Re: OT-ish: txt - Could it replace Standard Written English?

On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 05:59:08PM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> H. S. Teoh scripsit:
>
> > Hold on a sec here... I thought the original discussion was about teaching
> > in schools (which I'm assuming to mean schools for minors). If you're
> > talking about educating adults, that's a totally different barrel o' fish.
>
> In fact, I think not.  The same basic methods that work with adults are
> also applicable to children, although you can give them a dose of rote
> memorization as well to help them past the maggelity of English spelling
> (whereas one may have to accept that adult learners will never get that
> 100% correct or even 90% correct).
Well, I still think there is a fundamental difference. With children,
learning should be a very focused, very disciplined matter.  Basically,
leverage their intense learning capacity. With adults, I think it would
work better with more informal, less intense settings. The underlying
methods may be similar or the same, but the emphasis is different.

> "The fact that the only people who get special education are those who
> can't learn at all by factory methods is a matter of cost, and should
> not obscure the fact that everyone would learn much better if taught by
> special education."
[snip]

Obviously, the best learning is one tailored for that particular person's
needs. But obviously that's not feasible in practice, at least not under
the current education system.

> Learning writing top-down, content before form, is a very powerful
> technique with all human beings.
[snip]

But one still needs the other aspect, which is to be trained in the basic
mechanics of writing, such as spelling, grammar, etc., in a disciplined
way. Like I said, neither should be emphasized to the detriment of the
other. And arguably for children, learning the form is more important
because it is a preparation for the future, when the child has real
content to express. (Of course, I'm not saying children have nothing to
say; just that they should be adequately prepared for when they have a lot
more to say than they have now. It may be inadequate to base their
learning of the forms merely on their current expressive needs.)

With adult learning, this analysis would of course be quite different.
Adults already have reached the stage where they have a lot to express;
that together with the fact their learning capacity is not as much as a
child's implies that it is more effective to drive their learning by
content rather than form.


T

--
Winners never quit, quitters never win. But those who never quit AND never
win are idiots.

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