Powerpoint to illustrate presentation on Modernising Grammar, A Study in Brain Activity, for Association for Language Learning, Friday 30th April:
Two related points were raised during the conference:
1. I was asked if I should not have included Chomsky as a major influence on our understanding of language. I thought this might be sensible, although I do not see that he has added anything to Saussure's work on linguistics. On reflection, though, I was wrong to agree. Chomsky's complete disregard for the need to support his theories with evidence, and his dismissive, ill-considered approach to evidence presented by his critics have harmed language studies rather than advance them.
2. The issue of a "paradigm" of language learning arose in discussion, but I'm not sure that our present state of knowledge allows anything so settled as this. All of our learning involves the formation of neural networks. Whatever promotes these is good, and whatever interferes with them - egs copying, going too fast, presenting too much at one, oversimplification - is negative to some degree. I'll be interested in more detail on the proposed model, but can't at the moment see how it might work. I continue to argue, on the basis of my observations of children learning, that they need to understand fully each aspect of their work, and that they should not be told that not understanding something doesn't matter. It usually does.
The Association might consider running its conference on Saturday and Sunday in future, as it is so difficult for teachers to be released from the classroom. The ILIC conferences on Sundays attract nearly as many people as this conference with that format, and do not have the same national base.
But, as always, some very useful conversations and new contacts. Steve Glover has produced what looks like an excellent set of new resources for A level literature, which he is going to let me check out. I'll review these, and John Crick's excellent new version of Clicker, over the next couple of weeks. Clicker 6, though, is an unequivocal best buy already, chiefly because of the versatility offered by its association with Acapela's new English voice recognition. This makes it an ideal tool for EAL as well as for languages, and a unique bridge between written and spoken language.