Learning new information in L2 is more effortful than in L1. We found different functional connectivity networks of naturalistic learning through speech among adolescents, confirming this prevalent observation
Does learning language require effort? Does it require more effort when learning a new language later in our lives? Why?
Today, we will highlight a study that shows the additional neurological networks that adolescents activate when learning in a second language – a key insight for all educators to consider.
Language Learning: Effortless for Babies, Effortful for Adults
Babies learn language with such ease that they have already begun to recognize the unique patterns of a language–even to distinguish between the unique patterns of multiple languages–while still in the womb.
We therefore tend to assume there is something wholly innate or natural to learning language.
Yet as we’ve explored previously in a series on this blog, even learning our first languages may not be as innate or natural as it can appear. Human language reflects a unique synchrony between our biological and cultural evolution, finely attuned to the social environment in which we interact.
When I typically begin a series of blogs to conduct nerdy inquiry into an abstract topic, I don't generally know where I'm going to end up. This series on LLMs was unusual in that in our first post, I outlined pretty much the exact topics I would go on to cover.
Here's where I had spitballed we might go:
The surprisingly inseparable interconnection between form and meaning
Blundering our way to computational precision through human communication; Or, the generative tension between regularity and randomness
The human (and now, machine) capacity for learning and using language may simply be a matter of scale
Is language as separable from thought (and, for that matter, from the world) as Cormac McCarthy said?
Implicit vs. explicit learning of language and literacy
Indeed, we then went on to explore each of these areas, in that order. Cool!
Thanks to a podcast, Emerging Research in Educational Psychology, from professor Jeff Greene speaking with professor Erika Patall about a meta-analysis she was the lead author on, I learned about her paper that looked across a large number of studies to synthesize findings on the impact of classroom structure. I thought some of the high-level takeaways were well worth highlighting with you for our 4th research highlight in this series!
Citation: Patall, E. A., Yates, N., Lee, J., Chen, M., Bhat, B. H., Lee, K., Beretvas, S. N., Lin, S., Man Yang, S., Jacobson, N. G., Harris, E., & Hanson, D. J. (2024). A meta-analysis of teachers’ provision of structure in the classroom and students’ academic competence beliefs, engagement, and achievement. Educational Psychologist, 59(1), 42–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2023.2274104
I think it’s no surprise to most educators that providing structure for kids, both in terms of the classroom environment and culture, and in terms of the design of instructional tasks, is critical to improving student learning. Part of this work is what we often term “classroom management,” but as the paper describes, the work is far more encompassing than that:
“In sum, creating structure is a multifaceted endeavor that involves a diverse assortment of teacher practices that can be used independently or in various combinations, as well as to various extents, and are all intended to organize and guide students’ school-relevant behavior in the process of learning in the classroom.”
In a previous post, Thinking Inside and Outside of Language, we channelled Cormac McCarthy and explored the tension between language and cognition. We dug in even further and considered Plato's long ago fears of the deceptive and distancing power of written language in Speaking Ourselves into Being and Others into Silence: The Power of Language, and how bringing a critical consciousness to our use of language could temper unconscious biases and power dynamics.
If you find any of that interesting, I recommend reading this short interview, How to Quiet Your Mind Chatter in Nautilus Magazine with Ethan Kross, an experimental psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Michigan.
Two relevant quotes:
“What we’ve learned is that language provides us with a tool for coaching ourselves through our problems like we were talking to another person. It involves using your name and other non-first person pronouns, like “you” or “he” or “she.” That’s distanced self-talk.”
“The message behind mindfulness is sometimes taken too far in the sense of 'you should always be in the moment.' The human mind didn’t evolve to always be in the moment, and we can derive enormous benefit from traveling in time, thinking about the past and future.”
This has been a great year for education research. I thought it could be fun to review some of what has come across my own limited radar over the course of 2023.
The method I used to create this wrap-up was to go back through my Twitter timeline starting in January, and pull all research related tweets into a doc. I then began sorting those by theme and ended up with several high-level buckets, with further sub-themes within and across those buckets. Note that I didn’t also go through my Mastodon nor Bluesky feeds, as this was time-consuming enough!
The rough big ticket research items I ended up with were:
Multilinguals and multilingualism
Reading
Morphology
The influence of physical or cultural environment
The content of teaching and learning
The precedence of academic skills over soft skills
We know that the explicit teaching of unfamiliar words that students will encounter in written text is important. But what about the language that is used by teachers throughout the school day? What implicit learning opportunities are constrained or afforded through the model of the language that a teacher uses while teaching, and what are the impacts on student learning?
I'm going to try out a new type of post here, in which I'll share one interesting research item I've happened across in greater depth. In the past, I've simply tweeted them out, but then I forget about them. I'm hoping this will be a better way of retaining them in memory and deepening my understanding — and of course, sharing them with you!
Individual differences in L2 listening proficiency revisited: Roles of form, meaning, and use aspects of phonological vocabulary knowledge
Citation: Saito, K., Uchihara, T., Takizawa, K., & Suzukida, Y. (2023). Individual differences in L2 listening proficiency revisited: Roles of form, meaning, and use aspects of phonological vocabulary knowledge. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1-27. doi:10.1017/S027226312300044X
This paper explores how various aspects of phonological vocabulary knowledge affect second language (L2) listening proficiency. The study involved 126 Japanese learners of English.
Back in 1978, Bloom & Lahey presented a simple and useful model of language: form, meaning, and use.
In my last post, we landed on the idea of a nascent scaffold that we are born with in our brains, which is developed through our daily interactions with one another – and then further accelerated through the reinforcement and extension of written language use.
Before we venture into the wilds of the possible relations between language and thought, I wanted to build on this idea of how our inner scaffolds are most fully realized through speaking, listening, reading, and writing by geeking out about the beauty and wonder of multilingualism.
There is a fertile topsoil we are born with in our brains, imprinted by the interplay of sights and sounds and movement of those who interact with us. This immersive communicative theater, felt first in the womb, roots itself within the immediacy of each moment, even while gesturing at distant realms yet unknown. Climbing towards this mystery with our tongues and thoughts and technology bends the world toward our needs, and allows us to project our inner selves into the past and future. We ride rivers and build highways across our brains. This is our cultural inheritance, our storied legacy of language and literacy.
When I typically begin a series of blogs to conduct nerdy inquiry into an abstract topic, I don't generally know where I'm going to end up. This series on LLMs was unusual in that in 
This has been a great year for education research. I thought it could be fun to review some of what has come across my own limited radar over the course of 2023.
