in my mind that as a language learner, it is only when you become an independent learner, and when you are prepared to put the time and effort in by yourself, you and the language. Listening to it. Reading it. Uh, looking at it. Seeing the words and phrases. Saving the words and phrases. When it's sort of you and the language learning, that's when the learning takes place and very often, uh, going to the classroom, sitting there with fifteen other people, it's almost like a passive sort of acceptance, that somehow someone else has to put the language in your head. That you cannot do it yourself, and I think that's the major thing that we try to achieve. Which, and I think we do. Or, perhaps it's just that the people who accept our system already have that state of mind. What is your feeling on that, Jill?
Jill: I was actually just going to say that the difference in using the whole furniture analogy and having it pre-assembled. Um, its, I mean, yeah, people can go to a school or a different learning system or whatever. But the bottom line is it's not like furniture. You can't have somebody input a language into your brain. It's just not even a factor. You don't have that choice. You have to learn it on your own. You have to do it on your own, and there's just no two ways about it. So, it's different, I mean, yeah, with the furniture you have a choice, you can choose to have it pre-assembled or not, but with language learning you don't have a choice. You have to do the work yourself, and that's the only way you are going to learn a language. Steve: Yeah, I think so. And the emphasis that we place on allowing a learner to choose content that's of interest to them I think is key. And, I was on a blog the other day where they were talking about language learning and a lot of teachers were putting forward their examples of what they had done to make the class lively and interesting and one teacher said that she had instructed her students to go on the internet and find articles about the recent tragic earthquake in south Asia to study. And then she had them in class write an essay about assembling a toilet from the kinds of material that would be available at the earthquake site, where obviously they wouldn't have modern conveniences, and so forth and so on. And I thought to myself, that might be very interesting for some people, but to be imposing this task, which is not related to language learning, which relates to something that the teacher finds very interesting, how to build a toilet after an earthquake. If I were interested in learning, as I am, in learning Korean, I don't want to imagine myself creating, you know, finding the words in Korean for flush or toilet, you know. That is not what would get me interested or motivated. I would want to read about the lives of Korean people in different situations. That is not to say that I don't have sympathy or solidarity for the people who have suffered in south Asia, but just, to connect that with my language learning is an imposition by the teacher. And so many of the situations are like that. The teacher decides that today we are going to do numbers. Today we are going to do parts of the body. Today we are going to do the, you know, some part of speech. And I think what is unique about our system is that we make it easy for the learner to explore the language, to explore things that interest the learner, and then gradually train themselves to become proficient in the language.
Mark: I was just going to say that, I mean, I think, a major motivation for most English teachers is having something to teach to their students. And since you can't really teach the language, the language has to be learned, what do you do in class? Well I gotta come up with some sort of game and they convince themselves of how clever the game is that they've come up with. But the reality is, I mean, not to belabor the point, but the learners have to learn on their own, pick stuff they're interested in, and work hard. It's, we always say it's more like training a muscle than an intellectual exercise. So, it's just a matter of doing it, and reading and listening and working on that muscle.
