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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 33 of 36 14 June 2012 at 4:02am | IP Logged | ||
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I could have been one of those language professionals, but back in January 1982 when I got my final exam I realized that the generation from 68 had occupied all the good academical positions and that they weren't going to leave them soon, so I decided to try something else - and ended up in computering as so many others. As a consequence I have no special reason to write things that conform to an academical standard and no reason to fear being frown upon from potential peers because I write here.
However when I think back to my time at the university we were so occupied with academical contacts and keeping ajour with things that happened within our own circles that we didn't really need to care about non-academical writings (apart from the literary authors we had to study, of course). You might think that the advent of the internet had changed that, but even there I guess that the academics are a fairly selfcontained lot - even back then, and now they have just got an additional time-consuming way of staying within the confines of their own tribe. Another reason would of course be a lack of interest in language teaching as such, and in polyglotism in particular. We all know the disastrous consequences on US linguistics the Chomskyan revolution has had with its emphassis on empty formalism and monolingual tendencies. I may not be quite a jour with current developments, but I don't remember ever having seen a complete generational grammar for any language, written by one of Chomsky's followers. All works which can be of any use for language learners are written by the remaining traditional linguists, or even by complete outsiders. In the 70s and 80s you could still be a linguist and write in a comprehensible way about language IN EUROPE, and several of my own teachers were respectable polyglots in their own right - but even this may be history, due to the lures and the repressive mechanisms of formalism at the expense of descriptivism. With professional linguists out of the picture you might stake your hopes in the academical pedagogical sciences, but I recently went through the website (with course lists and publication lists for its teachers) of a leading Danish institution in this field to see whether anything was happening within the field of language learning. Not much, it seemed, except in the field of school curricula and the languages of immigrants. And that has more to do with politics and the allotment of public resources than with an interest in languages or language learning for their own sake. So I wouldn't expect to see much interest from the academical world in our discussions here. Edited by Iversen on 14 June 2012 at 4:12am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6150 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 34 of 36 14 June 2012 at 11:48am | IP Logged | ||
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I just checked my own college, and it seems they are doing some good work in SLA. I might try and get in contact with,
David Singleton - Professor of Applied Linguistics (Trinity College Dublin) "I have supervised, most have dealt with some aspect or other of the research interests detailed above, but I have also brought to successful conclusion doctoral research on motivation, the “year abroad” and language attrition. My current supervisees are working on aspects of vocabulary learning and multilingualism." I seem to recall a paper concerning vocabulary size and the CEFR which they were involved in. Perhaps I could be a research subject. Edited by DaraghM on 14 June 2012 at 11:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5555 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 35 of 36 14 June 2012 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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If the visas for my wife and I go through without any hitches, I'll hopefully be starting a PhD in SLA later this year. The reason I mention it here is to suggest how, in addition to attracting or losing knowledgable and experienced contributers over the years, this forum can also lead and inspire members and tenderfoot dunces like myself on to whole new levels of personal inquiry and research.
To continue using myself as a poor example, I spent the last few years as a language learning hobbyist, investing many of my free hours outside work into developing language tools or investigating fun and novel ways how to learn languages, and definitely not enough on actually learning them (lol)! Throughout this period, the forum has been a veritable lighthouse in a stormy dark shore of conflicting and converging theories, and I have the members of this forum, and particularly my teammates and all the other great friends I've made, largely to thank for helping me navigate through the undulating tides of opinion and the all-too-often rocky ups and downs in my own lagging studies. It is of course wonderful to have access to informed academic opinions and recourse to the wisdom of so-called experts, but for me at least, it is the continued enthusiasm, support and practical know-how of everyday fellow language learners here on this forum that has ignited and kindled my passion for languages like never before, helping me realise what I really love doing in life and that I'm far from alone in this pursuit, and giving me the confidence and courage to take a risk and embark on a whole new chapter in my career. Edited by Teango on 14 June 2012 at 5:59pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4827 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 36 of 36 14 June 2012 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | ||
Makes me feel slightly better that although I've always found languages themselves fascinating, my relatively small investigations into actual linguistics have left me cold. Interesting also to read the implied criticism of Chomsky, whom I had thought to be regarded as the last word in linguistics, and that Ray Peat was something of a lone wolf in this respect, as he is in physiology. (He has spent most of his career in physiology, but started out in the humanities, and clearly has a love of language). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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