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Re-thinking language instruction

Posted by Apostolos K. on October 8, 2008 at 9:34am
Original Article Link Quote: By the time we finished school, 90% of my generation hated the mandatory Irish lessons. Hundreds of thousands of kids (aka language learning machines) failed to master even rudimentary communication in the language we had studied for years. If the teachers had set out to kill the language, I’m not sure they could have done it more effectively. But, of course, they didn’t set out to kill it, they set out to teach it, which would sound almost comical, if it weren’t so tragic. There is no single reason for the failure of traditional language teaching. It’s more like a constellation of bad pedagogy, irrelevant objectives, a school system that was calcified in another era, etc. Crowning it all was the illusion that you could and should teach a language to children, i.e. that you could/should explain it to them. The teachers’ focus was grammatical, rather than psychological - What are the structures of the language?, rather than How might we induce the language learning process? It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that if the kids were encouraged to use the language they would pick it up painlessly and quickly. Nothing (and I mean nothing) could have been less relevant than lectures on declensions or the conjugation of prepositions (they do that in Irish) to a bunch of children, but that’s what we got. I don’t want to harp on about my particular country. I used it to make a point but it was definitely not unique. For the most part, language teaching the world over remains in a fossilized state. The paradigms that inform it are often more Quintillian, and less web 2.0 even though there’s tons of amazing alternative ideas on the web these days - try Stephen Downes’ Stephen Web, or Connectivism for starters. (These treat learning generally, rather than language learning specifically, but they are relevant.) As far as I can see most kids leave schools to this day, with an abysmal record on language learning. Yesterday I talked with JP Villaneuva. He’s a tremendouly talented linguist and teacher who is leading the new SpanishPod team that launched last week. (You can sample his excellent work here.) Well, JP and I share a belief in the need for change in language teaching - in this case in how Spanish is taught. (Note: I’m not saying there are no good Spanish teachers out there. Of course there are! I’m saying the discipline as a whole needs change.) JP and I will be working together and reporting here as we progress. (I’m delighted to say that we also have an awesome tech team behind us to help make our ideas possible!) Over the coming week and months I’ll try to bring concrete examples of what we might call ‘language learning 2.0′. I beleive ChinesePod has already demonstrated a number of these, but I’m keen to keep developing the discussion beyond Mandarin. We certainly have ideas over here but we realize that you, the Big Brain, know far more than we ever could. I hope you’ll all stop by to add to the conversation in a ‘co-active’ way. Ken Carroll // end quote MY TAKE: Well, I should say that Ken does have a business in foreign language learning, so part of his post could be construed as advertising. However I do see merits in his blog post. When I was living in Greece and attending public school there I took mandatory French language courses starting at the 4th grade. That's great one would say! Well in most circumstances I would agree with you - in this case I won't. Most of my classmates did not pick up French in public schools. In order to keep up their performance and grades in public schools they needed to go to "frodistiria' (after school, for pay courses) to do French. I didn't because of various reasons. End result: having taken 5 years of French in Greek public schools I learned almost nothing! Seriously! The pedagogical model used, and the attitude of the teachers was awful (as far as I recollect), and this made me dislike languages! If not for some very talented instructors at Umass boston as an undergrad, I would have never discovered that I really like languages! I would be interested in hearing what others have to say about second language learning and their experiences
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Girls Have Harder Time Than Boys Adjusting In Language-learning Environment, Study Finds

Posted by Apostolos K. on October 8, 2008 at 9:30am
Interesting article: link I was reading this article today - thought you might be interested! QUOTE: ScienceDaily (Oct. 7, 2008) — Girls who don’t share a common language may have more difficulty adjusting socially than boys, according to surprising new Michigan State University research looking at language acquisition among young children. A study of 3- to 6-year-olds attending an international school in Beijing found that in general, girls had more social adjustment problems than boys. The students, representing 16 nationalities, were immersed in both Chinese and English, meaning each child was learning at least one new language. “In early childhood, we know from previous research that girls are more verbal and more social than boys, generally speaking, but what we found in this study is that girls had a tougher time with social adjustment in the classroom,” said Anne Soderman, MSU professor emeritus of family and child ecology and lead researcher on the project. The study, published in the latest issue of European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, found that girls who did not understand teachers or classmates at the 3e International School tended to act out or withdraw more than their male peers. Students at the “dual immersion” school are taught in Mandarin during the morning and English in the afternoon. Soderman, a consultant at the school, studied preschoolers and kindergartners last school year using more than 100 two- to three-hour observations in the classroom and teachers’ perceptions of the children’s social adjustment on the Social Competence Behavior Evaluation scale. The study, which continues this year, also found that young children overall have a more difficult time learning a second language than many people believe, Soderman said. “There’s a wide-held perception that if children are very young, learning language is extremely easy for them – that they are like sponges – and that is just not true,” she said. “Their motivations for doing so are very different from those of older children or adults.” Soderman said it’s important teachers are properly trained to teach a second language and that they make the children comfortable as they go through the often stressful process. A child who acts out may be doing so because of the language barrier, she noted. “While teachers may see these students as oppositional or significantly withdrawn, sometimes it’s just due to the fact that they really don’t understand what someone wants them to do. They also become frustrated when they aren’t able to communicate their needs and wants to peers and adults,” Soderman said. By observing the students in a unique language-acquisition environment, she added, researchers are also able to identify valuable teaching strategies for children who differ by gender, culture, age, language ability and experience. The study is funded by the Sun Wah Educational Foundation in Hong Kong and co-authored by Toko Oshio, who recently completed her doctorate in family and child ecology at MSU. For more information on the 3e International Kindergarten – which was co-developed by MSU – visit http://www.3eik.com.
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Sarah Palin's Accent (via Slate) - NOT POLITICAL

Posted by Apostolos K. on October 2, 2008 at 9:00am
Professor Meyer sent this article to our 601 class. I read it this morning and I thought it was interesting - definitely worth a read. Personally I thought her accent was midwestern :-) QUOTE: Since Sarah Palin was selected as the Republican candidate for vice president, many people have made comments about her unusual speech, comparing it to accents heard in the movie Fargo, in the states of Wisconsin and Idaho, and in Canada. Some have even attributed her manner of speaking to her supposed stupidity. But Palin actually has an Alaskan accent, one from the Matnuska and Susitna Valley region, where Palin's hometown, Wasilla, is located. Alaska is an unusual dialect area. As with most regions of the Western United States, its inhabitants have typically arrived from a variety of places, and comparatively recently. Western dialects are thus usually less sharply defined than many in the East, where there are long-established stable settlements that have given distinctive features to the dialect—as, for example, Scots and Northern Irish did in the Appalachians, or the Puritans from East Anglia in New England, or Germans and Scandinavians in the Upper Midwest.... Continue Reading - click here
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Why German can sound funny to English speakers

Posted by Apostolos K. on September 19, 2008 at 1:26pm
In English when you talk about scientific, technical, legal or medical topics, you tend to use a lot more words of Latin, Greek and French origin. However in everyday conversation words of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse origin are much more common. Therefore you could say that English has two distinct registers - a higher register used in academic and other formal settings, and a lower register used elsewhere. New scientific terms are usually coined from Latin and/or Greek roots. Mixing the registers or using one where the other would normal be used can a source of humour. In other languages, such as German, new words tend to be coined from native roots. This gives you words like Wasserstoff (water material/stuff), for hydrogen, Sauerstoff (sour/acidic stuff) for oxygen, and Stickstoff (close/stuffy stuff) for nitrogen. According to this post, such words can sound funny to English speakers because they are made from words similar to lower register English ones which are not normally associated with serious vocabulary like this. There have been suggestions and proposals that new English be coined from native Old English / Anglo-Saxon roots, none of which have really caught on. For example, in a text on atomic theory, Uncleftish Beholding by Poul Anderson, almost all the words are of Anglo-Saxon origin and there are many newly coined words, including beholding for theory, waterstuff for oxygen, ymirstuff for uranium, bulkbits for molecules, and worldken for physics. There is even a group of people called The Anglish Moot, who aim to create a version of English free of loanwords from other languages. via Omniglot
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Why can’t cats and dogs get on?

Posted by Apostolos K. on September 9, 2008 at 1:27pm
Cats and dogs do not always live in perfect harmony together, but this doesn’t have to be the case. According to an article in Science Daily, one reason why cats and dogs often don’t get on together is because they misinterpret each other’s body language. For example, when cats are angry they usually lash their tails, but dogs growl and arch their backs. When a cat avert its head, it is a sign of aggression, but this signifies submission in dogs. If cats and dogs are introduced to the same house when they’re young - under 6 months for cats and under a year for dogs, they can learn each another’s body language and are therefore less likely to fight and more likely to get along well together. If you’re wondering what this has to do with language, well not much really. I am interested in body language and animal communication as well and will be writing about it here occasionally. --------------- Personally I think that it has to do with language/culture learning Original blog post - can be found here
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