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Why is there so little research? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5056 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 57 of 81 06 February 2014 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | ||
I believe that language-learning on one's own is a highly individual process. Just look at how different my advice on this thread Help me start out (Spanish) compares with James29's advice- widely divergent. His advice is based on what worked, quite successfully, for him. My advice is based on what successfully works for me. Who's to say which is better or more effective? I don't think there's any way to really judge because what works for one person may not work for another. This isn't analogous to classroom study which can be controlled and analyzed effectively. Individual learning tends to be more of a hodge-podge of methods. Like a buffet restaurant, no two people will have the same portions or ratios of particular foods. Each meal will be different. How do you quantify such very different approaches to individual learning in a scientific manner without a large group and a control group? It wouldn't be practical and could only be controlled if we were taken out of our homes and had our methods strictly monitored- just not practical. So, I can live with a paucity of data to tell me which self-learning method is most effective. Besides, what if research were to come out that skewers all of our sacred cows. How many of us experienced learners would be willing to give up what has worked successfully for us to follow a new way that may not be appealing? Somehow, I don't think there would be too many. Edited by iguanamon on 06 February 2014 at 5:07pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5022 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 58 of 81 06 February 2014 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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There wouldn't be too many, but that's because people are extremely and regrettably flawed in our weighing of evidence. That's why nearly all of us place more value on anecdotal evidence than statistical data. We also have all sorts of confirmation biases. That's, in part, why people believe patently untrue things, like that sugar causes hyperactivity, or vaccines cause autism. I knew a guy. I have a friend. Etc.
These are the kind of things you do careful science to counteract. Sure you can always say, well, I'm different than everyone else studied. Sugar DOES make me hyper. But when careful studies find little evidence for such an effect and one's only recourse is anecdote, it's clear where we should place our bets. Edited by ScottScheule on 06 February 2014 at 9:20pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hobom Triglot Newbie Joined 4011 days ago 33 posts - 61 votes Speaks: German*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 59 of 81 06 February 2014 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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It makes sense to me that science cannot develop a one size fits all approach since obviously learning happens, to some extent, differntly for everybody. Ironically, basically every research about SLA is based on this assumption.
One group of people practices one method for a certain period and is compared with a different group following another method. No matter if the resarch is about implicit vs explicit learning or output vs input, not one of the researches stops to think that learners might have different preferences. No wonder, that most of the research (and there is a lot of it) is inconclusive. Funnily enough, most people know that there are certain learning types. So one could develop a test which quickly determines the learning type and then check which group profits more from which approach. In my opening post I complained about the lack of research: It appears to me that there is little conclusive evidence when it comes to a very general question like: what happens in my mind when I learn or process a language? There are a lot of theories about that, but not so much evidence. The other area are small questions like: should vocabulary be learned by recognizing or by production? One study posted here actually concluded that both methods are equally efficient if vocabulary should be recognized at a test. (Problem: carried out with a small group of students over the course of two weeks) This is exactly the research which would be interesting and helpful to a lot of learners I believe, at least those who might accept these findings. 1 person has 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 60 of 81 07 February 2014 at 2:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Like iguanamon and others, I admit that we all have individual learning styles and our particular preferences in
terms of methods and tools. Hence we are loathe to tell people what to do; rather we say what we do or what works for us. This is certainly the prudent thing to do, and we all do it to some extent. But there are two aspects that I think are worth examining before throwing our arms up in the air and saying, "Here's what I do; you do whatever works for you." First, I like to understand what is the science, if any, behind a method, a technique or an approach. Pimsleur is supposedly based on the scientific work of professor Paul Pimsleur who was a major figure in the field. How all the recent products have implemented his approach is another thing, but let's assume they are faithful to Pimsleur's ideas. What about the science behind Michel Thomas? Frankly, I still don't understand what the Michel Thomas method is and how it works. That said, I recognize that many people swear by it. When I look at all the many products out there, I really feel that most of the time buying a product is a shot in the dark. Much of the information about the package or the method is really marketing hype that tells me nothing about how the product actually works. And don't get me started about all those fake review websites that are nothing more than thinly disguised shills. The second observation is that, despite our individual differences and learning styles, we can probably agree that certain products or offerings work better than others. A product like Assimil is highly regarded, not that it works for everybody but many people do find it useful. A lot of people like flashcards with Anki. One can say that many people find iversen-style lists very effective, even though they are not for everybody. Perhaps what I'm looking for is a forum of serious assessment of the many offerings out there rather than the usual misleading hype, especially for the more advanced or discerning learner. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4048 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 61 of 81 07 February 2014 at 2:45am | IP Logged | ||
I think you're forgetting how huge a role human intuition plays in science. We use scientific researches to test our hypothesis and the conclusions we draw from data are not always set in stone. Someone can publish a study and say that it shows that people who drink wine are at increased risk of mouth cancer. Then someone else can re-interpret the data and say that wine only increases the risk of mouth cancer in smokers, and that non-smokers were statically unaffected. Also learners set up all kinds of checks for themselves to measure their progress. "I was able to read ____ book, I could understand ___% of a new report, I held a conversation with a native speaker for ____ minutes". They won't be able to say what the best techniques are for everyone because they might not be aware of all the variables at play in themselves. But they can get pretty damn good at testing what works for them and those techniques might work for certain other people. That's how people get good at stuff, they practice a lot, they face some sort of evaluation from themselves or their peers (does my drawing of a tree look like a real tree?) and then they try to improve their weaknesses. A master carpenter probably can't write a formula about the quickest way to be a master carpenter, but he can propose some useful techniques that would probably accelerate the progress of a novice. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6497 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 62 of 81 07 February 2014 at 10:56am | IP Logged | ||
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I am a firm supporter of scientific methods, but I am also a firm believer in scepticism when it comes to claims about scientific research. It is simply too easy to say "There is scientific research which shows that..", and my standard reaction is: ok, show me a link to that research. And even if there is research it is worth evaluating whether that research really was conducted in a proper and realistic manner, or whether some guy just cooked up an experiment which was predestined to show something he already believed in. And linguistic experiments are notoriously difficult to organize because language learning is such a complex and longwinded processs.
Among the few things you can check in more or less controlled surroundings is the efficiency of different memorization techniques. And here a fair number of experiments have been based on the retention rates of meaningless syllables. Meaningless syllables? My own experience is that it makes a huge difference whether you work on something meaningful or not, so is there actually scientific evidence that conclusions drawn from experiments based on meaningless syllables give results which are comparable to the conclusions you would have achieved with meaningful material? Or in other words, do experiments with meaningless syllables have any bearing whatsoever on actual language learning, where we try to use meaningful materials as much as possible (and even impose meaning on things that aren't comprehensible)? Maybe there is, but I haven't seen it. And given the general dismal level of the language pedagogical research I have seen I'm not willing just to take somebody's word for it. In medicine there is something called the Cochrane Institute, which makes surveys of all the research it can get hold of, and then it sift all this research through and tries to see whether there are dependable tendencies in the material. I can't judge whether it always comes out with dependable claims, but the idea is excellent, just as it is good thing that at least some scientific magazines - but not all - are peer reviewed (if they all were peer reviewed novel thinking would have a hard time). In language pedagogical research it seems that the most vociferous groups or groups who have a special agenda can dominate the sparse trickle of information that comes down to the general public, including us homelearners, language students and their teachers. But history of fads in language learning is a worrying sign that the scientific basis isn't nearly as solid as it should be. And in this information vaccuum I tend to make my own experiments and see what happens. Input from other learners in a similar situation can inspire me to make certain experiments, and if I find something that works then it will take really hard facts to convince me that it doesn't. Edited by Iversen on 07 February 2014 at 11:03am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5022 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 63 of 81 07 February 2014 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I suppose this comes down to what sort of weight we should give people's appraisal of their own progress. I don't have much faith in a person's ability to self-evaluate, to judge what method is best for himself. I think we're too rife with cognitive biases, placebo effects, wishful thinking to give much credence to our own judgment.
Now maybe there's no alternative. Maybe the actual research out there is crap science, and if that's the case, of course we shouldn't give it any weight. Is that the case? I don't know--I'd like to hear from some people in the field. But my instincts are always, first, to trust the experts. If experts said, say, Method A is the best, I'd go with it. If it turned out to be absolutely horrible for me, I'd reconsider the expert opinion. But they get the benefit of the doubt. It's technocratic and even a bit elitist, but given what we know of ordinary peoples' cognition, it's defensible. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4416 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 64 of 81 07 February 2014 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Not only do different learning styles suit different people, but everyone's motivation and perseverance ebbs and flows at different rates.
I used to study and practise German obsessively, but once I got to the point where I could comfortably communicate with natives who spoke at full speed, I guess I eased off a bit and even began to explore other languages as well as pick up old hobbies and interests again. It was like, ok I can do this Deutsch thing now, so what else does life have to offer? I still read German texts but I'm certainly not pushing myself as hard as I could. I believe I'm hovering around the lower end of C1 and that meets all my needs. I don't have a pressing desire to get to the next rung on the ladder by a certain time. If I moved to Germany, then yes, but at the moment I'm happy just ambling along. Edited by beano on 07 February 2014 at 4:27pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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