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IQ needed to be a hyperglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5191 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 161 of 164 27 September 2010 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Why people are so offended at the idea of IQ tests, I fail to understand. It's a statistical exercice.
Take 100 people and make them study a new language, under similar conditions, for the same duration (presuming fair, even learning conditions, and proper testing methods). Inevitably, some people will do better than others. Take the results and apply them to a bell curve and you've got yourself a language IQ. It's purely a statistical analysis of the results of the testing method. The method may be wrong, and the results may vary according to the tests, but you could design 10 different tests from different angles and add them all up -- inevitably, you will still end up with some type of bell curve where certain people excel and others do not. You can claim all you want that there is no such thing as talent, that it's 90% sweat, etc., the bottomline is that out that group of people, some will perform stikingly better than others. Perhaps the idea that this number would impose limits on people's potential learning abilities is what feels most insulting, but from a statistical point of view, it's an inevitable reality. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5522 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 162 of 164 27 September 2010 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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The more languages one learns, the better he becomes at learning languages. The faster he becomes at learning languages. The higher his "language intelligence" becomes. His "Language IQ" increases at an exponential rate, something that no test could account for, and something that undermines the purpose of a traditional IQ test, viz., IQ cannot be learned.
In a language test proper, such as the WAIS, the tests become more difficult as the testee gets older. This would be ludicrous in something such as the test which you propose, because a person's ability to acquire a language naturally flat-lines after the age of 12. This would mean that, in some cases, a person's IQ would be higher as a child than as an adult. Some people learn by mnemonics (think Khatzumoto). Some people learn by submersion (think Steve Kaufman). No standardized test could account for these differences in language learning styles. The only way to measure one's "Language IQ" would be case studies, and even this would be flawed because of the aforementioned problems and trying to account for all the differences in learning styles. The closest thing we have to a "Language IQ" test currently is the DLAB and even that is inadequate because [1] easy, if you know what you're dealing with (i.e. can be studied for) [2] isn't completely accurate (i.e. some people fail as linguists, and some people still learn languages regardless of the results; false positives) [3] it still doesn't account for all learning styles. My point is that some people can sit in front of ANKI for hours, some cannot. Some can tear through reference grammars, some cannot. Some can learn every word in a pocket dictionary by rote but only after forgetting each word 20 times, some cannot. Why? Because of determination. Something that could measure one's "determination quotient" would be far more applicable, but even this would be a futile exercise because of people like me - although I go through periods of stagnation, every little success breeds enough determination to help me endeavor to persevere in my pursuit of learning many languages as well as I can.
I'm not offended, but you have to remember that the idea of ANY type of IQ test is still mildly controversial. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6513 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 163 of 164 28 September 2010 at 1:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I can see one use for IQ in the classical sense, namely for 'language ethnographs' who go to faraway places to learn new languages from scratch - it must be practical to be able to hear XYZ and XXZ and YZX and infer anything about the language from that.
But a good and welltrained memory plus sheer stubbornness and maybe even musicality could also come in handy, and as far as I know they are not particularly closely correlated with classical g-factor intelligence. Neither does the possession of good dictionaries and grammars. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| habadzi Super Polyglot Senior Member Greece Joined 5384 days ago 70 posts - 106 votes Speaks: Greek*, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Hindi, French, German, Italian, Ancient Greek, Modern Hebrew, Arabic (classical), Indonesian, Bengali, Albanian, Nepali | Message 164 of 164 28 September 2010 at 3:45am | IP Logged | ||
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For language learning, people think of obvious variables, like IQ. But one of the most important determinants of language ability is short-term memory span. Those who have a longer phonological loop keep more material in working memory and can repeat it. Research suggests that working memory is an area separate from the fast circuits that seem to constitute intelligence.
Other determinants are methods. Learning styles are often assumed but the research suggests that they don't exist (see prof. Daniel Willingham on youtube). Some methods are more efficient than others, and age may play a role. The younger people can easily concatenate "nonsense" sounds and automatize them into longer chains, the older ones need to rely more on meaning, etymology of known words, and perhaps large numbers of audio repetitions. (What I do at age 59.) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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