On Language, Texting, & Being I can speak some French. I took it all through school but learned it mostly when writing my dissertation which involved several French books that were, at the time, not yet translated. And for the books that were translated, I read the French not for accuracy per se but to get a sense for the writing — its style, its rhythm, its mode of being. Now, I love translations. I find the act of translation as amazing and erotic (such intimacy with another) as it is impossible (however actual). Anyway, at that point, my French wasn’t terrible (this was 15 years ago). We imagine, perhaps, that language is a tool much as, say, a hammer is. But that’s not how language works. And each language is different, asks different things of us — the French tu wants something different from me than the German du and, in the process, makes something different of me. When I was in grad school, I had to prove proficiency in two languages so, other than French, I chose classical Greek. Oh, was I wrong.
What we know about second language acquisition Education researcher and trainer Dylan Wiliam tweeted this abstract today. The study concerned has analysed 71 peer-reviewed studies in order to find out the optimal conditions for learning a second language. Here is the relevant part for teachers of French in the UK, or teachers of English in France: (1)... L2 learners with little L2 exposure require explicit instruction to master grammar; (2) L2 learners with strong L2 aptitude, motivation, and first language (L1) skills are more successful; (3) Effective L2 teachers demonstrate sufficient L2 proficiency, strong instructional skills, and proficiency in their students’ L1; (4) L2 learners require 3-7 years to reach L2 proficiency, with younger learners typically taking longer but more likely to achieve close-to-native results. Point (3) raises an interesting question: are native French speakers teaching in the UK, and perhaps with imperfect English, at a disadvantage in some cases.
Les personnages dans La Peste Séquence 2 Nous allons étudier le roman de Camus en Oeuvre Intégrale (OI) : vous devrez avoir la connaissance la plus fine possible de ce roman. Comment faire ? Lire le roman, mais surtout le relire et l'annoter ! En effet, d'ici la fin de l'année, vous aurez tellement lu qu'il vous faut des notes pour retenir tout cela ! (photo de zimpenfish) Lire, c'est bien, mais relire, stylos et petits papiers en main, c'est mieux ! The many reasons (29 so far) why we DON'T succeed in learning languages, and retorts for why we can. Let's hear your reasons/solutions in the comments! Today’s post is my serious attempt to collect every possible reason why we don’t learn a language in list format, and to offer possible suggestions to overcome them, or to request your solutions to these problems! I will be updating this list to add new reasons based on your comments. (Note that in the post after this, I am looking for the opposite to reasons why we can’t and I want to hear your success stories that could potentially inspire millions of people!) I am genuinely going to try to get the number of reasons and their possible retorts up to the high double digits, because I want there to be no more excuses for us to remain monolingual throughout our lives. If any of these apply to you, please consider my reply to them seriously and follow the links in each point to blog posts where I dive into it in more detail. As an engineer, I do feel many problems can be looked at analytically and a possible solution offered up when you think about it logically enough! 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Bilingual Mind: Understanding How the Brain Speaks Two Languages Learning to speak was the most remarkable thing you ever did. It wasn’t just the 50,000 words you had to master to become fluent or the fact that for the first six years of your life you learned about three new words per day. It was the tenses and the syntax and the entire scaffolding of grammar, not to mention the metaphors and allusions and the almost-but-not-quite synonyms. But you accomplished it, and good for you. Humans are crude linguists from the moment of birth — and perhaps even in the womb — to the extent at least that we can hear spoken sounds and begin to recognize different combinations language sounds. “Before 9 months of age, a baby produces a babble made up of hundreds of phonemes from hundreds of languages,” said Elisabeth Cros, a speech therapist with the Ecole Internationale de New York. (MORE: How Terror Hijacks the Brain) Excelling on the Stroop test is hardly a marketable skill, but what it suggests about the brain is something else.
Visible Thinking Routines for Blogging Our school‘s fabulous PE teacher, Claire Arcenas, is bringing blogging to her PE classes. She is incorporating Visual Thinking Routines to help her students become reflective commenters. In a recent planning session, she reminded me of the book Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchard, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison, that I had download but not read yet. We then started diving into the core routines outlined on Visible Thinking from Harvard University. The core routines are a set of seven or so routines that target different types of thinking from across the modules. Each one of these routines seemed well suited to help guide students in quality blog post writing as well as commenting. Here is our first attempt: Blogging as Information/Research Research- What have you read that has informed your position? Purpose– What kind of thinking is involved- To make sense of a concept that I am trying to understand or wrapping my mind around. Blogging as Reflection Blogging as Documentation
5 Reasons Language Learners Should Acquire More Vocabulary Posted on 25. Nov, 2013 by meaghan in Language Learning, Trends “While without grammar little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” – David Wilkins New language learners may assume that learning grammar is more important than learning vocabulary. 1. As Mr. Image © oatsy40 on flickr.com In his book, Vocabulary Myths, ESL teacher Keith Folse tells of his adventure to the supermarket in Japan. 2. Did you know your brain processes languages using two different memory systems? The cool part, though, is that much of what was originally thought to be processed by the procedural memory is actually declarative. 3. Image © aarmono on flickr.com It’s just like running—many runners do it to train for another sport. Think about how much easier it would be to read a novel in your second language if you didn’t have to look up 10 new words on every page. 4. Sometimes learning grammar can be downright demoralizing. Vocabulary, sweet, reliable vocabulary, won’t put you down. 5.
Recognising the power of voice recording | Education | Guardian Weekly Gone are the days when "computer assisted language learning" (Call) was restricted to practising writing, reading and listening skills. The emergence of web 2.0 tools and the development of mobile and tablet applications are offering numerous ways for students to explore their own voice by recording themselves speaking. The teacher can then listen and provide feedback on their oral performance or get students to peer review or even self-review their work. Amongst the tools I have been experimenting with at the University of Warwick are MyBrainShark, Vocaroo and MailVu. Vocaroo has to be one of the easiest tools I have ever used for making simple audio recordings. For higher levels, MyBrainshark offers interesting opportunities. All these tools can encourage autonomous learning and students are not just limited to using the computer as their device of choice. One great thing about all these tools is that they can be used to contribute towards an e-portfolio.
Educational Leadership:Instruction That Sticks:Strategies That Make Learning Last Daniel T. Willingham The second way is by illuminating fundamental principles of how students think and learn. Every teacher has a theory of how children learn; the theory may be unstated, but every teacher takes actions (or refrains from taking them) in the belief that doing so will help kids learn better. If researchers could offer principles of memory that are relatively universal across students, materials, and contexts, now that would help educators. Learning to Teach Oneself In the early years of schooling, we don't expect students to be able to guide their own learning; the teacher is largely responsible for creating classroom experiences that lead to student learning. Researchers have asked college students how they study, and the results show that most use inefficient strategies (Hartwig & Dunlosky, 2012; Kornell & Bjork, 2007). These results fit well with another, highly informal finding from my own teaching. What Students Typically Do Clearly the first strategy is not optimal.
Learning Styles: A Misguided Attempt to Highlight Individual Differences in Learners — The Learning Scientists Another learning styles concept is to differentiate between abstract versus concrete learners. The idea put forward here is that concrete learners need concrete entities and examples for successful learning whereas abstract learners enjoy abstract rules and representations. However, a much better way to look at individual differences is to take their prior knowledge and expertise into consideration. Not impulsive versus reflective styles, but general cognitive processes and personality Another learning styles concept categorizes students into impulsive versus reflective learners. Downloadable Materials — The Learning Scientists About the six strategies for effective learning resources: These resources were created based on research from cognitive psychology from the past few decades. To learn more about how we created the materials, see this blog. The materials are intended to teach about principles of learning and to provide teachers and students with flexible guiding principles to guide learning and studying. However, they are not intended to fix all problems within education. Further, we cannot guarantee success, and we cannot predict students' grades based on the use of these strategies. Fair use of the materials: Please use our materials and pass them along to others for educational purposes!
School culture determines blended-learning success – EDUWELLS When you were at school, you may have agreed with so many current students that ‘seeing your friends’ was by far the most significant positive about school. This has been said to me in numerous schools of all types. These same schools all claim to have modern blended-learning environments (real+online). So, why has the internet and millions of dollars in technology around the world seemingly made little difference to the significance of learning at school? Increased achievement thanks to the opportunities offered by mixing on-line and off-line learning hangs on one important point – a mindset that allows these opportunities to flourish. What the internet doesn’t change, is the feeling you are doing someone else’s work. To only learn online is to miss out on the crucial social aspect of learning and problem-solving. In 2015, I was lucky to tour New Zealand, looking at best practice in education. The 4 rooms that each child had free access to would include: Like this: Like Loading... Related
Memory under stress: from single systems to network changes - Schwabe - 2016 - European Journal of Neuroscience It has been known for more than half a century that stress and stress hormones affect learning and memory processes (Lazarus et al., 1952; McGaugh, 1966). Since then, a plethora of studies has demonstrated that stress can have both enhancing and impairing effects on memory and technical progress, such as the development of neuroimaging techniques in humans, has helped to shed light on the mechanisms involved in these effects. Most of this research focused on how stress alters the functioning of single, memory-relevant brain areas. The area that received most attention was the hippocampus, yet evidence for stress effects on other, non-hippocampal memory systems is accumulating. Stress, memory, and the hippocampus The impact of stress during learning depends also critically on the contextual relatedness of stress and learning experience. Importantly, the effects of catecholamines and glucocorticoids are not independent of each other but intimately linked.