Education Archives - The Linguist

14Dec

14 Dec 2021

How Should Languages Be Taught in School?

It's not a good idea, in my opinion, to demand grammatical accuracy from language learners in school, because so few of them end up speaking the language. What does it matter whether they are able to nail niceties of grammar at the age of 12? To me, it doesn't matter. If there's some way of making them enjoy the process of language learning so that they expose themselves to the language, they [...]

11Aug

11 Aug 2021

Why Many People Fail at Language Learning

Education, Motivation

Right now I've been at my Arabic for three years and my Persian for two, I can't say that I speak either language particularly well. I really struggle. My Farsi is now better. I've had the opportunity to use it a bit here and there around Vancouver, North Vancouver, especially West Vancouver. I'm now exploring Egypt in Arabic with Mohammed, my tutor, and I do struggle in our conversations, [...]

29Aug

29 Aug 2019

Universities – Who Should Pay?

Education, Off-Topic

I’m going to stray a little bit from my usual focus on language learning and I’m going to talk about education, in general. I’m going to talk universities and, specifically, refer to the strikes that we’re experiencing here in Canada in the Province of Quebec where university students have been striking for weeks now in […]

03Apr

3 Apr 2018

Language Acquisition: Do Children Learn Faster Than Adults?

Education, Traditional Instruction

I think that children learn faster than adults. There is ample evidence of this, for example amongst immigrants to Canada. Rare is the immigrant family where the children don’t speak English, or French, much better than their parents. Can Adults Learn More Like Children? I also think, however, that adults can learn how to learn […]

06Mar

6 Mar 2018

What Is Literacy?

Education

We have literacy proliferation these days. I just Googled emotional literacy, physical literacy, health literacy, social literacy, and different kinds of literacy. I was amazed at what I found. So what is literacy? To me literacy means the ability to read. The invention of writing is one of mankind’s most useful creations. With writing, we can record things. Writing […]