Government language study released (fwd)

[MiaKalish@LFP]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rolland Nadjiwon" <mikinakn at SHAW.CA>
To: <ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 11:52 AM
Subject: Re: Government language study released (fwd)


> Mia...your comments on this, perhaps:
>
> I forwarded the news release on this study in standard black and white to
> most of my online 'skindian' friends. Some wrote back saying they could
not
> see it. I then sent it around in brown(earthtones). I spoke a bit later
with
> my son and asked him what he thought of it being in brown. He said, "I'm
> color blind so it looked all the same to me. I did wonder why you posted
it
> twice."


I told him it must have been pretty rough trying to find a Mexicano
> when he lived in Oaxaca.
--> I laughed so hard. . . . .

Although, brown color-blindness is a bit unusual, except in the
psychological sense. Usually, people are green/blue color blind, and often
red/blue color blind. The really unfortunate people, like my past uncle,
managed somehow to be blind both ways, and yet made his living as an
electrician.



>
> Second thought: On your mention of "clues to how learning happened"
> (paragraph 3 line 2), and "build[ing] visual models
>  in my[your] head, in full color...."(last para),  I was very interested
in
> what you might respond to the question whether there is a
Chomsky(Syntactic
> Structures (1951)) difference between learning and language learning, or,
> any comment you might have.
Actually, Rolland, I am in the middle of writing a grant for cognitively
informed learning materials. Otherwise, I would like to do a detailed
analysis of what I think about Chomsky. However, in the light of short time,
I will hit what I consider the high spots:
    1: Chomsky is superb as an anarchist (Letters from Lexington is one of
my all-time faves)
    2: Chomsky doesn't know diddly about how people learn language. He is a
structuralist because he always really wanted to be a programmer, but
unfortunately, when he graduated from Penn in 1954, computers had only been
breathing for 6 years, and they were still made of huge tubes.
    3: Chomsky spent most of his life coming up with modeling strategies
that were supposed to run on the computer that the military funded that
never worked. He an Victor Yngve, also a Linguistist, also a programmer
wanna-be, butted heads for years. . . (I know Victor personally).
    4: There are syntactic structures, and some cool Psych experiments have
looked at the differences between the ways different learners rely on them.
Interestingly, English speakers rely on syntax: they would accept something
like The man bit the dog. Speakers of say, Italian, who rely on semantics,
would not accept such a thing. They rely on semantics and would interpret
the meaning as The dog bit the man.
    5: I think we use structure a lot. . . . I just don't have any really
good details to share at the moment.

And, how would you see this in terms of
> orality(primary orality) vs. literacy vs. full color visual modeling
and/or
> their juxtaposition in any order...I guess this last one is number three
:)

**** This one I can do :-)

I did my thesis on learning Apache without using English as a bridge (such a
waste of cognitive time, space and effort to produce such a poor result),
and so I had to cope with how I could help people learn without introducing
foreign cultural effects (from English) into the process. Here is what I
did. First, I built the fonts to write Apache. Then I got the spellings.
Then I got a native speaker who was also literate to say the words for us.
Then I clipped out just the target words, so I now had a collection of
written words, and matching spoken words. Then, I got pictures, ones that
didn't move for the nouny things like Li (horse), and ones that did for
verby things like hutas (running). Hugish was my favorite because we had a
green lizard crawling. We used GIF animations. It was so cool. I put them
together on the computer in Flash movies, and than I let 42 people, some
Apache people, some people here at the University, play with these
animations. I told them it was an experiment, but they had so much fun, and
they were so happy with their learning that it didn't seem to matter.

What were the results? 77.8% effective across populations, self-directed
learning, average 20 minutes. People learned 48 words, and were tested on
24. We hit an unexpected ceiling. When we designed the experiment, my
advisors though I would be lucky if people learned 7 of the words. They
didn't think that 25% of the people, evenly distributed between Apache and
non-Apache people, would learn that many (24, 25% of the people learned all
24 words. They could choose the correct text, the correct spoken word, and
disambiguate the word in conversation.)

Of course, then we got all smashed up with the Tribal politics, but that's
another day's story.

Does this answer your question in a very indirect, but very perceptually
multi-modal way? See, if you give people rich stuff to learn from,
especially when they can make connections to prior knowledge, they do really
good. And when you give them skimpy, stingy, ugly stuff that doesn't relate
to anything they know, doesn't have any point in their lives, and doesn't
meet any of their goals, well, they don't bother to learn it. For a
particularly interesting view of the learning process, read Walter J.
Freeman's book on his experiments with bunnies. I don't remember what its
called, but it was published in 2000.

Mia


>
> -------
> wahjeh
> rolland nadjiwon
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "MiaKalish at LFP" <MiaKalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US>
> To: <ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 1:04 PM
> Subject: Re: Government language study released (fwd)
>
>
> > The response to this report reminds me of a response I saw in one of my
> > classes when I referred to a book that talked about a longitudinal study
> > that was able to count the number of words children had heard (total
> > volume,
> > not unique words) and showed that the more words children had heard, the
> > better they were able to learn. Based on cognitive research that shows
> > that
> > the more connections you can make when assimilating new information,
this
> > makes total sense.
> >
> > Because the writers were supposed to identify their participants, they
> > found
> > themselves in the unfortunate position of having to say that people in
> > different SES groups spoke different volumes and different forms to
their
> > children.
> >
> > So my professor Totally Ignored the Good Information about neuron
density,
> > activation of prior knowledge, clues to how learning happened, and
> > referred
> > to a listserv where people where having similar responses to that shared
> > with us by Taiaiake Alfred. Certainly he can take that position.
> >
> > However.
> >
> > My research shows that people In General don't learn well in black and
> > white
> > if they have no prior knowledge. Lit reviews show that people don't know
> > how
> > to teach language. And finally, other cognitive research shows that
people
> > respond best to things about themselves and their friends. So, if you
show
> > the colors of the vegetation around the Colorado river, especially in
> > winter, to the people who live there, they will respond more positively
to
> > it than to black and white. Why? Because it is deeply familiar to them.
> > Does
> > it matter if they are Tribal? Nooooo, not really. Unless of course the
> > colors you choose just happen to be the Tribal colors. So, quiz: In this
> > case, will the Tribal people respond more? Or less? Than people who
don't
> > have deep cultural significance for the colors?
> >
> > It's really too bad that the results of these studies are published in
> > terms
> > of the People INSTEAD of the Materials.
> >
> > Guess I was on a soapbox, but this sort of thing really irritates me.
> > I-Mia
> > don't learn well in black and white. I take the time to build visual
> > models
> > in my head, in full color, and I dream the same way. If someone
discovered
> > that about me, I would say, Gee, does that mean you will be building
> > materials that facilitate learning for me? Instead of going around
howling
> > that it is racist against Irish-Jewish women with green eyes who tend to
> > get
> > cranky.
> >
> > !
> > Mia
>
>