Mozuku

In recent years, there has been a definite increase in the attention being paid to brain fitness. The starting point was work done on brain placticity in the 60s and 70s that began to suggest that the brain and the neurons that it consists of are not necessarily fixed in number and destined to to a slow and steady decline. They can and do grow and develop as people use their brains.

For language teachers–particularly aging ones like myself who have started mixing up the names of their children–this has implications that cannot be ignored. It is important on an individual level and I believe it has the power to radically affect our present approach to teaching. But let’s leave that second point for a while and concentrate today on the basic notion of brain health.

I have been aware of the idea of brain fitness for several years, but the first time I heard about it in the popular culture was Nintendo’s DS brain training software (this link is for the English version). It was interesting, but hardly seemed a scientific program in total brain fitness. And, of course, it couldn’t give you advice on diet and exercise and positive thinking, things that seem to also be crucial for good brain fitness.

For those of you who are interested in total brain health and fitness and checking out some of the training programs available, there are two great resources available on the web, both connected to Dr Elkhonon Goldberg, author of two books on the subject: The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind, and The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older.

The first one is Sharpbrains. It is really a resource clearinghouse with lots of links to articles and studies. This is a good place to learn about brain fitness. There is also a lot of information here on advice for evaluating brain fitness programs.

The next one, Headstrong, calls itself a brain gym. Here you can actually start training. For the time being it is free, but it really looks like it is set to go commercial in the very near future. You can create a cognitive profile, and select exercises in memory, attention, speed language, or problem solving. Well worth checking out.

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Chatroll is a chat-discussion tool that recently opened. Learners can join or start discussions on any topic.

As I mentioned in my last post, increasing the amount of time learners engage in English is essential for success. Of equal, or I should say related importance, is the need to provide activities where learners can participate in communities of use–places where they can construct identities of themselves as English users. Hanna & de Nooy (2003) asked students learning French to participate in online debate forums at the Le Monde newspaper website. Their students met with mixed success. The ones who wrote simplistic messages asking for help learning French were ignored or met with sarcastic comments. Others who tried hard to actively participate and express their ideas, met with better success. The focus for everyone–the native French users in the forum and the learners–had to remain on the content of the discussion. Hanna and de Nooy say “…the critically important message for this study, framed in the vernacular, is that if you want to communicate with real people, you need to self-present as a real person yourself. From an instructional perspective, encouraging (or requiring) students to participate in noneducationally oriented online communities would involve teaching students how to recognize genres, and subsequently, how to engage in discussion that does not ultimately revolve around the self…as the exotic little foreigner/the other” (pg. 73). That means that using the language and participating as an individual is essential to identity formation and language development.

Which brings us to the big problem of where. Forums for language learners are often too simplistic (”Hi, my name is Hanako and I like music. Do you like music?”) or learners may have been forced to participate and are not likely to participate further (”I’m Ali. I lke pretty girl….aaaaammmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!”). Large forums for native speakers (or near-natives) may be out of reach for many or most of our learners, as the Le Monde exercise showed. The answer might be smaller forums on much more specific topics that learners already have expertise in. Lam (2000, 2004) followed the development of a learner who found his voice and his entrance-way into linguistic competence (of a sort, anyway) by participation in blogs related to a Japanese pop singer. On the negative side, the dangers of this type of learning don’t go away so easily. These sites can also just as easily host predators as active learners. Students need a little heads-up training in online community self defense.

A new site and promising site for this kind of participation is Chatroll, where people find chat partners by topic. The name is made from combining chat with blogroll. There are already lots of topics here, but users are free to create their own topics. This latter function is what makes the site really useful, I believe. Learners can more easily get to linguistic competence and an identity as an English user if it develops through their topic identity. But they need to be able to find or create a group that specifically matches that topic. By being part of a group of similarly-interested individuals, the chances of meaningful interaction are greatly increased. The only problem at this point is that there aren’t that many people in the Chatroll system yet. Hopefully that will change. There may be some topics here that instructors are uncomfortable with ( the flirting group comes to mind immediately, and there is probably some more dicey or racy content). I plan to get my students to report on what they do in their blogs so I can monitor as best I can how they participate.

Recently I took delivery of two books I ordered: Mindset, The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, and The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge.

The former seems the rather tortured product of a Stanford U. psychologist and an unnamed editor who seemed to want to take a good, scientifically-based idea and pitch it to a self-help audience that they believe are not too interested in the data. Wrong (and if you read the Amazon reviews, you get a strong sense of exactly how wrong. Dweck comes across as mostly sincere but often condescending, particularly if you really believe the story she tells that her students sat her down and ordered her to write this book. The basic idea is sound, however: that a growth midset–being open to challenge and learning and striving for excellence–leads to considerably better learning (and business, parenting, and relationship success) than the fixed mindset of people who choose “easy” tasks they can do well so they can feed themselves (or placate themselves) on the laurels they achieve by succeeding every time. According to Dweck, praise is good only if it is praise for effort that leads to more effort. Learners need to be challenged more and encouraged to embrace challenges more, persist in the face of setbacks and learn from criticism. Dweck says the difference between the achievement of these two groups, the growth mindset group and the fixed mindset group is astounding. Her research path developed early in her career when she began to see two types of abilities in children: “…a fixed ability that needs to be proven and a changeable ability that can be developed through learning” (pg. 15). Some kids feed on praise and success and thus never challenge themselves. The job of educators is to help learners understand how brains are like muscles that can be stretched and then continuously challenge learners and support their effort.

A complimentary notion comes up in Doidge’s book, which is about neuroplasticity. In an early chapter, the topic of competitive plasticity arises in a section on language learning. Competitive plasticity is the notion that brain resources are “turned over” to other uses when we do not practice or engage in a certain skill. In this view, first and second languages (for example) compete for brain real estate and when we stop making use of the second language, the first language will just take over the parts of the brain no longer being used. Competitive plasticity also explains why unlearning bad habits (those so-hard-to-fix repeated language and usage errors, for instance) is so challenging–the bad habits are already established and in place with competitive advantage (pg. 58-9).

Dweck’s book encourages us to “learn and help learn” but the combative metaphors flying around in the the section on competitive plasticity in Doidge’s book suggest that more than just encouragement is necessary when it comes to learning a second language. Indeed between the covers of both books, the harsh reality of language learning–the vast amount of time necessary, the need to start early, the need to continually challenge learners, acclimatize them to criticism, and get them able to handle setbacks by trying harder–becomes clear. For EFL settings, the wisdom of these two authors points to more time for language learning, particularly in intensive courses if possible, and the necessity of encouraging learners (realistically only those who are ready and able to make the effort) to max out their time with the language as independent learners. This means access (i.e., internet) and tools and techniques for immersive participation. It means we teachers and our paltry lessons and programs are not enough. We knew that already, of course, though we often don’t embrace it.

The latest WorldCALL 3 podcast interview is available. It’s with Claire Bradin Siskin who is the director of the  Language Media Center at the University of Pittsburgh,  co-chair of the program committee for  WorldCALL 3, and one of the workshop presenters. Her presentation will be on a  piece of  software that allows for rapid content development. It can do the same things as Flash but is apparently much easier to learn to use. The catch is that it–like  Flash–is not free; but whereas the Flash player is  widely  used and preinstalled, Runtime’s Revolution player needs to be downloaded. Check out the commercial site here.  Claire’s  support site is here.