A language learners’ forum

Cainntear wrote:

Cavesa wrote:transcranial stimulation is a also a well known thing that is researched heavily and even clinically used. The tool is supposed to make your sport or music (or other motoric memory based skill) practice more efficient. I wasn't using it consistently enough, but the reasoning and studies seemed rather ok.

I thought the studies all said that it works for most people if monitored and adjusted by a professional to match the specific user, but that an off-the-shelf unit has no guarantees of stimulating the right areas....?

It is not total nonsense like many other such tools. But you're most probably right, there is no such guarantee. It is based on the known motoric areas, and fits rather well, but of course it is not adapted to an individual brain mapping of your cortex. I guess it is helpful to some people, may be better than placebo, but it should definitely be approached with realistic expectations, not as a miracle.

But it is still far superior, in terms of scientific background, to the language learning with skin idea.

Studies show: Within eight to twelve minutes, the hypnotic repetition of words beginning with 'neuro-' puts the user in a relaxed state in which his or her brain physiology offers optimal conditions for absorbing this rubbish.

Do the supersonic sounds actually provoke any response in the brain? Otherwise there is no reason to continue listening to Mr.Kohberg. More specifically, do the supersonic sounds actually provoke any response in parts of the brain that normally decode messages? Otherwise there is no reason to continue listening to his claims.

If they in fact do provoke a brain response (against expectation) then the point of using them must be that you aren't aware that you are listening to actual speech, which might explain that you don't kill the experiment leader after eight hours of incessant speech.

If you instead of listening to complicated conversations ad nauseam, you instead heard, say, ten or twenty unknown words with translations for eight hours you would normally remember a couple of them. Does this happen if delivered through ultrahigh frequences? If not then it doesn't serve any purpose to use more complicated kinds of materials, like recordings of conversations between native speakers.

Does in normally help to let a newbe learner listen to ten hours of discussion with translations? Well, many teaching methods build on listening exercises, and I'm myself an ardent supporter of the use of bilingual texts for intensive study, but you would normally not just be listening for hours on end to incomprehensible talk with interspersed translations, just interrupted by a half hour of 'normal' teaching once a day. Does such a system work at normal, audible frequencies? If not, then there is no reason to assume that it would function better at a higher frequency. If it does, then why transpose it several octaves up to where you can't hear it any longer? And wouldn't it function just as well (whatever that means) with just the lessons?


If something sounds too good to be true it mostly is. And at that price ...

THIS could be what I've been waiting for since the "The Mind Portal"...