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6 useless things teachers do

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
40 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4
ScottScheule
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 Message 33 of 40
17 July 2015 at 5:30pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Basically, if degrees matter to you, no need to label people as amateurs without asking.


Degrees do matter to me, but since most people do not have a degree in a specific field (the number of people who have degrees in linguistics is very small compared to the number of people who exist), I assume, rightly it seems to me, that people are amateurs until I hear otherwise. Moreover, I would have expected you to mention a relevant degree earlier in the conversation if you had one, given the topic.

Some people seem to think that I'm saying Conti's right in what he says. I'm not (how would I know?). Some of what he says gels with feelings I have, but he may be an outlier in his field for all I know. But none of that is to detract from the authority that a Ph.d. in a field should enjoy compared to those without one.

The thin cook line is cute, but I've made it clear why it's only cute, not meaningful.

Conti did reply to my notifying him about this thread, but he said he had trouble registering for the forum.

I suppose I'll leave it at that, since nobody's going to sway the other side here.
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Serpent
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 Message 34 of 40
17 July 2015 at 6:25pm | IP Logged 
daegga wrote:
Sounds just like the Super Challenge ... ever-present pressure to read, track the pages and minutes spent etc ... it's too late, the invasion has already begun

I'm only against the idea of calling it a language workout.
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Serpent
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 Message 35 of 40
17 July 2015 at 7:02pm | IP Logged 
On HTLAL the percentage isn't as low as among the general population. I don't consider it as important as my experience as a learner, and I assumed you'd already seen my mentions of it during your 1800 days on this forum.
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aokoye
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 Message 36 of 40
17 July 2015 at 9:24pm | IP Logged 
Mork the Fiddle wrote:
1. On Experts

Here are OED definitions of the word expert*. I hid the quotations from the OED entry.


1. One who is expert or has gained skill from experience. Const. at, in, with.
1853—1882

2. a. One whose special knowledge or skill causes him to be regarded as an authority; a specialist.
Also attrib., as in expert evidence, expert witness, etc.
1825—1890
b. In recent use esp. one skilled in the study of handwritings.
1858—1886

By definition #1 Serpent, emk, iverson and a number of other members of HTLAL are experts in
language learning.


In the field of second language acquisition I would consider someone an expert if they had actually
done a lot of academic research on SLA (either inside or outside of the classroom). I don't think that
"One who is expert or has gained skill from experience" is the best arbiter of "expert" for things like
linguistics (overarching and general topics), philosophy, economics, etc. Also a major flaw in that
definition is that they used "expert" in the definition for the word "expert".

That definition would, however, work well for things like cooking, music, any sort of art/craft,
gardening (to an extent), computer science and various other subjects.

I would consider someone with substantial academic research (I would include the reading of texts) in
SLA an "expert". Keep in mind that just because someone has a degree in linguistics does not
mean that they have had much if any exposure to SLA. There are a number of linguistic topics that
one can specialize in and SLA is just one of them. That said I don't particularly care about one's
expertise until they start claiming that X method is by and large better than Y method and this is why
without citing any sources.
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Serpent
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 Message 37 of 40
18 July 2015 at 6:23am | IP Logged 
aokoye wrote:
Keep in mind that just because someone has a degree in linguistics does not mean that they have had much if any exposure to SLA. There are a number of linguistic topics that one can specialize in and SLA is just one of them.

Yeah, that's why I didn't bother to mention mine. I've learned much more about this on HTLAL and from the books of Gunnemark, Farber etc. And from giving advice and watching people succeed ;)

Also, what's the difference between linguistics and computer science for you in this regard? In Europe many people actually do a linguistics degree for the purpose of learning a couple of languages, and based on the people I've studied with, I'd say someone like Chung or Volte who's studied/dabbled in a few languages outside of the Romance+German bubble AND reads about linguistics for fun is much more of an expert than many people with a degree who lack an actual passion for linguistics.

IDK, to me this is starting to resemble a situation where you claim that a Westerner studying an indigenous culture knows it better than a member of said culture. SLA is focused on language teaching. HTLAL is focused on language learning and treats teachers as a tool. Conti is more of an expert in teaching than in learning, it seems.

Edited by Serpent on 18 July 2015 at 6:37am

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aokoye
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 Message 38 of 40
18 July 2015 at 7:54am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Also, what's the difference between linguistics and computer science for you in
this regard?


Computer science is analogous to learning actual languages than it is to learning how they tick to a
large extent. It's much more applied than the field of linguistics is generally speaking. Yes there is
theory, but there are an extremely large amount of people in the field of computer science, world
wide, who were entirely self taught (for what it's worth I used to be an intern at a somewhat major
multinational tech company). There are definitely people who are very good programmers who have
degrees in computer science, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was an equal number of very good
programmers who don't.

The other thing about computer science is that it is, by it is nature, very binary. Something either
works or it doesn't. Yes there can be multiple ways of doing something (and there are concepts like
refactoring code and keeping things DRY - don't repeat yourself), but again, it either works or it
doesn't.

In short, computer science involves a lot more experiential learning than linguistics does and you
don't have to do anything involving academia or reading things like journal articles to do learn it.
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luke
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 Message 39 of 40
18 July 2015 at 10:58am | IP Logged 
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach ESL.

Motivation is such an important part in language learning, the most important thng teachers need to do is not
de-motivate learners.

Edited by luke on 18 July 2015 at 11:01am

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Serpent
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 Message 40 of 40
18 July 2015 at 11:37am | IP Logged 
I'm biased here because I actually did applied linguistics ;D Which was basically linguistics + computer science.

The question is whether academia and scientific articles actually produce effective teachers though. In any case they're not the only way.


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