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Article: Students fall short on Vocabulary

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Serpent
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 Message 233 of 319
23 April 2014 at 11:52pm | IP Logged 
Gemuse wrote:
Serpent wrote:
Gemuse wrote:
Cavesa wrote:
I think you won't see the same
approach in any technical, medical or
other "serious" field.
The curriculum is not being dumbed down to make it easier to pass.


It is starting.
to-40/">http://qz.com/192071/how-one-college-went-from-10-fe male-computer-science-
majors-to-40/
What? That's just making the programme more appealing for
women, %E2%80%9Ccomputer-geeks%E2%80%9D-replaced-%E2%80%9Ccomputerg irls%E2%80%9D">a reversal
of an intentional stereotype.


By making it seem more fun and requiring less intense solitary work than is actually
the case in the real world? It is not an intentional stereotype, it is what it is.

Dumbing down is changing the content, not the presentation. That's completely different from having lectures and reading literature in English because the students' French isn't good enough. Besides, this course was just an introduction. AFAIU, the key point is that the target audience proceeded to take more courses and make computer science their major when they saw that they were welcome in the field.

And this was started by a female scientist/mathematician who became a college president. Would she really lure women into an area that's unsuitable for them?

The equivalent of this awesomeness would be creating a language class/course for people who love maths/science and think they lack a talent for languages.

Also, one of the commenters (on my link, not yours) actually pointed out how working in a team requires strong communicational skills. But I think you didn't read even the article itself, let alone the comments...

The stereotype is not about the work being solitary, but programmers being antisocial. That's not the same thing. Just look at emk :-) Also, antisocial isn't the same as shy or introverted either.

Edited by Serpent on 24 April 2014 at 12:23am

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emk
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 Message 234 of 319
24 April 2014 at 12:40am | IP Logged 
Gemuse, Serpent: This whole discussion of programming curricula is off topic, and it's getting a bit political. Please don't make work for the moderators, OK? :-)
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Serpent
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 Message 235 of 319
24 April 2014 at 2:41am | IP Logged 
Sure. I don't really know what's political about that though, but it's definitely offtopic.
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s_allard
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 Message 236 of 319
24 April 2014 at 1:43pm | IP Logged 
Elexi wrote:
I generally agree with what you say, but I do not think that Milton's study is a
useless study in academic navel gazing (if that is indeed what you are saying). Whilst
the discussion here has descended into navel gazing, the motive of Milton's study is
aimed at curriculum change in the UK education system. Given that so much of secondary
school language teaching in the UK is still about grammatical accuracy (as in filling
in verb endings) rather than communicative competence (which is the foundation of
CEFR), I rather think that what he is doing has deep importance for the future of
language teaching in England and Wales.

..    

Seen in this light, Milton's work has some merit that I would describe as political rather than strictly scientific. I
still remain baffled by the interpretation of the figures that he has produced. To wit, the bewilderment of many of
us here.

The reason I dismiss most vocabulary size studies out of hand as academic navel gazing is precisely the lack of
meaning. The illusion of precision is produced here because vocabulary is seemingly easily quantified, unlike
most aspects of language. I say seemingly because there are very fundamental methodological issues concerning
the definition of a word.

More telling is perhaps the fact that vocabulary measurement occupies a very marginal role in linguistics today
and is of hardly any concern to observers of language and literature in general. In French, I can't think of any
contemporary work on vocabulary size.

Do we compare authors in terms of their vocabulary. Does Earnest Hemingway have a bigger vocabulary than P.
G. Wodehouse? Who cares?

How many people here at HTLAL have given any thought to their native vocabulary size? And even in their other
languages, what difference does it really make to know some estimated size of your target language?

The reason I'm so adamant about all this is because this obsession with vocabulary size is predicated on the
assumption that the word is the fundamental unit of communication. Hence the necessity of counting them. But I
believe with what we know of how language works, the basic unit of communication is more like a phrase or
sequence of words at the intersection of grammar, vocabulary and phonology.

Edited by s_allard on 24 April 2014 at 1:46pm

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s_allard
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 Message 237 of 319
24 April 2014 at 4:24pm | IP Logged 
Vocabulary size is invariably linked to language proficiency. The more vocabulary you have, the better you speak
the language. The problem is that we therefore think that learning more vocabulary is the key to better
speaking. Therefore more wordlists, more flashcards.

The problem is the separation of lexicon from grammar. At advanced levels of proficiency this separation does
not exist: we have to think in terms of lexico-grammatical resources. This means more words of course but also
more complexity in how those words are used.

One striking example of this is the use of idiomatic expressions that are found in advanced speech.

Another example is the ability to modify words to indicate nuances of meaning. In many languages this is often
done through prefixes, suffixes and derived forms. Often we indicate abstract notions by certain word endings.
In speaking, pronunciation is also very important for conveying meaning.
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luke
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 Message 238 of 319
24 April 2014 at 10:48pm | IP Logged 
s_allard wrote:
Vocabulary size is invariably linked to language proficiency. The more vocabulary you have, the better you speak the language.


I hear angels singing Let's all sing together!

Edited by luke on 24 April 2014 at 10:48pm

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Serpent
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 Message 239 of 319
25 April 2014 at 12:35am | IP Logged 
Yes! And for metalheads.

s_allard wrote:
The problem is that we therefore think that learning more vocabulary is the key to better speaking. Therefore more wordlists, more flashcards.
I think a more common reason is simply that vocabulary study is easy and/or enjoyable for many. Anyway, most of your debates are with fellow long-term members. But normally it's painfully obvious when someone is "throwing tons of vocabulary at the problem" when they would benefit more from things like shadowing, grammar study or even speaking from day 1. I'm just not sure who your "we" even refers to.
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s_allard
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 Message 240 of 319
25 April 2014 at 3:59am | IP Logged 
luke wrote:
s_allard wrote:
Vocabulary size is invariably linked to language proficiency. The more vocabulary
you have, the better you speak the language.


I hear angels singing Let's all sing together!

I don't know how this contributes to the debate here but that rendition of O Fortuna from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana
is great. I can always tell the quality of a person by the music they like. If nothing else @luke and I share the love of
great music. In fact, I had the good fortune (no pun intended) of singing that very chorus in a choir some years
back. Great memories. It also did wonders for my Latin.


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