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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
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References: <D3C4uG.DFK@spss.com> <D3DsyK.1tt@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <D3Fpv3.8o2@spss.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 16:18:02 GMT
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In article <D3Fpv3.8o2@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <D3DsyK.1tt@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
>Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>In article <D3C4uG.DFK@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>
>>>Some ways of acting like children can however be very useful in learning
>>>a foreign language: talking without regard to whether the grammar is right;
>>>reading comic books; learning by talking to people rather than from drills.
>>
>>So you're an expert on this, are you?  
>
>What is this supposed to mean? 

You're making a number of assertions.  Why should I believe you
rather than, say, the people who taught languages at my university?
Now, I suspect that my model of "drills" may be different from yours.
At one point, based on the kinds of drills I'd encountered up till then,
I'd have a greed with you.  (I said this in my previous article too.)

BTW, I agree that what you say is useful (above) is useful.

>        If you disagree with my observations on
>language learning, why not say why that is, or ask what they're based on?

I disagreed because of what I've seen of language teaching.  But I
don't want to go into the details.  It would take time, and it's not
something I'm very interested in.  Anyway, perhaps the teaching
methods I encountered were all nonsense.  I don't know.  They worked
only moderately well with me.

-- jeff

