Determination and hardwork vs G&T

[KatyMac]

DD is G&T (apparently)

She works bloody hard, concentrates and plans, practises and learns what she is taught

Which comes first I wonder the ability or the determination or do they grow symbiotically?

Confidence I agree with much you've said. What saddens me is that I believe the NC levels within our system/its linear structure often stifle potential.

You identify internal motivation as a predictor of future success but how many switch off early as for various reasons things don't come as quickly to them as they perceive they do to others? We set for maths early in our primary, those who are young in year are often disadvantaged particularly when teachers don't really believe maths talent can be latterly acquired (teachers lack any model of cognition containing plasticity - Kovas et al 2007).

One question do you believe CATS etc are reliable predictors of what people can do in the future?

Another question (to play devil's advocate for a moment) why is it that one sibling learns much more quickly than another - this must be differences in innate intellect?

I agree very strongly with cory on the language-expectations theory. My experience, having lived in an environment where children and teenagers are expected to learn a lot of languages, is that expectation + time spent are the great drivers of fluency in other languages.

And I think that the pre-puberty thing is not true; I know very many people who have acquired native-speaker fluency in a second or third language without having studied a single foreign language before puberty.

I may have it wrong but wasn't Confidence's point that it's almost impossible to sound like a native/as if it's your mother tongue in the second or third language if it's acquired after puberty?

It's not correct, though!

Isn't it? Not an expert but there being a window for perfect pitch makes sense to me & I've read about there being a small window when children are particularly receptive to a second language too. I know some who've picked up Chinese as adults and locals always say they speak with a foreign accent. These same business people (Chinese) I met said the only Caucasians they'd ever met who sounded authentically Chinese had learnt from native speakers as tiny infants. Chinese is a tonal language & more difficult to master in that sense so that might be why if correct.

Going on both what I have read and on anecdotal evidence (rather a lot of it), I think that the ability to pick up accents in later life is a function of innate talent (some people can, some people cannot) and just sheer amounts of exposure to native speakers.

I think the point regarding why siblings learn differently is the same as for any child. Each sibling will have been exposed to different things and will have different experiences, for example in the time spent with them by parents. By default the first child of a parent who is at home will have more time individually with the parent than a second/ third child of the same family. This could mean more pre-school experience for a child in the family or 1:1 with the parent - both different experiences. Parents may have both worked while the eldest child was small and given up working after the second and therefore both children have different experiences in the same family iyswim.

I think it does also boil down to the childs interests though, as if they show an interest in puzzles then they are probably asked more frequently if they would like to do a puzzle and this leads to excelling at puzzles/ mathematical problems. A child who enjoys books and brings books to the parents to be read to will likely be read to more often iyswim.

Yet I still believe in innate ability - not necessarily work to an exceptional standard (which requires persistance and hard work) but the ability to retain and synthesise new experiences and learning, apply it etc.
My DD started trampolining at age 3.11 in the 4+ age group and progressed through 3 levels in a year, she went for 1 hour per week and although we have a trampoline she did not go on it to practice routines, just to run around and straight bounce, she finished age 4.11 on level 6 which was the same as children several years older. She started ballet instead, she was told she had to learn to skip which her same age friends had been practicing for 6 weeks previously as she joined late in the term, she mastered this skill before her friends with 2 weeks. We read for the standard 10 mins per day of her school book, at 5.9 she is on turquoise level. She mastered pedalling a 2 wheeled bike before going to school, it took 10 minutes of practice!

These are not outstanding achievements but they are when you consider the lack of practice/ effort.

Bonsoir - I agree re accents, some people are better mimics, definitely.

Ah but anxious what about twins?

I have twins who were parented in much the same way and on te exact same time line. Their abilities/skills sets and learning styles are very different.

KatyMac I suggest you research carefully what kinds of injuries are most common among dancers and try very hard to get your DD to follow the best advice about prevention. I have this issue currently with DS who is becoming quite keen about cycling (knees and lungs to protect).

Knees & backs; although chest will worry me as she is quite a bad asthmatic

word that is what I mean! I still believe in innate ability! Even twins aren't parented exactly the same though because they have different personalities and react to the same stimuli in different ways, for example one twin may be more cautious than the other, one more outgoing/ sociable. In the same way that experiments have shown in the past that girl babies were talked to more often than boy babies, babies who smile more or who are smiled at more, are more likely to be verbal earlier. Each baby has unique qualities and even identical twins are not identical. If twin A cry's more than twin B then attention could be drawn more to calming the crying baby, thus more interaction. Likewise this could be the opposite in that the crying baby may be ignored and more attention given to the happy child. Either way the way the parent reacts to the child determines the interactions.

That might make no sense at all but.......in summary it is the sum of a series of actions from the child + response of the parent = outcome.

Confidence I agree with much you've said. What saddens me is that I believe the NC levels within our system/its linear structure often stifle potential. You identify internal motivation as a predictor of future success but how many switch off early as for various reasons things don't come as quickly to them as they perceive they do to others?

Certainly agree about the straightjacket of NC levels. And how many switch off too for the opposite reason - that schools hamstrung by that system are not able to present the subject to them in a way that would engage their early readiness for it?

I'm certainly not trying to suggest here that everybody is genetically the same. But I think the problem is that when people describe someone's advanced ability or speed of learning as being due to "talent", they don't actually do so based on any evidence. There may be some general evidence from what we know about genetics, but invariably they haven't actually studied the genetic code of the individual they're referring to and found anything that sets them apart. My understanding is that attempts to do this with successful sports people for example have generally failed, and found that they have as much genetic diversity as anyone else.

So the talent hypothesis reads to me a bit like the First Cause argument for the existence of God - something basically made up to fill the gap in the face of an overly intimidating number of variables. Science hasn't completely ascertained how life came about and probably never can now, so we'd rather just make something up than admit we don't know.

This is kind of understandable when you look at what contibutes to people developing skills and abilities. First of all there is the contribution of DNA itself, which is far more complex than popular understanding often supposes, with many different genes contributing to the same effect, and likewise single genes often contributing to multiple, highly disparate effects. There are genes which "switch on" in response to environmental stimuli, or just switch on later in life, and so on.

Then there is the multi-facted nature of "skills". One of my pet hates in my own field is how people refer to children as being "musical" or "unmusical". What does this mean? The skills needed by a jazz drummer are very different to those needed by an opera singer, and my experience with young children is yet to suggest that the orientation towards these, and many other possible "musical" skills, is in any way connected. I have taught enough people with fantastic voices and very clumsy coordination, or vice versa, to believe otherwise. Then to make matters even muddier, there's the fact that there are often many different ways to achieve even the same skill.

Then finally there is the role of environment, experience and particularly, parental emotional "nurture" in the early years. What happens to the person with the voice and the person with the coordination if they are both raised in an opera singing family who hate and don't understand jazz? Or if they are both raised by a professional jazz drumer who hates and doesn't understand opera? What happens to those whose relevent genetic components to achieve something switch on at the age of eight? Are they already put off the thing by then by pushy parents who couldn't accept that they couldn't do it at five? Or are they not exposed to the experience until they are fifteen, by which time they find others are much more expert than them and they can't compete? Or are they fortunate enough to find everything come together at exactly the right time?

I think in reality the number of possible combinations of all these variables must approach infinity. There will naturally be some combinations that result in strikingly quick learning or skill development, and some that result in striking difficulties. There's simply no reason however to postulate that that's due to some absolute genetic difference that can be considered apart from the other factors - other than that, like the First Cause argument, it's simple and understandable and has centuries of habit behind it.

However I do certainly appear to have a talent for verbosity.

It is very interesting. For example how my dd1 is less tuneful than her 3 yo sister, who sings always in tune and yet dd1 wants to learn to play the piano and is learning to play the violin at the moment. Also how DH studied GCSE music and plays the piano badly and yet I sing well and play the recorder and piano by ear, barely reading music and only ever having had recorder lessons.
I agree there are so many factors and combinations

Cortina Tue 11-Oct-11 09:39:45
"I may have it wrong but wasn't Confidence's point that it's almost impossible to sound like a native/as if it's your mother tongue in the second or third language if it's acquired after puberty?"

I'd say that depends on the language. Tonal languages, like Chinese or Swedish, seem to be more difficult to imitate after a certain age, but lots of our students/teachers of e.g. Italian and Spanish manage to sound very good indeed. My brother is often mistaken for a native speaker of German and he was only exposed to native pronunciation in his late teens.

Anyway, pronunciation is only a small part of acquiring a language; if you can write like Joseph Conrad then the language is clearly still worth having.

My main interest is not in language acquisition though (I share my time between the ML and the English dept), but in the ability to reason coherently and come up with thoughts that strike other people as intelligent/not totally bonkers.

If the nurture argument was entirely prevalent, then you would expect to predict students' abilities to do well from their family and school background. Sometimes you can, often you cannot. I come across students who have had every advantage: families who love education and assume that their child will do well, excellent private or grammar school, student desperate to do well- and it still fails to come together; they just can't understand what other people are on about.

Otoh one of the best students I have ever come across had grown up in a working class family with a very negative attitude towards education (="getting above yourself"), she had then spent her time as a housewife with an abusive husband; only later in life, in a new and happier marriage, had she realised that she had something in her that needed developing and had found herself able to do so. This was a woman who had the lecturers quailing in their shoes because she was that sharp- she could spot a feeble argument a mile off, even if the subject was new to her.

Obviously, motivation counted for a lot with her: this was not somebody who had ever been given anything for free and she didn't expect it either. But I don't think that was the whole story: motivation doesn't explain how she could find herself in a discussion of something totally new and just cut straight to the point and see something that people hadn't seen who had devoted years to thinking about the subject.

To put it briefly: if time and practice were all, then (after 30 years in the field) I would never have to deal with students who were brighter than me.

I think confidence's summing-up is right: it is an infinite combination of different factors.

The point about tonal languages is very interesting, in relation to the idea of a critical period for absolute pitch acquisition - since distinguishing between tones in such a language is like a form of absolute pitch.

It has long been observed that advanced music students in countries like China have a far greater prevalence of absolute pitch than those in the west. For a long time people thought this was genetic, that east Asian people are just more genetically likely to have it. Then someone studied music students of East Asian heritage, but brought up in the USA without speaking their parents' language. And lo and behold - their incidence of absolute pitch was no higher than that of other American students.

So there's a strong theory now that learning a tone-based language in early childhood strongly increases the likelihood of developing it. Which makes sense. Necessity is after all the mother of invention, and people tend to learn best the things that they need the most. If you have to learn to distinguish pitches in order to speak and communicate, that's a pretty good incentive.

It could be that there isn't actually a critical period for language acquisition per se, but there is one for absolute pitch and this affects tonal language acquisition.

I think that your original question is a tough one. Tbh I think there is a certain amount of symbiotism, but to start with there does need to be a certain spark or curiosity at least.

What I find interesting is the contrast between my 2 kids, both considered g&t but ds is very much a heuristic learner, just has a natural ability to pick things up quickly, while dd has to & is happy to work. For instance I test ds on spellings once a week, job done, dd, practises every night using different methods, both get full marks! Ds may be naturally cleverer(?) but I'm less worried about Dd achieving her goals because she is clever & prepared to work!

Fascinating conversation! To return to the subject of Scandinavians speaking English so well, I toured recently with a large group of Swedish and Danish musicians and realised to my great interest that those born after about 1970 had vastly better English than their older colleagues. When I enquired about this the general consensus from the Scandinavians themselves was that there was a sudden influx of subtitled (as opposed to dubbed) English and American TV and films available after a certain date in their childhoods- this may well tie with the "critical periods" mentioned earlier.

I was born in 63, flussymummy, did not emigrate from Sweden until the age of 29 and I am often mistaken for a native speaker. In fact, I had some workmen in my office the other day and they were talking about my colleague who was clearly "from other parts" (she's American)- they never spotted that I am also from other parts.

What we found was that our generation (born in the 60s and 70s) often had better accents than our teachers because we had the opportunities to travel: nearly everybody I knew in Sixth Form either worked as an au-pair in the summer or went InterRail- our teachers had often had very limited opportunities to speak to real natives.