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Re: Only 45% of the students were prepared for math
Posted:
Mar 28, 2006 3:56 PM
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In article <1143525533.152262.56820@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
Reef Fish <Large_Nassau_Grouper@Yahoo.com> wrote:
>Bob LeChevalier wrote:
>> toto <scarecrow@wicked.witch> wrote:
>> >On 24 Mar 2006 21:10:22 -0500, hrubin@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman
>> >Rubin) wrote:
>> >>One needs very little of a language. Scientists have
>> >>demonstrated that little vocabulary is learned before
>> >>the idea of grammatical structure is managed; there
>> >>has been an argument, with data to back it, that
>> >>children earlier than one year, with zero vocabulary,
>> >>can comprehend grammatical ideas.
.................
>First of all, Herman seems excessively gullible about one article of
>which he couldn't quite recall.
I can recall the article; I cannot recall the issue of
_Science_ in which it occurred. It was also referred
to in _U S News and World Report_.
>The idea of young children understand grammatical ideas before
>vocabulary has to have come from someone who is linguistically
>challenged. The grammatical structure of Romance languages
>(French, Spanish) and Germanic languages (German) and their
>derivatives from Latin, such as English, are vastly different.
Vastly? Not at all. The way in which the parts of speech
are put together does differ in detail, but not much in
concept, in the Indo-European family. I am not that much
of a linguist, but I am familiar with the grammatical
structures of all the languages listed above (I can read
all of them), and somewhat with that of Russian and other
IE languages. I can also compare them to the different
structures, but still similar ideas, of the Semitic
languages, and the differences are not such as to cause as
great problems as idiomatic expressions do.
>Children
>who are less than 6 years old should have no difficulty being multi
>lingual in English, French, Spanish, German, and even Chinese.
>The older one gets, the more difficult it is to learn.
They have just as much problem with detail confusion.
In reading or listening to a language, grammatical details
are not that much of a problem; in writing or speaking,
they definitely are. I have read mathematical papers in
Latin, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian, never having
taken any of those languages.
>I was told by a Berlitz teacher that I tried to THINK too much about
>the grammar of Spanish (when I already learned those in French,
>German, and English). I was no match for any 6 year old.
In speaking or reading? My one-year French course gave me
a reading vocabulary larger than the speaking vocabulary of
a 6 year old native speaker. I did carry on discussions in
which the other person spoke French and I spoke English.
BTW, that course did all the grammar in less than 1/2
academic year.
>In fact, when I was 6 years old, I was multi-lingual in four dialects
>of Chinese -- each of which is as different as German, French,
>and English.
>Young children have a completely different way of learning a
>language, by "imitation of rules" rather than abstraction of rules.
>Vocabulary certainly precedes grammar.
I suggest you read articles by scientists. Children learn
regular rules, and then the irregularities; that is why
phonics is far better at teaching reading than the whole
word method.
>At Yale, there is a tall science building called the Kline Tower.
>The mother of a German kid mused when her son couldn't
>understand why the tower was "Klein" when the word means
>"small" in German. :-)
One can easily have a 6-footer named "Small" or a 5-footer
named "Gross". This happens in any language.
The kid had no trouble speaking
>English and German fluently. I had the hardest time learning
>why every inanimate object is male, female, or neuter in German,
>and how to look for the separable prefixes and suffixes that may
>be a page or two away. Kids NEVER had that kind of problem
>in learning German.
Are you so sure? I had no problem with learning about
grammatical gender, and there are more kinds than that.
Many languages have only "masculine" and "feminine",
and their speakers are quite aware that gender is not
the same as biological sex. There may be some changes
to drop some endings, but speakers of those languages
do not object to "hurricane" because its first syllable
is pronounced the same as "her".
>Scientist are often blinded by their own prejudices and ignorance
>in conjecturing and testing the untestible, as in less than 1-yr olds.
I suggest you read the paper before jumping to conclusions.
>But often they get GRANTS to do the silliness, if they can BS
>enough pages in application for the grant.
>-- Bob.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
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