The "Education" Thread
- Thread starter viewerfromnihil
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rms
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The Ozzman
Melted by feels
rms
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Onder
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- Apr 10, 2006
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My situation is fairly complicated at this point. It's actually taking months to work out how my life is supposed to look like for the next few years if I do a post-grad program. Three months ago I got a research job in my field despite not having a PhD and I thought this was a great opportunity to apply for some post-graduation programs because working on a PhD while working in research full-time is like doing two things at once. However there's the financial side which is problematic. I'm still figuring out how to arrange it so I can receive money from both the research institution and the university. Plus I will probably need a third income of some sort. I even know people who have four incomes like this. Fuck, money in research. 
As much as I don't like making budget tables in Excel and long-term planning, this is the time to do it.
As much as I don't like making budget tables in Excel and long-term planning, this is the time to do it.
Einherjar86
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Einherjar86
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Teaching kids who don't speak English well for three straight hours M-F is grueling. Mostly it's just making sure I have enough activities and whatnot for them to do, because they barely speak (for obvious reasons). The only way really to get them involved is to play games, which I don't usually do in class. The classes also can't be too intellectually rigorous because these kids are already completing other work for their chaperones outside of class, and as soon as they leave class they eat lunch and then go on field trips--every single day, sometimes until 9 pm. If I were them I'd be exhausted.
Dak
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What level are they at? I really enjoy English instruction with advanced students, but it can be a real slog with beginners, especially if they're not motivated.
Einherjar86
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They’re virtually beginners. I got the students who scored lowest on the placement test. They’re not terribly unmotivated, but the real reason they’re here is to experience Boston.
And yes, I think their families have a lot of money.
And yes, I think their families have a lot of money.
Blurry_Dreams
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- Apr 2, 2018
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i never wear denim for anything ever
so,
to me, the guys that wear denim pants every single fucking day of the year just seems red-necked to me
Dak
mentat
I wear shorts whenever possible year round. Can't do so in a professional context but that doesn't mean I enjoy dress pants.
Blurry_Dreams
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CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Blurry_Dreams
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Einherjar86
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Why wouldn't you just roll them up?
In other news, Harvard upped my position to .75 FTE and I haven't even started yet. It's a few more students to advise, but the pay's a lot better.
mo' money mo' problems. dink n' flicka.
In other news, Harvard upped my position to .75 FTE and I haven't even started yet.
It's a few more students to advise, but the pay's a lot better.mo' money mo' problems. dink n' flicka.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Dak
mentat
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...-not-whole-word-best-teaching-reading/591127/
McWhorter down on the side of phonics and direct instruction.
McWhorter down on the side of phonics and direct instruction.
Einherjar86
Active Member
I can't help but ask (because this is how my mind works) how a child can intuitively correlate the i sound in "pig" with ih, when they (presumably) would have recently learned that h produces a voiceless glottal sound and not a sound that depends on the shape of the mouth. I imagine that's where instruction enters into play to provide a working base for young children, and then they learn the exceptions as they go/grow.
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It's way outside of my area of expertise, but I've never found the arguments for whole-word instruction to be convincing. Sure, when I'm reading complex texts or taking a standardized exam, I learn/infer the meanings of words I'm unfamiliar with based on the context. Young children don't quite have the capacity for that sort of abstraction -- my adult students have enough trouble with abstraction. Phonics isn't perfect, and the look of a below-average 4th grader stumbling through a text sounding out every syllable and still not understanding what they're reading isn't a good one, but I'm skeptical that using whole-word instruction makes it any easier for students who already struggle with the phonetic method. It is a problem when troubled students get stuck on the syllables and can't see the forest through the trees, if you will. Is the whole-word method more efficient in this regard? Not sure. I don't consider inconsistencies in spelling to be a major hang-up, despite being befuddled more than once in attempting to explain them to young adult students.
I went to about 9 different elementary schools, some using phonics and others not, though I believe my early curriculum used Hooked on Phonics. I had a pretty severe speech impediment and had attended speech therapy since the age of 4 or 5, so it's possible phonics worked well for me because I was already familiar with the notion of sounding-out words and focusing on syllable pronunciation. There's a ceiling, of course, at which phonics no longer makes sense and in which the whole-work or chunk system needs to be implemented. That said, even now I'll still sound words out from time to time, albeit in foreign languages. In German, I used to do it sometimes to try to make sense of some of the longer words (to find those 'chunks'). In French, because so many words are shared with English, but are spelled differently, I'll catch meanings of words through pronouncing them which I wouldn't have by simply reading silently. Dutch is a fun one to do this with as well, given that it shares so much with English and German. The spellings are weird and sometimes unrecognizable, but I can figure out what's going on in simple texts by sounding words out. I know, of course, the use of phonics with small children is very different from my little anecdote here.
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