how to
Oh jeez. I'm stuck in my lecture writing. The problem is how do I explain this to my students? Is it better to oversimplify it, to confuse them with a detailed description which would necessarily include a lengthy history of the very larger context issue, or do I just skip it and say something like "and there's another theory which assumes you don't infer reality?" I'm too tired to sort this out tonight.
2 comments:
I'd recommend just presenting to polar ends of the spectrum. (I assume this is for the psych of lang and you want to give them acoutstic recovery and some variety of direct realist/ articulatory-motor theory.) Then you can mention that there's a middle ground, but not go into detail. Having the middle of an indirect realist compromise theory will just help them confuse it all up. Personally, I've been finding that my expectations of students are kinda too high. While simplifying or even dumbing down the material may be offensive to us pedagogicaly (now there's a fun word I probably spell wrong), it may be necessary given the context (semi-interested undergrads with little or no background). Gotta teach 'em to walk before they can run and all that.
-vengicar
p.s. Read the last post too. My mom wasn't half as abusive as your folks, but I still refuse any contact with her despite her basically being declared a ward of the state and effectively institutionalized. I feel some residual guilt, but I shouldn't; you've got to take care of yourself and draw the line at some point. Shared genetics isn't a license for entitlement.
One big problem is that motor theory is not the same as direct realism. So do I focus on the difference being one of acoustic vs. gesture or do I involve us at all in the other one, which is direct vs. indirect perception? I could try to just skip the latter except the text I chose (at the recommendation of TWO profs who usually teach this) gets into modularity, pretty one sidedly too. I can either present that approach as if it is the final word on it (which I feel is just irresponsible) or I can explain some of the motivation behind it. Those readings horrible, and I doubt my ability to do all the explaining on that one. I can't assume any prior knowledge of or familiarity with this material as this course has NO linguistics or cognition prereq. Just 132. Seems like the best thing to do for them and for me is to present the modularity stuff and say "there are other theories out there however they are beyond the scope of this course". I like "beyond the scope". It's saved my ass on many papers.
thanks for the support on the parent thing. It's always risky to put it out there because for every person who gets it, there are oh probably 100 who would be more than happy to point out "you sound angry!" like it's a friggin news flash, and who want to push that whole lifetime channel forgiveness fallacy shit. I believe many of those people have never really had someone do something that bad to them or have religious dellusions which they wrap themselves in like a fuzzy blankie of bullshit. Whatever gets you through, but I don't want the bullshit blanket, you know?
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