Jeremy Thompson Catholic PhD in Biblical Languages, Programmer, Runner

Since I’ve transitioned in my work to being more interested in lexicography, I haven’t had time to do a significant amount of reading in Second Language Acquisition.  But, I recently picked up The Neurobiology of Learning: Perspectives from Second Language Acquisition.  I would highly recommend it to anyone with the responsibility of teaching languages, whether ancient or modern.

Some readers may find the neurobiology a bit dense, but it’s not too dense if you have read at least a little bit on the subject.  I may be misjudging that since I did my undergraduate work in psychology, but even so, I think the structure of the chapters makes it possible for anyone to benefit from the book.

The chapters are generally structured with an introduction, a section on the neurobiology of a particular area, e.g. motivation, attention, etc., and then a section drawing applications from the neurobiology.  I think the application sections are readable for anyone.

Some insights from the book were new to me and others not so much.  For example, one new piece of information for me was the research on aphasia and second language learners, which suggests that a second language is not learned like a first language, despite much of what modern communicative language instruction suggests following Krashen who was probably influenced by Chomskyian conceptions of Universal Grammar.  Even if there is an innate mechanism for first language learning (which the authors of the book also doubt — and so do I), it doesn’t appear that same mechanism is at work in second language learning.* The book highlights a number of other reasons for this beyond research on aphasics, but I’ll let you check out the book for that.

A less new to me insight, which nonetheless could bear repeating in the age when people like to talk about “the best way to learn a language,” is that “brains are as different as faces.”  As such, people will all learn a little bit differently, and there is not a “best” way to learn a language for that will work for everyone.

In sum, I highly recommend the book.

* I don’t mean this to suggest that Krashen’s work was all bad. In fact, some methodology he suggests has worked well in experimental research.  Only I think he gets the underlying mechanism wrong.

Ok, ok. I’m just having a little fun with my literalist friends and others who accuse the Catholic Church of not following “the clear teaching of scripture.”  Today’s lectionary reading includes Matthew 2:23, which reads as follows:

He went and dwelt in a town called Nazareth,
so that what had been spoken through the prophets
might be fulfilled,
He shall be called a Nazorean.

The issue?  No prophet ever literally says that the Messiah would be called a Nazorean.  I know, I know. It may be a play on words with the Hebrew words for “branch” or “Nazirite” or some such other hypothesis (or at least that’s what I read in seminary).  All that to say, when people ask me “where do you find such and such Catholic teaching in the Bible?,” more often times than not I don’t bite.  Some Catholics do, but that’s their prerogative.  My follow-up question is usually “where does a prophet clearly state that the Messiah would be called a Nazorean?”  There’s at least as much, if not more, clear evidence for something like purgatory than there is that the Messiah would be a Nazorean.  So, I generally try to steer the discussion into more basic ideas about interpretation and what biblical interpretation sometimes looks like even within the Bible itself.

“Where do you find such and such Catholic teaching in the Bible?” is, in fact, not really a good question to ask a Catholic in my opinion.  We have a whole theology around the concept of the development of Christian doctrine.  John Henry Newman’s famous analogy is that a doctrine may be found in scripture in the form of an acorn that later develops into an oak tree.  Does the mighty oak resemble the acorn? Not so much.  A better question for a Catholic would be “where is that belief rooted in scripture and how does it develop over time?”

The other lesson to be learned here, follow-up on the Old Testament quotations in New Testament texts.  There’s a whole lot there a lot of our current theological frameworks might be ill-equipped to handle.

I’m not commenting here because I have any great stake in the matter. I don’t even have cable and only have the vaguest notion of what a duck dynasty is.

I’m not sure where I picked up this adage — I’m guessing somewhere in my last 15 years of formal and informal schooling, but one step in critical thinking could be phrased as “imagine the situation in reverse.” This helps us to overcome confirmation bias – the phenomenon that we as human beings have an inbuilt tendency to automatically affirm information that supports our current beliefs and reject information to the contrary.

So here goes:

Individual’s contract suspended by non-Christian (secular) institution for “biblical” views

Individual’s contract suspended by Christian institution for “unbiblical” views*

If you think that second scenario doesn’t happen, I have some proverbial ocean front property in Arizona I’d like to sell you. Or, if you’re not in the real estate market, I could just send you some links to some recent firings.

I’m certainly not saying that second scenario above is right in every circumstance, especially considering the way some institutions deal with situations when they come up. But supposing that scenario for the sake of argument, if Christian institutions want to reserve the right to hire, fire, suspend, etc. based upon the views a person espouses, I don’t think the outrage from Christians over the current situation is warranted at all. Yet it seems that there are a lot of people who are upset by the first scenario but are fine with the second. And I consider that hypocrisy.

PS- There are plenty places I can’t teach for sheer virtue of my views as a Catholic. Feel free to show some moral outrage for me if you like. Or just conclude with me that such is life.

* biblical and unbiblical are in quotes here because I’m not claiming anyone’s views in this particular situation are either biblical or unbiblical, only they are considered so by someone involved

Every now and again because I did my PhD research on second language teaching/learning I get asked what I think about Rosetta Stone.  So, I thought I’d post a link to the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language report on Rosetta Stone entitled: “Rosetta Stone V3 Falls Short of Manufacturer’s Claims.”

As it turns out, a lot of people are interested in knowing how well Rosetta Stone works because government agencies have poured a lot of money into it (It is my understanding that the US Army recently allowed their contract with Rosetta Stone to expire, but I couldn’t find relevant links to determine if this report or others like it might provide a reason why).  So, there are plenty of people who have looked through software more thoroughly than me, and I will defer to them.  All I will say is that I looked at several languages in Rosetta Stone, for example Modern Hebrew and Latin, during my PhD research.  This report pretty well sums up the way that I felt about the product, particularly about the cultural irrelevance of the pictures and the software overstating its claims.

Here’s an excerpt from conclusions of the report:

Our review of Rosetta Stone V3 reveals that while some problems with V2 have been addressed, there is still more room for improvement. Further, it is unlikely that using V3 would have had much of an effect (if any) on the outcomes of our previous empirical study, which examined the effects of V2 on language learning.

Therefore, our conclusions and recommendations remain the same.  The claims made by the Rosetta Stone manufacturers concerning the innovativeness of their product as well as the language learning outcomes possible after use are generally overstated. While it is possible that learners using this product might learn some conversational phrases, the software does not provide the dynamic environment required to practice using the language in context. Rosetta Stone might be a useful tool to supplement vocabulary acquisition in a more well-rounded language course, but as a stand-alone package it is unlikely to be the solution to the U.S. Government’s language learning needs.

If you’re considering purchasing one of Rosetta Stone’s products, you may want to give the whole report a read at the link above.  I’m not necessarily saying not to buy the software.  This report does note some positives about it.  Only, be aware that their marketing may be setting you up with very unrealistic expectations, especially considering the price that you are paying.

This is my version of the meme going around on Facebook (not that anyone asked) to name 10 books that have stuck with you without thinking too much about it:

1. Ecclesiastes – unknown
2. Night – Elie Wiesel
3. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Arthur Conan Doyle
4. Introduction to Christianity – Joseph Ratzinger (or Truth Tolerance and the World Religions, both of which I read around the same time and had a significant effect on me)
5. The Beak of the Finch – Jonathan Weiner
6. The Neuroscience of Language – Friedemann Pulvermuller (close competitor – A Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics – Dirven and Verspoor eds.)
7. The Critical Meaning of the Bible – Raymond Brown
8. The Count of Monte Christo – Alexandre Dumas
9. The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and a Way Forward – Michael Lewis
10. Introduction to Biblical Hebrew – Charles Isbell

Now that the task actually has me thinking about it, this was pretty much impossible.