Some universities are happily going along with new tracking technology. Let’s turn their cell phones into electronic snitches!
Short-range phone sensors and campuswide WiFi networks are empowering colleges across the United States to track hundreds of thousands of students more precisely than ever before. Dozens of schools now use such technology to monitor students’ academic performance, analyze their conduct or assess their mental health.
But some professors and education advocates argue that the systems represent a new low in intrusive technology, breaching students’ privacy on a massive scale. The tracking systems, they worry, will infantilize students in the very place where they’re expected to grow into adults, further training them to see surveillance as a normal part of living, whether they like it or not.
I agree with that last paragraph. I do not take attendance in any of my classes — the first couple of days I try to get to know them, but I literally tell them in the syllabus that I do not care if they don’t show up for class, except that I do contribute information that will help them pass the exams, so it’s probably a good idea to show up. We also have occasional quizzes and exercises that contribute to their grades. But otherwise, it is their responsibility to show up for the classes they are paying for.
Wouldn’t you know it, though, part of the drive for installing these surveillance systems is college athletics.
SpotterEDU chief Rick Carter, a former college basketball coach, said he founded the app in 2015 as a way to watch over student athletes: Many schools already pay “class checkers” to make sure athletes remain eligible to play.
Here at UMM, we have an appropriate level of monitoring of athletes: around mid-semester, they come around with a form to report their preliminary grades. That’s fair. More is silly. We also have systems set up where we can inform the administration if a student’s grades are slipping, information which is also passed on to the student’s advisor. I don’t need to know where a student is if they skip out on my class — that is none of my business, or the university’s.
Also, I already know when and why my attendance drops: first day of hunting season, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, or the Friday before a fall or spring break. If someone wants to miss my scintillating lecture to spend time with family or friends, I don’t begrudge them that at all.
It will still be on the exam.
The technique has been successfully pioneered by China, to monitor and control the Uighur population. There are also apparently some US military base commanders that are requiring troops to download an app that includes loads of tracking.
All of this relentless capturing of information seems to me to be stupid; they’re not going to actually use it in a way that improves any outcome, at all. It’s “we do it because we can” stuff. Just wait ’till all that data starts leaking, which it will.
I actually care quite a bit whether my students attend class or not, because skipping class is the surest way to fall behind and fail the course. Of course, I teach at an open-admission community college, where many students do not start out with the experience and discipline to master course material on their own (perhaps they can be casual about this when they get to the big U). But I don’t actually enforce attendance by taking roll. Instead I give frequent quizzes (which telegraph future exam content) and try to make it worth their while to attend.
My school uses the same confirmation process for athletes as yours — the mid-semester progress form. That seems sufficient, even if the coaches (and some administrators) would prefer to microchip the student body.
The only time location tracking should be utilized is in response to a life threatening emergency and interestingly, that capability is within many 911 emergency operations centers abilities to engage.
That a school of higher learning wishes to track there whereabouts and activities of its students is worrisome and worse, open for abuse by those who have access to the tracking software. I suspect that the first time such abuse occurs, it’ll involve Title IX, with severe financial impact to the school.
I don’t know about location tracking (who CARES, anyway?), but my university’s official class web page software is good enough to be used by the NSA. It literally monitors each student’s every keystroke, date, time, links accessed, the number of seconds spent on every link, and more. Students are usually quite shocked when they learn how much the page is tracking them, because of course it’s done secretly, without their knowledge or consent. There’s not even a long terms of service document in small print that they click on Accept.
It’s far more information than I want. If a student accesses a certain class resource on a certain time and date for so many seconds, I would prefer not to know. But, of course, the administrators of the web pages know, and can use that data as they wish.
When I was teaching Russian, I did require attendance, but that’s sort of because of the nature of the game. You can’t learn a language if you don’t show up every day to speak it, at least as much as you have the opportunity to, and be exposed to it. (Plus a lot of grammar and whatnot is way easier to explain in person.)
It also made the grading more fair imo, having a large portion of the grade being attendance. Like, not everybody has a huge talent for learning language, not everybody is going to ace all the tests, but showing up and putting in effort counts for a lot.
If I got correctly, the app simply tracks the physical location of students. How is that supposed to monitor their academic performance? Tests and exams used to be how a university monitors the academic performance of students. How can knowing my physical location help a university figure out whether I can pass some exam? Analyze their conduct in classes? What does this even mean? Knowing my location is somehow going to help university staff figure out whether I actively participate in discussions during the lessons? Or whether I am being rude and abusive towards my classmates? I don’t think so. “Assess their mental health” is an even sillier claim. Trained mental health professionals who have face to face conversations with some patient often struggle to reliably assess their mental health. An app cannot do that.
JP @#5
I am fluent in Russian. I didn’t learn the language in some classroom. Instead I learned it by watching movies in Russian, reading books, having conversation in Russian online forums, reading Russian news sites, having face to face conversations with Russian speaking friends, etc. When learning a foreign language, classroom time and grammar tasks are the most useless component. You cannot learn a language by studying it, you can learn it only by actually using said language.
For the record: I am a polyglot, I speak six languages. I know that my own methods for how I prefer to learn languages are somewhat unorthodox, but that’s what works for me. I understand that there seem to be other language learners who do well in classrooms. I am not such a person.
As for grammar, I can just read a grammar textbook at home on my own. In classrooms where I have a chance to interact with other people, I want to actually speak the language I am trying to learn.
I did show up for the language lessons back when I could get them for free at school and also later in the university. The few Russian lessons I had actually were useful for learning Russian alphabet and writing system.
But sitting at home and playing a computer game in Russian also would constitute “effort” while trying to learn a language. (I have a friend who learned English by playing computer games in English language with a dictionary app in one hand and a mouse in the other hand. It worked for him.)
How nice! When I outright told my advisor that I was having serious problems when she noted that I’d missed over a month’s worth of classes, I was told ‘get over it; you’re a grownup now.’
That was just the kick in the pants I needed. Next semester I attended the first week’s worth of classes, then lost it completely and refused to leave the dorm for the rest of the semester. I couldn’t even bear to go to the cafeteria to eat- I waited until the middle of night, then snuck out to the vending machines.
I guess if they’d had this app they could have sent the campus cops to my dorm room to threaten me, because that’s what we do here in ‘Merica. I’d have gone out the window. I was on the ninth floor, so I suspect there would have been a lot of “how could we have predicted this?” hand-wringing in the aftermath.
Meanwhile, did my university have mental health services? Probably. Almost certainly. Did anyone, the advisor, the professor I confided in, the professors whose classes I started missing, the people who gave the orientation lectures, mention them? Even in passing? No. Yeah, I suppose that ‘being a grownup’ meant that I should have looked for them myself. Never mind that I had no experience or learning in how to do such a thing; my previous broke-ass/religious schools had no such programs. Never mind that having a break down means you’re probably not in your right mind anyway. No, I should have very reasonably (despite being quite unreasonable at the time) have calmly and coolly (despite being anything but calm and cool) assessed my problem and accessed the help I didn’t even know existed.
I flunked out of university. I went to a community college, which was less stressful, and managed to muddle through for a couple of years before going back and giving university another shot. I had another breakdown and, since I was out of money anyway, I dropped out for good. Eventually, I sought help.
This app? It’s not help. Sending a bunch of threatening emails to someone having a breakdown is not help. Tracking every move of someone having a breakdown is not help, particularly if they have paranoid tendencies (like me). I have no idea what ‘analyzing their conduct’ means, but I very much doubt that they’ll use what they learn to ever ask if the student needs help. That’s not the way things work in this country, and I suspect that this app will drive more people to self-harm and dropping out.
I’m never going back to school. Despite the fact that I love to learn, despite wishing I had a degree, I can’t bear the thought of going back to that hell. Stories like this one just reinforce that decision.
Oh well, I couldn’t afford it, anyway.
@Andreas:
I learned Russian, too, genius, I didn’t just teach it, and yeah, that also included movies and video games and TV. But it also included a textbook and a teacher and lessons and grammar and explanations. And, for the record, I’m a “polyglot” too, quite considerably, I just don’t feel the need to go around bragging around it.
Take a seat, kid.
bragging *about. Not everybody learns the same way, either. That’s something you learn as a teacher.
Tbh, anyone who refers to him/her/themselves as a polyglot is just about bound to be a tiresome, pretentious @sshole, the type that academia is all too full of. Being abroad is pretty important, too. For the vernacular.
Attendance is tracked at colleges and universities in many Asian countries. Miss enough classes, and they may fail you. In my college they didn’t keep attendance because those who missed classes almost inevitably were dropouts or withdrawals. Once they started missing classes, they didn’t come back.
From what I can tell, the US still offers 2G everywhere, so anyone using an old phone that doesn’t have apps or GPS chips would be immune. Are colleges demanding all students own smartphones?
Most people these days want smart phones, but I would rather have a “feature phone” (a/k/a T9 or “dumb phone”). I don’t have one because there are few 4G feature phones sold in Taiwan, and those sold are terrible. Taiwan forced everyone onto 4G last January, putting thousands of functioning phones into landfills.
Andreas – Is he one of those tiresome individuals you mentioned?
@ 1 Marcus
How easily would it be to simply feed in false information?
At the most basic, the other day I was thinking about being tracked by my phone. I just “loan it to friend for a few hours who is going somewhere I never go….
Off topic: I’m still annoyed that the SNCC hands (or a similar image) are used in that INGSOC logo. Maybe the original intent was “irony” (which excuses all, naturally) but I’m afraid more people today have seen that logo than have ever heard of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The SNCC logo was used effectively and movingly by Ursula K. Le Guin in The Lathe of Heaven.
Requiring attendance and grading attendance create perverse incentives for students who are contagious to show up to class and spread their germs on to their peers. Last year my son had pneumonia. He missed a week of classes, which he caught up on once he was well again. Students should feel safe to do that.
PZ: I’m not arguing against personal responsibility, but shouldn’t study and work discipline be part of the education as well?
Well obviously you work with somebody if they’re sick or something happens and they can’t come to class; it’s not like it’s “come to class no matter what or else.” I mean, I’m sure I had something in the syllabus, but I really didn’t even think about it much; just, you know, come to class. It’s not that complicated.
I mean, the other thing about language classes, especially Russian classes, is that they’re small and personal and high-interaction. If somebody doesn’t come to class, you know it. They’re missed. It’s a human endeavor, after all.
In the last few years I’ve done a 180 on tracking attendance. I don’t think faculty should have to, but I think it would be nice if something passively did. Attendance changes can be big indicators that something is going terribly wrong with a student. You might not notice for just your class, but if a student stops going to all classes, stops eating in the dining hall (if residential), etc., that can be a bad sign. If the school has a good system for dealing with such things, it can be a big help for someone to notice. The RA can do a wellness check if they’re residents, the counseling center can give them a call, there are a lot of ways offices on campus can reach out that is NOT campus police chasing them down. And not just for mental/physical health – they might have lost their childcare, or had to take on another job, or other things where they could either be helped by the school or pointed to community organizations that could help.
Part of why college costs more now is that these extra services now exist, but students in need often can’t bring themselves to use the services in the state they’re in. It often helps to have someone reach out, but the college experience is disjointed enough that it’s tough for anyone to recognize global problems with one person. I say if there’s a way for tech to help, go for it. Just be sure the students know it’s happening. College is a unique, incredibly stressful environment, and the more we can help students through it the better.
Paid class checkers are not new. My uncle attended Notre Dame in the mid-50s. He and a couple of other guys got paid to follow future Hall of Fame running back Paul Hornung around and make sure he went to classes.
@JP
I’m not sure grades should be ‘fair’ in that sense. I mean, grades is supposed to be a measure of how well somebody knows a subject, but this seems to treat them more as a reward for the effort they’ve put into learning the subject.
I’m a polyglot too: “Squawk! Who’s a pretty boy then? Squawk! Pieces of eight, Squawk!….”
Well, everybody’s required to take a language in college, so if they’re going out on a limb and taking Russian, I think they should get some credit for that. I wasn’t out to tank anybody’s GPA. And it’s not like it was an easy A; there were students who got As, some who got Bs. I think the lowest grade I gave was a C.
I personally think grades are bullsh!t anyway, what should matter is learning, but then I went to Evergreen.
@#19, carlie
This is only a bad sign if the student can’t afford to go elsewhere. My undergraduate had unnecessarily expensive mandatory food contracts for their horrible, horrible food service, and basically all the rich kids paid but never went, and the rest of us generally spent a few years subsisting on cereal after trying to find anything else which was actually edible.
JP @#11
When you know absolutely nothing about some stranger who wrote an online comment, you shouldn’t make assumptions about them.
Who said I am bragging? Me knowing multiple languages is nothing particularly impressive given how I live in a country where everybody is a polyglot. When your native language is so small that it is spoken only by a few people, when it is impossible to get education in your native language, when you cannot even get a job while being monolingual, then you have no other choice but to learn some more languages. Everybody learns some foreign languages in my part of the world, because here people literally have no other choice. I suppose native English speakers cannot even imagine a society in which being a polyglot is the norm, because it is necessary for survival rather than an optional indulgence.
Learn some manners, condescending adult.
In my opinion, those are a waste of time and money. I would never pay a language teacher for explaining to me something that I can read for free at home in some grammar textbook.
My point was that there is no single correct way how to learn languages. Classroom time with a teacher who explains grammar is not necessary, it is perfectly possible to learn a language without studying grammar at all. Am I making grammar mistakes in this comment right now? I am not a native English speaker. And I barely had any English grammar lessons at all. I didn’t bother with studying English grammar. For me studying English grammar seemed boring and useless, hence I skipped it. I just picked up English grammar rules naturally while actually using English language in my daily life. This is how I prefer to learn foreign languages. That’s my choice. A snobbish language teacher who tells other people that they must study grammar in some classroom or else they cannot learn a foreign language is wrong. I understand that some language learners benefit from classroom time and grammar lessons, but those are not absolutely necessary.
It’s great that some specific language learning approach worked for you, but this is not the only way how to learn a language. Seriously, just because something worked for you doesn’t mean that it is the only right approach that will work for everybody.
Snobbish language teachers like you are the reason why I used to hate learning languages. At school I was forced to sit down and listen to a French teacher talking about some boring grammar rules. I couldn’t memorize all those annoying grammar tables. I incorrectly assumed that I have no talent for learning languages. Then in my late teens I discovered on my own that I can just ignore grammar completely. By simply using the language I am trying to learn, I could actually learn it and even enjoy the process. Only when I completely discarded the standard language learning techniques (sit in a classroom and listen to a teacher explaining grammar rules), I actually succeeded at learning foreign languages. It became fun. I decided that I wanted to learn even more languages.
https://www.fluentin3months.com/ This guy, Benny Lewis, has been a huge inspiration for me in my attempts to learn languages. He skips the classroom time and instead learns languages by actually speaking them and using them in his daily life. When I tried his methods, I actually succeeded with learning foreign languages. Back when I was a child and was forced to sit in a classroom and listen to a teacher explaining grammar rules, I failed miserably and didn’t learn almost anything.
Brings back a memory for me. Back in the mid seventies, when my husband and I were in college, there was one particular young lady who was enrolled in several classes with us. We noted that she would show up for the first class to pick up the syllabus, then only show up on days when major projects were due or there was an exam. It was frustrating for the rest of us that she usually had the highest scores on the exams. She seemed to not want any social interaction. She lived in our dorm, but we rarely saw her.
Fast forward to when we were living in Texas and had already sent a couple of our kids to college. Some friends had sent their daughter to a small college in Austin. Once, when we asked why she wasn’t home for Thanksgiving, the parents replied that she had broken curfew at her dorm and was being punished by being confined to her dorm for the holiday. Considering that the young woman was around 20 years old at the time, I expressed my dismay that the college could be allowed to treat young adults in such a way. After withering glances, the parents explained that they had signed an agreement with the school that the administration would be able to act “in loco parentis” while their “child” attended classes there. They claimed to be quite happy that their “little girl” was being so well cared for.
I suppose that we raised wild hooligans, since they went off to college and learned how to be adults, often after making a few mistakes. The administrations of those colleges treated them like the young adults that they were, and so did their parents!
magistramarla @#26
Yep, I have done that as well. In university, I always showed up for the first few lessons. Afterwards, it depended. I once got a perfect grade for a course where I skipped about 90% of all the lectures. There, during the first few lectures, I concluded that the professor was boring to listen to, so I read the textbook instead and successfully passed the exam.
But there were also courses where I attended every single lesson, because the professor was great and engaging and I loved going to their lessons.
I believe that demanding mandatory attendance from university students is very wrong. It unfairly punishes those students who prefer to read a textbook at home. Feeling frustrated or envious, because a classmate gets higher scores in exams without attending the lectures, is an unfair attitude—you have no idea how much time and effort the student put into mastering the subject at home, maybe they learned much more than all those students who did show up for the lessons.
Whenever some professor demanded mandatory attendance from me and I didn’t like it, I just showed up for the lesson, pulled out a book, and didn’t hear a single word they said. A professor could force me to bring my ass to some room, but they couldn’t force me to actually participate in the lesson or listen to them. Whenever I concluded that I prefer to learn some subject on my own, then that’s what I did. By the way, my exam results in the university were always extremely high. I had to maintain those scores in order to keep my grant (I had little money, so I needed the financial support, hence I was forced to keep up the high exam results).
Andreas @7 & 25:
As the nearest thing to a neutral observer, I have to say you ARE coming off like a bit of an asshat in this exchange.
I mean, #7 was barely responsive to #5. What JP actually said was simply that regularly using the language is an important part of learning, so simply coming to class and participating is potentially a valid thing to base grades on. Some things JP did NOT say were that formal classroom grammar lectures are the only proper way to learn a language, that self-study and immersion are not valid or important, or even that a university classroom would be their own first choice if learning a new language.
And yet, you took the opportunity to jump in and vehemently disagree with all those strawman positions by, oddly enough, vehemently agreeing with what little was actually said (that regular practice is critically important) and also that you know what’s what because…polyglot*. Your followup just doubles down on the straw-manning and irrelevance in the worst way.
The topic of the thread isn’t “what is the best way to learn a language”. It’s not a place to talk about exactly how you’ve learned all the many languages you know, or the best app rec for video chatting with native speakers or whatever. It’s about (broadly) about university attendance, and whether tracking that is ever appropriate.
I think JP made a pretty good case as far as language classes goes. Not so much because attendence itself matters, but because practice does, which is what you do when you attend. And which you agree is key to learning. (I think a very similar argument could be made for participation in things like basic science labs: you don’t necessarily need everyone’s experiments to succeed, or get the same results, but you do want to make sure everyone is showing up and — under proper supervision — getting plenty of hands on experience with all the equipment and procedures and so forth.)
Remember that point is specifically about how students who have registered for a basic language class should be graded. Maybe it’s not the best way to learn a language in general, but it is how they are learning it, and they do need to be graded somehow to satisfy the records office. If you yourself would never want to learn a language that way, then get this: you don’t have to. Even if your university has a language requirement, it’s very likely they will let you test out of it — if you can demonstrate proficiency obtained elsewhere — and/or let you take advanced literature classes or something instead.
-—–
*And yes, the word for what you did there is ‘bragging’. Nobody who isn’t trying to brag, or drafting a jacket bio for their upcoming book (same diff, maybe), should be referring to themselves as a “polyglot”. It’s just one of those words non-asshats don’t use in a sentence that starts with “I’m a(n)” — see also ‘autodidact’ or ‘very stable genius’. If you do speak several languages, just say that. Or say what they are. Or, if everyone in your part of the world knows and uses several languages just in the course of things and it’s not a big deal, just say “I’m Indian” or “I’m from Lebanon” or whatever.
jack lecou
I think another word you need is “narcissist”.
Happy New Year!
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jack lecou @#28
Wow, native English speakers are weird. In Latvia the word “polyglot” is a perfectly neutral description a person can use to state a fact about themselves. Saying “I am a polyglot” wouldn’t be bragging any more than saying “I am right handed.” That’s just a random fact about a person. Moreover, here the majority of people are polyglots (just like the majority of people are also right handed), therefore this statement would be nothing unusual or attention grabbing, because this is true for majority of the population.
I suppose that’s entitlement. Native English speakers are used to everybody else knowing their language, thus they don’t really need to learn other languages. Therefore for a native English speaker being a polyglot would be an accomplishment, while for a Latvian it is a necessity.
Here’s the problem. If I start talking online about how to effectively learn other languages, the other person who instead advocates traditional methods is likely to assume: “I am a language teacher, I know better, you aren’t qualified to argue against me.” I have been told this crap on countless occasions, hence I tend to preemptively mention that I speak multiple languages. This way some language teacher who adamantly supports traditional language teaching methods cannot discredit me by claiming that I’m trying to talk about a topic that I am not competent to discuss. Since I did learn multiple languages, that means I must at least know which language learning techniques work for me.
I know countless arrogant language teachers who fetishize effort. According to them, you have to attend boring classes, memorize grammar tables, spend many years being bored to death, and then at some point all your effort will pay off and you will speak the foreign language. They claim that learning a language requires hard work, the process must be boring, tedious, and miserable. I have had such language teachers. They have tried to shame me for being lazy and refusing to memorize all those fucking grammar tables. Back when I was a child, at school my French teacher chastised me and warned me about how I was destroying my future by failing to study the language hard. And she was somewhat right—a native Latvian speaker who fails to learn foreign languages is bound to struggle with finding any employment. A Latvian who isn’t a polyglot can only wash public toilets for a minimum wage. Even the job of a supermarket cashier or a waiter requires being a polyglot in this part of the world. As a child, I was shamed and abused by well-meaning language teachers who fetishized effort.
Learning languages by sitting in some classroom and studying didn’t work for me. Not only I was bored and hated the process, I actually couldn’t learn anything. I simply cannot memorize grammar tables. I imagined that I had no talent for languages. I discovered that this assumption had been wrong by accident. I accidentally learned Russian after making a friend who was a native Russian speaker. The two of us didn’t study each other’s native language. Instead we spent time together and talked in a mix of Latvian and Russian. As a result, we both learned each other’s language. I also learned English unintentionally. Playing with a computer and utilizing the Internet required knowing English. Latvian translations don’t exist for most software. Internet pages in Latvian are very rare. Thus I had to use a computer in English, and I learned the language in the process.
The traditional process how some person is expected to learn a foreign language simply does not work for some people. It didn’t work for me. Right now I know many languages despite my language teacher’s efforts. Not only they failed to help me learn, they almost convinced me that I have no talent for learning languages. They almost made me to give up any hopes of succeeding with learning other languages.
Whenever some arrogant language teacher starts talking about “effort” or how students have to go to a classroom where they will study the language, that’s problematic, because such approach doesn’t work for many people, and it propagates harmful myths. “If studying grammar doesn’t work for you, then you have no talent for languages,” is a myth I used to believe. This myth harmed me. It is immensely wrong for some language teacher to insist that there is only one correct way how to learn a language and to try to force this attitude upon their students.
“I have worked as a Russian teacher” is somehow not bragging, but “I speak several languages” somehow is bragging. WFT? By stating “I am a language teacher” a person attempts to show that they are an expert on the subject. Yet my own experience has been that many language teachers don’t understand what they are doing or how they are harming some of their students.
For me memorizing grammar tables didn’t work. Going to a class and listening to somebody explain grammar rules was an epic waste of time. My reading speed is much faster than people’s talking speeds. If I needed to understand some grammar topic, I would just read a book at home. Whenever I am paying for language lessons, I prefer to have conversations with my teacher. It’s a waste of time and money to pay another person to explain to me something that I can just read in a book.
Sure, “I am right, because I am a polyglot,” is not an argument. Similarly, “I am right, because I work as a Russian teacher,” isn’t an argument either.
Back to what was said @#5
I disagree. There is nothing special about learning languages compared to learning any other subject. Personally, I’d rather learn math or biology in a classroom. Languages are the one thing I prefer to learn outside of the traditional classroom setting.
Yes, you have to regularly use a language in order to learn it. No, you don’t have to show up at some classroom. Speaking in said language with a friend at home is much more useful than showing up for some boring class where you will be bored and half-asleep.
Again, I disagree. I’d much rather read a grammar book at home, given how my reading speed is much faster than some person’s talking speed. Paying another person to explain grammar rules to me would be a waste of time and money.
How is this “fairer”? Some students do well in traditional language lessons. Others (like me) fail miserably in this kind of learning environment.
As for “showing up and putting in effort counts for a lot,” that just sounds like another attempt to fetishize effort and claim that effort is good for its own sake even when there are no results and the student fails to learn anything.
And I argued that mandatory attendance for language classes in an unnecessary requirement.
Yes, practice, not attendance matters. You can skip all the language classes and get practice in other places.
Yes, and I said that grading students based on their attendance is a poor approach.
Hahaha. You sure haven’t met some of the language teachers I have had.
To conclude, when it comes to learning languages, one size does not fit everybody. There is no single right way how to learn a language that would work for every student. “In order to get a passing grade, you have to show up for the lesson and sit still while I explain the grammar rules” is a bad attitude for a language teacher to have. Back when I was in my mid teens, I had such language teachers. It didn’t work.
chigau (違う) @#29
Are you implying that I sound like a narcissist? Because I used the word “polyglot”? Jeez, what’s wrong with native English speakers? Look, in Latvian “polyglot” is a value-neutral word. Assuming that English speakers really have something against the word “polyglot,” I hadn’t heard about this before. I know that this word is used in English in normal contexts, for example Benny Lewis calls himself “Benny the Irish Polyglot.” I have read his blog a lot, so this is my main source from which I am familiar with the word “polyglot” in English.
Besides, how can “I am a polyglot” be a narcissistic statement if similar other statements are fine? “I am a Russian teacher” and “I speak several languages” also express the same meaning, namely that some person knows more than one language. Why is one statement bragging while the other statements aren’t bragging?
Native English speakers in the US often don’t learn foreign languages other than Spanish, which is the most useful. (At least where I grew up.) Also, the vast majority of the US population really isn’t wealthy at all, and inter-continental travel is heckin’ expensive. Heck, just getting from city to city or state to state takes lots of time and money. (It’s a big country.)
I had to be special or something and learn Russian, though. (Well, I got interested in the novelists and the poetry.) It’s not nearly as close to English as e.g. German or French, but there are still some cognate words from back in the day. The grammar is really complicated compared to English, but it hearkens back to Indo-European stuff. (Greek, Sanskrit, Latin, etc.) I believe I’ve heard that Slavic languages are the closest to PIE, except for the Baltic language family. I think somebody I knew actually managed to convince a professor that she didn’t need to study Sanskrit for linguistics because she knew Latvian.
No, but “I am a polyglot” is. At least to my ear, the word ‘polyglot’ specifically has a pretentious connotation that doesn’t sound natural in normal conversation (even IF it’s relevant, but especially where it’s not). Yes, it’s a perfectly cromulent word, one which I might use in some contexts when talking about someone else. But it has an unseemly flavor as a self-descriptor. YMMV. (Especially if coming from another native language.)
“I speak several languages,” on the other hand, would work, in the right context. Note that this isn’t really the right context, though. The subject wasn’t the best way to learn a foreign language, the subject was university class attendance.
The emphasis there was really on teacher — an experience relevant to a discussion about class attendance. The language part comes in only inasmuch as language classes — if taught properly — tend to work somewhat differently than, say, physics lectures, and so might arguably merit a tailored approach to grading and attendance. As I read it, JP’s entire point rests on the idea that their Russian classes were NOT boring grammar lectures, but venues for active participation.
You’re attempting to plaster your own contrary anecdotal experiences on top of that, in order to exercise a personal hobbyhorse. Maybe your language teachers were terrible. Fine. But unless one of them was JP, it’s not really relevant, is it?
And, like, I get that you had bad experiences with formal classes, but what exactly are you arguing for? At the end of the day, university language classes are still going to be a thing. Are you suggesting that teachers of such classes should just stand up on the first day, tell the students there are probably better ways to learn, and cancel class?
FWIW, my own language teachers were quite good, or at least the best they could be given the acknowledged limitations of a classroom setting. They’d be the first ones to encourage you, wherever possible, to strike up outside conversations with native speakers, travel to the country in question, etc. But they also still had a class to teach.
There’s nothing special…but that’s the one subject you’d approach differently. Gotcha.
Not even if you have registered for a language class? You yourself wouldn’t be caught dead in one. We get it already. But if you were — or if you were teaching one — how should it be graded?
Maybe, though opportunities to chat with native Russian speakers or whatever might be sharply limited if you’re stuck in middle America somewhere. And, again, you’re still enrolled in a class. What do you imagine that class should consist of? On what is your instructor supposed to be grading if not activities connected to that class?
Once again, note that if a student already has gotten that practice in other places, there are avenues to get appropriate credit or placement for the purposes of language course requirements. If you’ve already learned, e.g., Russian, you’re probably not supposed to just sign up to Russian 101, then skip the whole semester and pass the final or something.
No. Not everyone has. Kinda makes you think, don’t it?
Self aggrandizing branding for the purposes of promoting a blog persona is not what I would call a “normal context”. That gets a pass in roughly the same way BMW does for calling itself “The Ultimate Driving Machine”.
On the other hand, if he actually introduces himself to people at parties that way — rather than something more like “Hi I’m Benny, I run a blog about language learning” — then yes, he’d kind of sound like an asshat.
Andreas Avester
I suggested “narcissist” because I’ve read most of your posts and comments on FtB.
“polyglot” was just this thread.
Back when I was still at university, “attendance required” in a class’ syllabus was pretty much an instant disqualifier when it came to enrolling for classes. Only ones I voluntarily took with required attendance were also prerequisite classes. Thankfully, it seems to be pretty rare in most fields. I think in my entire sociology and philosophy experience I had one class with required attendance.
Weird. At Evergreen attendance was just kind of assumed. I mean, it was a freewheeling school in a lot of ways, but you had to go to class.