Yes, I think we can learn better when we can choose freely how we learn it. We accept it from the bottom of our hearts that way. I did an experiment on myself once. I tried different ways to memorize different formulas in chemistry (which were about the same length): I stared at it, I read it out loud, I wrote it down, and I think reading out loud and saying it again helps me remember it better. For me, I had to stare at it several times to remember it...difficult.
I believe that we all learn the same, but we all like different things. Just as you said. Based on this, I've been thinking that it would be great if there was a web sight with information on several different methods of language learning, and links to all the major sites and blogs, so that people can see all that's out there, and then make the decision on which method they enjoy the most, or even take single parts that they like from several methods, and assemble their own method from there.
I find that I remember numbers with greater ease if type them in on a phone or a numpad on a computer, I guess that's kinetic memory. I remember watching movies as a boy and I'd frequently ask my parents what this or that word meant and eventually started piecing the dialogues with the subtitles, I think that's how I learned English. I'm seeing a german woman, I hear words here and there that help me understand the gist of the conversations when she talks with her sister.
I find that I remember numbers with greater ease if type them in on a phone or a numpad on a computer, I guess thats kinetic memory. But I remember words and sounds just fine.
I think everybody learns in a different way. Some people can recognize/memorize pictures better than words. Or remember hearing something better than if they read it. It's just a fact.
@ubny1 It's not a strongly held belief. How can you deny that some people remember things better by learning them in a different way. If I can read something and remember almost all of it, but if someone reads it to me and I don't remember anything, that's learning in a different way... This is very common.
I taught calculus and physics in the public schools. I tried to make lessons interesting, but emphasized that mathematics is the language of science. There is no way around it.
I taught lessons in just one way. I don't believe in "differentiated learning".
My personal opinion is that people do learn in different ways, especially as they age! I think our brains act similarly when we are young (say five years of age and younger) but we start having "learning styles" as we age. For me, for example, I cannot "hear" words. I must SEE the words written first. But there are some people who can simply listen and learn. I know one girl who learned Korean in one year simply by listening and then speaking.
:( I like poetry. I like reading poems in other languages. And I also think Listening is extremely important, if not the most important thing you can do to learn a language. I do know though that I learn better visually, I discovered this by myself. I think the learner should learn the way he wants. teachers should try to encourage their students to learn how they want to.
aw :( I LOVE POETRY. I love using it to increase my vocab in other languages. The big reason I really like it to learn languages is because poetry gives you a good sense of image in your head which really helps me to remember the new words. And yea I do agree they alot of the words are not ones commonly used but I find them fun to learn nonetheless.
I use lots of different methods to learn languages. I memorize certain words I think I will want to know, and I read, and I practice translating, and talking to people over microphone.
I also do not like poetry for learning a language. The words used are usually words rarely used in real life situations and are often archaic. I know this is the case with Arabic poetry. I consider myself to be almost fluent in Arabic, but for me, reading Arabic poetry is often like reading another language. If I had tried to learn Arabic through poetry I would imagine that other forms of Arabic would be just as foreign as poetry is to me right now.
A lot of what you say here can be summed up by one of Confucius's sayings - "all men are by nature the same, it is their habits that differ".
As regards Universal grammar, I can't see where your contention is, as what you say here (apart from saying explicitly that you disagree) seems fairly inline with Chomsky's theory.
We have a universal ability to recognize patterns. We are not born with a universal sense of what is appropriate grammar and what is not. In fact this differs from language to language. If you read Pinker on Chomsky he goes into great detail describing the nature of this universal grammar. I do not agree. We can notice patterns in anything.
So, of course the schools are babbling nonsense about "learning styles"! Kinesthetic, auditory, visual, etc. are all in the realm of perception! They completely omit conceptualization. In my opinion, you may call it "extremist" or whatever, I think the intellectuals, the people in the ivory tower, are consciously setting out to destroy our rational (integrated) minds while we are still young. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I think I may have something here.
You learn by integrating percepts into abstract concepts. The brain perceives facts in reality, and then organizes and conceptualizes those percepts into conceptual knowledge. Unfortunately, progressive education, with its roots in philosopher John Dewey, completely omits the integration (conceptualization) in learning.
We do have translation for beginner content, although not interlinear, and not on the same page. We will be improving how we do this once we can segregate the target language from the learner's language in our statistics. I, however, prefer to have the translations separate.
I do not accept the universal grammar hypothesis and am not alone in this. I feel that a person who really only spoke one language, with a smattering of a second, is in a difficult position to talk about universal grammars. The same goes for Stephen Pinker.
As for interlinear translation, I have tried it and found it distracting and highly unsatisfactory. I find it to be low resonance and not something that I would do. I accept that others may enjoy this method.
Interlinear translations are mainly for teaching beginners. With the meaning under each word they can now read the text much faster and get a feel for the language. They dont get bogged down in looking up all the new words.
If you supplied interlinear versions for your Who is She series on lingq Im sure that your beginners would really appreciate it !
Re Chomsky, maybe its all a bit academic. But search Youtube under ...Christopher UCL.... Part 4 seems pretty convincing to me.
As for interlinear translations, I feel that they can be a crutch and prevent people from reading only in the target language. However, if learners are to be motivated reading, they have to be able to read what they'd normally read in their own languages, so these may be helpful in the beginning.
As for UG, I think it's very theoretical and doesn't have much application to real-life language learning. However, as with everything, I believe there is a scientific basis behind language learning.
Theres no point in asking people about learning styles because language learning is different from all other learning. The human brain invented language in the first place and our brains are innately primed to learn it (with respect, Chomsky is right about his universal grammar).
I tell my students that they have to observe the way their own brain learns language best, then feed the language into it that way. Its our brain who learns language, not us. We are just bystanders.
Krashen says that if you feed some language into the brain and the brain understands the meaning, it will learn that language. He calls this comprehensible input.
The best form of comprehensible input Ive found so far is the interlinear translation (target language on one line, equivalent English words directly underneath). This was a method pioneered with great success in the 1820s by James Hamilton. Regards, David
The theory of learning styles is build on one very flowed assumption: that you can separate what you learn from how you learn. If you were to teach a computer to do something, then this is something you could do, but our brain does not in any way resemble how a computer works. For more info on why learning styles does not exist see: watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk
It's interesting that he expresses himself like a proper scientist, by saying that nobody really knows just how we learn. By pointing out that the tests surrounding the specific learning styles conclusively show that they don't offer any useful answers.
I like his honesty. No black magic, no definitive answers, just simply evidence. That's a refreshing change!
Text messages are great if you have a friend who is a native speaker. My best friend is a native Spanish speaker so I love writing Spanish messages to her. She really loves it, too, and responds in Spanish and gives me corrections. :] It also helps me learn the vocabulary and phrases that I would want to say anyway. Of course this is not my primary language learning strategy (far from it), it's just something fun.
...I can't start to learn a language without learning any grammar as you do. Even at the beginning I want to know about the rules behind most of the structures. Learning the grammar is not unpleasant for me and I even enjoy it. To become fluent and to work on my pronunciation I always read loud, when I am learning with the courses. When I am listening to audio resources I always repeat the content loud in the same moment.
Maybe better to write such long comments in your blog the next time ;-)
I think it's important that people still have a degree of grammar learning and pronunciation - often seen as the unpleasant aspects of language learning, as one cannot syntactically develop without grammar and one cannot develop full confident in the phonological system without pronunciation practice.
...with this monotonous school textbooks. So my only good experience was, that we once read the book "Un pacte avec le diable".
In general I prefer autodidactic learning. I am interested very much in different languages. In moment I am learning japanese Kanji (just the signs and meanings) and russian using different methods. I use spaced recognition software for my vocabulary. Using the Assimil course in combination with books which emphasize more on grammar works quite good for me...
I have different experiences with classrooms. I have learned english in school. We had a good teacher and we read a lot of books, did presentations about topics we like and had a lot of conversations in class. I think this methods helped me a lot to improve my english. On the other hand I also had to learn french in school for 5 years. At this time I wasn't interested at all in France, so I wasn't motivated to learn this language. The lessons were boring , because the teacher always worked ...
Hmm, I had a similar experience with French - loathed it and learnt almost nothing.
There's a world of difference between learning out of curiosity and because one has to.
I've learnt more Japanese, by myself, in 9 months than years of French at school. I've put an enormous amount of time and effort into it put it doesn't seem like work at all - well, most of the time. :o)
If you're skipping one-liners, you're probably missing out. You say you enjoy live conversations, but love conversations are full of "one-liners." I think one-liners are more important for mastering conversational language (the real language, by the way), than reading books or long posts.
I often hear that kids these days have no attention span, and can only focus for long enough to write a short text message. But, I just don't buy it. Just think what happens when each new Harry Potter book came out: kids would read for hours at a stretch, and finish each book in a couple of days, hungry for the next volume.
I would agree - it's not so much the fact that children's attention spans are getting shorter as much as they are getting more selective and demanding of any content they have to take in. I think this isn't just kids, but also adults now who feel this way.
With Japanese, the way i keep things is by using them more than two or three times. If I use it everyday somehow, Ill be able to keep itup. I also copy words into a journal and flashcards for back reference.
...as far as twitter goes, its use in a class reeks of fad. There's nothing wrong with making topics accessible but pandering to short attention-spans doesn't seem helpful: children need to learn to focus and concentrate.
Short fragments of information, won't help to develop articulacy and the ability to create a narrative in written language. It's all about communication after all.
The slang/abbreviations used in e-mail etc are fine if they're in addition to learning to write like an adult.
I'm still working out my own method of learning a language so I don't have a strong opinion. Generally though, in all other topics, classrooms etc just get in the way.
I far prefer to follow my interests where they lead me and, in so doing, usually learn a great deal more depth than is offered by a syllabus.
All the things that I'm good at, I've learnt by myself. Teachers have only been useful to me in offering some support and guidance not for the comprehension - that's my responsibility.
Yes, I think we can learn better when we can choose freely how we learn it. We accept it from the bottom of our hearts that way. I did an experiment on myself once. I tried different ways to memorize different formulas in chemistry (which were about the same length): I stared at it, I read it out loud, I wrote it down, and I think reading out loud and saying it again helps me remember it better. For me, I had to stare at it several times to remember it...difficult.
vivdclyde 3 months ago
I believe that we all learn the same, but we all like different things. Just as you said. Based on this, I've been thinking that it would be great if there was a web sight with information on several different methods of language learning, and links to all the major sites and blogs, so that people can see all that's out there, and then make the decision on which method they enjoy the most, or even take single parts that they like from several methods, and assemble their own method from there.
OtacooI 10 months ago
I find that I remember numbers with greater ease if type them in on a phone or a numpad on a computer, I guess that's kinetic memory. I remember watching movies as a boy and I'd frequently ask my parents what this or that word meant and eventually started piecing the dialogues with the subtitles, I think that's how I learned English. I'm seeing a german woman, I hear words here and there that help me understand the gist of the conversations when she talks with her sister.
mohfuu 1 year ago
I find that I remember numbers with greater ease if type them in on a phone or a numpad on a computer, I guess thats kinetic memory. But I remember words and sounds just fine.
mohfuu 1 year ago
I think everybody learns in a different way. Some people can recognize/memorize pictures better than words. Or remember hearing something better than if they read it. It's just a fact.
ubny1 1 year ago
@ubny1 Don't confuse you strongly held beliefs with facts.
lingosteve 1 year ago 4
@ubny1 It's not a strongly held belief. How can you deny that some people remember things better by learning them in a different way. If I can read something and remember almost all of it, but if someone reads it to me and I don't remember anything, that's learning in a different way... This is very common.
ubny1 1 year ago
haha oral we all used to laugh at that in French lessons
MrOregona230 1 year ago
I taught calculus and physics in the public schools. I tried to make lessons interesting, but emphasized that mathematics is the language of science. There is no way around it.
I taught lessons in just one way. I don't believe in "differentiated learning".
dickda1 1 year ago
My personal opinion is that people do learn in different ways, especially as they age! I think our brains act similarly when we are young (say five years of age and younger) but we start having "learning styles" as we age. For me, for example, I cannot "hear" words. I must SEE the words written first. But there are some people who can simply listen and learn. I know one girl who learned Korean in one year simply by listening and then speaking.
rfwelsh 1 year ago
:( I like poetry. I like reading poems in other languages. And I also think Listening is extremely important, if not the most important thing you can do to learn a language. I do know though that I learn better visually, I discovered this by myself. I think the learner should learn the way he wants. teachers should try to encourage their students to learn how they want to.
Codylangaugesblog 1 year ago
aw :( I LOVE POETRY. I love using it to increase my vocab in other languages. The big reason I really like it to learn languages is because poetry gives you a good sense of image in your head which really helps me to remember the new words. And yea I do agree they alot of the words are not ones commonly used but I find them fun to learn nonetheless.
CheeseBubbles 2 years ago
@CheeseBubbles Ha I didn't even know I watched this before. I'm responding to my other channel.
Codylangaugesblog 1 year ago
And what makes you an authority?
lingosteve 2 years ago
@lingosteve thanks for this video. i get what you mean.
learningstuffonline 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@lingosteve thanks for this video. i get what you mean.
learningstuffonline 1 year ago
@lingosteve haha no one made him an authority, he is merely stating the fact
lemontofu 1 year ago
@lingosteve I think he refers to multiple intelligences theory of Howard Gardner.
marckami 1 year ago
I use lots of different methods to learn languages. I memorize certain words I think I will want to know, and I read, and I practice translating, and talking to people over microphone.
BMtodaP 2 years ago
I also do not like poetry for learning a language. The words used are usually words rarely used in real life situations and are often archaic. I know this is the case with Arabic poetry. I consider myself to be almost fluent in Arabic, but for me, reading Arabic poetry is often like reading another language. If I had tried to learn Arabic through poetry I would imagine that other forms of Arabic would be just as foreign as poetry is to me right now.
saxquiz 2 years ago 3
A lot of what you say here can be summed up by one of Confucius's sayings - "all men are by nature the same, it is their habits that differ".
As regards Universal grammar, I can't see where your contention is, as what you say here (apart from saying explicitly that you disagree) seems fairly inline with Chomsky's theory.
Deorca 2 years ago
We have a universal ability to recognize patterns. We are not born with a universal sense of what is appropriate grammar and what is not. In fact this differs from language to language. If you read Pinker on Chomsky he goes into great detail describing the nature of this universal grammar. I do not agree. We can notice patterns in anything.
lingosteve 2 years ago
@lingosteve What books have you read on Chomsky? Are you familiar with his work?
Kouziren 1 year ago
Are you going to add arabic or Urdu? if yes, when?
do you know of any other sites where u can learn, i am learning arabic at livemocha
kasana 2 years ago
So, of course the schools are babbling nonsense about "learning styles"! Kinesthetic, auditory, visual, etc. are all in the realm of perception! They completely omit conceptualization. In my opinion, you may call it "extremist" or whatever, I think the intellectuals, the people in the ivory tower, are consciously setting out to destroy our rational (integrated) minds while we are still young. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I think I may have something here.
CommodoreV 2 years ago
You learn by integrating percepts into abstract concepts. The brain perceives facts in reality, and then organizes and conceptualizes those percepts into conceptual knowledge. Unfortunately, progressive education, with its roots in philosopher John Dewey, completely omits the integration (conceptualization) in learning.
CommodoreV 2 years ago
We do have translation for beginner content, although not interlinear, and not on the same page. We will be improving how we do this once we can segregate the target language from the learner's language in our statistics. I, however, prefer to have the translations separate.
lingosteve 2 years ago
See what you mean. If you put target language and learner language on the same page you end up with too many versions.
ClassicalWorkbooks 2 years ago
I do not accept the universal grammar hypothesis and am not alone in this. I feel that a person who really only spoke one language, with a smattering of a second, is in a difficult position to talk about universal grammars. The same goes for Stephen Pinker.
As for interlinear translation, I have tried it and found it distracting and highly unsatisfactory. I find it to be low resonance and not something that I would do. I accept that others may enjoy this method.
lingosteve 2 years ago
Interlinear translations are mainly for teaching beginners. With the meaning under each word they can now read the text much faster and get a feel for the language. They dont get bogged down in looking up all the new words.
If you supplied interlinear versions for your Who is She series on lingq Im sure that your beginners would really appreciate it !
Re Chomsky, maybe its all a bit academic. But search Youtube under ...Christopher UCL.... Part 4 seems pretty convincing to me.
ClassicalWorkbooks 2 years ago
As for interlinear translations, I feel that they can be a crutch and prevent people from reading only in the target language. However, if learners are to be motivated reading, they have to be able to read what they'd normally read in their own languages, so these may be helpful in the beginning.
As for UG, I think it's very theoretical and doesn't have much application to real-life language learning. However, as with everything, I believe there is a scientific basis behind language learning.
MrSimonLiu 2 years ago
Theres no point in asking people about learning styles because language learning is different from all other learning. The human brain invented language in the first place and our brains are innately primed to learn it (with respect, Chomsky is right about his universal grammar).
I tell my students that they have to observe the way their own brain learns language best, then feed the language into it that way. Its our brain who learns language, not us. We are just bystanders.
ClassicalWorkbooks 2 years ago
Krashen says that if you feed some language into the brain and the brain understands the meaning, it will learn that language. He calls this comprehensible input.
The best form of comprehensible input Ive found so far is the interlinear translation (target language on one line, equivalent English words directly underneath). This was a method pioneered with great success in the 1820s by James Hamilton. Regards, David
ClassicalWorkbooks 2 years ago
The theory of learning styles is build on one very flowed assumption: that you can separate what you learn from how you learn. If you were to teach a computer to do something, then this is something you could do, but our brain does not in any way resemble how a computer works. For more info on why learning styles does not exist see: watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk
theiamania 2 years ago
Interesting link, thanks.
It's interesting that he expresses himself like a proper scientist, by saying that nobody really knows just how we learn. By pointing out that the tests surrounding the specific learning styles conclusively show that they don't offer any useful answers.
I like his honesty. No black magic, no definitive answers, just simply evidence. That's a refreshing change!
acromel 2 years ago
Text messages are great if you have a friend who is a native speaker. My best friend is a native Spanish speaker so I love writing Spanish messages to her. She really loves it, too, and responds in Spanish and gives me corrections. :] It also helps me learn the vocabulary and phrases that I would want to say anyway. Of course this is not my primary language learning strategy (far from it), it's just something fun.
kelliwisethebrave 2 years ago
Mz stzle is"
Read until you can read no more, then listen.
Listen until you can listen no more, then watch.
Watch until you can watch no more, then rest.
Then read.
;)
biantai888 2 years ago
...I can't start to learn a language without learning any grammar as you do. Even at the beginning I want to know about the rules behind most of the structures. Learning the grammar is not unpleasant for me and I even enjoy it. To become fluent and to work on my pronunciation I always read loud, when I am learning with the courses. When I am listening to audio resources I always repeat the content loud in the same moment.
Maybe better to write such long comments in your blog the next time ;-)
shikei86 2 years ago
I think it's important that people still have a degree of grammar learning and pronunciation - often seen as the unpleasant aspects of language learning, as one cannot syntactically develop without grammar and one cannot develop full confident in the phonological system without pronunciation practice.
MrSimonLiu 2 years ago
...with this monotonous school textbooks. So my only good experience was, that we once read the book "Un pacte avec le diable".
In general I prefer autodidactic learning. I am interested very much in different languages. In moment I am learning japanese Kanji (just the signs and meanings) and russian using different methods. I use spaced recognition software for my vocabulary. Using the Assimil course in combination with books which emphasize more on grammar works quite good for me...
shikei86 2 years ago
I have different experiences with classrooms. I have learned english in school. We had a good teacher and we read a lot of books, did presentations about topics we like and had a lot of conversations in class. I think this methods helped me a lot to improve my english. On the other hand I also had to learn french in school for 5 years. At this time I wasn't interested at all in France, so I wasn't motivated to learn this language. The lessons were boring , because the teacher always worked ...
shikei86 2 years ago
Hmm, I had a similar experience with French - loathed it and learnt almost nothing.
There's a world of difference between learning out of curiosity and because one has to.
I've learnt more Japanese, by myself, in 9 months than years of French at school. I've put an enormous amount of time and effort into it put it doesn't seem like work at all - well, most of the time. :o)
acromel 2 years ago
If you're skipping one-liners, you're probably missing out. You say you enjoy live conversations, but love conversations are full of "one-liners." I think one-liners are more important for mastering conversational language (the real language, by the way), than reading books or long posts.
AstAMoore 2 years ago
I often hear that kids these days have no attention span, and can only focus for long enough to write a short text message. But, I just don't buy it. Just think what happens when each new Harry Potter book came out: kids would read for hours at a stretch, and finish each book in a couple of days, hungry for the next volume.
Silvuschka 2 years ago 4
I would agree - it's not so much the fact that children's attention spans are getting shorter as much as they are getting more selective and demanding of any content they have to take in. I think this isn't just kids, but also adults now who feel this way.
MrSimonLiu 2 years ago
With Japanese, the way i keep things is by using them more than two or three times. If I use it everyday somehow, Ill be able to keep itup. I also copy words into a journal and flashcards for back reference.
sk8tertater 2 years ago
It can be tricky to find uses for some phrases though. :o)
I especially love this one: 「共振現象でございます。」
acromel 2 years ago
...as far as twitter goes, its use in a class reeks of fad. There's nothing wrong with making topics accessible but pandering to short attention-spans doesn't seem helpful: children need to learn to focus and concentrate.
Short fragments of information, won't help to develop articulacy and the ability to create a narrative in written language. It's all about communication after all.
The slang/abbreviations used in e-mail etc are fine if they're in addition to learning to write like an adult.
acromel 2 years ago
I'm still working out my own method of learning a language so I don't have a strong opinion. Generally though, in all other topics, classrooms etc just get in the way.
I far prefer to follow my interests where they lead me and, in so doing, usually learn a great deal more depth than is offered by a syllabus.
All the things that I'm good at, I've learnt by myself. Teachers have only been useful to me in offering some support and guidance not for the comprehension - that's my responsibility.
acromel 2 years ago