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6 useless things teachers do | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6385 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 17 of 40 15 July 2015 at 8:07am | IP Logged | |||||
As a non-native that wasn't rhetorical enough for me ;D I think emk and I have made it very clear why we don't have much faith in the SLA research. And I actually do believe that learning styles exist, but can they be figured out through questionnaires?.. Edited by Serpent on 15 July 2015 at 9:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3324 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 18 of 40 15 July 2015 at 10:10am | IP Logged | |||||
To be fair, as a native the tone very much struck me as "there is no point posting here so you should stop and post there" so don't feel too bad - perhaps this phrasing doesn't sound as harsh in the US/UK but here in Australia at least you wouldn't say "why don't you" unless you were basically commanding e.g. "Why don't you get lost". 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5016 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 19 of 40 15 July 2015 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Fair enough. For the record, I meant it in a very gentle fashion. Wording it as a question was a way to make the suggestion polite.
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| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5016 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 20 of 40 15 July 2015 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, but I'm not sure if what you're saying about SLA research is accurate. You're amateurs, like me, and it seems to me the best way to figure out whether or not if these claims are true is to ask an expert. Hence my suggestion. Are SLA experiments crippled by low sample sizes? Does Conti mean language styles don't exist, or that they're simply not divergent enough to justify paying attention to them in a classroom setting? These and other questions seem best posed to the expert who wrote the post in question. In my opinion. And again, apologies if my reply came off as pushy or imperious. It was not intended in that fashion. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5016 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 21 of 40 15 July 2015 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Serpent, you sent me a private message. I tried to reply, but apparently you've exceeded the number of private messages you can receive.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6385 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 22 of 40 15 July 2015 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I'm no amateur in linguistics, and as far as I can tell he has no experience with Finnish or Ancient Egyptian. Or even German.
I'm not saying his experience is worthless, but he's not the most accomplished learner I know. As for learning styles, I can only say that I'm very aural, and I would've benefitted from knowing that. My learning has truly flourished once I started watching lots of football in 2008. edit: cleaned up my inbox a little. I had only 71/100 messages but there's a bug ;/ Edited by Serpent on 15 July 2015 at 8:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5016 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 23 of 40 15 July 2015 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm not appealing to his experience as a language learner, I'm appealing to his experience as someone who has researched language education. It would make very little difference to me if the man were a monoglot--one does not need to learn something to do work on finding the most effective way people learn that thing. Economists do not have to be particularly good at making money to effectively describe and research how money is made. I can research the best way to gain muscle without being a bodybuilder. And so on. Does it matter if Chomsky can speak a dozen languages or only one? I'd say no. If Conti spoken 12 languages would we trust his reporting of what the scientific literature says more? I can't see why. So I'm really unclear why how accomplished a polyglot Conti is or is not is being brought up.
I don't have much faith in amateurs' ability to answer scientific questions, like the most effective language teaching techniques, and no, I don't expect that to be a popular stance on a board full of amateurs (like myself). (I'm also not sure what your "I'm no amateur" means--do you think you're less than or more than an amateur?) This is another topic, but suffice it to say, there's vast evidence that scientific experimentation is superior to the observations of dilettantes. This is why lots of people think sugar makes them hyper, and why scientists know that, nope, that's not the case. Your example of yourself is fine, and may be true. But it's an anecdote, and Conti's article, so far as I can tell, is about what language teachers do, not what may or may not be most effective for a particular person. That being said, I doubt what I say will sway anyone one way or the other. I thank the original poster for his information, and if others are unimpressed by a PhD in language education, then I think they're wrong, but there's little more I can say. Obviously going around telling people that other people know better than you is not a recipe for popularity, but so be it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5329 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 24 of 40 16 July 2015 at 12:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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You also have an issue of whether or not students actually want to be in the class. Are they there
because they're genuinely interested or are they there because they're required to take a foreign language class? You can make something all as interactive and as pedagogically sound as you want, but if the person doesn't want to be there it's not going to help much. One the exceptions to that is if you make it very clear that learning whatever language they're in is going to be incredibly advantageous to their career (at a university level). I'm more than willing to bet that an engineering student would be much more excited to take something like, "German for Engineers" than a normal 2nd year German course. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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