CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6858 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German
| Message 345 of 430 05 May 2008 at 7:27pm | IP Logged |
Goindol wrote:
If more people enjoy chocolate ice cream, then chocolate ice cream is better for the stated goal - to bring most enjoyment to the greatest number of people. |
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How do you know that chocolate ice cream is the best?
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CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6858 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German
| Message 346 of 430 05 May 2008 at 7:28pm | IP Logged |
Oh my God, it is scaring me the direction in which this conversation is going! I only ask for the sake of argument.
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Goindol Senior Member United States Joined 6075 days ago 165 posts - 203 votes
| Message 347 of 430 05 May 2008 at 7:30pm | IP Logged |
CaitO'Ceallaigh, I fear that we're heading down a monstrous slope of semantics, which I do not enjoy, probably because I am not very good at it.
But it seems to me that a reasonable definition of the quality of a language course would largely depend on some combination of effective results and enjoyability. Do you disagree?
It seems ridiculous to me that if we were to transfer this argument to another endeavor, such as tennis, and say that all one needs is INPUT (having balls coming in one's direction) + OUTPUT (swinging at the ball) + TIME (lots of practice), one method of instruction is as good as another.
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CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6858 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German
| Message 348 of 430 05 May 2008 at 7:37pm | IP Logged |
Goindol wrote:
CaitO'Ceallaigh, I fear that we're heading down a monstrous slope of semantics, which I do not enjoy, probably because I am not very good at it.
But it seems to me that a reasonable definition of the quality of a language course would largely depend on some combination of effective results and enjoyability. Do you disagree?
It seems ridiculous to me that if we were to transfer this argument to another endeavor, such as tennis, and say that all one needs is INPUT (having balls coming in one's direction) + OUTPUT (swinging at the ball) + TIME (lots of practice), one method of instruction is as good as another. |
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Who said they're as good as one another? No good tennis coach is going to coach his or her athletes in exactly the same way. Every person has his or her own unique needs. Good coaches recognize this.
We have to be our own coaches, and recognize that there is no one cookie cutter way to learn a language. The END.
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Goindol Senior Member United States Joined 6075 days ago 165 posts - 203 votes
| Message 349 of 430 05 May 2008 at 7:39pm | IP Logged |
CaitO'Ceallaigh wrote:
Who said they're as good as one another?
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I apologise for not having read the entire discussion, but isn't the premise of this thread that as long as there's INPUT + OUTPUT + TIME, all methods lead to more or less equivalent results?
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CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6858 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German
| Message 350 of 430 05 May 2008 at 7:47pm | IP Logged |
I'm going to shut my eyes really tight and say, gulp, "yes."
Edit: Event though there is no way I can define what "results" means here. If it's "I know more of X language than I did yesterday" then YES.
Edited by CaitO'Ceallaigh on 05 May 2008 at 7:49pm
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Goindol Senior Member United States Joined 6075 days ago 165 posts - 203 votes
| Message 351 of 430 05 May 2008 at 7:49pm | IP Logged |
Aha!
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Goindol Senior Member United States Joined 6075 days ago 165 posts - 203 votes
| Message 352 of 430 05 May 2008 at 7:54pm | IP Logged |
CaitO'Ceallaigh wrote:
Edit: Event though there is no way I can define what "results" means here. If it's "I know more of X language than I did yesterday" then YES. |
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True, it's difficult to quantify one's knowledge of a language, but surely we have rough metrics such as CEFR that give us some sense of progress made?
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