CP4E was Re: Deitel and Deitel Book...

[Mats Wichmann]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2002 13:27:20 +0300 (MSK), Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru>
wrote:

:On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, Simon Brunning wrote:
:
:> > From:	Geoff Gerrietts [SMTP:geoff at gerrietts.net]
:> > For the space of around three years, a child is immersed almost
:> > constantly, from waking to sleep, and even sometimes while asleep, in
:> > language. For those first three years, the child is almost completely
:> > incapable of making him or herself understood.
:
:Are you sure? My daughter makes herself understood by all available
:means. She built her own dictionary which we, parents, learned.
:What is interesting, she uses (internally) a hash table to
:convert from our language to her almost instantly...

I have to say, my daughter made herself well understood to the
listeners that matters long before speaking an intelligible word.

:Our observations tell us that children differ in their ways. E.g. some of
:them unthinkingly repeat lots of words and even sentences, while our child
:uses only what she understands. Some others do not talk at all and
:then at once speak clearly in sentences.
:
:I guess, adults can also be categorized by their approach in learning
:languages. And trial-and-error is, IMHO, also needed to learn computer
:languages. I can't imaging someone writing right from the start
:after studying docs and specs.

There have been several distinct learning styles identified, and
unfortunately, one of the shortcomings of schools is that it's
impossible to cater to all styles at once.  Even within these styles,
there are clear variations.

Some people only "learn" from reading detailed descriptions, but I
believe they're in a minority, and, proficiency still requires
application, and particularly trial-and-error learning.

:I do not remember who told me this, but it seems that students
:better learn from poorly constructed lectures than perfect ones.
:Because, they need to be _active_ in constructing their own system
:rather than _passively_ "eat" readymaid knowledge frames.

I don't know about learning more from poorly constructed lectures;
that doesn't jibe with my own experiences, although I see the point
being made. The active participation is certainly important, and there
are techniques that can be used in a classroom that promote such
participation - much harder with a book.  I do recall that lectures
that had demonstrations that didn't work (I had a Physics professor
who always had the experiments fail) were more instructive than the
demos that did work, because they did seem to make you think, whereas
success was just, "okay, that's what you said, so what?"

:So, a bad book (with errors, inconsistencies, etc) is not necessary bad
:for learning purposes (if it covers enough of a subject).

I think that's a stretch.  Bad books have stopped me almost dead on a
subject, unless I had a personal reason why I needed to push through.
I'm closer to conceding the point on lectures... a classroom situation
is by its' nature more interactive, a bad book can stop any
interaction.
Mats Wichmann