Dear Jason,
Thanks for the thought. I hadn't considered the parallel between the success
of 'toal immersion' language learning and metrication. Now that you point it
out, the parallel is obvious.
To support this view let me tell you of a trip I once made from Yorkshire to
Denmark, via Norway and Sweden. When I went to Norway from Yorkshire my
first impression was the number of words that Norwegian and the Yorkshire
language had in common. I hesitate to refer to Yorkshire as a dialect of
English as it is quite distinct. I was travelling alone so I was perforce in
a 'toal immersion' situation.
After two weeksa in Norway and about the same time in Sweden I was accused,
in Denmark, of speaking Danish with a Norwegian accent � I took it as a
compliment and also as a demonstraion of how quickly 'toal immersion'
techniques can be for languages. By the way, I've now, 20 years later)
forgotten almost all of the Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish words that I ever
learned.
If we view the process of metrication as learning a new language*, it might
be useful in deciding what methods are best to choose for the process.
* Of course, the metric language is much simpler than any other language. It
only has 29 units, 20 prefixes, and a grammar that uses only the universal
structure of mathematical sentences.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin LCAMS
Geelong, Australia
Pat Naughtin is the editor of the free online newsletter, 'Metrication
matters'. You can subscribe by sending an email containing the words
subscribe Metrication matters to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
on 2003-09-06 12.08, James Wentworth at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> You are (correctly) advocating what is called "total immersion" in the US.
> Total immersion is the superior method of learning a new language (English
> in the case of the US) in which non-English speaking immigrants are immersed
> in English.
>
> The inferior method is called bilingualism (what our public school system is
> unfortunately now doing) in which pupils are taught in both their native
> languages *and* English. We are doing the same thing ("bimetrology?") with
> metrication, and we are experiencing about the same rate of progress as
> bilingualism. -- Jason
