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Terrible headline. They found that Chinese children who were adopted into French-speaking families processed language in the brain more like Chinese/French bil
by panglott 11y ago
Terrible headline.
They found that Chinese children who were adopted into French-speaking families processed language in the brain more like Chinese/French bilingual children than like French monolingual children.
- surement 11y agoAdditionally, apart from Pimsleur, language courses are structured very differently from how one first learns to speak.
- brobinson 11y agoI think Michel Thomas' courses are vastly different from every other method, too, including Pimsleur. No reading/writing, only verbal communication... it's awesome.
- GolDDranks 11y agoPimsleur is a child of it's age; a so-called audio-lingual method that has its roots in Skinnerian behaviorism. I think no language acquisition researcher takes it seriously any more. Check This out for a modern viewpoint: https://youtu.be/X1LRoKQzb9U https://youtu.be/X1LRoKQzb9U
- surement 11y agoI see what you mean, but I've learned several languages using Pimsleur and native speakers are almost always shocked at how well I can speak their language.
- ksenzee 11y agoThat's still n=1. It might just be that you're particularly good at language acquisition, and you'll succeed no matter what method you use.
- dragonwriter 11y agoOr just particularly receptive to the method: X is the best method for me to learn a language is a very different proposition than X is the best method for people in general to learn a language.
- surement 11y ago> Or just particularly receptive to the method If this is true, then my anecdotal experience is still evidence against this: > I think no language acquisition researcher takes it seriously any more
- dragonwriter 11y agoActually, "X works particularly well compared to other methods for one person" (even if demonstrated -- which your experience does not do, though it is one of many possible interpretations of that experience) is not evidence against "No language acquisition researcher takes X seriously".
- surement 11y agoyou originally said > X is the best method for me to learn a language if this statement is true, then it is evidence that researchers should not dismiss it. This: > X works particularly well compared to other methods for one person is not the same statement.
- surement 11y agoOne can still reason when presented with an anecdote.
- tmalsburg2 11y agoThank you very much for this summary. Terrible science reporting is really getting out of hand recently. "Chomsky was right, we have a grammar in our head", what non-sense is that?! I blame this partly on TED which effectively promotes the misrepresentation of research to increase main stream appeal. Nowadays, science needs to be sexy and I see more and more research that appears to be designed to "go viral" on Twitter and Facebook.
- panglott 11y agoI would say that it's university PR departments, but I suspect that often enough researchers are complicit as well. The researchers hype up their research to university pr copywriters who don't understand it at all, then a journalist who may or may not understand it rewrites it into a story, and then some editor slaps a clickbaity headline on it. And who knows what bearing the actual study has on any of that. And it's hard to disentangle the nonsense along the way. Like, I wrote "processes language in the brain" when it would have been more accurate to say "processes French pseudo-words".
- dang 11y agoGet that into 80 chars or less and we'll use it.
- panglott 11y ago2nd-lang learners process pseudo-words more like bilinguals than monolinguals. Boom.
- dang 11y agoHmm. The abbrev is cheating to get under the limit, and "pseudo-words" doesn't have any obvious meaning. We replaced "wired" with "influenced" in the title above, which seems more moderate and within the scope of what the study found.