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CaitO'Ceallaigh
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
katiekelly.wordpress
Joined 6654 days ago
795 posts - 829 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian
Studies: Czech, German
| Message 305 of 430 04 May 2008 at 8:25pm | IP Logged |
P.S. I learned some Latin watching Monte Python. :)
1 person has voted this message useful
| slucido
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
Spain
https://goo.gl/126Yv
Joined 6472 days ago
1296 posts - 1781 votes
4 sounds
Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*
Studies: English
| Message 306 of 430 05 May 2008 at 1:46am | IP Logged |
reineke wrote:
In the name of logic! Stop!
You write: "Purely psychological effects are NOT equal to placebo". and a few lines further down "You are confounding UNSPECIFIC effects (placebo)..." and "Psychological effects can be placebo"
Now, as much as I hold methodologies dear (and I don't), I hold logic dearer. So please excuse me while I drive my SUV through your arguments.
First of all, I am not confusing things, you are. You seem to be confusing things like effect and technique and cause and effect.
Application of a placebo may result in psychological and other effects. The result is often called the placebo effect. The definition of a placebo effect is "the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health or behavior not attributable to a medication or treatment". So you're wrong there too.
Now, measuring those effects is also not an issue, no one is disputing that feeling all fluffy about a particular method is beneficial. The issue is placebo/method itself.
If the method does not work as advertised /accelerate learning because of its properties, it's a placebo.
It is irrelevant whether you called it a placebo by name and I am not sure anyone suggested that you did, however others have felt that your argumentation points that different methodologies are a placebo since results produced are not due to any active properties/design of the method.
Now if you realize the error in your logic we may proceed to deconstruct your other methodology-induced fobias. You know, if one is not a believer of a particular religion he or she may be just as fanatical as the worst of crusaders. Assuming all methodologies are cosmetic and you were happy with all of them for a while, I see little damage done as you "believed" and progressed in your studies. You also got to experience different methods. By challenging all methods you're basically doing the same thing others did to you - wholesale. However the experts actually believed their approach was the best and that they were doing good. Now if you're right, nothing really happens. If you're wrong, you and whoever lost the faith sort of gets punished. The punishment is of course an enormous loss of time, no fire and brimstone. |
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I know this endless terminology is part of the strong reaction, but I will try to be simpler.
Example: FSI
1. Linguistic effect differences:
Nothing. It's all about words, sentences and repetition (like Assimil or whatever)
2. Specific Technique effect differences (NO-placebo):
Motivation increasing. Who? People who like hard work and strict schedules, who tolerate boredom. Maybe people who has been very influenced by some experts.
3. Unspecific effect (Placebo):
Due to the generic belief that they are doing something useful to their language improvement.
What's so difficult to grasp?
1 person has voted this message useful
| ChrisWebb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6060 days ago
181 posts - 190 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean
| Message 307 of 430 05 May 2008 at 4:11am | IP Logged |
slucido wrote:
reineke wrote:
In the name of logic! Stop!
You write: "Purely psychological effects are NOT equal to placebo". and a few lines further down "You are confounding UNSPECIFIC effects (placebo)..." and "Psychological effects can be placebo"
Now, as much as I hold methodologies dear (and I don't), I hold logic dearer. So please excuse me while I drive my SUV through your arguments.
First of all, I am not confusing things, you are. You seem to be confusing things like effect and technique and cause and effect.
Application of a placebo may result in psychological and other effects. The result is often called the placebo effect. The definition of a placebo effect is "the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health or behavior not attributable to a medication or treatment". So you're wrong there too.
Now, measuring those effects is also not an issue, no one is disputing that feeling all fluffy about a particular method is beneficial. The issue is placebo/method itself.
If the method does not work as advertised /accelerate learning because of its properties, it's a placebo.
It is irrelevant whether you called it a placebo by name and I am not sure anyone suggested that you did, however others have felt that your argumentation points that different methodologies are a placebo since results produced are not due to any active properties/design of the method.
Now if you realize the error in your logic we may proceed to deconstruct your other methodology-induced fobias. You know, if one is not a believer of a particular religion he or she may be just as fanatical as the worst of crusaders. Assuming all methodologies are cosmetic and you were happy with all of them for a while, I see little damage done as you "believed" and progressed in your studies. You also got to experience different methods. By challenging all methods you're basically doing the same thing others did to you - wholesale. However the experts actually believed their approach was the best and that they were doing good. Now if you're right, nothing really happens. If you're wrong, you and whoever lost the faith sort of gets punished. The punishment is of course an enormous loss of time, no fire and brimstone. |
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I know this endless terminology is part of the strong reaction, but I will try to be simpler.
Example: FSI
1. Linguistic effect differences:
Nothing. It's all about words, sentences and repetition (like Assimil or whatever)
2. Specific Technique effect differences (NO-placebo):
Motivation increasing. Who? People who like hard work and strict schedules, who tolerate boredom. Maybe people who has been very influenced by some experts.
3. Unspecific effect (Placebo):
Due to the generic belief that they are doing something useful to their language improvement.
What's so difficult to grasp?
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What's hard to grasp is why you imagine that your analysis in general is convincing to others, in this case I dont see anything to make me accept your analysis of FSI, it's just more assertion as usual.
In general you have a hypothesis which the experience of others appears to heavily contradict, if you were not such a zealot you'd probably have noticed but instead you simply write everything that doesnt fit your view off as 'psychological'. Given that there will always be a human component in any study or experiment to determine the effect ore lack of effect of language learning methods your strategy effectively renders your hypothesis unfalsifiable. If you know something of science you'll know that scientists would regard an unfalsifiable hypothesis with very deep suspicion.
The other plank of your arguement ( i hesitate to use that word ) is to straw man everyone elses point of view as that of 'best method zealots', which looks somewhat ironic from my point of view as you come across as a no method zealot. No one here is claiming a best method, they are merely noting that the lack of an objectively defined best method does not dictate that all methods are therefore of equal effectiveness.
The person who really seems to have a need to believe that they are right in this thread is you and as you noted earlier in the thread emotional attachments are not changed through reason which means those of us conversing with you here are essentially wasting our time trying to alter your emotions with our reason.
Worst of all is that, as Reineke noted, there is a kind of Pascal's wager type effect working here. If you are correct those who disagree with you lose nothing because their chosen method will be as good as any other anyway, conversely, if you are incorrect those who you convince lose a great deal of time should they get unlucky and decide to use a method that is in fact inefficient or ineffective.
Edited by ChrisWebb on 05 May 2008 at 5:19am
1 person has voted this message useful
| slucido
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
Spain
https://goo.gl/126Yv
Joined 6472 days ago
1296 posts - 1781 votes
4 sounds
Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*
Studies: English
| Message 308 of 430 05 May 2008 at 9:17am | IP Logged |
ChrisWebb wrote:
What's hard to grasp is why you imagine that your analysis in general is convincing to others, in this case I dont see anything to make me accept your analysis of FSI, it's just more assertion as usual.
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If my analysis is so unconvincing, why you waste your time responding here instead studying Korean. It will be more productive for you. Nobody is forcing you to read this thread.
ChrisWebb wrote:
In general you have a hypothesis which the experience of others appears to heavily contradict, if you were not such a zealot you'd probably have noticed but instead you simply write everything that doesnt fit your view off as 'psychological'. Given that there will always be a human component in any study or experiment to determine the effect ore lack of effect of language learning methods your strategy effectively renders your hypothesis unfalsifiable. If you know something of science you'll know that scientists would regard an unfalsifiable hypothesis with very deep suspicion.
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Apart from personal attacks, if, according to you, everything here is unfalsifiable due the human factor, we are talking about religion, hence whatever we speak here it's about faith. You are agreeing.
ChrisWebb wrote:
The other plank of your arguement ( i hesitate to use that word ) is to straw man everyone elses point of view as that of 'best method zealots', which looks somewhat ironic from my point of view as you come across as a no method zealot. No one here is claiming a best method, they are merely noting that the lack of an objectively defined best method does not dictate that all methods are therefore of equal effectiveness. |
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We are improving !!! You agree that there aren't best methods.
If you admit that lack of an objectively defined best method, what are we talking about?
You agree with me!!
ChrisWebb wrote:
The person who really seems to have a need to believe that they are right in this thread is you and as you noted earlier in the thread emotional attachments are not changed through reason which means those of us conversing with you here are essentially wasting our time trying to alter your emotions with our reason.
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I am writing here, because a have interest about this subject, I think it can be very useful for other forum members and I am practicing English.
On the other hand you agree about the lack of best methods objectivity. It seems you think it's unfalsifiable.
ChrisWebb wrote:
Worst of all is that, as Reineke noted, there is a kind of Pascal's wager type effect working here. If you are correct those who disagree with you lose nothing because their chosen method will be as good as any other anyway, conversely, if you are incorrect those who you convince lose a great deal of time should they get unlucky and decide to use a method that is in fact inefficient or ineffective.
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If I am correct, I lot of people are wasting a huge amount of time looking for the best method or experimenting anxiety because the think there are best methods than theirs.
If I am incorrect...WAIT? You agree about the lack of objectivity about best methods!!!
If they choose a inefficient method for them, they will feel bad, their motivation will decrease and they will change their approach. That's what I am talking all the time and some of you don't want to listen.
Edited by slucido on 05 May 2008 at 9:32am
1 person has voted this message useful
| slucido
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
Spain
https://goo.gl/126Yv
Joined 6472 days ago
1296 posts - 1781 votes
4 sounds
Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*
Studies: English
| Message 309 of 430 05 May 2008 at 10:01am | IP Logged |
reineke wrote:
Volte wrote:
I strongly have to disagree with the idea that time is much more important than method.
Let me clarify a few points first.
- Time spent is vital: without it, no method is useful.
- A variety of reasonable techniques seem to take similar amounts of time.
That said: it is entirely possible to spend hundreds or thousands of hours very ineffectively. I'd say that primarily learning from materials purely in your target language, which are not artificially graded or made comprehensible is the most obvious way to do so. This is useful at later stages, and an amazing waste of time at early ones. I don't think any amount of time with "English as she is spoke" would be well-spent either.
I've personally spent hundreds of hours listening to various languages. In the more unfamiliar ones where I had the least base, I still learned a little - but it's really not comparable to using any of the methods which people have successfully used and advocated on this forum. Reineke wrote about his experiences learning Italian in a similar way as a child - and estimated around 4000 hours to reach a decent level of comprehension of cartoons. Compared to estimates of time to reach basic fluency/FSI level III of around 200 to 600 hours, that's about 10 times less efficient - and I consider that a rather significant factor.
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I will try to give a better account in the future of my Italian and German experience if anyone finds it useful. The little I wrote is thanks to luke. The level of comprehension was actually deep but the amount of time was certainly frightful. I was comparing the number of hours I spent on TV with class 'hours of understood listening" and AUA's Automatic Language Growth Program, based on a sort of a "comprehensible input" Krashen method and which includes a long silent period. The ratio is not so grim but I'm not sure I quite understand ALG graphs, study hours, or the final goal. I estimated 4800 (say 5000) hours of TV time (including just about everything and not just cartoons) to get to a high level of comprehension. That's still a lot or, putting it another way, you're looking forward to a whole lot of fun "input". |
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I can understand people need the belief in some "best method", but I think it's waste of time. I can only compare with myself and give some testimony, but I can not be sure.
I feel something works for me in some stage, but:
-I don't know if it will work next month
-I don't know if it will work in more advanced steps.
-I don't know if it will work with other mood or personal circumstances.
-I don't know if it will work with other languages.
-I don't know if it will work with other people.
-I don't know if that feeling is objective, a bit objective or absolutely subjective.
Thinking about my conclusion is:
Keep it simple.
Whatever method you use, sooner or later you will need to deal with real, native material. If you want native fluency, most of your global time will be spent with real resources.
At the beginning you can use whatever method as long as they have input (words, sentences), output (words, sentences)and repetition (time).
If your method lacks some of the three factors, your learning process will suffer.
For example:
Volte wrote about this site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_As_She_Is_Spoke
1-That method is a joke. Why? Because the input is wrong. It fails in the input step. If you want to learn English and you get WRONG English sentences, you will fail.
2-Same if you compare watching movies (only input) and FSI or Assimil (you work input and output) your movie method will fail because of the lack of output training.
If you work with movies with input + output (like people do with FSI and Assimil) + repetition , your results will change a lot. On the other hand, marketers estimations are not very reliable.
reineke wrote:
Now if you realize the error in your logic we may proceed to deconstruct your other methodology-induced fobias. You know, if one is not a believer of a particular religion he or she may be just as fanatical as the worst of crusaders. Assuming all methodologies are cosmetic and you were happy with all of them for a while, I see little damage done as you "believed" and progressed in your studies. You also got to experience different methods. By challenging all methods you're basically doing the same thing others did to you - wholesale. However the experts actually believed their approach was the best and that they were doing good. Now if you're right, nothing really happens. If you're wrong, you and whoever lost the faith sort of gets punished. The punishment is of course an enormous loss of time, no fire and brimstone.
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Extreme believers in "best.-method-and-mine-is-the-best" might not be hurt with this philosophy, but the average learner can suffer a lot of damage.
People waste a lot of time talking about how to learn languages and best methods, instead of studying them.
My message is:
keep it simple:
As long as your method have input (words, sentences) + output (word , sentences) and time (repetition) you will succeed.
If you FEEL BAD about one approach or method, CHANGE IT whatever experts or wannabe experts claim about best methods, because you only need:
words, sentences (input +output)
and repetition (TIME)
Edited by slucido on 05 May 2008 at 11:14am
1 person has voted this message useful
| reineke
Senior Member
United States
https://learnalangua
Joined 6244 days ago
851 posts - 1008 votes
Studies: German
| Message 310 of 430 05 May 2008 at 12:43pm | IP Logged |
slucido wrote:
ChrisWebb wrote:
The other plank of your arguement ( i hesitate to use that word ) is to straw man everyone elses point of view as that of 'best method zealots', which looks somewhat ironic from my point of view as you come across as a no method zealot. No one here is claiming a best method, they are merely noting that the lack of an objectively defined best method does not dictate that all methods are therefore of equal effectiveness. |
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We are improving !!! You agree that there aren't best methods.
If you admit that lack of an objectively defined best method, what are we talking about?
You agree with me!!
If I am correct, I lot of people are wasting a huge amount of time looking for the best method or experimenting anxiety because the think there are best methods than theirs.
If I am incorrect...WAIT? You agree about the lack of objectivity about best methods!!!
If they choose a inefficient method for them, they will feel bad, their motivation will decrease and they will change their approach. That's what I am talking all the time and some of you don't want to listen.
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The little logic fairy passed away this morning 05 May 2008 at 9:32am.
Chris is simply stating that that the lack of an objectively defined best method does not dictate that all methods are therefore of equal effectiveness. THE best method is different from choosing between a handful of excellent methods, mediocre ones etc. You can therefore have "best methods" assuming they work as advertised if you compare them with other approaches which have proven themselves as less effective.
This should be crystal clear and it somehow escapes you.
Also, how can one choose an inefficient method if methods are all the same, simply decoration etc.?
1 person has voted this message useful
| CaitO'Ceallaigh
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
katiekelly.wordpress
Joined 6654 days ago
795 posts - 829 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian
Studies: Czech, German
| Message 311 of 430 05 May 2008 at 12:58pm | IP Logged |
reineke wrote:
Chris is simply stating that that the lack of an objectively defined best method does not dictate that all methods are therefore of equal effectiveness. THE best method is different from choosing between a handful of excellent methods, mediocre ones etc. You can therefore have "best methods" assuming they work as advertised if you compare them with other approaches which have proven themselves as less effective.
This should be crystal clear and it somehow escapes you.
Also, how can one choose an inefficient method if methods are all the same, simply decoration etc? |
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What's the best method then.
1 person has voted this message useful
| slucido
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
Spain
https://goo.gl/126Yv
Joined 6472 days ago
1296 posts - 1781 votes
4 sounds
Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*
Studies: English
| Message 312 of 430 05 May 2008 at 1:03pm | IP Logged |
reineke wrote:
The little logic fairy passed away this morning 05 May 2008 at 9:32am.
Chris is simply stating that that the lack of an objectively defined best method does not dictate that all methods are therefore of equal effectiveness. |
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....and does not dictate that there are best methods either.
reineke wrote:
THE best method is different from choosing between a handful of excellent methods, mediocre ones etc. You can therefore have "best methods" assuming they work as advertised if you compare them with other approaches which have proven themselves as less effective.
This should be crystal clear and it somehow escapes you. |
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How you can have approaches which have 'proved themselves as less effective' if you have lack of an objectively defined best method?
How can you prove or define something as less or more effective if you lack a OBJECTIVE point of reference?
reineke wrote:
Also, how can one choose an inefficient method if methods are all the same, simply decoration etc.? |
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You have chosen an inefficient method if:
-it don't have input and output and repetition.
-you don't get motivated by it.
Is it so difficult to grasp?
Edited by slucido on 05 May 2008 at 1:08pm
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