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Revolutionary approach to learning langua | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| chelovek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6090 days ago 413 posts - 461 votes  5 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 25 of 129 29 January 2009 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
What on earth are you talking about? As I told you before, stop trying to extrapolate so much from the article. The fact of the matter is you don't even know the specifics of what was being studied, and yet you're sitting here arrogantly talking about what he must have done, and must not have done. That said, it's clear from the article that he was interested in whether the brain grew tissue from lots of audio exposure, and whether it was subsequently easier to learn new words. You certainly wouldn't need to design a specialized, epic course to test this. More than likely, the experiment involved an uncommon foreign language that most participants would never have heard before (ie. Icelandic). They'd take a baseline account of brain tissue (probably in the form of MRI scan of brain volume), and have a control group and a test group. The control group would be given a time period to learn a set of words and then tested, and the test group would listen to the audio sample for a period of time, and then go through the same study/testing procedure. They would likely go through this pattern for several weeks, do another brain scan, and compare the test results of participants in each group. Have you become so obsessed with the "course" aspect of this just because you couldn't understand his remark about an hour of listening being more beneficial than an hour of studying French text? It was ambiguous, sure, but when there are two possible meanings, and one can be ruled out by common sense, why get caught up on it? Edited by chelovek on 29 January 2009 at 9:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6014 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 26 of 129 30 January 2009 at 3:13am | IP Logged | |||||
No, I'm responding because you were extremely rude to another poster about him not understanding it. If it's not clear, it's the writer's fault, not the reader's. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raчraч Ŋuɲa Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5821 days ago 154 posts - 233 votes Speaks: Bikol languages*, Tagalog, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, Russian, Japanese | Message 27 of 129 30 January 2009 at 6:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think everyone can agree that no one amongst us has read the actual thesis, so we are all limited to referencing the article only.
I've re-read the article and I've changed my mind: I think Sulzberger did claim it. I am inclined to believe that the article writer did not made a mistake in attributing to the Dr the claim that 'frequent "listening" is the best way to learn a language' even if incomprehensible because Sulzberger added: "A lot of language teachers may not accept that". If he is referring to listening as critical, him saying this is odd. But if he said that "best way to learn a language is through frequent exposure to its sound patterns—even if you haven't a clue what it all means" that would make a lot of sense. The probable reason why he is not quoted saying as such is due to the writer's technique. He probably wrote what the researcher said faithfully, yet did not quote him again to avoid redundancy/repetition. Yes, I am speculating, as everyone had been. Now, I still do not agree with this article, not just for claiming that "the best way to learn a language is through frequent exposure to its sound patterns (read: listening)—even if you haven't a clue what it all means" but also for claiming that "Our ability to learn new words is directly related to how often we have been exposed to the particular combinations of the sounds which make up the words." There is actually a research that contradicts this statement.
English children can hear the differences in vowel length and have been exposed to it until then, but has not learned the words. Listening to incomprehensible sounds will be worse. New words are learned not by listening only, but at the same time by being able to work out its meaning. Meanings must be matched to words (series of sounds) and minimal differences in their sounds helps us distinguish between words. For a person to be able to differentiate sounds, he must figure out also that the differences in pronunciation is lexically contrastive, if to be ignored or retained. But how are we going to do that if what we're listening to is incomprehensible so as to be gibberish? I think the researcher should have tested this by listening to a radio (he mentioned Spanish language radio station as an example) broadcasting in an unidentified aboriginal language continuously and see how much he can identify the meaningful sounds and learn words. By using the radio as an example, he is illustrating that sounds is all that matter, not meaning from other cues or context. Why not !Xóõ, which has the most phonemes in any language, and limiting the input to aural stimulus only. ---- EDIT: According to Wikipedia: Taa, also known as ǃXóõ, is a Khoisan language with a very large number of phonemes (speech sounds), with at least 58 consonants, 31 vowels, and four tones (Traill 1985, 1994 on East !Xoon), or at least 87 consonants, 20 vowels, and two tones (DoBeS 2008 on West !Xoon), by many counts the most of any known language. These include 20 (Trail) or 43 (DoBeS) click consonants and several vowel phonations, though opinions vary as to which of the 130 (Traill) or 164 (DoBeS) consonant sounds are single segments and which are consonant clusters. As of 2002, Taa is spoken by about 4,200 people worldwide. These are mainly in Botswana (approximately 4,000 people), but some are in Namibia. Edited by Raчraч Ŋuɲa on 30 January 2009 at 6:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6678 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 28 of 129 30 January 2009 at 9:42am | IP Logged | |||||
This article you quote doesn't contradict the other article. Actually both are journalist articles and not scientific papers. I gave you scientific articles in previous posts. Here you have another scientific article about subliminal learning: http://www.neuron.org/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS08966 27308005758 Mathias Pessiglione, Predrag Petrovic, Jean Daunizeau, Stefano Palminteri, Raymond J. Dolan, and Chris D. Frith. Subliminal Instrumental Conditioning Demonstrated in the Human Brain. Neuron, 2008; 59: 561-567 Here you have a journalistic commentary about this research: Subliminal Learning Demonstrated In Human Brain http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080827163810.ht m Edited by slucido on 30 January 2009 at 12:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6678 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 29 of 129 30 January 2009 at 10:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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This one is very very interesting:
Subliminal Speech Priming Psychological Science Volume 16 Issue 8, Pages 617 - 625 Published Online: 8 Aug 2005 Sid Kouider 1,2 and Emmanuel Dupoux 1 1 Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, EHESS-ENS-CNRS, Paris, France, and 2 Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, INSERM, IFR 49, SHFJ, Orsay, France http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118661809/abstrac t
Edited by slucido on 30 January 2009 at 10:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6154 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 30 of 129 30 January 2009 at 10:22am | IP Logged | |||||
The article has a number of ambiguities, but this isn't one. He seems to be saying one hour of French class isn't enough, you need two hours, the hour of French class and an additional hour of listening. In the article it mentions his experience over seven years teaching Russian to New Zealand students. If he chose this language, or French, for the basis of his thesis, then adding a listening component would make a huge difference to their success rate. If you hear an unknown Russian word, and then see it written, it's a lot easier to remember, then trying to memorise an unknown Russian word you've never heard before. Edited by DaraghM on 30 January 2009 at 10:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6678 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 31 of 129 30 January 2009 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Here you have a few interesting scientific articles.
Long-Term Auditory Word Priming in Preschoolers: Implicit Memory Support for Language Acquisition. Journal of Memory and Language Volume 39, Issue 4, November 1998, Pages 523-542 Barbara A. Churcha and Cynthia Fisherb a State University of New York at Buffalo b University of Illinois http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0749596X9892601 8
Learners' Production of Passives during Syntactic Priming Activities Applied Linguistics 2008 29(1):149-154; doi:10.1093/applin/amn004 Youjin Kim and Kim McDonough Northern Arizona University
Edited by slucido on 30 January 2009 at 1:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raчraч Ŋuɲa Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5821 days ago 154 posts - 233 votes Speaks: Bikol languages*, Tagalog, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, Russian, Japanese | Message 32 of 129 30 January 2009 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ok, its an article about a research, though more transparent in describing the research it is writing about.
It does contradict it. He said "Our ability to learn new words is directly related to how often we have been exposed to the particular combinations of the sounds which make up the words." Now if it doesn't contradict it, the English 18-month olds could have learned that the "taam" unlike the "tam" has a different meaning (goes with a different object) like the Dutch children, yet English speakers ignored the elongation of vowel sounds", meaning they haven't learned the the other word. Neural tissues have not developed automatically to learn that. English children, like all babies, have the capacity to "distinguish most of the phonetic contrasts used by all the worlds languages" when they were young. Even before the experiment, they have been exposed to differences in vowel length for several months, for no person can guarantee speech of equal vowel length. That vowel length differences though does not affect the meaning of words in English. Yet, that exposure has not favorably affected the ability of the English children to learn just 2 words repeated 12 times each in 3 experiments. How simple is that? I do agree with the researcher that we need a lot of exposure, but I can't agree with the unqualified statement that " just listening to the language, even though you don't understand it, is critical" and "simply listening to a new language sets up the structures in the brain required to learn the words" and especially if preceeded by ""the best way to learn a language is through frequent exposure to its sound patterns—even if you haven't a clue what it all means". It implies that even a wholly incomprehensible exposure will benefit me and phonetics is the only factor to setup those word learning structures and never semantics, which is an unacceptable, repugnant idea as it goes against my own personal experience. There is another article describing another research among children that describes a more believable way to acquire vocabulary than the one described by Sulzberger, but this one does not advocate use of incomprehensible language.
Now that article implies the ability to differentiate easy from difficult words based on frequency of usage. And words are learned best by working out their meanings in another article. And we learn nouns faster than verbs says another. How can incomprehensible input account for that?
Now chelovek, which of us two has a crappy idea? --- slucido: I've realized you've been posting about subliminal learning a lot, and that your using that article to support it. I have nothing to add about that topic, that doesn't interest me at all only because that is really hard to decide either way. Cheers. Edited by Raчraч Ŋuɲa on 30 January 2009 at 3:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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