"最近過得如何?" 這個問題真的很難回答。在一片論文提案的焦頭爛額中，還有言談分析課無止盡的reading和聽到要翻掉的七○年代的對話錄音、語料庫那讓人每用必當機的軟体帶來的挫折感裡…我即將要完成人生中的大事之一---結婚。
我其實沒有那麼在意花束的顏色的，蛋糕嘛，不要食物中毒就好了。喜宴的話，大概我自己當天也會忙到沒辦法好好享用，所以好不好吃大概也就算了。我也不太想要管婚紗穿起來如何--直到我媽覺得我租的那件禮服有點難看，我開始覺得好像很多東西都不對勁了。也才發現我真的沒有好好在做論文。
有一天晚上我做了一個經典的夢，也許正是我這一陣子的心境:
我夢見我穿著那件我開始覺得難看的白紗，在我的房間裡面光著腳。不知從哪裡來的數百隻鴨子塞爆了我的房間。他們又吵又到處亂踏、亂排泄。我拉起裙角試圖保衛我的衣服不被弄髒，但沒有地方可以移動我的腳步，又覺得自己踩在糞便上，又噁心又驚慌失措。
第二個夢跟第一個很像。只是鴨子換成牛群，變得更臭更擠…
是怎麼樣，"王老先生有塊地"，農場上的動物都來了嗎?
已經有好幾次被主任牧師還有教會不認識的姐妹禱告服事。每一次都是嘩啦嘩啦的哭。第一次主任牧師走下來為我按手時我還真嚇到了，因為早上出門前才跟上帝無助地說今天要經歷到祂的愛。之後又有幾次類似的經歷，上帝透過人對我說話。每一次都是像坐雲霄飛車--先是經歷到情緒上的低潮，然後被聖靈鼓勵、大哭，開始變得有盼望。同樣的情況可能只是幾小時的光景反複發生。
我不知道為何重要的大事都要在這三個月裡發生、甚至做出決定。也許這是我的選擇，但是真的太辛苦了。我心裡知道上帝透過牧師告訴我祂要帶領我做出決定，但是我還是很害怕，也很擔憂。
Monday, November 14, 2005
Monday, September 12, 2005
Prefrontal Cortex-where is it and why does it matter?
Prefrontal cortex is the subdivision of frontal lobes. Basically as the name tells us, they are on the front area of fronal cortex, which is around the above of our eyes. The frontal lobes include the important mortor cortex (which affects our somatic senses), and the famus "broca's area" which is thought by some linguists as "main language area".Compared to other mammals like cats, dogs, or even monkeys, we human beings have the most extended area (the biggest) of prefrontal cortex.
The part that's right above our eyes, (dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, DLPFC) is thought to be important for "working memory," -things that can be held for a very short period of time. (dude, i feel this term takes another paper to explain the definition).
The developing and existence of this part of brain function can be seen on experiments done on infants, young children, and monkeys (whoes DLPFC are knocked out).
For example, the A-not-B experiment:
There are two wells in front of a subject (a monkey with DLPFC being removed or a cute baby). The subject watches a reward being put into one of them (say A). Then the wells are covered, a curtain might fall to block the vision and causes delay. Finally the subjects can reach to the well where they think the treat is.
Both the monkey and human baby would reach to A. Then they get the reward.
However, the next time, they would watch a reward being put in well B. This time, given the location they have already seen, they would still turn to the successful pattern of reaching to well A.
Another test they do on younger kids is to ask them to shout out "day!" when they see a card of moon and star, and "night" when they see a card of a sun. Children who were bellow 3 did a poor jobs than older kids. Even though they showed understanding of the rules.
In order to acoomplish the tasks, there must be some information being held active at hand (e.g. remembering the location of the treat, or remembering the rule of the test). But there's also another piece of information coming in/being held that are competing with the other (e.g. seeing the card change, remembering the successful, conditioned location of the treat). An adult or normal person w/o brain damage to DLPFC can inhibit one and reach to the other. DLPFC seems to be in important position in this "inhibitory" function of working memory.
It's actually a good news for us being human. That means we are not just reponsive to any stimulus, or old patterns. We can integrate the new information with the old data, and then make the best solution. Otherwise we would never have new ways of dealing things, like some brain damage patients, who kept pressing the same button or stick onto one way of sorting cards, despite the inspector told them the rule had changed.
Regarding the latency of 3 year old children in the "day-night" test (given that they know the rule correctly)--It's more of the cognitive difficulty. What about learning a language? Normal adults are assumed to have normal cognition. But sometimes I found that, although I know the grammar (maybe not perfectly, but pretty well), the setence just won't come out right. There might be some coordination problem, since motor cortex, especialy for the tongue, and mouth is close to this area. But what's the relationship of working memory, DLPFC, and language acquisition? We can’t be all brain-damaged for learning a language (or are we?)
The part that's right above our eyes, (dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, DLPFC) is thought to be important for "working memory," -things that can be held for a very short period of time. (dude, i feel this term takes another paper to explain the definition).
The developing and existence of this part of brain function can be seen on experiments done on infants, young children, and monkeys (whoes DLPFC are knocked out).
For example, the A-not-B experiment:
There are two wells in front of a subject (a monkey with DLPFC being removed or a cute baby). The subject watches a reward being put into one of them (say A). Then the wells are covered, a curtain might fall to block the vision and causes delay. Finally the subjects can reach to the well where they think the treat is.
Both the monkey and human baby would reach to A. Then they get the reward.
However, the next time, they would watch a reward being put in well B. This time, given the location they have already seen, they would still turn to the successful pattern of reaching to well A.
Another test they do on younger kids is to ask them to shout out "day!" when they see a card of moon and star, and "night" when they see a card of a sun. Children who were bellow 3 did a poor jobs than older kids. Even though they showed understanding of the rules.
In order to acoomplish the tasks, there must be some information being held active at hand (e.g. remembering the location of the treat, or remembering the rule of the test). But there's also another piece of information coming in/being held that are competing with the other (e.g. seeing the card change, remembering the successful, conditioned location of the treat). An adult or normal person w/o brain damage to DLPFC can inhibit one and reach to the other. DLPFC seems to be in important position in this "inhibitory" function of working memory.
It's actually a good news for us being human. That means we are not just reponsive to any stimulus, or old patterns. We can integrate the new information with the old data, and then make the best solution. Otherwise we would never have new ways of dealing things, like some brain damage patients, who kept pressing the same button or stick onto one way of sorting cards, despite the inspector told them the rule had changed.
Regarding the latency of 3 year old children in the "day-night" test (given that they know the rule correctly)--It's more of the cognitive difficulty. What about learning a language? Normal adults are assumed to have normal cognition. But sometimes I found that, although I know the grammar (maybe not perfectly, but pretty well), the setence just won't come out right. There might be some coordination problem, since motor cortex, especialy for the tongue, and mouth is close to this area. But what's the relationship of working memory, DLPFC, and language acquisition? We can’t be all brain-damaged for learning a language (or are we?)
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Evolution of Language
"人類語言到底是怎麼開始的??"
這問題橫跨了生物、人類、考古、社會、心理、語言、民族學等等學科的範疇。這也是我在這裡的研究所處理的問題之一。身為基督徒，我相信上帝創造人類的獨特性。人不是猴子變來的，但是光是去思考為何我們能生為人H. Sapiens，就算從一個接受進化論基礎的角度來看，也是夠複雜的了。如果現在的人類是進化來的，那從什麼時候開始，人除了肢体表情動作以外，開始使用語言? 又是怎麼樣的因素使黑猩猩們到現在還是黑猩猩(註:人和黑猩猩有98%基因相似)? 像Kanzi之類在實驗室長大的黑猩猩(Bonobo)，如果真的承認他們有使用抽象符號思考溝通的能力，這對人類語言(也是種抽象符號)又有什麼啟示?
這問題橫跨了生物、人類、考古、社會、心理、語言、民族學等等學科的範疇。這也是我在這裡的研究所處理的問題之一。身為基督徒，我相信上帝創造人類的獨特性。人不是猴子變來的，但是光是去思考為何我們能生為人H. Sapiens，就算從一個接受進化論基礎的角度來看，也是夠複雜的了。如果現在的人類是進化來的，那從什麼時候開始，人除了肢体表情動作以外，開始使用語言? 又是怎麼樣的因素使黑猩猩們到現在還是黑猩猩(註:人和黑猩猩有98%基因相似)? 像Kanzi之類在實驗室長大的黑猩猩(Bonobo)，如果真的承認他們有使用抽象符號思考溝通的能力，這對人類語言(也是種抽象符號)又有什麼啟示?
times when students couldn't understand...
Part A
This lessen was about using present and past participles such as “boring” and “bored” as adjectives to describe feeling and things. Before the teaching, both Christine and my mentor teacher, Martha had anticipated that students would have problem with the “-ing” form taking a human subject (e.g. “The guy is interesting”).
I started the lessen by showing students pictures of different activities, and then asked them to describe the activity and the feelings of people in the pictures. With this part, I only wanted them to use those –ed/-ing type of adjectives, so I posted 7 pairs of –ed/-ing adjectives (which I had already written on index cards) on the board, and told them to pick an appropriate one from the list.
Students started giving me sentence such as “The roller coaster ride is exciting”, “The woman is interested in the cosmetics”, etc. Then I asked them, “what rules can you see from these sentences?” and I built up the grammar rules from their answers. It’s clear for them to see that activities take “-ing” form, and humans take “-ed” form. But then while I was building the grammar rule on the board, I realized, “oh, crap, students don’t have this grammar knowledge at all, therefore they won’t be able to give me a sentence like ‘the kids are annoying’. How can I introduce the “-ing” form for human subjects?”
So I went back to the pictures, and introduced the sentence with human subjects in “-ing” form. The next 15 minutes I let them play a game deciding which form they should use. More questions came up, and I saw question marks floating on their heads. They got confused with the present progressive and passive voice, which also have the form of present/past participles. Time went by quickly, and I couldn’t even finish the game that I prepared.
Part B
After doing troubleshooting with Christine, I prepared the whole lessen again the next week. We figured out the confusions they had with this grammar point. I came back with beautifully typed up power point. I thought through the steps to bring them back to the grammar points, and to re-clarify the difference between the adjective and verb forms. During the exercise, some students stuck at deciding the sentence “His supervisor is an amazing/amazed boss”. I explained the question by asking them, “are we talking about his supervisor’s feeling or our opinion?” But some of them just hadn’t got the point. In the end Martha jumped in to help me explain the whole concept again. I didn’t even remember how it ended that way…I really appreciate her tho. She always let me try my best, and when I couldn’t handle it, she would come to my rescue. Because we spent too much time dealing with students’ questions, I had to modify my lessen, so that we could move on to next activity that Martha already scheduled.
After my teaching, Martha gave me feedback and told me that she thought my grammar points were extremely clear to her. “They just need more practice to get it,” she told me. I guess I was kinda disappointed after the teaching. When Martha asked me if I wanted to give them more exercise on the same lessen, I told her I wanted to try something else (anything but grammar…=p). Don’t worry, I am totally over it now. After Friday’s class sharing with people my unsuccessful experience and listening to people’s teaching stories, I feel I can start again now. It’s such a great thing to be a student teacher because we are allowed to make mistakes and to not be perfect.
(originally posted on C218 discussion board)
This lessen was about using present and past participles such as “boring” and “bored” as adjectives to describe feeling and things. Before the teaching, both Christine and my mentor teacher, Martha had anticipated that students would have problem with the “-ing” form taking a human subject (e.g. “The guy is interesting”).
I started the lessen by showing students pictures of different activities, and then asked them to describe the activity and the feelings of people in the pictures. With this part, I only wanted them to use those –ed/-ing type of adjectives, so I posted 7 pairs of –ed/-ing adjectives (which I had already written on index cards) on the board, and told them to pick an appropriate one from the list.
Students started giving me sentence such as “The roller coaster ride is exciting”, “The woman is interested in the cosmetics”, etc. Then I asked them, “what rules can you see from these sentences?” and I built up the grammar rules from their answers. It’s clear for them to see that activities take “-ing” form, and humans take “-ed” form. But then while I was building the grammar rule on the board, I realized, “oh, crap, students don’t have this grammar knowledge at all, therefore they won’t be able to give me a sentence like ‘the kids are annoying’. How can I introduce the “-ing” form for human subjects?”
So I went back to the pictures, and introduced the sentence with human subjects in “-ing” form. The next 15 minutes I let them play a game deciding which form they should use. More questions came up, and I saw question marks floating on their heads. They got confused with the present progressive and passive voice, which also have the form of present/past participles. Time went by quickly, and I couldn’t even finish the game that I prepared.
Part B
After doing troubleshooting with Christine, I prepared the whole lessen again the next week. We figured out the confusions they had with this grammar point. I came back with beautifully typed up power point. I thought through the steps to bring them back to the grammar points, and to re-clarify the difference between the adjective and verb forms. During the exercise, some students stuck at deciding the sentence “His supervisor is an amazing/amazed boss”. I explained the question by asking them, “are we talking about his supervisor’s feeling or our opinion?” But some of them just hadn’t got the point. In the end Martha jumped in to help me explain the whole concept again. I didn’t even remember how it ended that way…I really appreciate her tho. She always let me try my best, and when I couldn’t handle it, she would come to my rescue. Because we spent too much time dealing with students’ questions, I had to modify my lessen, so that we could move on to next activity that Martha already scheduled.
After my teaching, Martha gave me feedback and told me that she thought my grammar points were extremely clear to her. “They just need more practice to get it,” she told me. I guess I was kinda disappointed after the teaching. When Martha asked me if I wanted to give them more exercise on the same lessen, I told her I wanted to try something else (anything but grammar…=p). Don’t worry, I am totally over it now. After Friday’s class sharing with people my unsuccessful experience and listening to people’s teaching stories, I feel I can start again now. It’s such a great thing to be a student teacher because we are allowed to make mistakes and to not be perfect.
(originally posted on C218 discussion board)
My first teaching experience at Culver City Adult
This Thursday I taught my first lessen at Culver City Adult School. Although it’s not my first time teaching in front of a class, I still got nervous even the night before. Since students usually are not very on time, Martha led a small information gap activity for the first 40 minutes, so that I could start my lessen when everyone’s there.
The exercise was about “past perfect and simple past”, which was adopted from their textbook. The point is to let students get a feeling of figuring out what happened first in two given past events. In order to emphasize my point, I drew a timeline on the board, telling them about a story of an Indian guy coming to America, being separated from his wife in India, to look for jobs. (I found some random picture of an Indian couple online…just to make my story more believable… =p). On the way of telling the story, I stick the strips of different events on his timeline. After that, I started pulling two random events from his time line, and asked them to make sentence using “Before/After/Because…”
I guess my intro story got their attention. They all looked up at me, waiting to see what I was gonna do next, which made me even more nervous. I was glad that I got my verb phrases all written on the flash cards, which saved a lot of time. . I could just pull them out to make combinations (e.g. moved to Houston, quit his job…etc.). My handwriting was so messy, my hand was shaking, and it felt like forever for me to finish writing a sentence. I also thought ahead all the possible combinations that I wanted to give them, since I am not a person who can talk or make up sentences on my feet. However, I still looked very busy on the stage, coz the magnet kept falling from the white board, and I had to adjust them back while I was talking…
I made a mistake showing them the past form of “quit”. I asked them the three forms of “quit”, then one student gave me “quited”. The first thought told me it’s wrong, but I got confused while I was writing “quit, quited, quit”. When I realized, I crossed down the “ed” and told them, “see, this is treaky, remember not to put ed here.”
I didn’t know using overhead as an aid takes skills until Martha reminded me. When I was using them, I totally forgot to look back and see if the slides lined up from students’ perspective. I guess most of the time they were tilting their heads to read my slides. (I hoped their necks were alright the next day). Also, I should have let the slides stay longer before I moved onto next lines. Martha suggested me that I go to the back of the classroom to check my own writing on the board (when students are doing their exercises), so that I could see from their perspective and check my own spelling mistakes on the board.
It seemed that my time pacing was alright. I got full 45 minutes and I finished all the planned activities in time. After I finished the lessen, couple of them came up to me and said, “good job!” One student told me that she could tell I was nervous at the beginning. “But you felt more comfortable in the end,” she said. I didn’t expect to have students encouraging me for my first teaching. But it felt good! Now from my retrospect, I did have a good time in my first lessen.
(Ori. posted on 218 Practicum discussion board)
The exercise was about “past perfect and simple past”, which was adopted from their textbook. The point is to let students get a feeling of figuring out what happened first in two given past events. In order to emphasize my point, I drew a timeline on the board, telling them about a story of an Indian guy coming to America, being separated from his wife in India, to look for jobs. (I found some random picture of an Indian couple online…just to make my story more believable… =p). On the way of telling the story, I stick the strips of different events on his timeline. After that, I started pulling two random events from his time line, and asked them to make sentence using “Before/After/Because…”
I guess my intro story got their attention. They all looked up at me, waiting to see what I was gonna do next, which made me even more nervous. I was glad that I got my verb phrases all written on the flash cards, which saved a lot of time. . I could just pull them out to make combinations (e.g. moved to Houston, quit his job…etc.). My handwriting was so messy, my hand was shaking, and it felt like forever for me to finish writing a sentence. I also thought ahead all the possible combinations that I wanted to give them, since I am not a person who can talk or make up sentences on my feet. However, I still looked very busy on the stage, coz the magnet kept falling from the white board, and I had to adjust them back while I was talking…
I made a mistake showing them the past form of “quit”. I asked them the three forms of “quit”, then one student gave me “quited”. The first thought told me it’s wrong, but I got confused while I was writing “quit, quited, quit”. When I realized, I crossed down the “ed” and told them, “see, this is treaky, remember not to put ed here.”
I didn’t know using overhead as an aid takes skills until Martha reminded me. When I was using them, I totally forgot to look back and see if the slides lined up from students’ perspective. I guess most of the time they were tilting their heads to read my slides. (I hoped their necks were alright the next day). Also, I should have let the slides stay longer before I moved onto next lines. Martha suggested me that I go to the back of the classroom to check my own writing on the board (when students are doing their exercises), so that I could see from their perspective and check my own spelling mistakes on the board.
It seemed that my time pacing was alright. I got full 45 minutes and I finished all the planned activities in time. After I finished the lessen, couple of them came up to me and said, “good job!” One student told me that she could tell I was nervous at the beginning. “But you felt more comfortable in the end,” she said. I didn’t expect to have students encouraging me for my first teaching. But it felt good! Now from my retrospect, I did have a good time in my first lessen.
(Ori. posted on 218 Practicum discussion board)
Saturday, March 05, 2005
每日一推
今天所要推的主題是"笑話"
不知道現在的高中生是否還是在背那本迪克生片語。這幾年下來我發現那本書除了一些phrasal verb 像pick up, take off有點用之外，其他還真是無用的東西。不過就算這樣的片語動詞如果不放在使用情境中看真正的語意是什麼，也是搞不清楚人家在講什麼。像是pick up除了撿起來之外，也可以是去接回某人，或是像pick-up line("吊馬子/帥哥"的開場語)。
有一陣子我會注意別人所用的俚語，有些時候從談話的內容可以大致猜到俚語的意思。不過後來發現，除非是私底下或是家人間的談話，在學校裡用俚語的程度並不是很高。大家對老師講話也是客客氣氣的 (不過這也要看俚語的"俚"有多俚。有的俚語可能滿俗的，而且是區域性用語，用的時候絕對要看場合)。ESL學生有的時候跟同年紀的朋友在一起學會了這些用法，但是沒學到使用的場合，就會發生那種跟教授講話fucking來fucking去的尷尬場面。
最近我發現一塊值得探討，卻很少ESL學生注意的領域--笑話。
A: Knock, knock.
B: Who's there?
A: Radio.
B: Radio who?
A: Ready or not, here I come.
有一次上第二語言習得的時候，老師用這個笑話(其實也不算笑話，比較像是文字遊戲)測試我們
老師:Knock, knock.
高中以後才來美國念書的外國學生:…(呆呆的望著老師)
Native speaker: Who's there?
因為這是小孩子必有的經驗之一，"Who's there"是標準的反應。但是即便語言溝通無礙，不在這裡長大的學生便少了這個經驗與反應。
我到現在都還記得幼稚園時後的押韻歌:
"炒蘿蔔炒蘿蔔切切切，
包餃子包餃子捏捏捏。
壞孩子壞孩子打一打，
好孩子好孩子摸一摸。"
"小姐小姐別生氣，明天帶妳去看戲。看什麼戲，看妳爸爸流鼻涕。涕，剃，剃光頭，頭，投，投大海，海，海，海龍王，王，王，王八蛋。蛋，盪，盪秋千，千，牽孩子。你是我的乖孫子，天天幫我洗襪子。"
忘記是誰提出來的，不過有人說過，孩子在邊玩邊念這些押韻歌的時候，也正在為他們的語言能力和學習做預演。語言溝通能力就是在這種狀況下越磨越光。而且孩子很容易被聲音，押韻吸引覺得有趣，他們也喜歡玩這樣的文字遊戲，學習去操弄文字和聲音。
不知道現在的高中生是否還是在背那本迪克生片語。這幾年下來我發現那本書除了一些phrasal verb 像pick up, take off有點用之外，其他還真是無用的東西。不過就算這樣的片語動詞如果不放在使用情境中看真正的語意是什麼，也是搞不清楚人家在講什麼。像是pick up除了撿起來之外，也可以是去接回某人，或是像pick-up line("吊馬子/帥哥"的開場語)。
有一陣子我會注意別人所用的俚語，有些時候從談話的內容可以大致猜到俚語的意思。不過後來發現，除非是私底下或是家人間的談話，在學校裡用俚語的程度並不是很高。大家對老師講話也是客客氣氣的 (不過這也要看俚語的"俚"有多俚。有的俚語可能滿俗的，而且是區域性用語，用的時候絕對要看場合)。ESL學生有的時候跟同年紀的朋友在一起學會了這些用法，但是沒學到使用的場合，就會發生那種跟教授講話fucking來fucking去的尷尬場面。
最近我發現一塊值得探討，卻很少ESL學生注意的領域--笑話。
A: Knock, knock.
B: Who's there?
A: Radio.
B: Radio who?
A: Ready or not, here I come.
有一次上第二語言習得的時候，老師用這個笑話(其實也不算笑話，比較像是文字遊戲)測試我們
老師:Knock, knock.
高中以後才來美國念書的外國學生:…(呆呆的望著老師)
Native speaker: Who's there?
因為這是小孩子必有的經驗之一，"Who's there"是標準的反應。但是即便語言溝通無礙，不在這裡長大的學生便少了這個經驗與反應。
我到現在都還記得幼稚園時後的押韻歌:
"炒蘿蔔炒蘿蔔切切切，
包餃子包餃子捏捏捏。
壞孩子壞孩子打一打，
好孩子好孩子摸一摸。"
"小姐小姐別生氣，明天帶妳去看戲。看什麼戲，看妳爸爸流鼻涕。涕，剃，剃光頭，頭，投，投大海，海，海，海龍王，王，王，王八蛋。蛋，盪，盪秋千，千，牽孩子。你是我的乖孫子，天天幫我洗襪子。"
忘記是誰提出來的，不過有人說過，孩子在邊玩邊念這些押韻歌的時候，也正在為他們的語言能力和學習做預演。語言溝通能力就是在這種狀況下越磨越光。而且孩子很容易被聲音，押韻吸引覺得有趣，他們也喜歡玩這樣的文字遊戲，學習去操弄文字和聲音。
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