we learn from successes not failures

It's in the news! Science news. An article has just come out at Science Daily that says brain cells react and learn from successes. "After a failure, there was little or no change in the brain — nor was there any improvement in behavior."

From the article, it seems the research was done on animals, such as monkeys. I wouldn't be surprised if the results were different for humans because humans have more emotional feelings.

Of course, our objective is to learn how to do something correctly, not incorrectly.

Another thing to note is that the animals only knew if they had responded correctly when they were rewarded. So in this study rewards were given. Maybe we learn better if we get rewarded, I'm not sure. But the tests were too simple. Scientists are still studying the very basics and using simple little tests. But at least they are looking at the brain and seeing what does happen. If you read the article, think about how the brain is learning naturally and on its own.

When we study a language, our reward is being able to understand. But what makes a reward rewarding? Is looking up a translation in the dictionary rewarding? When excitement is created, that is rewarding. Using a dictionary is hardly exciting. But understanding on your own is exciting. It's a great reward.

Here's a link to the article: Why We Learn More From Our Successes Than Our Failures

What do you think about the article? Do you have any praises or criticisms? Is the study relevant to language learning?

more on David Long

Catherine Wentworth posts interviews with successful Thai language learners and her latest post is an interview with David Long, the director of ALG World at AUA.

If you are not aware, David Long is one of the first students to complete the AUA Thai program and reach native-level Thai. I still have yet to see a video of David speaking Thai, but since I don't know the language myself I guess I won't lose any sleep over it.

Although it would be cool if there were a video with David Long speaking Thai with Stu Jay Raj. The two of them would probably make you think that learning Thai should be easy! Of course, if you were to go through the AUA Thai program at ALG World, it would be easy.

ALG Thai interview with David Long

Antonio Graceffo has uploaded an interview with David Long, the director of ALG (Automatic Language Growth) Thai. It has 5 parts, and since Antonio hadn't created a playlist for it, I created one myself. It's a very good interview. Thanks Antonio!



I hope to some day get a chance to go to AUA and enter this Thai program. I want to experience it for myself. And I don't mean "just experience it." I would complete the program and come out a native Thai speaker.

Here is a link to my playlist: ALG Thai presented by Antonio Graceffo

don't believe the lies!

You will hear the lies. You will read the lies. Don't believe the lies!

Let me list the lies in the article, Unraveling how children become bilingual so easily.

1. The best time to learn a foreign language: Between birth and age 7.
2. The brain tunes out sounds that don't fit.
3. babies being raised bilingual — by simply speaking to them in two languages — can learn both in the time it takes most babies to learn one.
4. While new language learning is easiest by age 7, the ability markedly declines after puberty.
5. As an adult, "it's a totally different process. You won't learn it in the same way. You won't become (as good as) a native speaker."
6. "You'll be surprised," Kuhl says. "They do seem to pick it up like sponges."

Why you should not believe what researchers say about language learning

These researchers have no clue as to how people learn languages. They do not really know what language learning is, therefor they cannot create a valid test. All of the researchers tend to test language-learning ability in one way. That way is to test how well individual words are learned in a short period of time. Sometimes as little as one day. First of all, language learning is not just learning words or vocabulary. Second, being able to recall the words the next day does not mean that they have been learned.

In the article above, it refers heavily to recognition of sounds not in your native language. There has been an erroneous conclusion that is often repeated. Sometimes it is stated as such: you cannot hear sounds not in your native language. That would be obviously false. All sounds enter your ears whether or not you've ever heard them before. This article states it in another way, saying that we lose an ability to distinguish sounds by the age of 11 months. This is erroneous. Rather than losing, we actually gain an ability to consolidate sounds and make sense of them. Have you ever thought somebody said one thing when they actually had said another, in your native language?

The brain tries to make sense of what you hear. There is a lot of processing going on to make sense of the language. The article mentions the difficulty of Japanese people being able to distinguish the difference between the words lake and rake. Of course their mind would only bring up the word that they know if they didn't really know both words. If they did know both words but always used the same pronunciation in their mind then they hadn't even established the difference in the words. Most likely, rake would not be a familiar or necessary word for a Japanese person.

Japanese people can hear the difference in pronunciation, but they don't remember which pronunciation had which meaning. That is the actual problem. They may not even know which sound is L and which one is R, but they can hear the difference! Now, if you don't know which sound is which, you will immediately forget which one you heard. The problem then would be that the sound cannot be accurately identified. The problem is not being unable to hear the difference.

I'm sure that my explanation above will be very unclear for many of you. But let me continue. A sentence from the article begins with, "Japanese college students who'd had little exposure to spoken English..." That identifies a big problem, doesn't it?! By college, students have studied English for 6 years. If you spend 6 years not listening to English but studying it, then you will not have made a distinction in your brain between the sounds of words.

The solution is not to teach the difference but to listen a lot. Show me students who had a lot of exposure to spoken English and you will find that they can tell you which sound is being spoken. Even if they start getting that input after puberty or after reaching adulthood, they will be able to do it.

If you start with a false assumption, your research will have false conclusions. There are better ways to research language learning than to base it on tests which don't test what you think they are testing. So please don't believe anything these researchers tell you about language learning! Don't assume that just because they are professional researchers that they are doing anything correctly. If they want to research language learning, why don't they go and actually learn some languages!