Most helpful scientific study on language learning?

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Most helpful scientific study on language learning?

Postby Yunus39 » Mon Sep 05, 2022 6:45 am

For those who are interested in scientific studies on language learning:

What scientific studies or case studies were most helpful to you?
What did the research show?
How did it change your own language pursuits?

Links would be great, but I will also take third hand reporting of something you read but can't find now (if it was important or helpful to you).
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Re: Most helpful scientific study on language learning?

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Sep 05, 2022 7:28 am

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Re: Most helpful scientific study on language learning?

Postby Iversen » Mon Sep 05, 2022 7:57 am

Mondria's Seven myths - a list of debunked myths about vocabulary learning with references to those studies that debunked them (like for instance that you learn more from discovering a few things, misinterpreting far more things and never noticing the rest than you do from opening a standard dictionary or that wordlists are of limited value :lol: :lol: ).

Well, actually Mondria mostly writes about vocabulary learning, but you can extend some of the ideas to grammar studies - for instance the idea that taking a peek into a grammar book can save you from a lot of mostly faulty guesswork. The proposal to wrote words on cards is not my cup of tea, but if you for some reason do prefer cards then use Anki - that's the modern version of flash cards.

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Re: Most helpful scientific study on language learning?

Postby Yunus39 » Mon Sep 05, 2022 8:26 am

Iversen wrote:Mondria's Seven myths - a list of debunked myths about vocabulary learning with references to those studies that debunked them (like for instance that you learn more from discovering a few things, misinterpreting far more things and never noticing the rest than you do from opening a standard dictionary or that wordlists are of limited value :lol: :lol: ).

Well, actually Mondria mostly writes about vocabulary learning, but you can extend some of the ideas to grammar studies - for instance the idea that taking a peek into a grammar book can save you from a lot of mostly faulty guesswork. The proposal to wrote words on cards is not my cup of tea, but if you for some reason do prefer cards then use Anki - that's the modern version of flash cards.

Mondria_table_4.jpg


This is really helpful and thought provoking! For much of my language learning I have been scolded by others for looking at Grammars, working through Word Frequency lists, and told to only learn words in context. I broke and break all these rules, but I honestly thought I might be hurting myself. I'm an introvert and can only take so much social learning, so this is encouraging.
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Re: Most helpful scientific study on language learning?

Postby Le Baron » Tue Sep 06, 2022 2:54 pm

Iversen wrote:Mondria's Seven myths - a list of debunked myths...

I read the paper and I'm less convinced on some of these. He cites fairly old research (though this may well hold) and the most recent from himself as justification. I'd want to follow up the references for myself.
I disagree with 4, 5 and 6. I think he looks at these things in isolation and not as part of a integrated whole for language learning.
Words whose meanings have been inferred from context are not retained better, and the meaning-inferred method takes more time and is therefore less efficient.

Actually I think they are. I don't buy his sole objection that students tend to understand most it from the single example sentence and are unable to apply it elsewhere. He claims 'we've all seen it', but I've never seen that. Some words simply can't be learned out of context because they are meaningless as standalone words or their context use changes their common meaning. However it's not one or the other I'm insisting upon, it's that I find list/card word learning, looking up the meaning of words as you find them, and seeing them in context as complementary.
Words learned productively are not retained better, and productive learning takes more time.

Again I find this to be dubious and not an either/or. Sometimes you can 'learn' a word in list style again and again and still fail to produce it when you need it. Often learning the word (or being corrected) as part of an active production scenario does cement it into your brain due to the memory created by the scenario you were in. I think we remember things to do with incidents and experiences more than list repetition. In the final analysis though that both a little drilling and also usage are complementary. Not least for forming a habit between memory and active use.
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Re: Most helpful scientific study on language learning?

Postby einzelne » Tue Sep 06, 2022 3:42 pm



I second this. I think it hits all the essential points.
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Re: Most helpful scientific study on language learning?

Postby Iversen » Tue Sep 06, 2022 5:13 pm

I think that Mondria is right in claiming that it takes extra time to learn words from context and do something productive with them without recourse to a dictionary than it would have done with it - and that how I read his claims. It also takes longer time to learn to use a bicycle if you have to invent the wheel first.

I agree with Le Baron that using context and doing productive things with words aren't bad things in themselves. The article by Mondrian is fairly old and I think that he faced a battle with 'progressive' teachers who claimed that those things were the only acceptable learning techniques, and that it might even be harmful to check things in a dictionary - at the level of cheating with your calculation exercises in school. Similarly some theoricians have condemned bilingual dictionaries in favour of monolingual ones, even for beginners. But Mondria didn't not claim that the use of context or productive activities were dangerous or worthless and should be avoided (notice how he uses the words "preferred" and "necessary" in the didactic column - not "don't do it"). He warned against using them as the only legal way to learn words because he didn't see them as particularly efficient.

A central problem is that the information you get from guessing on the basis of just one or a few examples is likely to be fragile and fuzzy and maybe even false - and therefore such hypotheses should be controlled by a peek into a dictionary. This not only may prevent the worst errors, but will also speed up the time that passes before you have semantic information you can trust. As for using the words actively - well hurray for that, but you should know the real meaning of the words first.
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Re: Most helpful scientific study on language learning?

Postby Yunus39 » Wed Sep 07, 2022 1:10 am

Iversen wrote:I think that Mondria is right in claiming that it takes extra time to learn words from context and do something productive with them without recourse to a dictionary than it would have done with it - and that how I read his claims. It also takes longer time to learn to use a bicycle if you have to invent the wheel first.

I agree with Le Baron that using context and doing productive things with words aren't bad things in themselves. The article by Mondrian is fairly old and I think that he faced a battle with 'progressive' teachers who claimed that those things were the only acceptable learning techniques, and that it might even be harmful to check things in a dictionary - at the level of cheating with your calculation exercises in school. Similarly some theoricians have condemned bilingual dictionaries in favour of monolingual ones, even for beginners. But Mondria didn't not claim that the use of context or productive activities were dangerous or worthless and should be avoided (notice how he uses the words "preferred" and "necessary" in the didactic column - not "don't do it"). He warned against using them as the only legal way to learn words because he didn't see them as particularly efficient.

A central problem is that the information you get from guessing on the basis of just one or a few examples is likely to be fragile and fuzzy and maybe even false - and therefore such hypotheses should be controlled by a peek into a dictionary. This not only may prevent the worst errors, but will also speed up the time that passes before you have semantic information you can trust. As for using the words actively - well hurray for that, but you should know the real meaning of the words first.


This is mostly how I took it. It is old, and it is a bit reactionary. But I am also around progressive teachers who claim that these are the only right ways to do things. Dictionaries were forbidden as was all use of native language.
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Re: Most helpful scientific study on language learning?

Postby sfuqua » Wed Sep 07, 2022 4:59 am

I'm an old teacher. Forty years ago, I knew exactly how to teach and learn languages. Anyone who disagreed with me was ignorant. :shock:
I was fresh out of graduate school. I was conversant with the current technical literature. I had learned a non-Indo-European language to a high level. I knew everything. At least everything important.

I shudder to think how arrogant I was. :lol:

After the last forty years of teaching and learning, I am much less sure of everything. :D

The more I learn, the more I realise how profoundly ignorant I am. :o

I’m not saying this because I'm generous or humble or something, it is just the truth. :D

I tend to value people who speak from practical experience more than people who simply speak from a theoretical framework.
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Re: Most helpful scientific study on language learning?

Postby Kraut » Wed Sep 07, 2022 2:06 pm

Stanislas Dehaene's work

for instance:

Writing is a human invention, for reading the human brain seems to "recycle" the brain site for face recognition.
Listening and speaking is part of the human evolution... the brain capacity for grammar, pronunciation ...is halved at the beginning of puberty etc ..
Lots of useful knowledge that can be derived for language learning: brain development, memory, repetition, sleep, concentration without distraction ....


https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-Ne ... merReviews
Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07S1 ... bl_vppi_i1
How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now


https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 14&t=16274
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