Today's session at Tama University (what does it stand for, does anyone know?) was a challenge. Dr. Jones is an intelligent man! With my background in cognitive psychology and neurolinguistics, I was able to understand his message. But I am not sure those without the basic, core knowledge could.

Basically, and I don't mean AT ALL to sound like a smartie-pants person, I felt he was saying that underneath everything, scientists feel the pieces-parts of language are al the same, but as it transforms and takes the surface structure of a particular language, changes happen. Therefore, communication of basicly similar or the same concepts/ideas get confused. this is n atural and to be expected. Noam Chomsky's book on this stuff is fascinating to slightly warped people, like me.

And, forgive me, Dr. Jones, if I misintrepreted your ideas today. It is not my job to interpret what you meant or said..this is my take on today's session.

Perhaps, if I may suggest something, a more productive way to spend this day would be a briefer talk about Chomsky-esque ideas, and more discussion on how lay people take those concdepts and bring them to fruition in the regular classroom setting. How do we take research like you were mentioning and slam it into practicality?

Comments anyone? Let's speak up.
Cynthia

Being kind of a science nerd and psychology minor I found today's session to be very interesting. I think the good Dr. J was outlining the differences in learning/encoding English vs. Japanese...which explains why learning to write and read Japanese is such a challenge.

Jim,
EHS

P.S. Tama means ball or globe, of course it could be a family name. Tama-tama means accidentally or casually.

Jim,
EHS

I thought TAMA stood for Totally Amazing Mental Accomplishments, but I like Jim Z`s thoughts even better. I`m always curious to find out what others think about our meetings. Everytime I experience the thoughts and feedback from the group, my opinions alter...thank God! I`d like to translate some of these ideas into my curriculum. Best, Jim McElroy

I like the idea of totally amazing. I looked for materials there in English so I could understand the concept better..but found none. Does anyone know more about this university or the concept?
C. Jones
Bellwood

The lecture by Dr. Jones sounds very interesting. I wish I could have been there!

Tama is also a name of a place in Tokyo. In Japanese there are lots of homonyms because we use kanji. Tama (ball) and Tama (a name of the place) has different Kanji.

Miki, Hibiki High School

Hi Cynthia,

Thanks for the comment - I'll forward this discussion to Dr. Jones and see if he has any comments and/or additional readings for teachers who are interested!

Elissa

PS: Tsukamoto-sensei, thank you for clarifying the kanji situation! I appreciate your replying to everyone's posts. :)

For those looking for direct application to their classrooms, I am not sure if I can make a connection for you, but I think the real "take home message" was that whole brain learning for long term retention pretty well trumps everything else. Jim, EHS

I wonder how his research would apply to deaf students. If Japanese reading is based on concepts rather than phonetics, the deaf students should have an easier time learning to read since sign language is a conceptual language. But from what I understand from my partners is that Japanese deaf students also have difficulty learning to read. Hmmm. Should would be an interesting study!

Sherry