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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6731 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 65 of 77 25 July 2008 at 5:18am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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This is the old discussion once again about learning your first language as a child versus learning secondary languages as an adult. I didn't use dictionaries and grammars and graded text books (in fact I didn't use books at all until after I had learnt to speak - in my case -Danish), and my parents didn't know a thing about teaching methods. Yet I learnt Danish just by investing endless hours on the project. So even now endless hours and no theories would be enough, right?
Not quite. I'm not going to discuss in detail how people who haven't studied language learning can teach small children to talk, but just mention a few things that are different for small children and me as an adult. 1) I don't have as malleable a brain as a baby, who has a large surcapacity of brain connections to weed away while the native language is learnt. I have just the leftovers from that period, and my myelinization is completed long ago so I'm not even as flexible as a teenager. 2) I'm not surrounded by people who supply me with comprehensible input during all my waking hours, so I have to develop methods to deal with stuff that is in all honesty too difficult 3) I can't spend all day learning foreign languages on the other hand 4) I know more languages now than I knew when I was 2 years old, so I can use my knowledge from previous languages -and from learning those language - when I add new languages. 5) I can understand books about grammar - at two I couldn't even read them 6) I can devise methods for speeding up the acquisition of words and idioms - I don't have to rely on chance So in short I have lost some mental factulties, but I have the possibility of compensating for that by using some methods that to some extent rely on conscious data processing. Just piling up tons of imcomprehensible books and letting the TV run in unknown languages would be an idiotic way of wasting my time, unless I need to know how to 'crack' them. In short I need some pedagogical tools. And this forum is one of the few places where methods specifically for individual students are discussed. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6039 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 67 of 77 25 July 2008 at 7:51am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
We don't need to have all the answers to have one answer (Socratic knowledge aside). We do not know how those people learn, but we do know that it is not in the manner of a child. To say "it works for some people" is fine if you do so from observation. To say "because it works for children" is naïve and unscientific. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6039 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 69 of 77 25 July 2008 at 10:44am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
You refuted the converse. Same thing. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6039 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 70 of 77 25 July 2008 at 11:24am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
I know that there are many ways to learn things too. The subjectivity comes when we talk about them being "good" or "effective".
That's one of my bugbears. You yourself said:
So do I. You and I and most of the people on this site are good learners. Most good learners are capable of learning any given subject in many different ways. Therefore the proficiency of a good learner is not a useful on the merits of a particular technique over another technique. It is a fairly sound assumption that where a teaching/learning technique is successful for a minority of learners, the majority of those learners will be good learners. This surely must cast doubt on the merits of the teaching method -- if it only works for people who can work independently, isn't it plausible that the success is down to the learner and not the method? Making it more personal, weren't there subjects at school where you felt the teacher was useless, but you passed anyway? When you got your exam results, did you feel that they proved the teacher was good, or that you were? In particular, this doesn't work in favour of the argument for multiple intelligences either -- the point of multiple intelligences is that we all have limited individual strengths, so some courses are suitable for X learners, others for Y learners. But many of the ones who succeed are good learners and could have learned in any way -- like you, me and DaraghM. Yet each of those courses would count us in as "their" learners. When a method justifies itself by multiple intelligences it is unambiguously saying that it only works for a minority of the population. If we're part of that minority... well it's hard to imagine how few people that leaves that the course is especially good for, isn't it?
Rote learning is for memorisation -- a fact or fixed text (like a poem) can often only be learned by rote. Very few people would refute that. Rote learning is only considered useless where you need a working knowledge of something -- where you need to manipulate and create.
Ah but now that we both understand each other we can start to discuss the matter properly! Our misunderstanding only seems to be over the term "multiple intelligences". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| J-Learner Senior Member Australia Joined 6058 days ago 556 posts - 636 votes Studies: Yiddish, English* Studies: Dutch | Message 72 of 77 25 July 2008 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Cainntear, I think that in my mind that I have no idea of the theory of multiple intelligences. lol
Certain people excel in certain ways. So they need to have courses tailored for them. Is this the basis gist of the theory? I find that to be a static view. What I have learnt, from increasing my own intelligence and widening my own methods/skills for learning, is that there is no set thing we are good at. From a limited viewpoint, one may be good at one or a few limited ways of learning something/interacting with input. To only teach in that way seems to be the way school are trying to operate these days. Instead of enhancing the total range or ways a student can learn efficiently. One can certainly learn languages, learn to sing or play an instrument, to draw, do mental mathematics, ride a bike and more. As soon as it is onlyone person learning all these things, we call them polymaths and geniuses! lol To me intelligence is one single phenomena. When it is used towards certain things that rely on certain senses, after much practice in that area a certain intelligence may seem to develop. After 10 years of music training ones musical sense may be strong. Often people do those things which they already are good at and never challenge those that they are bad at. Why we do so is another matter. Why we have mozarts and Da Vincis is another. I myself am terrible at calculation or numbers. This year - I am training myself in mental mathematics. I am already finding that overall my learning abilities are increasing. Only 2 months in so far. I think this is what most theories and schooling programs miss while they try to be too convervative. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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