Critical thinking

[concertmatell]

'they just want to learn English, so why don't you make it easy on them'

So true.

[saik1975]

Hi, I agree with you on some part of your talk.

But, I have another point is that critical thinking is depend on your knowledge. So thinking goes as per your knowledge on the subject. You can teach Critical Thinking on based of knowledge.

[lingosteve]

I agree with you. So we need to teach people to read well so that they can learn more. With more knowledge, and with the exposure to many ideas and points of view, and facts, we improve our critical thinking. It is not something that these English teachers area able to teach.

[yahags]

I agree with with what you said completely.

Educated people (or those who think of themselves as educated) often don't listen to what more humble people have to say. They're not interested unless the message is encoded in form of pseudo-scientific gibberish. It also has to be fully compatible with their views.

That's why imho it's cool to work on skills and all but... specializing in some narrow boring field, writing long sentences and acting all superior...

I just don't bite that part. :)

[FlyingFin]

Hi Steve!

I just finished watching all of your videos and had a great time doing so! I speak quite a few languages myself, and will be giving LingQ another shot (briefly used it when it popped up on the web for the first time) since I've now seen you speak quite fluently in some of my native languages haha :) Good job! Keep it up and I am sure that more people than you think are watching these videos!

[mediteight]

Would you agree there are ways of teaching critical thinking - e.g. by explaining types of logical fallacies, formal logic, scientific method etc., but that these are probably not very language specific?

I'd be very interested in any opinion you have on the Sapir-Whorf language hypothesis - whether your language affects the way you model the world around you. Would thinking in a language as different as say "lojban" have any interesting affect on our day-to-day reasoning...?

[lingosteve]

1) You can teach methods of organizing your thoughts in order to express them convincingly. I don't believe these ESL teachers can teach how to think, how to be open to new ideas, how to question assumptions, without imposing their own assumptions. We arrive at our views based more on emotion than logic, and use logic to justify these views.

2)Language is part of your culture and affects your world view. Each successive language you learn opens your mind to new perspectives.

[mediteight]

I'm ignorant of ESL teaching methods, but would agree teaching critical thinking seems quite separate from any specific language.

I'm slowly beginning to appreciate (2) more and more. Some domains, a little removed from everyday life (such as programming or maths), seem to necessitate the invention of their own languages to cope with their development.

Many thanks for the reply and interesting videos (... and inspiration for learning more languages! :)

Cheers, Paul