tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5714045366168902489.post4186847325248766811..comments2024-02-06T07:49:22.830-08:00Comments on Evidence Based EFL: Never let the facts get in the way of a good story. mallingualhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13278408615407649532noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5714045366168902489.post-54170087577666353002014-07-07T01:57:18.326-07:002014-07-07T01:57:18.326-07:00Glad you enjoyed it :)
I have no idea why people ...Glad you enjoyed it :)<br /><br />I have no idea why people read bedtimes stories to kids. In fact I never thought about that until you said it. I know that kids love it, and I loved it as a kid. I know if I had kids I'd do it. I guess adults think it probably helps with literacy (though I don't know if it does). I can think of good reasons for doing it but I'm not sure that's 'why' people do it. They do it because someone did it to them. Even cultures without written language have story telling so it must be a pretty powerful force. <br /><br />mallingualhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13278408615407649532noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5714045366168902489.post-7588134808615732902014-07-07T01:52:00.249-07:002014-07-07T01:52:00.249-07:00A better example would have been shark attacks and...A better example would have been shark attacks and car accidents. Curse me for trying to be topical. mallingualhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13278408615407649532noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5714045366168902489.post-60737793908460750022014-07-07T01:50:03.887-07:002014-07-07T01:50:03.887-07:00all true but then a shark can only bite you if you...all true but then a shark can only bite you if you are in the sea. If you look at the article in notes "any opponent of Suarez has about a one in 2,000 chance of getting the same treatment by the 27-year-old" and "there is a one in 3.7m chance of being bitten by a shark in the ocean". <br /><br />but yes, I think the sentence is not clear enough, I'll add a note. mallingualhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13278408615407649532noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5714045366168902489.post-24842022207885767462014-07-07T01:46:20.461-07:002014-07-07T01:46:20.461-07:00Hi Carol,
I agree that we need both experience a...Hi Carol, <br /><br />I agree that we need both experience and evidence. I guess what I'm getting at here is that stories are more powerful than 'evidence', so the evidence of millions of lives saved by vaccines isn't as powerful as 'my kid got autism after he was vaccinated' kind of thing, which tends to affect us emotionally. <br /><br />I would never promote ignoring individual differences, but at the same time, we teach classes of people and not individuals. didn't Hugh make a point about this? Something like 'the class is more important than the individual'.? <br /><br />And you're right about being wary of stats. The average human has 1 testicle and 1 breast. We need to know how to read and interpret stats and how they can help us, -maybe I should try to do a post on that?mallingualhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13278408615407649532noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5714045366168902489.post-83609685102316683802014-07-06T22:09:49.459-07:002014-07-06T22:09:49.459-07:00Hmmm...statistically, Luis Suarez bites men who pl...Hmmm...statistically, Luis Suarez bites men who play at top level football, most commonly towards the end of a game in a penalty area. The odds of a woman being bitten by Luis Suarez are therefore presumably negligible. A quick google search reveals many more women are bitten by sharks.<br /><br />The chances of many of the men I know playing at this level of football (although I note the entry of teams such as Burnley and Leicester City this year) are also pretty minimal. The chances of them swimming in water that may contain hungry sharks are, I suspect, slightly higher.<br /><br />If statistics were to tell me any different, I would have sympathy with Twain's views (or were they Einstein's...?) on these mendacious mathematical phenomena. <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5714045366168902489.post-85383280994246259672014-07-06T09:45:10.222-07:002014-07-06T09:45:10.222-07:00A very interesting post. Now my question is: Why d...A very interesting post. Now my question is: Why do I read bedtime stories to my youngest son every night? I have actually never checked any research or statistics which would prove that bedtime stories are good (or bad). I simply do it because I believe they are powerful, even though most of them were invented - they are legends which never really happened. First of all, I'm convinced that they make my son (and all kids) think critically. My fellow teacher tells me that her five-year-old bilingual grandson loves listening to Czech bedtimes stories on the phone while he’s in his native Thailand and once, out of the blue, he asked: “I'd like to know something about the granny character in The Red Riding Hood story - where on earth is the grandfather?” I really loved reading all the stories in the post and I didn’t sulk when you later revealed that they weren’t true. By the way, your post is a lovely story itself and I thank you for it because it gets me thinking. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02407302558747461727noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5714045366168902489.post-57682441861351300852014-07-06T07:56:02.267-07:002014-07-06T07:56:02.267-07:00I'm going to start skimming your posts before ...I'm going to start skimming your posts before reading them more closely!! Or, at least, pay attention to the title :-) <br /><br />The problem I’d have with statistical likelihoods in favour of anecdotes in learning is that statistics tell us about what’s likely to work for the majority of people. I’m not sure how big that majority needs to be since statistical significance is something that still baffles me somewhat. I do know (I think) that to be statistically significant, something is unlikely to have happened by chance. <br /><br />For us to base our teaching and learning on statistical likelihoods and to discount the anecdotes and the “it worked for me”s seems to set us up to ignore the individual differences in learners and teachers, and to potentially put individual learners at a disadvantage. <br /><br />I’d say that both - statistics and anecdotes - are good to know about and be aware of as we work with any group of learners. While we may not need to categorise people into having different learning styles, people are different in terms of past experiences, personalities and processing, etc. What works for them is something we (and they) need to be open to discovering. Equally, what works for a teacher can only, surely, be a good thing, as well as a starting point for further investigation. <br /><br />I like the stories. They help to build or refute theories. <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com