One of the basic ideas of a good learner is the concept of being comfortable with paradox. If you have a set of rules, but most of the items that should follow those rules are actually exceptions, how long would it take you to get angry and loose your mind. For most learners, not long as this is what happens to learners who attempt a language such as English.
Language has a large body of information which is perhaps one of the most complex in the world.
All language is highly complex and multi-layered and requires many hours of studying, and still you aren't guaranteed to be proficient.
Learners who have had experience with large, complex bodies of information (such as university graduates) usually have a very systematic approach to learning which doesn't require them to master the subject in early days, hence approach language in the same way.
Schema
Schema is basically how we view the world. If a person has a good understanding of the world, it is because their schema is flexible. Confused people, or the like, don't have the appropriate schema, that is their understanding of the world cannot process certain information.
In language learning, and in life, it is important to have a strong, flexible encompassing schema.
Could cognition be directly related to the establishing and revisiting of schema?
Age doesn't always mean you get smarter. Chess masters and Specialists like doctors have been found to have bad memory and trouble learning in areas outside their expertise (schema theory supports this) this suggests that their schema related to their specialism is very good, but limited. Their cognition would have probably spiked when they were studying, but once their schema was established and they stopped learning and started repeating/ using their knowledge, I'll wager that their cognition dropped. The more you repeat something, the less you need to concentrate to achieve success. Like riding a bike.
Memory doesn't equal cognition.
Dividing schema
How you understand life is a much bigger network of ideas compared to how you understand cooking French cuisine. It is possible for us to define two things:
1 – Macro-schema: how you understand life and other philosophical debates
2 – Micro-schema: how you do an action, such as cook, drive a car, etc.
A person who has a weak understanding of life, or one which has been conditioned into them, will defend it. A person comfortable with their macro-schema will be comfortable with change. To themselves and their environment.
This leads to the idea that if a learner has a willingness to change things/ allow you to help change, it suggests a flexible & strong macro-schema It also suggests internal motivation. Perhaps we could directly connect internal motivation to strong, flexible macro-schema
In language studies we teach words to describe language (verbs,nouns, progressive tenses, etc.) which we call 'metalanguage'. It merits mentioning that the understanding of how language functions and how it is understood is also valuable to the learner. The schema governing language is seldom examined in a classroom and it makes sense that it could benefit learners as much as metalanguage. Therefore, schema concerning language could be called 'meta-schema'.
In conclusion, a simple test to establish whether a learner is comfortable with paradox will tell whether that learner has a flexible macro-schema meaning the micro-schema can be established and modified easily. This 'paradox test' could eliminate learners who are going to waste time defining a micro-schema when they need to put more time into their macro-schema
Once again, this shows that not only would adults benefit more from learning a language, but they are also in a better position to learn the language as they have better established schema than children.
Take a glance at this informal study and see you can connect this blog post to the conclusions drawn from this study.
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