Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: Language

  • Useless Vocabulary?

    Useless Vocabulary?

    One of the important steps in vocabulary learning is to decide if a word is “worth” learning. Will I use it in conversation? Will I need it to understand an important idea or concept? (How is the word “idea” different from “concept”?)

    The four words in the photo are pretty useless, unless I use a boat. But the ideas that make the differences (is it built on wood or dirt? Does it stick out into the water or not?) are important distinctions that can help in other areas. Just to think about how words are different can help you understand more about a language.

    Here is another example: Smell and Stink. Something can smell good or bad, but Stink means it always smells bad. Now look up other related words like Aroma and Stench. Use a thesaurus (dictionary of synonyms or similar words) to find other smell-related vocabulary.

    The important thing is to spend time with your new words.

  • TBLT Course: The Book

    While I am the first to decry the use of the textbook as the syllabus, we are going to stick pretty close to this book so we will be able to “cover” (another loaded word) the concepts in this course. Let me give my reasons here. But also note that the class plans will morph depending on the participants. I count it as my job to prepare for as many eventualities as possible. More on that tomorrow.

    The book is a part of the Cambridge Applied Linguistics series. Read their blurb, and the iTDi (my) take on it in the course description.

    For me, the elephant-and-3-blind-men approach to the theory made the book head and shoulders above others in the field. I am one of the blind men, feeling the elephant as either a wall, a rope, or a trunk. They look at TBLT from five different perspectives (Cognitive, Psycholinguistic, Sociocultural, Psychological, and Educational). I enjoy how each builds upon the others while introducing new aspects. That is what I meant by being inclusive.

    Conflicting and controversial viewpoints come up and are hammered out. This is probably the result of having five authors. The richness they bring to the text is astounding. If they could have added Peter Robinson, it would have been a perfect book.

    I get the Kindle version for these kind of projects. That makes it easier to “mark up” with highlights, quotes, notes, and even flash cards, then share those with others in the class. It’s also cheaper (US$25).

    Today’s time: Reading (Ch.9) 0:52. Blog 0:20.

    Previously: Announcement.

  • TBLT Course Prep Announcement

    Last December, Steven Herder at iTDi asked me to lead (coordinate? teach?) a course as part of the new Great Minds series. I am honored to be considered along with my new colleagues Steven, Dorothy Zemach, and Scott Thornbury.

    We discussed the shape of the series, and we came to focus on books that contained a diverse look at one specific part of language teaching. Scott chose to look at the work of Earl Stevick, calling the book a festschrift. Steven was fascinated by the work of John Hattie and Visible Learning. Dorothy is looking ahead with a new book on 21st Century Skills. I wish I could take them all.

    The closest thing on my bookshelf was a recent (2019) look at Task-Based Langauge Teaching by leaders in the field. It is kind of a festschrift to a body of research that I was heavily involved with, but had wandered away from (to CALL). I wanted to take a deep dive, and thought this the perfect opportunity.

    I have been preparing the TBLT course for iTDi since then. Like one of my favorite authors, and many bloggers, I find that posting about my preparation helps me think about the book, the course, and to let the potential participants know a little about what they are getting into.

    So the plan is to document my preparation from this point. As I read more, and research more, the excitement builds. I hope it will be evident over the next 70 days, until Day 1 of the course. Maybe I will see you there, but if not enjoy the musings on TBLT.

    Stay tuned. (Suggestion, use RSS or find me on Facebook and Twitter, and I will announce new posts there.

    (Time Track: 0:58 Blog)

  • Weakly Post #3

    Media: Marie Kondo (or in Japanese, Kondo Marie) is famous for her technique of tidyng up. She has a new show on Netflix. I am not sure what to think of it. She is a small bubbly (yes, bubbly) woman who speaks little English, giving advice to families in the USA. I’m not sure if her ultra Japanese-ness is affected or genuine. The families seem to eat it up. The real star of the show is the translator. Maybe something to use in class as an example of how people do simultaneous translation. You only need to watch one episode. I watched 2 and they are the same. Unless you want to see more cluttered homes (voyeur!). Evidently organization porn is a big hit.

    Politics: Crazy stuff when the American Taliban prosecute a woman for having a miscarriage. (NYTimes). And other countries might start thinking about tourists from America trying to emmigrate, because of health care. Pet stores in California can only sell rescue dogs and cats (NYTimes). You have to go directly to the breeder if not. Designed to limit puppy farms and animal cruelty, and reduce the state animal shelter budget, this has me wondering.

    Business: Amazon is the place where America shops online. Following up last month’s link about how opaque the marketplace (The Verge) is on Amazon, where 3rd parties (small business) sell through Amazon, you can also make money by giving advice to new sellers. But is it legitimate? (Atlantic)

    Media: Elsevier owns 2,500 academic journals, publishing articles by unpaid faculty, and charging over US$30 to access each article. Sci-Hub pirates these articles, much like the torrent network does for TV, movies and music. Meanwhile in Europe Open Science is gaining support for Plan S to require all government funded research to appear in Open (free) publication immediately. Publishers are worried, but this really needs to be a global concern to succeed, and this is the first step.

    Writing: Is the exclamation point (!) an intensity marker or a sincerity marker? That and more, in how we overuse them!

    Looking at this post, I don’t like the mish-mash of topics. I am going to start separating the posts and let the Categories help you find what you need, along with a much shorter Weakly Post each Sunday pointing to the other stuff I posted during the week. Check back here often (or better, add me to your RSS feed reader), and make a comment. I may even start an email list to notify people of Weakly Posts.

  • Cormac McCarthy on Language

    Cormac McCarthy, author of novels like No Country for Old Men and The Road, is, believe it or not, interested in physics and complex systems. Writing in Nautilus (great publication), he muses on language and the unconscious in The Kekulé Problem.

    The shoehorn into the discussion is that people solve problems when they are asleep. Kekulé is only the most famous for this; falling asleep and solving the problem of the chemical structure of Benzine. The point is that the image he saw, that revealed the structure, did not contain any language. That is because it is from the unconscious.

    Read the article to find out why the unconscious and language are separate. Is it biology, did it evolve, or are they simply incompatible? McCarthy jumps between psychology, biology, philosophy in his quest for an answer. He gets help by discussing with his friend and colleague David Krakauer, both from the Santa Fe Institute (home of really smart people). He ends up solving the problem after a ten-hour lunch with Krakauer and yes, some sleep.

    This article reminds me of two other books. The Third Culture was the first collection of essays I read by John Brockman, a literary agent. He assembled a collection of scientists (Gould, Dawkins, Minsky, Schank, Pinker, Penrose, Smolin, Kauffman, and especially Gell-Mann, also at Santa Fe) to answer questions usually reserved for theologians and philosophers. C.P. Snow postulated that Science and Literature would merge into a “third culture.” It had a profound effect on my thinking. Brockman puts a similar book out each year, addressing a new question. Find him at the Edge.

    Language is metaphor, and that is what makes us human. China Mieville writes of an alien race inhabiting a trading outpost at the edge of the civilized universe in Embassytown. The heroine watches as the Ariekei try to lie and fail, repeatedly. They are not built that way. Their Language requires people to speak in two voices at the same time. Humans that are conjoined twins fill the role of Ambassadors. When a linguistic “virus” invades, all hell breaks loose.

    Which brings us back to language. It language itself just a virus, a parasite, riding on the cerebellum and medulla, causing the cerebrum to develop grotesquely large? Read McCarthy.