--- Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 7/5/07, Bill Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Terrence Brannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > > When I taught English in Taiwan, I forced my students to learn to
> > > write and speak on the premise that those can control the active
> > > aspect of the language can read and listen with no problem.
> >
> > Is there a reason you didn't teach them grammar instead and let them
> > deduce how to write and speak from those first principles?
>
> Personally, I do not see any substantial conflict between teaching
> people grammar and teaching students to write and speak.
>
> This seems especially true for a language like english where many
> of the commonly used words have their own special grammatical rules.
> (For example, consider some of the differences between common
> [valid] uses of the prepositions "of" and "on").
So that it does not look off-topic many of these things relate
to learning a computer language, esp. J which is different.
A couple of commnents:
it's not teaching that counts, but learning. So one can
(think that they teach) something, and it's different from
what is getting learned, which in turn may occur not as a
result of that particular teaching and often in spite of it.
In general, learning is the result of activities (experience)
a person is involved in, it could be observing examples,
doing exercise or learning grammar rules with varied and
individual success rate. Immitation is a strong mechanism
developed through evolution and manifested in primates.
Cognitive learning is a higher function is not reposible
for all (aspects of) learning. But it does not directly
relate to theoretical formalizations like traditional
textbook grammar. It could be cultural, contextual,
meneumonic. Self-discovery creates strong neuron cascades.
An interesting thing to note is that everyone exposed
to knowledge and skill aquisition creates their own
unique model of things and relations in their heads.
So a task of teaching (or rather facilitating learning)
is to see how to such models are formed and how to help
form better yet individually suited models.
The structure and complexity of such models may be
different from theoretical organisation of reference
material, such as organization of material in Dictionary,
Parst of Speech, Intoduction, Samples and Primer, Labs etc.
An interesting approach is Universal Grammar, and how
it could be applied to languages like J, what would be
surface and deep structures. And since the language is
artificial, it may be agued that certain rules are
predictable not only the stage of learning, but at the
stage of designing.
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