Language Transfer (Split from discussion in Programs and resources)

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Re: Language Transfer (Split from discussion in Programs and resources)

Postby rdearman » Mon Jan 28, 2019 7:06 pm

Topic split. Carry on.
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Re: Language Transfer (Split from discussion in Programs and resources)

Postby reineke » Mon Jan 28, 2019 7:09 pm

Um, I think ComPimp is a great nick. Take care, droog.
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Re: Language Transfer (Split from discussion in Programs and resources)

Postby Random Review » Tue Jan 29, 2019 12:03 am

Going back to what Reineke and Cainntear were discussing about error correction:

I don't have access to all the academic papers some others do, but on the occasion where I have been able to access the full article, I have been less than impressed.
I remember one where the abstract claimed that the paper showed that error correction is ineffective and on reading the actual paper the correction consisted of giving the correct answer to errors in student writing, concluding that the harm to self-confidence outweighed any possible benefit of error correction.

There is an art to error correction, both in having any kind of effect on learning and in not damaging confidence. The error correction they were looking at was a truly awful example.
I think there's a lot of evidence for how ineffective and even counterproductive bad error correction is and there is definitely a lot of bad error correction out there; but I agree with Cainntear that there is such a thing as good error correction and that this can be very helpful.

Regarding the communicative approach, I'm not a fan of when this is taken too far to downplay any importance at all for accuracy. It might seem common sense that this won't happen, but in my experience, it happens a lot.

Transfer of information is only one small part of communication. If you say, "My mum live in Nanjing" then I understand perfectly what you wanted to communicate; but I also understand many other things that you never intended to communicate and if you are my student, I also know that some people may incorrectly and unfairly judge you as being less intelligent than you actually are. I genuinely believe that if students making this kind of basic error could hear in their own language what they sound like in L2, they would care a lot about this kind of thing (even though communication in the narrow sense was totally unaffected). IMO students care very much about the image they are projecting.
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Re: Language Transfer (Split from discussion in Programs and resources)

Postby reineke » Tue Jan 29, 2019 11:16 pm

Random Review wrote:Going back to what Reineke and Cainntear were discussing about error correction:


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Re: Language Transfer (Split from discussion in Programs and resources)

Postby Random Review » Tue Jan 29, 2019 11:36 pm

reineke wrote:
Random Review wrote:Going back to what Reineke and Cainntear were discussing about error correction:



:lol:

I think it's a good topic. I care a lot about this topic. :lol:
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Re: Language Transfer (Split from discussion in Programs and resources)

Postby Cainntear » Fri Feb 01, 2019 5:19 pm

Another issue I have with the whole notion of input-only (or nearly only) is that nobody can reliably identify what the learner is ready for, and what the learner needs help with. While my correction here was pretty arsey (my classroom correction isn't) it still holds true that I only knew about the error because it appeared in production -- without production, I wouldn't have been aware the problem existed, so I wouldn't have been able to act upon it, whether that means explicit correction or choosing appropriate CI materials for the student's next lesson.

How is a teacher expected to select material that is n+1 without being aware of the learner's current level n?
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Re: Language Transfer (Split from discussion in Programs and resources)

Postby Random Review » Fri Feb 01, 2019 9:14 pm

Cainntear wrote:Another issue I have with the whole notion of input-only (or nearly only) is that nobody can reliably identify what the learner is ready for, and what the learner needs help with. While my correction here was pretty arsey (my classroom correction isn't) it still holds true that I only knew about the error because it appeared in production -- without production, I wouldn't have been aware the problem existed, so I wouldn't have been able to act upon it, whether that means explicit correction or choosing appropriate CI materials for the student's next lesson.

How is a teacher expected to select material that is n+1 without being aware of the learner's current level n?


It's hard enough for the learner, let alone the teacher (I think that may be your point). Concept checking is a real art and, because I was very bad at it (I'e worked hard and now I'm OK at it, but I still have a long way to go) I got into a bad habit in Spain: when I suspected that the student didn't understand something but they insisted they did, I would ask them to tell me the meaning in Spanish. Usually my hunch was correct, but the interesting thing was that they themselves were genuinely shocked that they hadn't understood. They had been totally convinced. I think Mike Campbell of Glossika mentioned similar experiences with people learning Chinese and Chinese speakers learning English.

Estimating your level of understanding of input is incredibly hard (and for most of us not very accurate).

However IMO this is only a death blow for the input only approach when it is restricted to certain types of input. There are other kinds of input that do have the essential feedback loop as part of the method. A few examples:

1) Crosstalk*: it's input only in the sense that you don't produce any language; but because of the back-and-forth nature of conversations, misunderstandings usually show themselves and get ironed out.
2) LR: stage 2 (or is it 3 lol?) will show up discrepancies if what you are understanding deviates substantially from the translation (assuming you can trust the translation).
3) Reading or watching something you already know well: if you know the story (or whatever) and your understanding of the L2 input deviates from what you know is meant, then again you get that feedback loop.
4) TPR or and the early stages of "growing participator": again, your actions or lack thereof will show clearly whether you understood.

This is just a short list limited by my lack of knowledge and imagination. So there are ways round this and successful learners do find them; but here again I come back to what I said above: if you are not experienced, it's very easy to get this wrong and waste literally hundreds or even thousands of hours of your time doing stuff like watching period dramas in L2 from day 1 (to take one example).


* In case anyone doesn't know, crosstalk is where you talk with a conversation partner who speaks the language you are learning, both participants speak L1 at all times.
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Re: Language Transfer (Split from discussion in Programs and resources)

Postby Cainntear » Fri Feb 01, 2019 10:26 pm

Random Review wrote:
Cainntear wrote:How is a teacher expected to select material that is n+1 without being aware of the learner's current level n?

I got into a bad habit in Spain: when I suspected that the student didn't understand something but they insisted they did, I would ask them to tell me the meaning in Spanish.

I'm not convinced that that's a bad habit. It's certainly not transferrable to teaching in other countries, but it's immediate and clear.
Usually my hunch was correct, but the interesting thing was that they themselves were genuinely shocked that they hadn't understood. They had been totally convinced.

Yup. The human brain is great at coming up with a theory then sticking to it. There's an entire genre of old parlour games ("Psychiatrist!" etc) which involve trying to identify a pattern and once people have a theory, even after hearing lots of examples that disprove the theory, people continue to try the same theory again and again.

However IMO this is only a death blow for the input only approach when it is restricted to certain types of input. There are other kinds of input that do have the essential feedback loop as part of the method. A few examples:

None of those get to the core of the problem, because they all overlook a key characteristic of the concept of comprehensible input: you can understand a full piece of language without having mastered all the language items in it. This means that if you show me that you've understood a text, it doesn't show me that you have mastered all the language items in it, and therefore it gives me no clues as to what you need to be exposed to for full acquisition.

Going back to the example of gerunds vs infinitives, there are very few situations where both are possible and carry genuinely different meanings -- off the top of my head, I can only think of "stop" or where the gerund is used as an adverb of manner (eg. he ran out to smoke vs he ran out smoking). This means that it's highly likely that a learner can go for a very long time operating with an incorrect model without ever failing to understand, leaving the rule forever floating in the fuzzy "+1 zone". And even if it does lead to an understanding, if the learner's been operating under a false assumption for a long time, we're back to having to convince someone that their error is, in fact, an error.

[Edit: quote tags]
Last edited by Cainntear on Sat Feb 02, 2019 10:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Language Transfer (Split from discussion in Programs and resources)

Postby Random Review » Fri Feb 01, 2019 11:37 pm

Er, you may want to have a look at the quote tags, dude. :P
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