Open Topic: Nisbett and Coordinate Learners

While I’ve grown up somewhat in-between cultures, I’m definitively more American than I am Japanese. This last article, by Nisbett gave me a framework with which to describe my placement on the American-Japanese spectrum, as well as explaining some interesting phenomena I deal with as a heritage learner with intermittent Japanese exposure in my childhood. Nisbett described a difference between individuals who learned an L2 later in life as coordinate learners and those who learned roughly at the same time as their L1 as compound learners. While Nisbett’s discussion focuses more on differences between coordinate and compound learns for cognition, what I found to be the most interesting was that coordinate learners appear to process information notably differently depending on which language in which it is presented. This is definitely something I have experienced, although it’s very fluid for me. There are something that transfer across very easily and something that I process more distinctly in one language as compared to the other.

I’ve spoken with my other half-Japanese friends at length on this topic, so it was nice to see it in literature.

Final Reflection

This course has greatly helped with JPN 410 (grammar), which I taking concurrently, as there is a degree of topic overlap. EALL presents these ideas in basic structure, where JPN 410 – at least for the subject matter that overlaps –  elaborates on it in great detail. As I have never taken linguistics before and have no formal background in the subject, this overlap during my first quarter at the University of Oregon was greatly beneficial, as it helped me build some foundations.

I really appreciate how often previous concepts are brought back into class and elicited from students. My psychology professor in Community College stressed how important it was to do elicitation tasks for memory recall for studying to improve connectivity to memories, and it was nice to see that put into practice in a teaching setting.

Getting to practice the basics of linguistic data analysis and writing in a relatively low-stakes setting was also very helpful. I found the background research I did for my papers actually increased my interest in those subjects.

On study tasks, I realized that I recall readings in much more detail if I read them the day before, within a few hours of going to bed, rather than trying to pre-study and cramming them into the weekend.