{"id":499,"date":"2017-04-28T06:00:32","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T14:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/?p=499"},"modified":"2019-09-25T12:12:04","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T20:12:04","slug":"this-week-in-language-education-april-28-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/this-week-in-language-education-april-28-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week In Language Education: April 28, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Reverse Turing Test: Is Good\u00a0Language Teaching\u00a0Robot-Proof?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The always brilliant Gene Glass provides a list of jobs that are “0% Automatable” (cannot be done by a robot) and “100% Automatable.” He uses the\u00a0list to examine what schools teach and the future of our economy, but\u00a0it is a question you may want to ask of your own job.<\/p>\n

Robots and computer software can very efficiently\u00a0deliver traditional “drill and kill”\u00a0in language arts, as Frank Smith pointed out<\/a>. A Korean researcher has just discovered that robots\u00a0work wonderfully on mindless (and utterly ineffective<\/a>) tasks like phonemic awareness training<\/a>, and someone in Japan is looking into “pedagogical machines<\/a>.”\u00a0But does it\u00a0takes a human mind to provide compelling language input? I think the answer is “yes.”<\/p>\n

Perhaps we need a sort of\u00a0“Reverse\u00a0Turing Test<\/a>” for language teaching: If an observer\u00a0can’t distinguish what you’re doing in the classroom from what a robot can do, you’re probably doing the wrong thing.<\/p>\n

ETS Introduces Software to Suck the Life Out of All Student\u00a0Reading Material\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

In a paper just released this week<\/a>, the Educational Testing Service reports on preliminary results of its online service,\u00a0Language Muse<\/a>. Study authors explain that it can\u00a0take a teacher’s\u00a0“input text,” analyze it for vocabulary and syntax, then spit out “activities” based on the student’s level:<\/p>\n

Teachers upload a classroom text into LM [Language Muse]. The engine automatically generates over<\/strong> 20 activities<\/strong> based on linguistic features identified in the text. Teachers then select activities to create an \u201cactivity palette\u201d . . . \u2014 a set of text-specific activities \u2014 to support one or more learning objectives, such as \u201cpractice with derivational word forms\u201d.<\/p>\n

No real data were reported in their “in progress” report, though the authors did say the results\u00a0were “difficult to interpret.” Sounds like bad news to me. They added\u00a0that “gains were observed in some components, but there were also score losses \u2013 potentially due to motivation, since the assessments were no-stakes” (p. 214).<\/p>\n

“If only we\u00a0could make all<\/em> assessments high-stakes!” an ETS spokesman\u00a0didn’t say, but was likely\u00a0thinking.<\/p>\n

Er \u00edslenskt a\u00f0 vana (Is Icelandic Disappearing)?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

If these AP and New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0stories are correct, children and teenagers\u00a0in Iceland are shifting so quickly to English, they aren’t even fluent enough to read the one Nobel Prize-winning author the island has produced (and yes, I’m talking about Halldor Laxness<\/a>). A former president laments the language may soon be in the “Latin bin,” a comparison that\u00a0will make her\u00a0no friends in Finland<\/a>.\u00a0Perhaps they should apply for a grant from the new Endangered Languages Fund<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Gap Widens Between Low-Achieving and High-Achieving First Graders; Researchers Stumped<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Parent Magazine<\/em> reports on a new study just published\u00a0in Educational Researcher<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(paywall)\u00a0that claims kids entering first grade are doing better overall at reading than they did 12 years ago.\u00a0The\u00a0gap between low-achieving and high-achieving\u00a0readers\u00a0has also narrowed, but only on isolated skills such as letter recognition. When it comes to actually reading<\/em>, the gap between the two groups\u00a0is greater now than before.<\/p>\n

Could it be that all that early literacy skills training of the past decade wasn’t the way to go?<\/p>\n

One of the\u00a0study’s author, Jerome D’Agostino, said<\/a>, “There’s a missing link between teaching low-achieving students basic literacy skills and having them actually put those skills to use in reading,” he said. “We don’t know what that is yet<\/strong>.”\u00a0His co-author, Elaine Rodger, however, has a radical solution sure to be rejected by saner voices in the field:\u00a0“We’re probably spending too much time emphasizing basic skills for the low-achieving students, when we should be giving them more opportunities to actually read text.” (Hat tip: Warren Ediger<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Can You Learn Spanish from Listening to Dodger Baseball?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Los Angeles Times<\/em> columnist Steve Lopez muses that you can improve your Spanish\u00a0by listening to the Spanish-language broadcasts by the\u00a0veteran LA Dodger announcer, Jaime Jarr\u00edn. I haven’t tried that, but\u00a0it certainly could be\u00a0a good source\u00a0of “narrow listening<\/a>” with (for a Dodger fan) compelling input, especially of Clayton Kershaw is pitching.<\/p>\n

More interestingly, the article describes the loss of the home or heritage language by 3rd generation immigrants, including by Jarrin’s own grandson. Lopez thinks\u00a0this loss is a “surprise,” but it is in fact the rule rather than the exception<\/a>. (Hat tip: Warren Ediger<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Learning English Can Boost Your Salary<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

A new survey of more than 5,000 businesses around the world by Cambridge English finds that nearly all companies think English is important for their success. Most reward employees with good English skills. No surprises here.<\/p>\n

Three Anthropology Graduate Students Try to Learn Turkish with\u00a0Duolingo and Hate It<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Or as they put it, “Narrative Perspectives on Self-Directed Foreign Language Learning in a Computer- and Mobile-Assisted Language Learning Context.” They didn’t like the\u00a0\u201cstilted robotic voice,\u201d \u201cthe same routinized patterns,\u201d and the frequent \u201cabsurd sentences.\u201d After struggling to finish the first level, they dropped out<\/a> (just like most people<\/a>). Languages<\/em> (open access)<\/p>\n

German Learning Helps Students With Dyslexia?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

An\u00a0ASU professor claims teaching\u00a0German “also lets her help students overcome dyslexia.” After mentioning\u00a0the\u00a0frequently cited and completely\u00a0bogus statistic<\/a> that 20% of American students\u00a0have “language-based dyslexia,” the university press release\u00a0quotes Dr. Sarah\u00a0Lee, who says she\u00a0sees herself as “a dyslexia specialist when it comes to teaching foreign language, especially German”:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe difference is really in the language itself.\u201d Lee explained. \u201cIn English, there\u2019s much more of a variety of how different sounds can be represented by different letters or how one letter can have different sounds. \u2026 In German, it\u2019s much more of one letter represents one sound.\u201d . . . \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s not quite as confusing. There are not so many different ways of pronouncing and spelling words,\u201d Lee said. \u201cSo it\u2019s actually easier to speak and learn German than it is to speak and learn English.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not to rain on the Frau Lee’s\u00a0new-found specialty, but, despite what you read in the papers, the case has been made that fluent reading is not primarily a matter of\u00a0phonology and transparent orthographies\u00a0(see\u00a0here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>, just for starters). On the specific question of L1 reading “skills” and L2 reading, a 2016\u00a0study by Alderson and colleagues in Modern Language Journal<\/em><\/a> (paywall) of Finnish ESL students found that the factors typically associated with “reading disabilities” and dyslexia in the L1 are not the most important in differentiating good and poor\u00a0L2 readers\u00a0(see also a 2013 meta-analysis by Melby-Lerv\u00e5g and\u00a0Lerv\u00e5g<\/a>). All the phonological\u00a0theorizing is\u00a0rather\u00a0unnecessary.<\/p>\n

Military Drops Giant\u00a0Grant Bomb in\u00a0Latest Attempt to Accelerate FL Acquisition<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

According to a press release:<\/p>\n

Researchers at the Texas Biomedical Device Center (TxBDC) at The University of Texas at Dallas have been awarded a contract worth up to $5.8 million<\/strong> from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to investigate a novel approach to accelerate the learning of foreign languages.<\/p>\n

The newly-awash-in-grant-money TxBDC will spend it on some really nice hotel rooms at the next conference<\/del>\u00a0“precise activation of peripheral nerves.” More specifically, the researchers will “focus on developing an approach that uses vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) during training to specifically reinforce neural networks that are involved in learning a particular task,” which is apparently more difficult than it sounds. Specifically:<\/p>\n

It involves sending a mild electric pulse through the vagus nerve in the neck. When stimulated, the vagus nerve affects the brain, where it boosts the release of chemicals called neuromodulators. These chemicals facilitate synaptic plasticity, a process in which the connections between brain cells change and strengthen during learning. \u00a0. . “We believe that we will be able to substantially increase the rate of language learning. With VNS, we may be able to improve on the brain’s natural ability to learn,” Kilgard said.<\/p>\n

At least part of the aim of VNS is to\u00a0improve working memory,<\/a> which has heretofore not been very amenable to training<\/a>\u00a0(Developmental Psychology<\/em>, paywall). But\u00a0it seems from other evidence that even if you can improve working memory, that itself does\u00a0not improve other types of “cognitive performance,” such as\u00a0reading comprehension; the prolific Dr. Melby-Lerv\u00e5g and her colleagues have the details\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cambridge University Press Has a Few Psycholinguistics Articles for Free Until May 31st<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I could find only eight articles, but may be worth a quick look.<\/p>\n

In Case You Missed It:<\/strong><\/p>\n