Étude 001: Linguistic proficiency

This post transcludes a Google Doc that in turn transcludes a chart from a Google Sheet.



Hopefully I can find a way to make the viewing window in this post wider and taller than it is.

For now, it'll be easier to read the doc. itself: http://bit.ly/Étude-001

A Perfect World Is One with No Grades

"To best report learning without the evaluative and sorting/ranking issues surrounding grades, students need to describe (a) what they tried to learn and why, (b) how well they learned it, and (c) how they know (what evidence they have)" (Brookhart, 2019, Support and Report Learning without Grades, ¶2).

Brookhart, Susan M. (2019). A Perfect World Is One with No Grades. ASCD Express, Vol. 14, No. 31. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol14/num31/a-perfect-world-is-one-with-no-grades.aspx

If you're talking 'bout a learning revolution, count Steve in!

A Learning Revolution Project is underway, as is–or soon will be The Learning Revolution Conference (April 21-24, 2014), one of many organised or supported by Steve Hargadon. 

Steve announces these projects and programs in a rack of newsletters and blog posts bursting with information and inspiration with regard to both education and educational uses of technology. For example, the snippets below about risk-taking resonated with concepts of learned helplessness (Maier, Peterson, and Schwartz, 2000) and growth mindsets (Dweck, 2006) that have bubbled up in consciousness as a new semester gets underway.

In follow-up remarks about risk-taking as a fundamental component of proactive learning, Hargadon argued, "Failure is a one of the natural outcomes of risk, but we're not striving for failure--instead, we are encouraging risk and acknowledging that failure will often be the result. / Without risk, there is no progress" (Hargadon, 2014, Final Notes, ¶¶2-3). Yet in contrast, Hargadon observed, "… A high-stakes, test-driven education environment induces the opposite of risk-taking, it creates fear, and so results in little intellectual progress" (Hargadon, 2014, Final Notes, ¶4).

Celebrating failure itself, of course, makes no sense; nor does never allowing for it. Education is a choice we make in how we think about learners. If we want learners who will take risk, build their skills and talents, and then learn to live their lives fully as contributors and creators, we'll recognize that they need to learn to prepare [for] and take risks, and that failures are an inevitable part of that process. 

(Hargadon, 2014, Final Notes, ¶7).

For more about about Steve's work across the field of education, I recommend browsing through the projects and labs he features on his blog (Steve Hargadon: Projects), and checking out the communities he supports in various other venues (Web 2.0 Labs: Communities). You may well find one or more to suit your own needs. For a bit of follow-up reading on mindsets, I suggest you check out Tomorrow's Professor, post 1324, Mindsets for Learning (April 18, 2014 [JST]), and the list of references included there.

References

Dweck, C.S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House. 

Hargadon, Steve. (2014, April 15). Learning Revolution Free Events - GREAT Keynotes - MiniCon - ISTEUnplugged! - Striving for Failure? [blog post]. Retrieved April 18, 2014, from http://www.stevehargadon.com/2014/04/learning-revolution-free-events-great.html

Maier, Steven; Peterson, Christopher; & Schwartz, Barry. (2000). From helplessness to hope: The seminal career of Martin Seligman. In J. Gillham (Ed.). The science of optimism and hope (pp. 11-37). Radnor, PA: Templeton Foundation Press.

[420 words]

The languages of Japan

Thanks to David Paul (LinkedIn) for pointing out a great post by Keiko Tanaka (GlobalVoices) about endangered languages in Japan, in which she interviewed Byron Fija (official site).

• Japan's Endangered Languages Still Considered Mere Dialects (GlobalVoices, 2014.03.01).

Tanaka's interview shed light on a number of issues related to definitions of and attitudes towards those languages in Japan, in particular, the tagging of a group of them, Ryukyuan languages, as dialects. The interview post included a detailed map of the Ryukyuan languages by Fija, with transliterations by Tanaka. The lines across the East China Sea in the map as well as the text of the interview highlighted lack of homogeneity among the languages of Japan.

To lean in and round up the discussion, I'd like to share a mashup of notes about disputed higher level classifications of Japanese and arguably related languages that I'd sent to a student working on a graduation paper last year. Here is the mashup:

I used the DigitalColor Meter app (a Mac app.) to check the area north and east of Korea and Japan [in a map from Before It's News, 2013], both of which were color-coded as isolates. Though it was [coded] the same color, the area to the NE of Korea and Japan may actually be a Yupik branch of Eskimo-Aleut (Wikipedia, Eskimo-Aleut languages, ¶4).

(close-up from Before It's News, 2013)

That same area NE of Korea and Japan is color-coded as Paleo-Siberian in another map (Wikipedia, Primary Human Language Families Map). The Primary Human Language Families Map still coded Korean as an isolate, but coded Japonic as a separate family of languages, one which may include Ryukyuan languages (Lewis, 2013).

There is plenty of controversy about relationships among Japanese, Korean, and other languages, for instance: "According to its [Altaic's] proponents, Altaic is a language family comprising at least Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic" (Wikipedia, Classification of Japonic, Altaic hypothesis, ¶1). 

The idea of a Japanese-Korean relationship overlaps the extended form of the Altaic hypothesis..., but not all scholars who argue for one also argue for the other. For example, Samuel Martin, who was a major advocate of a Japanese-Korean relationship, only provided cautious support to the inclusion of these languages in Altaic, and Talat Tekin, an Altaicist, includes Korean, but not Japanese, in Altaic....  

 (Wikipedia, Classification of Japonic, Korean hypothesis, ¶6).

Pereltsvaig (2012) summed up controversy about an Altaic language family, suggesting similarities [among those languages] might be due to borrowing rather than genetic[, but the matter is by no means resolved]. Lewis (2013) reexamined related issues.

…

References
Lewis, Martin W. (2013). Altaic and Related Languages. GeoCurrents. Retrieved from http://www.geocurrents.info/cultural-geography/linguistic-geography/altaic-and-related-languages 

Pereltsvaig, Asya. (2012). The Altaic family controversy. GeoCurrents. Retrieved from http://www.geocurrents.info/place/russia-ukraine-and-caucasus/siberia/the-altaic-family-controversy

(pab, personal correspondence, 2013.12.14)

Viewed from both up and down the human language family tree, it seems clear that the languages of Japan are neither homogeneous nor unique. Hopefully we'll achieve a modicum of certainty before the majority of those languages in the far reaches of Japan die out completely.

[501 words]