The Linguist - language learning should be fun

Should universites charge the full cost to their students?

Universities want to raise fees because of the economic crisis. Their endowment funds and other sources of income are down. They either get more from the government or they will have to charge more in fees. In most countries the fees for public universities are a fraction of the true cost of going to university. I wonder, if students had to pay the full cost, let us say, over $25,000 per year, how many students would still attend universities, especially if they could achieve the same educational results for less money.

I know there are issues of credentials, but I think these issues can be dealt with separately and more cheaply.

Many of the courses offered at university, especially in the Arts and Humanities, are of little practical use. Much of the knowledge contained in these courses can be acquired by reading books. iTunes University is offering more and more courses online. A recent report points out that students get more out of spending time on their iPods than in lecture halls. If it is language learning, there is LingQ, and other online resources.

It is unfair that governments take tax-payers' money and give it to these institutions, where a majority of professors are more interested in publishing obscure articles and papers for their peers, rather than in teaching. The universities are inefficiently run, and there is no incentive to improve their efficiency. Their true costs are not reflected in what their users, the students, actually pay.

Governments privilege those people between the ages of 18 and 25 who go to university, to the disadvantage of people who do not go to university, or who want to learn later in life. What should happen is that everyone receive an allotment of money at age 18 to be used for education, sort of like education certificates. They should be valid for the person's life. There needs to be some definition of the kind of expenditures that are acceptable for these certificates, but the definiton should not be too narrow. Then let the universities, with their real costs, try to compete for these certificates with other educational resources, such as books, CDs, websites, coaches and others.

Of course there would have to be some kind of testing industry to provide the degrees and tickets that our society requires.

This is just a rough idea and I will be getting back to it. Now I am going back to the Russian video I rented yesterday, to see the ending.

Obama is going to spend more on eduation.

I see that President Obama is committing more money to education. He especially wants more students to attend college.
I am not convinced that Universities and Colleges are essential to further and continuing education,  especially in the Arts and Humanities. These institutions are often bastions of privilege. Professors can pursue obscure studies on subjects of little interest except to their peers, in other words, other people who are pursuing research on subjects of little interest. Students can get "credits" on courses that contain very little knowledge, but are often full of fads or the latest intellectual ideology.

Most of what is valuable in the humanities programs at colleges and universties can be acquired by a motivated learner reading on his or her own, or taking advantage of the Internet. Certainly this is true for language learning, and the related study of literature, culture, history etc.

I think it is time to look at other models that take advantage of 21st century technology and social interaction via the Internet. I think that what we are on to at LingQ, although we are just at the beginning, will help to create a really universal "university" where anyone who is really interested can learn, and can learn from the most motivating and talented teachers. Learners, teachers, and content will converge and be discovered on the Internet. Those learners who are not motivated need no longer be subsidized, and those teachers who just want to study some obscure subject  for the sake of being reviewed by their peers, and who are not interested in their students, will have to support their habit by themselves.

What are the best language related blogs out there?

I would be interested to hear from you which language blogs you follow or enjoy reading from time to time.

More on political correctness

After my post and video on "dialoguing" and political correctness I received mostly comments which agreed with my position.  I also received two comments from typical political correctness defenders. As usual they had no points to make, just insults, innunedo and straw men. And they are not interested in discussion, since they have a monopoly on righteousness. Or maybe I wrong them. I certainly welcome their comments, but I will not promise to agree with what they have to say. Nor do they need to agree with me, but they should at least deal with the specific points that I raise.

Theirs is the same mind-set that has resulted in the abuses of the so-called Human Rights Commissions in Canada. It is the modern Inquisition, the modern witch-hunt mentality, that is far too prevalent amongst the self-styled  "progressives" in our society. These people feel that their views are the only correct views, and they simply want to shut down anyone with different views to express. I respect Ezra Levant for his willingness to fight against this.

A recent blog post of Ezra's shows that the slow to move mainstream is starting to wake up to this attempted cultural revolution, or at least I hope so.

In praise of listening.

By far my major language learning activity is listening.I listen while driving, skiing, walking, shopping, gardening, running, gardening etc.  Reading is  second, and word and phrase review is third. Then comes speaking. I hardly ever write, and only occasionally watch movies. I think listening, that is audio, should be used for a variety of educational purposes.

In response to some of the comments on my previous post, I have never understood the interest in videos for language learning. Videos ties you up. You have to watch them. You cannot multitask with them.
 Every day I go to Echo Moskvi to download Russian audio and text. There are videos there. I have watched two or three videos in 6 months. Videos are not convenient, not transportable, they are less "word intense", and I just do not find them effective for language learning.

Even movies, which can be fun to watch, and stimulating and a reward for the work I have put into the language,  are nowhere near as intense a learning medium as listening, especially when combined with reading.

Victor agrees with me in his comment, but many people seem to want videos. What am I missing?

Any interest in transcripts?

I do both videos and audio podcasts, and sometimes I just write.

Is there any interest in transcripts for the videos and podcsts? I am thinking especially for English language learners. Also, although I may have asked this before, is the videocast better or the audio or both? How easy is it to extract audio from a youtube video?

Also is there more interest in the odd "controversial" commentary, or is there more interest in the discussion of language learning. I can be controversial, even more controversial, if that adds interest from the perpsecitve of the languag learner. I could even be controversial in a few languages.

 I am interested in feedback.

Low cost computers

I hear about very low cast computers designed and produced in India and Brazil. Is this for real?  I have always thought of how LingQ could be used to spread literacy and language learning into countries where a majority of people cannot afford computers. Even if not everyone could buy one of these low cost computers, perhaps schools and libraries could have them. Then there is still the problem of the MP3 player. Is this all an illusion or is there something there that can be done?

Dialoguing, political correctness and freedom of expression.

It is important to challenge orthodox thought. Scientists like Gallileo and Copernicus challenged the established ideas of the church 500 years ago. The ideas of totalitarian societies like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union were not challenged, with tragic results. Nowadays, the forces of political correctness want to control what we say and think. One of their tools is the idea that we can be taught to "dialogue", and therefore not disagree, but rather achieve some kind of harmony of our views. This is nonsense. It is the hurly-burly of argument that stimulates us to reassess our own positions, both because we have to defend them, and because, hopefully, we are listening to contrary points of view.

Here I talk about dialoguing and political correctness.

The Internet, languages and life

The Internet is a great place to connect with language, with history, with knowledge and even with bits of your own life, in a virtual but very convenient way.

I downloaded my usual package of Russian sound files and texts from Echo Moskvi this morning. I was playing them while doing various chores. There was an interview with Gorbachev on the Soviet-Afghan war. It was interesting to hear the Soviet perspective and then to check Wikipedia on the full toll of destruction wrought on Afghanistan by this ill-advised Soviet adventure. Over a million Afghans killed, land mines throughout the land, and millions more injured, or refugees.  Yet I must admit that during the 80s, when this war was going on, it did not receive the attention, nor generate the concern and venom, that the Middle East conflict manages to generate today. I guess the same is true of the other great bloodletting of that period, the Iran-Iraq War. I am not sure why that is, but I have some ideas.

Then the next interview I listened to was with Marina Vlady, whom I remember as an up and coming French actress when I lived in France. I had not really focused on who was being interviewed when I first downloaded the interview. Now as I listened, I was brought back to my years in France, a part of my life that I really enjoyed (as I did all parts of my life). I was in awe of Vlady's flawless (to my ears) Russian.

She described many things about her life and activity as an actress and author and talked about her marriage to Russian singer Vladimir Vysotsky. I was able to look him up in Wikipedia. He lead a heroic-tragic life it seems, larger than life, and yet cut short by what we now call "substance abuse."

Well, today I have enjoyed listening to Russian. I have imported and read the text of the Gorbachev interview on LingQ and saved a bunch of new words and phrases. I have reviewed them. I have learned some things I did not know.

All thanks to the Internet.

How many words do you know? How many have you looked up in a dictionary?

I think that I might know 50,000 or so words of English. That is what a college educated person is supposed to know in English. How often have I looked up a word in the dictionary? Not often, other then when playing scrabble and trying some word that just may be in the dictionary.

Apparently I only knew 7,000 words when I was seven and 14,000 when I was fourteen. I learned from exposure. Now things are not that easy in a second language, but it just shows that the brain can absorb information from sheer input.