[B]rain cells activated by an experience keep one another on biological speed-dial, like a group of people joined in common witness of some striking event. Call on one and word quickly goes out to the larger network of cells, each apparently adding some detail, sight, sound, smell. The brain appears to retain a memory by growing thicker, or more efficient, communication lines between these cells.
My approach to language learning has always been one of multiple types of exposure. Take a new vocab word, for example. Let's say you come across it in a book. You've now got speed dial set up between that book and the word, and perhaps between the word and the sentence, paragraph, thing it was in reference to, etc. Then you look it up. Now you've got the connections built to the meaning. Let's say you later hear it in a podcast. There's another connection. An example like this would seem to fit into the paradigm they suggest: you're building thicker connections to that word, and are thus more likely to learn it. Apply that to all units of language learning—words, phrases, grammar rules, characters, pronunciation, intonation, etc.—and you can see how various exposure makes language learning easier.
A quick look at the ethical issues, and a clip from The Matrix,after the jump.
Read more...Beyond learning mechanics, there are some ethical issues involved here as well. They have begun work on chemicals that affect memory, initially aimed at treating problems but enhancing performance is just a few steps beyond that. The issues largely parallel steroid use in sports:
“If this [critical memory] molecule is as important as it appears to be, you can see the possible implications,” said Dr. Todd C. Sacktor, a 52-year-old neuroscientist who leads the team at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, in Brooklyn, which demonstrated its effect on memory. “For trauma. For addiction, which is a learned behavior. Ultimately for improving memory and learning.” … [W]hen scientists find a drug to strengthen memory, will everyone feel compelled to use it? … A substance that improved memory would immediately raise larger social concerns… “We know that people already use smart drugs and performance enhancers of all kinds, so a substance that actually improved memory could lead to an arms race,” Dr. Hyman said.
I can say for sure that I don't want to be one of the first guinea pigs to try something like this out, but if something like this is truly proven safe and enhances learning without screwing anything else up, it would certainly be something to consider.
Personally, however, rather than popping some pill and then using other learning techniques to learn a language, I'd rather take my languages like Neo took his kungfu. Just find a way to upload it straight to my brain, please. Rather than "I know kungfu", I'd be able to open my eyes and say, "I know Korean".
Japan is once again leading the way in sort-of-creepy-but-still-pretty-damn-cool robots. The child-like robot below, known as CB2, has some interesting language-learning abilities:
In coming decades, [Osaka University professor Minoru] Asada expects science will come up with a "robo species" that has learning abilities somewhere between those of a human and other primate species such as the chimpanzee.
And he hopes that this little CB2 may lead the way into this brave new world, with the goal to have the robo-kid speaking in basic sentences within about two years, matching the intelligence of a two-year-old child.
Read the full article here, or just check out the video below. So far, all the robot appears to be able to say is "e" え.
I've mentionedbefore how RosettaStone's PR people seem to be everywhere, and competitor Rocket Languages doesn't appear to be taking it sitting down. In fact, they appear to be doing a full-court press, including what appears to be a pretty blatant astroturfing campaign.
formal political, advertising, or public relations campaigns seeking to create the impression of being spontaneous "grassroots" behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf.
Why do I think Rocket might be astroturfing? The blatant evidence, after the jump.
Read more...My suspicions were peaked after I noticed a pattern among sites that seem to recognize Rocket Languages' software as top of the line.
Here's what the M.O. appears to be. Someone buys domain names that sound like independent, third-party review sites. The domain names have the feel of phishing or other web scams because they're just not quite right; the grammar is weird, they use an odd hyphen or two, etc. And, according to whois searches on Internic.net, the websites appear to have been registered by Enom, Inc. (the older ones) or GoDaddy.com (the newer ones). This suggests that a limited number of people are behind these sites, rather than them being small, independent sites.
On each of these domains they build the website of a "reviewer". Each website is slightly different, but the look tends to be pretty similar, as if designed by the same person or group. And how do you think these reviewers feel about Rocket's products? Why, they're always the best, of course! If they don't get ranked first in a best-of list, then they get five stars or some other stellar ranking.
Some pages also contain reviews of, say, RosettaStone as well. These competitor software products get decent reviews, but of course they don't beat out Rocket's stuff! This seems like a tricky way to get up there in Google's rankings; stick the name of a few highly Googled competitors' names in there, and bingo, links from Google.
However, the websites do go to some trouble to look legit. They include links to other language learning materials. They'll even say one or two negative things about Rocket's products, but still give their backing to Rocket.
All in all, it's a pretty clever scheme, if only a bit too obvious. The list below contains a few examples, but you can easily dredge up more through a few quick Google searches using keywords like RosettaStone, Rocket, review, software, language, or any of the languages offered by Rocket.
ProductsConsumerReview.com: These guys sound like they might be a competitor of Consumer Reports, don't they? Not so fast. The only products reviewed are Rocket's products. And guess what? They're all five-star!
ChineseReviews.com: This one I've seen linked to from Google ads on other sites. Here Rocket beats out RosettaStone and Pimsleur.
RocketSpanishReviewed.com: Seriously? Some independent third party is going to make a site solely to review Rocket Spanish? Seriously?
What's above is clearly enough to raise a few eyebrows, but I found indisputable evidence on the Warrior Forum, which bills itself as "the #1 internet marketing site since 1997". This thread tells you how you can get involved in Rocket's astroturfing campaign, at least part of which is being handled by Don Davis, who has designed some of the sites:
Rocket Language Review Sites! What a great opportunity to add an entire city block of new review sites to your Virtual Real Estate empire.
(For more on virtual real estate, see here. Click ahead to around 4:16 to get to the heart of it.) If you click through the link in that forum, you get this:
What I have to offer in this [Warrior Forum Special Offer] is an opportunity to put a little stable of sites to work in your online business. I have put together 6 review sites for the Rocket Language products.
These products have all been on Clickbank for quite some time, and the company boasts a customer base of over 180,000. These products are all priced right at a hundred bucks and pay between 69 and 75% commissions. The products are of a high quality which means you are more likely to keep the sales you make.
You may purchase one site individually, or you can buy them all in a package. I have also built a seventh site which reviews the Rocket American Sign Language product. This site is not being marketed in this WSO, but you can pick it up as a free bonus if you elect to purchase the full set of sites featured in this offer.
You can see how Rocket's been working with Clickbank here. Basically, Rocket has set up an affiliate system whereby anyone who builds up a website that can generate hits to Rocket's site and sales can make money off of it. Even if they are not directly behind each website, they're certainly enabling the M.O. described above.
What's more, if you did any of the Google searches I mentioned above, you might have come across some Rocket reviews on EZineArticles.com. Guess what? More astroturfing. From the Warrior Forum thread mentioned above:
I had one article on [EZineArticles.com] in a twelve hour period that had only 25 views and 6 click thoughs. I got one sale already of $34 in that period! It must be down to my amazing article writing skills (lol) and definately also down to Don's great site design skills - thanks man.
While RosettaStone is largely flat, Rocket is gradually catching up. RosettaStone's mass coverage seems to be meeting its match with Rocket's sly campaign. Still, the whole thing makes you wonder... are either of these actually any good, or is it all just slick marketing?
European Parliament split over language teaching: Next time any of my fellow yanks get themselves in a tizzy regarding the use of Spanish in the U.S., just remember: it could be worse; translation costs could take up 1% of our budget. Tangential money quote: "'[P]romoting the learning of […] an international "lingua franca",' such as English, should be a 'political priority'." As if there were another international lingua franca.
More languages, not fewer: Professor Erin Hippolyte "regularly see[s] statistics that link world language proficiency to salaries that are 8-20 percent higher." What exactly is a "world language" anyway? I wonder if it's a West Virginia regionalism for "foreign language". Someone should check a quirky regional dictionary. I am probably proficient in one or two "world languages", so where do I apply for the raise? When are Professor Hippolyte's office hours?
The Waver's Dilemma: A lot more information on how runners communicate in English than I gave you in my post on the runners' nod. For the record, I'm personally against waiving on the grounds that it makes you break form.
I seem to have gotten myself mixed up in this big debate about learning grammar, so this post the first in an unnumbered series called "Getting to Grammar" where I lay out my strategy and respond to some of the other things banging around the language-learning blogosphere regarding grammar.
When I was in grad school, we talked about the spiral syllabus. Imagine a spiral staircase going up multiple floors: You keep coming back to the same points, but at a higher level each time. Unfortunately, conventional grammars don't do this. They typically are divided into, e.g., phonology, morphology, and syntax, with morphology broken down into nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, etc. The treatments can get pretty exhaustive and the learner has to figure out how deep to dive in.
How to mediate the problem, and the as-far-as-I-know non-existant solution of a frequency grammar, after the jump.
Read more...This problem can be mediated by carefully selecting your initial grammar. It should be good enough to give you a complete overview of the target language's grammar, but not so in-depth that you get bogged down in exceptions to exceptions to exceptions that you're only likely to encounter once in every five years of intense target language use. Once you've gotten what you can get out of your initial grammar, you can move up to a more in-depth one, and ultimately you can cap it off with a grammar aimed at native speakers. This, in a sense, makes three passes around the spiral, which combined with exposure should give you quite a solid understanding.
But, three doesn't make for much of a spiral and, as is, it hardly makes for an efficient process. You're likely to have already covered much of what is in any subsequent grammars you look at, and there'll be no easy way to determine where that more difficult rule is hiding; you'll have to pick through the stuff you know to find the stuff you don't. By the point you get to looking at these kinds of grammars, that review is probably not the best way to spend your time.
Moreover, the cut off point for grammars are typically determined somewhat arbitrarily, by how an editor or author feels or guesses. I've never heard of a grammar's cut off point for what is covered being backed by statistics of what rules, constructions, etc., are actually used.
Mediation of a problem is all well and good, but what really dances in my language-learning dreams are frequency grammars, or grammars that introduce rules based on how likely you are to encounter them. In your first pass around the grammar spiral, you'd cover rules that represent, say, 50% of the rules you'd typically encounter. This'll take you through much of the language, just as frequency lists do, but you'd still have quite a ways to go.
Once you're at 50%, you'd click a button (these would need to be electronic, of course) and then the grammar would suddenly cover, say, 70% of the rules you'd typically encounter. The additional 20% would show up in a different color so when you go through the grammar again, you'd know exactly what has been added since your last passthrough. And you'd keep going in increments up until 100%, with the highest percentiles representing the most obscure rules of grammar out there.
If anyone knows of anything even remotely close to this in any language, I'd love to hear about it.
If this guess is anywhere near accurate, pretty much as many as you want:
Although we’re forced to guess because the neural basis of memory isn’t understood at this level, let’s say that one movable synapse could store one byte (8 bits) of memory. That thimble would then contain 1,000 gigabytes (1 terabyte) of information. A thousand thimblefuls make up a whole brain, giving us a million gigabytes — a petabyte — of information. To put this in perspective, the entire archived contents of the Internet fill just three petabytes.
after the jump.
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