15 April, 2011

Was arguing today with a college colleague about the methods used to teach us some of the stuff. She was referencing to another college where people had to sit for more than an hour and just constantly write down stuff dictated to them in English, which was later on evaluated e.t.c. Seems like her main argument was that that's a way how to get people motivated to learn proper spelling. But come on. If you can't find the motivation to do it by yourself, neither will you find it if pushed to write such stuff down. Besides, it doesn't teach a crap. In fact I believe (from my own experience as well) that it can even damage ones spelling, because in a task like that you don't have the time to look up on how to properly spell a word and as a result your first experience written in your memory with that word is how you wrote it wrong. Human brain doesn't really work like a hard drive and we can't erase memories so it will stay there, in our memory, forever and will continue confusing us in the future.
Also there is no real meaning behind knowing how to spell words if you don't know how to use them or what they actually mean. It's especially useless for a translator, because in his work he can always use dictionaries when working with written text, but dictionaries or knowing how words are spelled by heart won't help him to actually work with the text, how to find the most appropriate translation and not misunderstand idioms etc.
Well, this way of thinking is an artefact of USSR education system, there is no surprise that there are people thinking that way in Latvia. It's odd to find such people among those of my own generation however.

Just getting stuff out of my head here, because I can't really confront her directly with my arguments. She seemed quite upset and displeased with my attitude towards it when she mentioned it, lol.

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