|
 |
TEDx video to encourage speaking | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5919 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 9 of 30 15 January 2012 at 11:44am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I'd prefer if you just lose the demonstration of polyglottery. It's not entertaining to me, I don't know what language that is. It's just baffling. If you actually speak at Ted, people will just assume you're a super-language genius anyway. People will project amazingness onto you, I think.
Better if it could just be shorter and funnier, I think. Don't you have any horrifyingly embarrassing experiences 'just talking' like you say? I think that would spice up the talk a bit. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5427 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 10 of 30 15 January 2012 at 11:55am | IP Logged | |||||
|
How would an embarrassing story inspire people to start speaking a language? :P As I said above, the entertainment factor would dilute the message.
But yes, I'll be aiming to make it shorter in future. I'd likely shorten down the memory tricks and the rest of the middle to move the video along quicker. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5919 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 11 of 30 15 January 2012 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I just think a message, trying to inspire directly is too preachy, and that stuff is all a turn-off anyway and doesn't work. If you demonstrate polyglottery, it feels like you're showing off, and it creates a barrier. You'll sound like a gym teacher. Entertain, I say, don't be ashamed of this.
An embarrassing story will humble yourself in their eyes, and they'll empathize with you -- especially if it's funny. Once they empathize with you, they'll believe anything. The message will be there, because the punch line is that you do get better and do learn the language. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6376 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 12 of 30 15 January 2012 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I liked it. I don't agree with your conclusions (or rather, "it doesn't work that way for me"), but you're up there and you're enthusiastic and your message is that anyone can learn a language, and that's a good message. So hey, thumbs up.
9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4816 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 30 15 January 2012 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think the demonstration of polyglottery is essential. If someone is giving me advice about learning languages, I want to hear them speak some languages, so I know they can actually do it. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5114 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 14 of 30 15 January 2012 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually that's the only part of the lecture that you should definitely keep and maybe even extend a bit, because many people would probably appreciate edutainment more than interesting anecdotes. I'm convinced that most participants had never heard of language mnemonics and some of them might even remember your lecture the next time they try to memorize vocabulary.
To use another analogy: many people cannot cook, but they can definitely tell good food from garbage. I.e. many of the participants might not be able to speak a foreign language fluently, but could nevertheless tell if Benny at least sounded like native speakers of languages whose pronunciation they were familiar with. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5224 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 15 of 30 15 January 2012 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Contrary to some people here, I think the demonstration of polyglottery is essential. Obviously, you don't want to overdo it and come across as a show-off, but you have to be able to demonstrate what you are talking about. The fact is that a lot of people talk about all the languages they speak and we rarely hear them actually doing so.
Something that comes across quite well in the video is the fact that an adult can learn to speak a foreign language fluently. I would hone this message a bit, especially in the beginning. "What is the problem?" The problem is that most adults have come to believe that they are too old to learn a foreign language. Since it's been a couple of days since I saw the video, I may be wrong about the next point. I think it's very important to highlight the fact that learning a language in the country where it is spoken and interacting with native speakers are key success factors here. As for moving to the big stage of TED, I think the issue is going to be one of credibility. TED speakers tend to be heavy on university degrees, publications and research positions. Remember that second language acquisition is an academic field with a lot of people who look down on those of us who do their language learning outside the classroom. Regardless of what we think of their results, there are many schools--Middlebury College in Vermont comes to mind-- and institutions (like government language schools) that do a very credible job of teaching languages. You don't want to battle the SLA mafia; that's a fight you can't win. You want to position yourself as an outside the box thinker who is addressing the needs of people who are not in the classroom for whatever reason. So maybe you should bone up a bit on the current state of SLA thinking just so that you know some of the jargon and can avoid stepping on the wrong toes. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6376 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 16 of 30 15 January 2012 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
Most people I've discussed language learning with have two firm beliefs when it comes to language learning: 1: It's impossible to learn a language unless you're a genius or go to the country where it's spoken. 2: If you live in a country where the language is spoken, you'll just naturally aquire it without any effort. I think one needs to be careful not to reinforce any of these beliefs, as they're both terribly, terribly wrong. 18 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
