Expert reacts to YouTube language learning advice. (Dr McQuillan)

[@kingsolver99]

Thank you for addressing that silly "Learning Style" myth.

[@7073cain]

You touched on the noticing hypothesis briefly. I think “noticing” is just part of the process when you are getting comprehensible input. Maybe I don't fully understand the criticism. For example, in the first part of the interview, James mentioned coming across the Spanish word for “machine gun.” After coming across it enough times, he finally acquired it. But he did consciously “notice” the word as a part of the process. It wasn't just passively acquired. I think the advantage of reading over listening is not just “efficiency” (more input per unit time), but that it allows more time to reflect on the input and make sense of it. A luxury we get less of when listening or speaking.

[@futuremultilingual6134]

I think sometimes you notice things as you acquire them and mostly you don't. I noticed because it was so important to the story. What Schmidt said it that noticing is a necessary condition of acquisition. If you think of the 1000s of different patterns and structures in a language this is pretty unlikely. Our language adapts and changes constantly, we pick up words, we change the grammar as the grammar around us changes. If this all had to be noticed it would just become impossible. I'll just add that when you store something, like I did the memory of understanding that word, as an episodic memory like that it probably points to it being quite rare.

[@7073cain]

@@futuremultilingual6134I agree, that the idea everything must be learned explicitly is clearly wrong. But to discount any role for explicit learning seems too extreme- and that is the impression I sometimes get from the CI crowd. I agree, that In the case of the Spanish word for “machine gun,” you remember the circumstances during which you learned the word. For other words we learn while reading (probably most), we forget those circumstances. Each time it was encountered, it was stored in episodic memory, but it was eventually mapped onto your native concept for that word into long-term memory. Explicit leaning is just a strategy for mapping a difficult word or sentence structure to one's native concept for that word or sentence structure. “Noticing,” just a simplified way of describing this strategy.

[@futuremultilingual6134]

@@7073cain Thanks for your reply. I am going to talk about this in a video. I will speak about output and explicit learning. Let me know what you think

[@Elspm]

I think the appeal of the noticing hypothesis is that it feels right, but I think it's likely an example of selection bias and recall bias. Things I notice (by definition) stick out. However that needn't mean the noticing was part of the process of acquisition.

[@jantelakoman]

It just occurred to me that the concept of "late acquisition" is like a rehabilitated, operationalizable version of "fossilization", would you agree? Fossilization is like, "they're stuck, they'll never get this bit" but science is never say never... Late acquisition is like, "OK fine, we can't say they won't acquire it, but it's been an awfully long time hasn't it hmmm!"

[@futuremultilingual6134]

Yep. I see your point. I think what was wrong with fossilization is that it insisted that you would never acquire. Also, the sooner we get past the idea that it is necessary to acquire everything the btter

[@Ph34rNoB33r]

Always nice seeing Jeff. He really looks like Brad Pitt. (For those wondering, not sure whether he still does that, but in the ESLPod episodes back in ~2006 that was one of the running gags)

[@queennerd5581]

Would it be possible to point me in the direction of sources which show that learning styles (for SLA) are not well supported by research? One source, or even keywords that I could search? I want to confirm this before I start making the claim myself. But I don't even know where to begin searching.