Gems

[Lynn Santelmann]

In addition to Annette's comment, I recommend Klee (1985), where he
describes a procedure for training parents to keep accurate diaries of
children's questions (complete with errors). These reports matched quite
closely with the data tape recorded. Not all parental reports are dodgy!

>Besides, isn't there an unfortunate whiff of baby-hugging about it?

Yes, of course. For those of us with children, we've got these great
examples from our children, and we'd like to share them with the world.
 From a purely pedagogical point of view, I can tell you that humor (even
if the source is 'dodgy') is 10 times more effective in helping my students
understand a point than reams and reams of carefully controlled, but dull,
data.

I think if we're honest about the lag between utterance and recording, and
the circumstances under which these have been noted, as has been suggested,
they may well be an interesting source. If nothing else, they may spur
research into interesting pheneomena that can be controlled for and
recorded. Certainly if someone builds a theory based solely on these
'gems', we can (and probably should) be highly skeptical. But interesting
observations by trained observers (as we surely are) can be a starting point.

Lynn

****************************************************************************
Lynn Santelmann, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Applied Linguistics
Portland State University
P.O. Box 751
Portland, OR 97207-0751
Phone: 503-725-4140  Fax: 503-725-4139
email: santelmannl at pdx.edu
web: www.web.pdx.edu/~dbls
*****************************************************************************

At 04:00 PM 8/5/2004 +0100, r.n.campbell wrote:
>Surely in psychology we ought to know by now that 'no bread is much better
>than half a loaf'. It's a difficult enough subject without muddying the
>waters with dodgy data. This GEM collection sounds almost as bad as the
>MacArthur parent-response stuff.
>
>Besides, isn't there an unfortunate whiff of baby-hugging about it?
>
>Robin
>--
>Dr Robin N Campbell
>Dept of Psychology
>University of Stirling
>STIRLING FK9 4LA
>Scotland, UK
>
>telephone: 01786-467649  facsimile: 01786-467641
>email: r.n.campbell at stir.ac.uk
>Website:
>http://www.stir.ac.uk/Departments/HumanSciences/Psychology/Staff/rnc1/index.html
>
>
>--
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