Sengoku Strider wrote: ↑Mon May 27, 2024 5:11 amI'm holding back another rant here.
One thing I recall from yootoob street interviews in Japan were the number of people who said they'd like to know how to speak English as a skill. I know they're young people but.... ehhhh.... it's not as bad the oceans of fat people who "want" to lose weight (I infer this from all the weight-loss tricks and bullshit available in the markets), but it still reminds me of
Maddox's rant about science.
Bernies Sanders always said "show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you really care about." If they're not spending a little time toward it, it's not really a goal of theirs. And I think it shouldn't be for the vast majority of people, unless they want to move to another country.
English is the hardest language to master, after all.
I get your point of view of having an authority figure guide people and a social environment to keep them motivated, especially for normies, but I've always looked at learning new things as a very internal thing. And external interactions can be a hindrance. Hopefully the average college course exceeds the horror show of highschool language classes - which I'd put almost around par of watching anime with english subtitles (instead of japanese subtitles) in terms of uselessness. At least someone might learn a couple one-word phrases, like soogoy and saying "utah!" for good morning.
I really do shudder at the attempt of using words to teach words at such a basic level. People aren't LLM's, they need multi-modal context. Grinding out basic stock noun and verb memorization can't be done any better than with software. Constant, active use of the brain to try to recall words and connect them to images/video, and immediate constant feedback. Memorizing small chunks of things is trivial that way.
I'm sure there's nuance in grammar and pronunciation that a teacher could help with, but for some sad shithead who can't even say "potato" yet, it's kind of like giving a cat a primer on physics.
external interactions can be a hindrance.
One j-tuber, I think maybe it was Abroad in Japan, told this story of filling in for an english teacher or something. And was going around the room having the students take turns to attempt to speak a word out loud. When he got to this obnoxiously long word for some kind of French food or something, a word no native english speakers would know how to say, one of the quiet guys in the class got ambitious and took a stab at it.
He blundered it, as he was destined to from the start, and the class laughed at him good-naturedly. He got furious and yelled at everyone. I think about that dude sometimes, when it comes to social interactions. Good luck thinking about anything else all day if you happened to have been there at the time.
... since we're off topic on Japan (even if it is always on topic in shmups.system11), here's that
Train Otaku video for everyone to watch again.
they're unicorns
One common odd social interaction I used to have in highschool, is someone would ask me "where did you learn to juggle?" And I told them I read a book. And then they'd laugh.
They'd laugh at me, like that was the craziest, most unhinged shit they ever heard.
And I'd stand there completely baffled at their reaction. "They're laughing. I read a book and they're
laughing" is what I would have thought, if that had been a meme at that time.
Juggling is really one of the greatest low effort - high reward skills someone can learn. Anyone can learn to juggle three things at a time in an afternoon. It's the exact opposite of learning a language.
... juggling five or more things though, that's gonna take some work and commitment.
overachiever fakes
..... hrm, perhaps they're who those achievement unlocked trophies we've been talking about lately are for....
A false unearned sense of accomplishment. Like a certificate that says you attended a 2 hour long "course" on degreasing pipes or whatever.
