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Article: Students fall short on Vocabulary | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 233 of 319 23 April 2014 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Dumbing down is changing the content, not the presentation. That's completely different from having lectures and reading literature in English because the students' French isn't good enough. Besides, this course was just an introduction. AFAIU, the key point is that the target audience proceeded to take more courses and make computer science their major when they saw that they were welcome in the field. And this was started by a female scientist/mathematician who became a college president. Would she really lure women into an area that's unsuitable for them? The equivalent of this awesomeness would be creating a language class/course for people who love maths/science and think they lack a talent for languages. Also, one of the commenters (on my link, not yours) actually pointed out how working in a team requires strong communicational skills. But I think you didn't read even the article itself, let alone the comments... The stereotype is not about the work being solitary, but programmers being antisocial. That's not the same thing. Just look at emk :-) Also, antisocial isn't the same as shy or introverted either. Edited by Serpent on 24 April 2014 at 12:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 234 of 319 24 April 2014 at 12:40am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Gemuse, Serpent: This whole discussion of programming curricula is off topic, and it's getting a bit political. Please don't make work for the moderators, OK? :-)
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 235 of 319 24 April 2014 at 2:41am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Sure. I don't really know what's political about that though, but it's definitely offtopic.
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 236 of 319 24 April 2014 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Seen in this light, Milton's work has some merit that I would describe as political rather than strictly scientific. I still remain baffled by the interpretation of the figures that he has produced. To wit, the bewilderment of many of us here. The reason I dismiss most vocabulary size studies out of hand as academic navel gazing is precisely the lack of meaning. The illusion of precision is produced here because vocabulary is seemingly easily quantified, unlike most aspects of language. I say seemingly because there are very fundamental methodological issues concerning the definition of a word. More telling is perhaps the fact that vocabulary measurement occupies a very marginal role in linguistics today and is of hardly any concern to observers of language and literature in general. In French, I can't think of any contemporary work on vocabulary size. Do we compare authors in terms of their vocabulary. Does Earnest Hemingway have a bigger vocabulary than P. G. Wodehouse? Who cares? How many people here at HTLAL have given any thought to their native vocabulary size? And even in their other languages, what difference does it really make to know some estimated size of your target language? The reason I'm so adamant about all this is because this obsession with vocabulary size is predicated on the assumption that the word is the fundamental unit of communication. Hence the necessity of counting them. But I believe with what we know of how language works, the basic unit of communication is more like a phrase or sequence of words at the intersection of grammar, vocabulary and phonology. Edited by s_allard on 24 April 2014 at 1:46pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 237 of 319 24 April 2014 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Vocabulary size is invariably linked to language proficiency. The more vocabulary you have, the better you speak
the language. The problem is that we therefore think that learning more vocabulary is the key to better speaking. Therefore more wordlists, more flashcards. The problem is the separation of lexicon from grammar. At advanced levels of proficiency this separation does not exist: we have to think in terms of lexico-grammatical resources. This means more words of course but also more complexity in how those words are used. One striking example of this is the use of idiomatic expressions that are found in advanced speech. Another example is the ability to modify words to indicate nuances of meaning. In many languages this is often done through prefixes, suffixes and derived forms. Often we indicate abstract notions by certain word endings. In speaking, pronunciation is also very important for conveying meaning. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7205 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 238 of 319 24 April 2014 at 10:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I hear angels singing Let's all sing together! Edited by luke on 24 April 2014 at 10:48pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 239 of 319 25 April 2014 at 12:35am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes! And for metalheads.
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 240 of 319 25 April 2014 at 3:59am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't know how this contributes to the debate here but that rendition of O Fortuna from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana is great. I can always tell the quality of a person by the music they like. If nothing else @luke and I share the love of great music. In fact, I had the good fortune (no pun intended) of singing that very chorus in a choir some years back. Great memories. It also did wonders for my Latin. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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