Fòram na Gàidhlig

xxxx

Fionnlagh wrote:Over the past few years we have seen so many things connected with language learning and acquisition that have been backed up by research and simply don't work.
We hear about research done by students at conferences about the Gaelic language etc that is completely wrong. Yet, when you question these same students about the damage their research has often done in the community. Their reply is often it is not their problem and they never caused it. I can think of a particular situation in Skye where the Gaelic language is still suffering because of so-called essential research.

Well isn't that convenient. When we reject TIP we are ignoring good strong evidence, and empirically determine ideas like "400 uses in 20 contexts" are used to justify TIP, but any other research is the work of the devil.

Come on, bad research exists in every field, but we don't reject all medical research on the ground that they used to use leeches and ECT. There's a massive difference between going into a community and p*ss*ng everyone off (I don't know what happened on Skye and you haven't given me enough information to look it up) and doing simple entry and exit studies of students on a course. As it stands, you have no objective evidence for the success of your system.

Fionnlagh wrote:It is quite obvious that some on this thread have considered what needs to be done to save the Gaelic language from death as a community and home language within the next 40 years. Can we hear some of your solutions?

I think most people are of the opinion that we need to look at the existing communities and homes first and foremost. You seem to express the opinion that because there aren't enough, this can't be "the answer", so you imply -- unintentionally, I know -- that they aren't important. The point is that there isn't one single answer, but that the existing native base is utterly vital to the survival of the language -- see below.

Gaelic probably can be revived in 500 hundred years time if all the recorded material can be kept in good order but do we really want to see this happening.

No, but that's no different to what you're doing. You're trying to replace native speakers with new speakers -- you're playing that same numbers game that you complain about the authorities playing. The people you're alienating -- the "eggshells" that you're breaking -- are the people with real Gaelic. It doesn't matter whether it's 50 years or 500 years, the end result is the same: not natural Gaelic. You talk a good fight about intergenerational transmission, but learner language doesn't magically transform into good fìor Ghàidhlig in the mouths of babes, and there's no need to acquire Learner Gaelic as an infant because Learner Gaelic is a language many adults learn to speak fluently.

I'm far more interested in Scottish Gaelic than Learner Gaelic, and that's why it's unlikely that I would ever put my kids through Gaelic-medium education.

When I was teaching English (for a short time, admittedly) many of the schoolkids who came to me for after school classes were beyond help. They had been speaking "English" all their lives, most having been taught in trilingual schools (Basque, Spanish and English). Their English was, quite frankly, atrocious. They spoke with a Spanish accent, Spanish idioms and Spanish hesitancies (not umm ahh well, but haber osea pues). Why? Because they formed their own speech community where non-natives outnumbered natives. The same thing happens in lowland GME -- many of the teachers are non-native and a vanishing minority of the pupils are native, so the language produced cannot be considered native. I wouldn't put my kids into a non-native environment. In the Western Isles, GME teaches Gaelic; but it can't do where there isn't enough Gaelic to start off with.

Language is essentially democratic -- the majority rules. A million learners will not save the language: it will merely create a new one.

Somehow I get the feeling that arguing any point with Fionnlagh is vaguely pointless - he will push his own ideas regardless of whatever arguments or evidence that would suggest otherwise is put his way. Very well, the world needs people like that too I guess.

But - and this is entirely my personal conclusion - I am tuning out of Sianal Fhionnlaigh. I can use my precious time more constructively that argue with him on anything. "Sai hei" my mother calls this kind of thing, wasting Qi, and I have too many - believe it or not - Gaelic projects (got to start working on the DVD for the book on pronunciation, the format of the pronunciation workshops and a million other things...) going for that.

We might as well write a Gaelic Wiki article on mudskippers, it'll have more effect!

Am Mìcheal Eile

[quote="Fionnlagh"]
I can think of a particular situation in Skye where the Gaelic language is still suffering because of so-called essential research.quote]

Tha seo inntinneach. Dè a bh' ann gu mionaideach?
What situation?

rud a tha mi-fhin a' faireachdainn - i'll speak in the old englaise for a change - i feel that the resurgence of gaelic will not come from those who wish to learn it at an adult stage - despite those numbers being used as a statistic for when it suits - but will come from either those who are fortunate enough to be taught it from gaelic speaking parents or those who attend gaelic medium education - but what is happening is that some who attend the primary GM class may not then go onto the GM high school pathway and then the majority of those who go through the high school GM pathway do not then continue onto a GM career or further gaelic medium education - is this not where the focus of our attention should be? GME has totally taken off and teacher numbers on the rise etc etc but where do these kids go after school? ( and dont say home smarties!! )

and also is their gaelic strong enough to carry it onto their own children further down the line?

xxxx

xxxx

Fionnlagh wrote:How easy it is to knock things at every stage but how so difficult they are to start or to build anything new.

How difficult it is to accept that not everything we do is perfect and that improvements can be made without starting or building something new. I see it as far more effective to work together to try to improve as a community than for everyone to bunker down in their own personal silos reading from their own personal bible and grinding their own personal axe.

Not everyone criticises out of hatred or spite, some do it in an effort to help.

Maybe Niall Beag should read "The Green Book on Language Revitalization in Practice" by Prof Leanne Hinton and Ken Hale regarding the "400 uses in 20 contexts" he is so interested in.

Maybe Finlay MacDonald should reread Nìall Beag's post and see that Nìall Beag's point was not about this piece of research-based evidence, but rather was that Finlay MacDonald readily dismisses research-based evidence as untrustworthy, yet almost simultaneously Finlay MacDonald continues to quote research-based evidence that supports Finlay MacDonald's stance as proof of the efficacy of Finlay MacDonald's methods.

Finlay MacDonald will hopefully also have noticed by now how bloody patronising it is to be addressed in the third person in this way.

As for the book, neither Edinburgh University library or the Edinburgh City Libraries have it. I'd have to request it on an interlibrary loan. I'm not in a rush to spend £35 on a book on your recommendation.

He will also find out about the Master-Apprentice Scheme where both the masters and the apprentices use only the target language from the beginning.

I can find out about all the approaches in the world, and I can read all the subjective success stories written since the dawn of time. Believe me, every language learning method has had a good write-up somewhere. Given that this method is Hinton's own makes the book a very poor witness to its effectiveness.

What I want is cold hard evidence. Does this book provide any useful comparison between the efficacy of various methods? Does it provide statistically significant evidence that it is the method and not external factors that provide the success? This is particularly important given that this particular scheme is the work of one of the book's authors -- I hardly expect it to be given a fully unbiased critical appraisal.

What I would really like to see is an example of Hinton's work in a peer-reviewed journal. I'm searching via Athens, but right now all the references I see to the method point towards individual books in Hinton's name. I'll keep looking later.

Often the languages being learnt have no written forms.

Let's leave writing out of this, because I agree with you that the spoken form is prime, and that early study of the written form causes more often confusion to the learner (I hear "seach-dain" with a D all too often).

As I said, if you didn't conflate everything into one, you'd find a lot of common ground.

Unfortunately, we adopted the second language model in Scotland as did most other countries in Europe who have minority languages rather than first language acquisition model. In Hawaii they use first language acquisition methods where English is introduced in the school when the child reaches 10 years of age and having spoken Hawaii-ian with their friends for at least 7 years. Indeed the first children to start in the Hawaii-ian school system are now passing on their language to their children.
You will be able to read about it soon in the next edition of the Cothrom Magazine.
We also get language distortion strange accents and structures in some of our schools because of similar second language teaching methods.

Now you're really confusing the issue.

Are we talking about kids or about adults, because a moment ago we were talking about TIP -- an adult learners' course.

Certainly --- obviously, even --- children are best taught through first-language methods. But this says nothing about adults.

Finlay, as has been pointed out several times, being right on one thing doesn't mean being right on everything.

Can you please argue the point at hand?

I agree with a heck of a lot of what you're saying -- there's no point in arguing what we agree on. Can we debate about what we disagree on please?

What we appear to agree on

• First language acquisition is the obvious and most natural model for young children's acquisition of a second language.
  
  Acquisition of Gaelic as a native language by children is vital to the its survival as a living language.
  
  An early focus on writing skills during the learning of any second or subsequent language is detrimental to the learning of fluent spoken language.
  
  That the lack of Gaelic in schools and play in recent generations has left some fluent Gaelic-speaking parents without knowledge of the language required for constructive play.

Disagreements and points requiring clarification or debate

• Whether first-language acquisition models are of any use in the design of adult language courses. I suggest not, and believe that valid experimental evidence on the original "Natural Methods" have proved as such. This is backed up by later studies of the neurophysiology of learning and the vast differences in how the adult and infant brains exhibit neuroplasticity.
  
  Whether TIP indeed follows a first-language acquisition model. I believe it does not, as it relies on active participation from the beginning, rather than engaging in a "Silent Period", à la Krashen. I am not clear whether or not you suggest otherwise.
  
  Whether adult learners can provide a useful model for infants in acquiring a language. I suggest that an adult learner provides an incorrect model in terms of both phonology and syntax, and that this then has the effect of producing nominally "native" speakers with a grasp of the language little different to that of an adult learner, defeating the core purpose of teaching them as infants.
  
  Whether domain-specific language (such as that of children's play) can be effectively taught to an adult in the early stages of learning. I believe that vocabulary and common phrases learnt before the student has a good understanding of the underlying grammar become fixed and inflexible. (EG the nouns and verbs I learned when I started Gaelic, which I find myself failing to decline properly for case due to continuous exposure to the nominative/accusative form only.) This is of course purely anecdotal, and I readily admit to having no data to back this up. Is there data to support the opposite argument?
  
  The effects of having a large number of pupils from non-native backgrounds in Gaelic-medium schooling. I argue that the lack of a strong native model means that kids in GME will never learn real, genuine Gaelic. This means "saving" Gaelic through GME in the lowlands is no different to someone resurrecting it 500 years from now through old books and sound recordings. Consider Manx -- given that no-one spoke Manx when Ned Mandrell died, does it matter how short a span it was between death and rebirth? The learners developed their own accents, idioms and vocabulary without native contact -- the language is therefore very different. This is not in itself a bad thing, but when this comes into competition with the Genuine Article that we still have, it certainly becomes a very dangerous thing.
  
  You're always saying that there aren't enough native speakers to keep the language alive. Whether or not this is true, I cannot say. However, consider that Lamb identifies that the number of Gaelic-speaking couples who bring up their children to speak Gaelic varies from 60 to 87% by region, and the number of couples with only one Gaelic speaker who bring their children up to speak Gaelic varies from 7 to 40% by region. Are you giving these up as a lost cause?
  Are you familiar with the story of the quagga? It was a breed of zebra that became extinct about 100 years ago, and they have recently bred animals that look like them, but are not them, from horse, donkey and zebra stock. That's all well and good seeing as the original is extinct, but what you're doing is more like breeding a horse-zebra hybrid and ignoring the herd of real genuine quaggas behind you. Meanwhile, your new breed risk driving the native herd away.

Fionnlagh wrote:Niall Beag has for some reason come to the conclusion that I am uninterested in the native Gaelic community. Where he gets this idea from I do not know.

Read again:
" You seem to express the opinion that because there aren't enough, this can't be "the answer", so you imply -- unintentionally, I know -- that they aren't important. " (emphasis added)

Once you put yourself in the public eye, appearance is more important than intention.

Since, I really don't know Niall it is difficult to guage how much interaction he has with the Gaelic community throughout Scotland and elsewhere.
For the past 29 years I have helped parents and many others set up various groups, organisations and projects from the ground upwards.
It is clear that a very different approach and psychology exists in the various areas of Scotland that is if one want to see things getting started be they Gaelic-medium pre-school groups or Gaelic-medium primary units.
In all I have helped to open 180 groups or units throughout Scotland.

And the relevance of this is...?

I know you have achieved a lot, and I know that you continue to help many projects get on their feet.

None of that addresses my points regarding TIP or community projects. Gaelic-medium schooling and playgroups are a very different kettle of fish!

You are continuing to confound any debate by returning to issues like GME and intergenerational transmission, rather than discussing TIP and adult activities as we initially were.

It's utterly infuriating!

Finlay, once and for all:
These Are Different Things! If you want to justify one thing, you have to do it on its own terms. Chalk's nutritional benefits are not proven by cheese.

Wow, I've just reread my earlier posts, and you know what? Despite knowing consciously, rationally and logically that you are in support of native speakers, my unconscious mind does genuinely appear to believe that you are against/indifferent to them. The power of appearances, eh?

Anyway, as I said at the Edinburgh annual meeting, I am deeply concerned that amid all the noise and bustle of schemes, programs, initiatives and debates, the basic message of how to bring kids up bilingually is lost, and people are left without the simple knowledge of how to bring kids up truly bilingually from the day of their birth.

xxxxx

xxx

Fionnlagh wrote:Why is it so difficult to see that adults can learn much faster than children if you create an adult learning environment similar to a pre-school group especially the home environment where activity plus cooperation rather than competition takes place between adults. This is even more successful when both fluent adults and learners are together in a multi-level group.

Adults can learn faster than children.

Why?
1) Because they have critical faculties to employ.
2) Because they have already learned the underlying concepts of language, including the "harder" abstract stuff like pronoun reference, modality for permission and possibility, conditionality etc.
3) Because they have a more complete model of the world to map language onto, whereas infants are often baffled by mirrors and can't tell the difference between a dog and a koala.

So yes, of course adults can learn quicker than kids in any environment. This is not the question.

It was Professor Richard Johnstone from Stirling University who stunned most of the participants at a small conference in Perth a number of years ago when he that adults could learn a second or third language much faster than children, if you provided them with an appropriate but similar environment for adults as they have far more skills than children have to achieve such results.

I'm not arguing that it can't be done, just that it's bloody inefficient. If you put an adult into that environment, they will use their critical faculties to order the input and build a structure with which to learn it.

In essence, then, they design their own syllabuses from structured input data.

Why isn't it better to design the syllabus, give them the framework quickly and enter them into an immersive environment with a strong framework around which to gather lexical features?

This is the question:
Is playtime the best way for adults to learn?

Which we can divide into three questions, which may be considered independently or together:

Does this provide a higher success rate/lower dropout rate than other available methods? (Accounting for different levels of knowledge at entry.)

Does this provide the quickest completion time of all available methods? (Accounting for different levels of knowledge at entry.)

Does this provide more accurate and fluent spontaneous speak than all other available methods? (Accounting for different levels of knowledge at entry.)

Can these be answered, and done so objectively? If they can't, how can you expect to convince anyone that it is right?

Indeed if you consider the time frames and situations where action and appropriate activity takes place rather than the sterile learning places that adults have to put up with it is easy to see why and how.

You are once again conflating two issues.

The stuffiness -- sterility, if you prefer -- of traditional learning is not necessarily a result of either the medium or the linguistic content of teaching, but rather of the teaching method and organisation of the material.

I'm holding an English lesson in a pub on Wednesday. And I'm teaching it through Spanish -- the native language of my students. No sterile learning place. And they're making great progress after a meer few hours.

None of those who were present at that conference could believe their ears as they had never heard such views expressed before.

That's because as I've said elsewhere, nobody ever studies the history of language learning. It has been expressed many times, by many different people.

All you have ever offered as evidence is that one person said X and another person said Y, well sure as hell there's people who've said the opposite.

Numbers! Evidence!

And if you can't give me that, at least tell me why it should work. There must be a reason to do it that way!

xxxx

Can't keep quiet... because IT'S NOT TRUE, do we have to get a dozen Professors of Language Acquisition to t*tt** it on your forehead?

What IS true - and that show's the extent to which you have run your courses - is that for the very initial period, the first few weeks and months of language acquistion adults ARE faster because they have superior COGNITIVE skills (that analysis, spotting patterns, using logic and rules). But once the language acquitistion engine kicks in in children, they leave adults behind at lightspeed.

And master apprentice programmes are second-best last-gasp solutions to languages so severely endangered that they are down to as few as a single elderly speaker who may not live long enough to pass it on to a toddler passed into their care. Fionnlagh, did you teachers never teach you that you can't compare apples with pears????