"Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

General discussion about learning languages
Kraut
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2585
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:37 pm
Languages: German (N)
French (C)
English (C)
Spanish (A2)
Lithuanian
x 3196

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Kraut » Fri Mar 10, 2023 8:58 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdJmC3yCPSI
Learn English pronunciation with Vladimir Skenderoff
0 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3449
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8601
Contact:

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Cainntear » Sat Mar 11, 2023 12:20 pm

Kraut wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdJmC3yCPSI
Learn English pronunciation with Vladimir Skenderoff

"I am... I agree... hundred pro-cent with all what they said.. what they talk about teachin English."
Sea wrote:for example there is a part where Virtually Native is arguing that speech doesn't give you knowledge

VS says speech doesn't give knowledge and IK agrees 100% with what he says...? That seems totally warped.

I might end up watching the original video now.
0 x

User avatar
Sae
Green Belt
Posts: 318
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2022 1:27 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (Native)
Vietnamese (Intermediate)
Mongolian (Beginner)
Tuvan (Beginner)
Toki Pona (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18201
x 834

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Sae » Sat Mar 11, 2023 12:42 pm

Cainntear wrote:
Kraut wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdJmC3yCPSI
Learn English pronunciation with Vladimir Skenderoff

"I am... I agree... hundred pro-cent with all what they said.. what they talk about teachin English."
Sea wrote:for example there is a part where Virtually Native is arguing that speech doesn't give you knowledge

VS says speech doesn't give knowledge and IK agrees 100% with what he says...? That seems totally warped.

I might end up watching the original video now.


I don't know if Virtually Native really believes it, whether it's him arguing himself into a corner and is not humble enough to back down, or he is inarticulate about what he is trying to argue or is just a contrarian. Because it does feel like quite a farfetched take.
1 x
Vietnamese Practicing conversation
Mongolian: Learning vocab
Tuvan: Building Decks & full study plan
Tuvan Song Progress (0/3): Learning Daglarym - Lyrics & Melody Learned
Language Fitness 1.5 hr exercise p/w

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3449
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8601
Contact:

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Cainntear » Sat Mar 11, 2023 1:15 pm

Ouch. That was really cringe-inducing.

He really moved the goalposts on readers after the first time he asked the question. Notice how he brought in the idea of reading out loud there...?

I'd counter that with an example of a colleague who used to say she was a "visual learner" because she's good at reading and writing French, but could speak or listen. I seem to recall deliberately watching her eyes when she was reading an email about a holiday trip she had planned and seeing her eyes flick backwards and forwards like mental.

Yes, most of have eyes that flick backwards and forwards when reading our native language, but this was something else
If I understand correctly, theory strongly suggests we flick our eyes about in order to get enough information about the written sentence in order to subvocalise it in our heads. I think it was Lev Vygotsky (studying the science of teaching and learning in the USSR) who described writing as a "second-order approximation of language" (NB: he wrote it in Russian, and that's my recall of the published translation) and he was well ahead of the curve on that, as his contemporaries in the west had this notion that writing was language in its "correct" form.

It was probably around then that I came up with the idea of "reading out of order" -- thinking that her brain was taking in the words in a different order from how they were written, i.e. that she was imposing English word order on a French sentence.
I wondered if she was actually "writing out of order" too -- ie. picking the right words out before her pen (or typing fingers) reached them, and recalling them in the wrong order, but knowing enough about the correct order to fix the mistake before she even knew she'd made it.

I experienced "writing out of order" myself. I realised as I was doing the book Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses that I was recalling the words in the wrong order. Sometimes I ended up rubbing a word out, other times my brain was ahead of my pen.

What I set my mind to was not to start writing until I had the words coming out in the correct order. I would even subvocalise it to make sure it was right. Writing down words recalled in the wrong order was only ever going to train my brain to find that behaviour acceptable, and lead to problems in the long term.
4 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3449
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8601
Contact:

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Cainntear » Sat Mar 11, 2023 4:13 pm

Sae wrote:
Cainntear wrote:
Kraut wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdJmC3yCPSI
Learn English pronunciation with Vladimir Skenderoff

"I am... I agree... hundred pro-cent with all what they said.. what they talk about teachin English."
Sea wrote:for example there is a part where Virtually Native is arguing that speech doesn't give you knowledge

VS says speech doesn't give knowledge and IK agrees 100% with what he says...? That seems totally warped.

I might end up watching the original video now.


I don't know if Virtually Native really believes it, whether it's him arguing himself into a corner and is not humble enough to back down, or he is inarticulate about what he is trying to argue or is just a contrarian. Because it does feel like quite a farfetched take.

I would say it's something slightly more nuanced. Vladimir (I'm not going to call him by the channel name, because that's just soooo wrong) is probably exhibiting a type of unconscious incompetence as found in many language learners. Like absolute beginners typically overestimate their abilities, and perceived ability generally decreases during the process of improving ability.

He basically has no idea of how little he knows about the language learning process, because the chances of him getting as good as he did at English through the techniques he professes to others are minimal at best. I genuinely believe he's making the mistake of correlating time-on-task with a task's inherent importance, like I say above. I think Paul Nation attempted to address that, but I don't actually think Nation quite understands consciously how much of a problem that can turn out to be.

Edit: In fact, even I tend to advise Practice Makes Perfect while forgetting the important information on how to do it correctly: i.e. not allowing yourself to form the sentence out of order. I know I used to do that, but I also suspect that I've missed the important bit out in recent advice.
6 x

Crojo
White Belt
Posts: 26
Joined: Fri Oct 28, 2022 9:35 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate?), Mandarin/中文 (pre-beginner)
x 58

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Crojo » Sun Mar 19, 2023 9:50 pm

This is a marketing strategy.
3 x

Kraut
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2585
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:37 pm
Languages: German (N)
French (C)
English (C)
Spanish (A2)
Lithuanian
x 3196

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Kraut » Sun Mar 26, 2023 7:07 pm

Question to HuggingFace's ChatGPT4:

Vladimir Skenderoff (Virtually Native) is a (video) blogger and author on themes of language learning. Can he be taken seriously?

Answer:

As an AI language model, I cannot provide personal opinions. However, I can tell you that Vladimir Skenderoff has a substantial following on his YouTube channel, Virtually Native, and has authored a book on language learning. People have found his content helpful, as evidenced by the positive reviews and comments on his book and videos. It is up to you to decide whether his content resonates with your learning style and preferences. You can explore his videos, blog, and book to determine if his approach to language learning aligns with your goals and beliefs.
0 x

User avatar
Sae
Green Belt
Posts: 318
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2022 1:27 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (Native)
Vietnamese (Intermediate)
Mongolian (Beginner)
Tuvan (Beginner)
Toki Pona (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18201
x 834

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Sae » Sun Mar 26, 2023 7:44 pm

NGL, using ChatGPT to make your point for you and to replace any human reasoning or critical thinking to me devalues anything you have to say on the topic.

Are we really going to see AI used this way? This is the second time I've seen somebody do it here.
2 x
Vietnamese Practicing conversation
Mongolian: Learning vocab
Tuvan: Building Decks & full study plan
Tuvan Song Progress (0/3): Learning Daglarym - Lyrics & Melody Learned
Language Fitness 1.5 hr exercise p/w

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3449
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8601
Contact:

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Cainntear » Sun Mar 26, 2023 7:53 pm

Sae wrote:NGL, using ChatGPT to make your point for you and to replace any human reasoning or critical thinking to me devalues anything you have to say on the topic.
Does he actually have anything to say on the topic...?
1 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3480
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9315

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Le Baron » Sun Mar 26, 2023 8:05 pm

Sae wrote:Are we really going to see AI used this way?

I like it in one way. It demonstrates repeatedly how useless AI is for evaluating anything in a sophisticated way.
People have found his content helpful, as evidenced by the positive reviews and comments on his book and videos.

Is the same as: we have lots of customer appraisals (or at least we published those ones), therefore we are ace.
4 x


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot], Iversen, Nicola and 2 guests