21 Jan 98 Ernie Franklin - Instructional Technology Forum ...

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27 Jan 98 M. Dooner In a conversation with an industrial colleague some time ago, he succeeded, as far as I was concerned, in capturing the essential distinction between what is meant by education and training. It goes something like this... "If your daughter came home from school and told you that she'd had sex education, as a father you would be interested. If, however, she told you that she'd had sex training you would be alarmed." The point here is that analogy (or metaphor) is infinitely better at conveying meaning than definition. It has color, impact, directness, immediacy, vitality, etc. M. Dooner Department of Engineering Design & Manufacture University of Hull Cottingham Road Hull HU6 7RX E-mail: M.Dooner@edm.hull.ac.uk
1 Feb 98 Steve Draper I recently had an experience I am still digesting concerning vocabulary in teaching. I ended a block of six lectures to a final year undergraduate class by putting up an OHP [overhead projector] slide with some of the long words that had been used, and asking the class what they meant. I did this because of the research showing that a failure of common understanding between teachers and students of technical vocabulary is a major barrier to effective teaching in my, and probably in all, universities. (See http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/vocab.html for a note on this.) It felt a comfortable thing to do, both in planning and in execution. The students seemed to say it was useful to them, although one said I should do it at the start as well as at the end of a block of lectures. For technical words I had introduced, this was a good concluding tactic. For some other words it seemed to show some of the worrying problems the literature had warned me about. I also realized that I was as hesitant and inconclusive as the students about actually defining some of the terms. By serendipity (or anyway coincidence), only an hour or two after that I read the accumulated e-mails from ITForum about how to define the field of Instructional Technology, in which one person [Tripp, 20 Jan 98] argued that there is not and cannot be a sensible definition for names of academic fields: they have a developmental history and such words are necessarily like Wittgenstein's example of the word "game." They don't have definitions specifying necessary and sufficient conditions. I am still wondering what to make of this. From research literature I know that vocabulary is a serious problem, and that it is ignored by almost all university teachers, but that this damages teaching and I should be doing something about it in my own practice. I certainly feel that I should be able to define the words I use to my students. But the argument says I shouldn't. And in fact it is true that the terms that had us all stumbling the most referred to fields: neurophysiology, psychophysics. And it must matter. For instance I recently used the word "neurophysiology" in an exam question. What reason do I have for believing the students knew what it meant? I can't remember telling them. And if they didn't know, then the whole question reduces to a trivial surface test of vocabulary. What should I make of this? ● We have final year honors students taking a specialist vision course who cannot say, and do not really know, what "psychophysics" means. And one of them seemed pleased to understand for the first time that "physics" and "physiology" were not interchangeable terms. So I guess the research is right, and though I suffer strongly from the normal feeling that surely everyone has the same vocabulary as me and besides which it's not my job to teach English so I shouldn't have
Page 1 and 2: A Discussion of "Vocabulary and the
Page 3 and 4: 19 Jan 98 Howard Solomon As you beg
Page 5 and 6: 20 Jan 98 Puja Anand I read quite a
Page 7 and 8: 20 Jan 98 Steven D. Tripp In genera
Page 9 and 10: 21 Jan 98 Ernie Franklin [referring
Page 11 and 12: 21 Jan 98.a Nada Dabbagh [Referring
Page 13 and 14: 21 Jan 98.b Nada Dabbagh [quoting B
Page 15 and 16: 21 Jan 98 Walter Wager [quoting Dab
Page 17 and 18: E-mail: pleft@verso.co.nz
Page 19 and 20: Never, however, do these words slip
Page 21 and 22: 22 Jan 98 Frances Bell Thanks Dan S
Page 23 and 24: Athens, Georgia 30602-7144 USA Phon
Page 25: 22 Jan 98 Mike Kost It seems to me
Page 28 and 29: 23 Jan 98 Evelijn Bos I think that
Page 30: 23 Jan 98 Joe Beckmann One can defi
Page 33 and 34: 24 Jan 98 Johan Viljoen This is a V
Page 35 and 36: 24 Jan 98 Richard Cornell Johan's c
Page 37 and 38: 24 Jan 98 Mike Peay A few contribut
Page 40 and 41: 26 Jan 98 David Carter-Tod [quoting
Page 42 and 43: If anyone thinks that these types o
Page 46 and 47: to explain what I mean by the words
Page 48 and 49: 1 Feb 98.b Heather MacLean Ooh, jus
Page 50 and 51: 1 Feb 98 Steve Tripp [quoting MacLe
Page 52 and 53: 2 Feb 98 Deb Waddill Reality is not
Page 54 and 55: new terminology which can be daunti
Page 56 and 57: 2 Feb 98 Steve Tripp [quoting Sladd
Page 58 and 59: Blg 484, Wagga Wagga Campus Charles
Page 60: who do not understand such terms mu
Page 63 and 64: 11 Feb 98.b Steve Draper Steve Trip
Page 65: 12 Feb 98 Steve Tripp [quoting Drap
Page 68 and 69: 13 Feb 98 Walter Wager [referring t
Page 70 and 71: doing linguistic philosophy and phi
Page 72: 15 Feb 98 Joe Beckmann Wayne Slabon

21 Jan 98 Ernie Franklin - Instructional Technology Forum ...

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