Too many people selling language courses? (Language Programs, Books & Tapes) Language Learning Forum

Too many people selling language courses?
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Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes

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translator2
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6918 days ago
848 posts - 1862 votes

Speaks: English*

Message 57 of 61

27 July 2011 at 6:08pm | IP Logged

FREE PDF file:

The Story of Language

Edited by translator2 on 01 August 2011 at 9:07pm
1 person has voted this message useful

mioumiou
Triglot
Newbie
Czech RepublicRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5851 days ago
1 posts - 1 votes
Speaks: Czech*, English, German
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

Message 58 of 61

27 September 2011 at 2:56pm | IP Logged

Translator2, why are you so heavily opposed to the idea of people making money using their language skills in a creative way? You can do the same! It could even be more fun than being a translator all the time! :)
1 person has 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 59 of 61

27 September 2011 at 9:26pm | IP Logged

Evita wrote:

I have a degree in computer science and I don't think programming
languages can be compared with real languages at all. Here's why:

1) Programming languages have been invented by people and they have a finite set of
instructions/methods/definitions - which is a much much smaller set than all the words
in a real language. The persons who invent a programming language have to build a
compiler (it's a program that translates the programming language into machine code so
the computer can understand it) before the language can be used by programmers and so a
programmer doesn't need to learn more stuff than the compiler contains. It doesn't take
anywhere near 10 years to do that, more like 1 year for a beginner or even just half a
year if the person is dedicated and spends a lot of time practicing.

2) The concepts in all programming languages are similar. The biggest distinction
probably is object-oriented versus not object-oriented but even then it's just one
concept. The rest of them - variables, constants, functions, methods, parameters,
arrays, loops, variable scope, SQL, etc... Once you know them you know them. The syntax
and some details may differ in each programming language, as well as the names of
particular functions, but the concepts are the same. Once you know one programming
language well you shouldn't need more than a couple of months (half a year max) to
adjust to a different one, which is not true for real languages.

3) The ultimate goal of studying a real language - native-like fluency - doesn't exist
in programming languages. There may be thousands of classes or functions available in a
programming language but you don't need to learn them all by heart, you only need to
know a quick way of checking whether a particular function exists, how it is called and
what the parameters are, and this is always easily available in documentation or on the
internet. When you apply for a job as a programmer no one will ask you to name a
hundred classes or functions to check your knowledge, it's simply not the way it works.
Programmers are expected to know how to use a function, not to know all the functions
there are.

So comparing programming languages to real languages makes no sense to me.

It makes some sense, but as with all analogies, it cannot be carried to extremes.

While it may not take an experienced programmer 10 years to learn a new language,
especially if it is related to other languages that he already knows, it still may take
him a while to become really effective in it.

It is very easy to write very impressive looking code, but it has to be debugged and
tested under all situations,and it may even work perfectly but run inefficiently, and
the inefficiencies may not show up for a long while. And most people are not just
writing single programs, but components of large systems of interworking programs and
libraries of various sorts. That's where the analogy starts to break down a little bit.

Anyway, just to lighten the tone, a story from the world of IBM 360 Assembler, which I
used to program in once upon a time, and always makes me smile:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEFBR14

(It's the part at the end that's funny)

And there's another version of the same story within this page:
http://www.computerconsultantsforum.com/forum/programming-an d-technology/computers-with-flashing-led's/

Edited by montmorency on 28 September 2011 at 8:23pm
2 persons have voted this message useful

boaby
Newbie
Ireland
Joined 5479 days ago
16 posts - 41 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Portuguese, Catalan

Message 60 of 61

11 July 2012 at 7:36pm | IP Logged

This thread has had a few 'streams' since the original question. I'd like refer briefly to the discussion on one particular language course example that was queried - the Linguisticator.com course.

I'm almost finished flying through the free test offer which allows you to watch 11 of the (my guess 70 to 100 videos) in the full version. As to the quality of the material I've seen, I'd say it varies from good to very good (not including the written material which I don't have access to). His presentation in the videos is down to earth and tries to stay with the concrete even when introducing abstract linguistic ideas and terms. I would also have preferred the videos to use more illustrations and on-screen text.

Overall I think the course would have been very useful to me several years ago when I started looking a languages, language learning ideas and methods. Much of the criticism I've read in this thread was pretty wrong headed and misunderstood who this course is targeted at. I don't think it's for people who are already inclined to learn about a new subject or material through independent researches. The target grooup, I'm guessing, either don't have the inclination, knowledge or time to do all the things a course such as this can achieve - structure the whole dizzying field of languages, methods and resources into something manageable, locate quality and understandable explanations etc. So overall I'm impressed, not fabulously so but impressed.

But then there's the issue of the price.

If I was one of the above kind of learner who learns best with an expert guide to structure the tasks and field of language learning, then I might find the price high but well worth it, especially if it saved me months, if not years of scrambling around on my own down blind alleys. As I'm not that kind of learner and tend to learn deepest when I have to make my own sense of a field from a range of resources, I know the whole course isn't worth the fees for me, but it wouldn't stop me from suggesting it to others who aren't of an auto-didact bent.
4 persons have voted this message useful

freakyaye
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 4837 days ago
107 posts - 152 votes

Message 61 of 61

12 July 2012 at 4:20pm | IP Logged

Quote:

"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches."

Those who cannot teach, do educational research.

2 persons have voted this message useful

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