Study on Language Improvement with Native Materials

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Re: Study on Language Improvement with Native Materials

Postby smallwhite » Sat Jun 17, 2017 12:18 pm

The post-experiment test will be done right after the 6 months when knowledge is fresh. Will you require participants to have their knowledge fresh when they take the pre-experiment test as well? There are a few languages that I learned ~8 years ago and don't remember now, so I might score A0 in the pre- test, but after a day or two of revision, I could become, say, B1 again like I was 8 years ago. So my starting point is really B1 and not A0, but you'll have to require me to revise before my pre- test in order for that to show.

I wonder how people will tackle writing kanji's and hanzi's with just native materials :o I'm considering Czech and I'm trembling already.
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Re: Study on Language Improvement with Native Materials

Postby Ani » Sat Jun 17, 2017 12:26 pm

Cavesa wrote:I am still quite curious about the distribution of people into the individual groups, as it will be difficult to divide people evenly, given the very diverse background.

This is going to be awesome!



The more participants total, the less it matters how evenly matched the two groups are and the more questions you can ask the resulting statistical model. Most likely n will be too small for most of the really interesting questions to be asked out of this one set of data, but if some effort is made on dividing the participants it might hint at an answer and point to areas where more research can be done. There is no reason to think it is necessary to have an 1:1 correspondence
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Re: Study on Language Improvement with Native Materials

Postby rdearman » Sat Jun 17, 2017 12:33 pm

Doesn't invalid the study if you don't, but defeats the objective of trying to determine if native input and srs improve learning. There is work involved here, it isn't just sitting around watching films all day while eating chocolate cake. The test group will have to use a method which I will explain in more detail, but it is working to learn a language with a method of study.

If you don't want to use any srs, then i am afraid you will have to go in the control group.

Not trying to get an exact 1:1 correspondence, but as near as possible since not likely to get huge numbers.
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Re: Study on Language Improvement with Native Materials

Postby Cavesa » Sat Jun 17, 2017 12:37 pm

rdearman wrote:Doesn't invalid the study if you don't, but defeats the objective of trying to determine if native input and srs improve learning. There is work involved here, it isn't just sitting around watching films all day while eating chocolate cake. The test group will have to use a method which I will explain in more detail, but it is working to learn a language with a method of study.

If you don't want to use any srs, then i am afraid you will have to go in the control group.

Not trying to get an exact 1:1 correspondence, but as near as possible since not likely to get huge numbers.


Ah, actually sitting around watching films all day is exactly the method that has been working for me so well. (I cannot eat that much chocolate cake though).

I am not criticising or anything, I am asking exactly to know what am I signing up for and what can I afford to sign up for :-)
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Re: Study on Language Improvement with Native Materials

Postby blaurebell » Sat Jun 17, 2017 2:39 pm

I don't want to be a spoil sport, but I think you may end up with a bunch of isolated case studies rather than a quantitative study. There are different ways of using SRS in this context - subs2srs, word cards, sentence cards - and different ways of using native materials - intensive reading, extensive reading, intensive listening, extensive listening, listening-reading - and you seem to want to throw all of them into a single study with people studying different languages with different levels of proficiency and different language learning experiences. For useful quantitative data you'd need to isolate these variables and just vary one of them, otherwise you won't know what made the difference, the proficiency level, the language learning experience, the language, the method. How to do this? 2 university classes at the same university studying the same language at the same level, one study group, one control group, and then test what happens when you use native material in one way, intensive reading for example. And even that is a tad iffy because the sample size tends to be too small and the data might get ruined by a bout of the flu in one group but not the other. The bigger the sample size the better. Just something to consider when you think about the design of your study. With your current design I would guess that your data will be hard to interpret if it turns out usable at all. That's not to say that case studies aren't interesting, but you simply can't generalise from those. At the moment you'd need to have an awful lot of participants to get lucky and have more than one person use the exact same method. One can of course deal with noise in the data, but I suspect you're dealing with too many variables at once here.

So, my suggestion would be to forget about SRS unless you specifically need it for the method (subs2srs) and make sure you get at least enough participants (20+) using the exact same method - intensive reading, subs2srs, listening-reading etc. You already have enough noise from the different languages and proficiency levels so that you shouldn't introduce more variables that create noise. But well, that's just my opinion.
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Re: Study on Language Improvement with Native Materials

Postby rdearman » Sat Jun 17, 2017 2:40 pm

Sorry, was abrupt because answered on phone in taxi. :D
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Re: Study on Language Improvement with Native Materials

Postby rdearman » Sat Jun 17, 2017 2:51 pm

not throwing everything in, and haven't published the instructions yet! I don't have time to wriye them all out on this phone. But there isn't any LR, nor intensive listening. There will be word review, there will be srs. There will be extensive watching of native content.

I will outline everything later.

You're all over thinking this.
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Re: Study on Language Improvement with Native Materials

Postby blaurebell » Sat Jun 17, 2017 2:55 pm

rdearman wrote:I will outline everything later.

You're all over thinking this.


It's just that we're so curious and eager to do it! :D
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Re: Study on Language Improvement with Native Materials

Postby trui » Sat Jun 17, 2017 3:13 pm

rdearman wrote:There is work involved here, it isn't just sitting around watching films all day while eating chocolate cake.


Really? Granted, I find writing in Dutch and chatting with native speakers enjoyable but it's not like testing and pushing my limits is a piece of cake when I decide to really work on improving my Dutch.

I'm also with blaurebell here. I simply don't see how any data you get from this will be useful given the potentially large overlap in methods between the test group and the control group. And if you're not trying to test the effectiveness of native materials but rather native materials plus SRS using your own particular method then you should change the title and state that outright when telling people about the study.
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Re: Study on Language Improvement with Native Materials

Postby aokoye » Sat Jun 17, 2017 4:06 pm

Cavesa wrote:Ah, I'll need a bit more information on that. Is that going to be part of the testing or in what way is it important? You know, I usually don't review words at all while using native input. In these cases, my SRS is simply reading/watching/listening on as the words will come up again. If I have to use a way to review the words, it undermines the whole principle of learning with extensive reading/listening, I'd say, and it complicates the matters for me. It doesn't mean I wouldn't participate, but perhaps more in the control group as I always fail at trying to SRS for several months in a row and as having to read/listen intensively, and review it, would change the whole point and perhaps add workload I cannot afford.

The thing is, you don't get to pick if you're in the control group or the test group (which is logical). I won't be participating because a. I just don't have time and b. I don't know that I'm willing to learn most languages using only native materials and some sort of SRS. I also have questions about the potential gender segregation in the analysis but rdearman is on a plane so that'll have to wait.
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