Polish lg.course

30.03.06, 15:52
Can you recommend a really good language school in Warsaw which offers
courses for companies?
    • marcus_anglikiem Re: Polish lg.course 01.04.06, 17:47
      i should say a Callan method school should be able to sort out lessons for you.
      I worked at a Callan method school in Slupsk and Koszalin and we gave lessons
      to workers from Scania (Slupsk) Espersen (Koszalin) etc...
      • usenetposts Re: Polish lg.course 01.04.06, 18:46
        Okay, you ain't gonna like this, but here comes what I think of the Callan
        method (reprinted from an article I wrote on Maggie's group)

        W ogole nie polecam tej metody Callan, jeszcze bardziej, nazywalbym to oszustwo.

        Prosze mi powiedziec, jezeli to jest dobra metoda, dlaczego jest tylko do
        angielskiego, a nie do wszystkich jezykow?

        Metoda Callana adresuje pamiec KROTKOTERMINOWY - polegajacy na forsowanie
        pamiec do pamietania slow zgodnie z regulaminem - dopiero po miesiaca
        rozumiesz, ze juz nie idziesz do skutku ta metoda, ale juz pieniedzy sa hen i
        czujesz ze poprzez wydane pieniedze i dotychczasowa wysilke, i tak musisz dlaej
        skorzystac z tej blednej metody.

        Pokaz mi jedna osobe, ktora ta metoda wyuczil jezyk do konca, i pokaze ci
        czlowieka, ktory uzywal raczej swoja metoda a tylko bral podrecznik Calan jako
        zrodlo slownictwa - a nawet tacy sa rzadcy.

        Totalna katastrofa - nawet pol instruktorow wie ze to sciema, ale podoba im sie
        bo dostaja tych samych studentow ponownie,i nie musza sami wymyslic lekcje.

        Kazda opcja jest dobra, ktora adresuje pamiec dlugoterminową, i ktory daje
        przyjemne kolorowe materiałe - te materialy Callana sa tez ponure i nudne. 100%
        bad neurolinguistic programming!

        - Discuss.
        • marcus_anglikiem Re: Polish lg.course 01.04.06, 19:28
          usenetposts napisał:

          > Okay, you ain't gonna like this, but here comes what I think of the Callan
          > method (reprinted from an article I wrote on Maggie's group)
          >
          > W ogole nie polecam tej metody Callan, jeszcze bardziej, nazywalbym to
          oszustwo

          whether or not it is oszustwo is i would say best decided by those who have
          studied using the method, would you not agree?

          > .
          >
          > Prosze mi powiedziec, jezeli to jest dobra metoda, dlaczego jest tylko do
          > angielskiego, a nie do wszystkich jezykow?

          because it is an English company. (that's a little like saying if Okocim is
          good, why can you buy it only in Poland and not worldwide?) i have heard though
          that it is being developed for, i think, Italian, or was it Spanish?

          >
          > Metoda Callana adresuje pamiec KROTKOTERMINOWY - polegajacy na forsowanie
          > pamiec do pamietania slow zgodnie z regulaminem - dopiero po miesiaca
          > rozumiesz, ze juz nie idziesz do skutku ta metoda, ale juz pieniedzy sa hen i
          > czujesz ze poprzez wydane pieniedze i dotychczasowa wysilke, i tak musisz
          dlaej
          >
          > skorzystac z tej blednej metody.

          i don't believe that people would carry on doing something they don't believe
          in (and furthermore pay for it) if they realised it was no good... would you?

          >
          > Pokaz mi jedna osobe, ktora ta metoda wyuczil jezyk do konca, i pokaze ci
          > czlowieka, ktory uzywal raczej swoja metoda a tylko bral podrecznik Calan
          jako
          > zrodlo slownictwa - a nawet tacy sa rzadcy.

          i had a group of such people, even perhaps two groups. and i believe it can be
          seen that othergroups too progress to such a level.
          >
          > Totalna katastrofa - nawet pol instruktorow wie ze to sciema, ale podoba im
          sie
          >
          > bo dostaja tych samych studentow ponownie,i nie musza sami wymyslic lekcje.
          >
          > Kazda opcja jest dobra, ktora adresuje pamiec dlugoterminową, i ktory daje
          > przyjemne kolorowe materiałe - te materialy Callana sa tez ponure i nudne.
          100%
          >
          > bad neurolinguistic programming!
          >
          > - Discuss.

          i am insterested though what strategies you would recommend for aquiring usable
          knowledge to the long term memory. I look forward to hearing from you.
          Marcus.
          • asiaasia1 Re: Polish lg.course 01.04.06, 21:17
            Is Aire looking for English language course?
            I am a certified teacher of Polish for foreigners...I have to admit...I heard for the first time about Callan method used in teaching Polish as a Second Language smile))
          • usenetposts How to learn to the long-term memory! 01.04.06, 22:08
            marcus_anglikiem napisał:

            > usenetposts napisał:
            >
            > > Okay, you ain't gonna like this, but here comes what I think of the Calla
            > n
            > > method (reprinted from an article I wrote on Maggie's group)
            > >
            > > W ogole nie polecam tej metody Callan, jeszcze bardziej, nazywalbym to
            > oszustwo
            >
            > whether or not it is oszustwo is i would say best decided by those who have
            > studied using the method, would you not agree?
            >

            Of course not!!! What do they know? Have they read Hermann Ebbinghaus' "Ueber
            das Gedaechtnis"? Have they read Atkinson and Shifrin on the short-term memory?
            Have they kept up to date with the latest theories about the reinforcement of
            synapsal pathways? Have they even studied NLP? Not many have, not many people
            have even the rudiments of the discipline of cognitive psychology and those who
            have would never fall for the guff in the first place.

            They think it is their fault that they cannot learned languages, and never stop
            to wonder how they managed, being such talentless bums, to learn their first
            one so fine and dandy.

            They do not realise it is because the method is inappropriate - appropriate
            only to those schemes that make a qhick buck and make sure they get their money
            within 14 days or so of starting.

            Callan is not the only one, there are others. Callan stands out as being the
            most overrated of all of them, though. Closely followed by Paul Daniels'
            method, and Berlitz.

            > >
            > > Prosze mi powiedziec, jezeli to jest dobra metoda, dlaczego jest tylko do
            >
            > > angielskiego, a nie do wszystkich jezykow?
            >
            > because it is an English company. (that's a little like saying if Okocim is
            > good, why can you buy it only in Poland and not worldwide?) i have heard
            though
            >
            > that it is being developed for, i think, Italian, or was it Spanish?

            If it were any good, then they would have adopted the scheme a long long time
            ago.

            >
            > >
            > > Metoda Callana adresuje pamiec KROTKOTERMINOWY - polegajacy na forsowanie
            >
            > > pamiec do pamietania slow zgodnie z regulaminem - dopiero po miesiaca
            > > rozumiesz, ze juz nie idziesz do skutku ta metoda, ale juz pieniedzy sa h
            > en i
            > > czujesz ze poprzez wydane pieniedze i dotychczasowa wysilke, i tak musisz
            >
            > dlaej
            > >
            > > skorzystac z tej blednej metody.
            >
            > i don't believe that people would carry on doing something they don't believe
            > in (and furthermore pay for it) if they realised it was no good... would you?
            >

            Of course they would! A fool and his money are soon parted, Marcus.

            Why do you suppose that they offer 14 days? It's no coincidence, Marcus.

            It's all about getting the most in, paying, and then getting a large fall-out
            rate later. That way you get paid for what you don't even need to do. Super
            profit. IN a market where there is huge motivation to learn English, a course
            that focusses on the short-term memory and has lousy materials, as unattractive
            as they can possibly be made (on purpose of course - any of us on the computer
            would make nicer materials in a few minutes, but this is precisely the point)
            is the ideal money spinner. It would never work for languages less in desparate
            demand and the province of the discerning learner, and so we don't find that
            sort of materials for those languages.

            They get their money back in 14 days with short-term systems or they don't have
            to pay for the first 14 days to see how they like it but the short term systems
            are typified by the fact that for those first 14 days they will SEEM to work
            better than a long-term memory course (if you want to know why in scientific
            terms, read Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968).


            > >
            > > Pokaz mi jedna osobe, ktora ta metoda wyuczil jezyk do konca, i pokaze ci
            >
            > > czlowieka, ktory uzywal raczej swoja metoda a tylko bral podrecznik Calan
            >
            > jako
            > > zrodlo slownictwa - a nawet tacy sa rzadcy.
            >
            > i had a group of such people, even perhaps two groups. and i believe it can
            be
            > seen that othergroups too progress to such a level.

            Do you accurately remember your fall-out rate?

            > >
            > > Totalna katastrofa - nawet pol instruktorow wie ze to sciema, ale podoba
            > im
            > sie
            > >
            > > bo dostaja tych samych studentow ponownie,i nie musza sami wymyslic lekcj
            > e.
            > >
            > > Kazda opcja jest dobra, ktora adresuje pamiec dlugoterminową, i ktory daj
            > e
            > > przyjemne kolorowe materiałe - te materialy Callana sa tez ponure i nudne
            > .
            > 100%
            > >
            > > bad neurolinguistic programming!
            > >
            > > - Discuss.
            >
            > i am insterested though what strategies you would recommend for aquiring
            usable
            >
            > knowledge to the long term memory. I look forward to hearing from you.
            > Marcus.


            OK, here we go. And kindly, when you see that this works, credit my theories.

            Uncle Davey's "Golden List" methodology for learning to the long-term memory.

            1. No reliance on mnemonics and no creation of strange methods to try
            and "visualise" words in contexts. No "think of a cat in a cot and you'll
            remember that Polish for "cat" is "cot". - These are the ways by the way that
            Daniels gets phenomenal results over two weeks but they never last. Just as
            well, if they did, they would create a learner who, when he came to fluency,
            would not be able to say "kot" without thinking about a baby's bed. Ridiculous.
            Oszustwo. Don't let the oszusty deceive you by filling your shoes with the
            letter O at tea time.

            2. No cramming, no learning against the clock. No conscious "memorizing". The
            long-term memory is not a conscious function. Its samples are taken
            automatically and subconsciously out of the material which is run through the
            conscious. What we decide to memorise or forget only relates to s/t memory. You
            cannot decide to learn to the long term memory any more than you can decide to
            forget to the long-term memory. Disciplines based on the 'aha!' moment of
            putting two and two together to understand something can use the short term
            memory and be sure that they will get a long-term effect, but in languages
            there is very little "aha!", and so short term memory is of next to no use at
            all.

            3. Pay attention to study times. Because the l/t memory is not a conscious
            function, we are not aware of when it tires. This is measured to happen after
            20 minutes. At that point, the sampling process will be become less than
            optimal, and so the learner to the long-term memory is wasting his time,
            although he or she may feel interested and want to keep going. The rule is,
            after 20 minutes, take a break of at least 10 minutes in which a completely
            different sort of thing is done.

            4. Get comfortable when learning, don't rush, and use attractive materials. We
            banish unpleasant experience from the long-term memory and garnish pleasant
            experince to the long term memory. By all means eat and drink during the 20
            minute sessions of learning. After all, when learning to the l/t memory, you
            don't have to work that hard. Less is more - less effort to cram means more of
            what you do learn actually sticks.

            5. Use a variety of materials that present the content in a different way. For
            example, which explain the use of a particular tense or case in different ways.

            6. When using the key item in language learning, the vocabulary book, ensure
            that all the grammar for each word accompanies the word into the book. For
            instance, you would not just write "to begin" but also (began, begun) to show
            that it is a strong verb. You would not just write "Jugend" but "die Jug
            • usenetposts Re: How to learn to the long-term memory! 01.04.06, 22:12
              Well it cut off, so that you only got 6 of my 22 points in the end there. That
              would have been extremely frustrating had I not remembered that these sytems
              have a bad habit of doing that, which led me to copy and save a text file of
              what I wrote to you. Let me now give you hopefully the full answer of how to
              learn to the long term memory. I'll give point 6 again for continuity:

              6. When using the key item in language learning, the vocabulary book, ensure
              that all the grammar for each word accompanies the word into the book. For
              instance, you would not just write "to begin" but also (began, begun) to show
              that it is a strong verb. You would not just write "Jugend" but "die Jugend"
              or "Jugend f." Write the word on the right hand side of the page in your own
              language or the language from which you are learning the target language, and
              do 25 words at a time. 25 words can be comfortably written out that way in the
              course of 20 minutes, with time just to read the list through aloud at the end.
              Always work with units of twenty five head words, which wshould be written at
              the outset on the top left hand page of a double page A4 hardback writing book.
              You number the headword list from the beginning onwards so that the 5th such
              page will have numbers 101-125, etc. You always note the date you added the
              owrds to the list. You make an overall target of words to cover with no short-
              term time limit. It will be something like 2,500 words, which gets a learner up
              to what we used to call O level, and means that they become intermediate and
              most teach yourself course have roughly this number of words. I'm coming to the
              timing shortly.

              7. You write the words into the vocab book by hand, in a beautiful hard back
              book, as neatly as you can, without stressing over it - so that the learner can
              take a pride in the look of it and not hurry over it. Write at a pace that is
              comfortable and natural. Do not do this in a computer, latch onto the natural
              memory that is linked to handwriting. It is a long-term memory function, which
              is why your signature always comes out the same, year in, year out, and you
              don't even need to think about it consciously.

              8. The explanation of tyhe grammatical models and the practising of basic
              sentence types goes like any other system. My system differs in how you
              approach the learning of the vocabulary, which is 80% of learning a language if
              you consider that the irregularities of grammar can and should be linked as I
              say to the specific words they refer to.

              9. After writing out the vocab set of 25, and reading it through, a process
              which should take 20 minutes, you break for at least ten. You did not try to
              learn those 25 words, you just enjoyed writing them out in a nice book with a
              nice pen slowly and in pleasant comfortable surroundings. you do nothing more
              with them. If after ten minutes, you would like to go on to the next session,
              then you turn the page of the vocab book, go to the top left of that double
              page and do the next 25 numbered words. Then read them out aloud, and then take
              another break. You are enjoying the language, not cramming it.

              10. Don't do more than about 10 such sessions a day. If you get anywhere near
              that, make sure they are spaced out with other things going on between them.

              11. After no less than 2 weeks and no more than 2 months, go back to the
              headwords. No less than 2 weeks because the short term memory effect has
              passed, so anything you still remember is already learned to the long-twrm
              memory, and you will not deceive yourself. No more than 2 months in order to
              keep up a certain tempo. This should be a relaxed process, but there should be
              a limit to stop the laziness that is in human nature from making it ground to a
              halt. By 2 weeks a really enthusiastic learner may have already put all 2,500
              words in their headlist but not have memorised them, resulting in words being
              repeated by accident, but that is really of no importance in this process.

              12. What you then do with the words in the vocab book headlist that are more
              than 14 days old, but less than 60 days old is that you "distil" them. And this
              is what I call a "distillation": Ebbinghaus' experiments and the knowledge
              about the sampling nature of the long-term memory means that some of these
              words will already have been learned, despite the fact (actually because of the
              fact, but this is of course counter-intuitive) that all you did was try to
              enjoy them, not memorise them. In fact the prediction is that up to 30% of the
              words will be retained. You are looking to distil out the "hard to learn"
              expressions and obtain a concentrated, whisky-like list of distilled words that
              are an absolute bugger for you to learn (by which time you will, of course,
              actally have learned them, because they will have gone through this distilation
              process ten times with two weeks' break in between each time). I call that
              the "gold list". On the way to the gold list you will use up the first hard
              back book and a thinner second one.

              13. The first "distillation" therefore takes the first 25 words from the top
              left hand side of your A4 hard-back writing book and you pick from them 70% of
              the words which you least remembered, and write them again on the right hand
              side. You can test yourself by covering over the English, but that is noit the
              best way. The best is to say "I know that I must now discard 8 of these 25
              words which are on the top of the left page and write 17 of them on the top of
              the right page. Which do I think I have remembered best? These you ignore, and
              list 1-17 the least remembered of 1-25 from the headlist. If you cannot bring
              yourself to drop out a full eight words, then instead in one or two places you
              can conjoin words to make a phrase, and then learn them together in the system
              from then on. When writing the words of the first distillation, you take it
              nice and slow and keep to all the princliples of the writing of the headlist,
              namely easy, confortable work, not more than 20 minutes work at once, and read
              the side aloud when you are finished.

              14. The act of discarding words from the distillation by the way is the final
              stimulus to learning them, by the way. Psychologists have discovered that, just
              as in physics for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, for
              every conscious action there is a subconscious reaction. Note that we tend to
              lose and spend time looking for things which we intended to keep and often put
              in a special hiding place, but we rarely forget the things that we have thrown
              away or given away. We don't usually think we still have them and look around
              for them. So the very conscious act of discarding tricks the subconscious
              memory, namely the long-term memory, into being sure it jolly well has got
              those discarded bits. So if in doubt, discard rather than merge, when
              distilling.

              15. Again, you do nothing with the words of the first distillation for a period
              of at least two weeks (this is why you always date when you do the
              distillations also) and not more than two months (same reasons as given above)
              and then, when that time comes, you go back to the first distillations on the
              top of the right side page, and make from them the second distillation on the
              bottom of the right hand page. From those 17 words you will be looking at
              keeping 12 and discarding or merging 5. Again, first plan and ask
              yourself "which 5 of these seventeen words did I remember best?" and put a
              cross next to them, don't write them out again. It is a game with by our brain,
              an exploration of how our own memory worked - in some ways a discovery of
              ourselves and can be very interesting as an exercise in its own right -
              actually it is a lot less boring than cramming the vocab for a Callan lesson.

              16. It will come as no surprise when I mention that you
              • usenetposts Re: How to learn to the long-term memory! 01.04.06, 22:14
                It did it again. OK, forewarned is forearmed. Here are points 16 to 22
                inclusive now. I will not be beaten by a stupid machine.


                16. It will come as no surprise when I mention that you put the third
                distillation on the left side under the head list at the bottom, and that it
                has the best remembered 9 words of the 12 on the bottom right, and that you
                need to leave between the two a space of no less than 14 and no more than 60
                days.

                17. A person can structure this so that they are working on the later parts of
                their headlist while bringing the early parts already into the second or third
                distillation, or do the whole of the headlist, then the whole of the first
                distillation, etc. That depends on the learner, their time available, and the
                number of words they plan to cover in their language learning. For really big
                projects, learners will be working on different distillation levels for the
                earlier and later parts of their vocab stock. As long as all the above rules
                are kept, this won't matter at all.

                18. The head list and three distillations will cover the full space available
                on the excercise book, and so after that you take a fresh book, for
                distillation number 4, etc. Now distillation number 4 will have numbers 1-25 of
                that distillation on the top left hand corner of the first page but they will
                be taken from the first 36 of the third distillation which was the toughest to
                remember of the first 48 of the second distillation which was the toughest to
                remember of the first 68 of the first distillation which was the toughest to
                remember of the first 100 of the head list and therefore will be taken from the
                first four double pages of your old book.

                19. So the second book will only need to be a quarter of the thickness of the
                first one, and will be worked through on the same principles as the first one,
                but in a quarter of the time. Always taking 20 minutes and taking your time and
                sticking to the same principles throughout.

                20. The second vocab book then takes you to the seventh distillation. That
                would be enough for most people, but if you want to take it further then you
                probably don't need a book for the last bit, as the 2500 words in the headlist
                have become 150 words identified in this process as the toughest to rmember
                words. by this time you already know tyhem better than most people anyway, but
                of out of interest you wanted to continue than in little time engaged you could
                keep going on and distill this away to nothing. If you get to the seventh
                distillation you cannot be less than three and a half months from the beginning
                of learning even if you learned it to the max, as two weeks should be rested in
                between, or the short-term memory will deceive you.

                21. Because you are in for the long haul with the long-term memory system, use
                the fact that you have numbered the words to motivate yourself. You will know
                that you are 40% through your target of 2500 words when you have 40 pages of
                headwords. As the number of repetitions on average that are needed in order to
                learn the words to the end is 3.3 (some are learned after one but some will
                only be learned on the tenth reiteration or 'distillation') then we know that
                having 40 percent of one's head list in place is equivalent to 13 percent of
                the whole work. Use these numbers and statistics to motivate yourself, and note
                that even a small learning session can represent a small but irreversible
                advance on the road to learning the language. The s/t memory method makes huge
                advances at the beginning which are forgotten and the learner goes backwards,
                despairs, and drops out of class. The l/t method means that you are only ever
                going forwards, so the method is a more effective use of time, and much more
                motivating once the student understands memory in language learning and
                understands what is going on.

                22. Need to activate - language learners using the long term memory will obtain
                a large passive knowledge of the language. They will quickly move towards being
                able to read newspapers and novels in the language. But they may have
                difficulty and be discouraged when placed in a situation where they have
                to "activate" their knowledge and start talking. They will feel tongue tied,
                and not be able to find words that, when someone tells them, they know they
                knew. The activation of a language learned well in my method by means of
                immersion in the environment of the language takes a maximum of three days. In
                this time, the person who has spend the hours with his vocab book doing what I
                suggested above, and doing grammatical exercises, suddenly starts speaking the
                language with fluency, and the experience of this "activating" can be very
                exhilirating, actually. The person who thinks that they will learn by immersion
                and have not put the hours in beforehand will not have this, and will learn to
                the short-term memory, and forget it all on his return out of the milieu, and
                not achieve the results of the learner to l/t memory, who is able to reactivate
                his language every time he goes into the milieu for a few days, for the rest of
                his life. He appears to be someone who has learned thousands of words in a few
                days - a claim which not even the boldest short term system would make - but of
                course he knows them, he is only bringing them "to the front of his mind",
                which is a different matter to putting them there in the first place. Some
                people, witnessing the remarkable effect of immersion on activating the
                language ability of the long-term memory optimising student, and not giving
                full credit to the work this student did in his own time beforehand, think that
                the immersion method is a great way to "learn languages". So you get people
                trying to combine Callan and immersion, then doing more Calan and more
                immersion, and then more of the same, and never getting off the ground with it.
                One Callan victim I knew had done the callan-immersion mix three years running,
                and when her boss came from England the first thing she said was "would Meester
                like the cup off tea?" and we're talking about an otherwise educated person
                whose knowledge of her mother tongue is nothing short of eloquent in both
                speech and in writing.

                Any questions?
                • usenetposts Re: How to learn to the long-term memory! 01.04.06, 22:55
                  OK, now I've done a web page with all of the above in, plus an illustration to
                  make it hopefully clearer.

                  www.usenetposts.com/goldlist.htm
                  .
                  This shows in the correct order the 22 points that the server on this forum
                  wouldn't let me put into a single post.
            • marcus_anglikiem Re: How to learn to the long-term memory! 02.04.06, 10:53

              > Of course not!!! What do they know? Have they read Hermann Ebbinghaus' "Ueber
              > das Gedaechtnis"? Have they read Atkinson and Shifrin on the short-term
              memory?
              >
              > Have they kept up to date with the latest theories about the reinforcement of
              > synapsal pathways? Have they even studied NLP? Not many have, not many people
              > have even the rudiments of the discipline of cognitive psychology and those
              who
              >
              > have would never fall for the guff in the first place.

              i can't believe it! do you know how and why superglue works. no! (here i
              apologise if you actually do and invite you to think of your own example)
              but you know full well that it works and so you use it.
              to say that students are incapable of having sound judgement on the
              methods of learning which suit them sounds to me like very of the whole truth
              of the matter...

              sure teachers and educationalists can study and improve methods of teaching,
              but then they present various methods to the students and the students make
              a choice. much like politics. or do you believe how to run a country is much
              too serious and complicated a matter for the minds of the dumb electorate and
              that we'd be better off without all this 'voting' business ?

              >
              > They think it is their fault that they cannot learned languages, and never
              stop
              >
              > to wonder how they managed, being such talentless bums, to learn their first
              > one so fine and dandy.
              >
              > They do not realise it is because the method is inappropriate - appropriate
              > only to those schemes that make a qhick buck and make sure they get their
              money
              >
              > within 14 days or so of starting.

              Firstly, if a student finds a method not the best for him/herself, he/she
              may choose another. this does not mean the method is bad! it means simply
              that one method may not be suitable for all. agree ?

              Oh, and Callan, and other schools too i'm sure, give a couple of lessons
              for free to see it in action before any question of payment is made.

              >
              > Callan is not the only one, there are others. Callan stands out as being the
              > most overrated of all of them, though. Closely followed by Paul Daniels'
              > method, and Berlitz.
              >
              > > >
              > > > Prosze mi powiedziec, jezeli to jest dobra metoda, dlaczego jest ty
              > lko do
              > >
              > > > angielskiego, a nie do wszystkich jezykow?
              > >
              > > because it is an English company. (that's a little like saying if Okocim
              > is
              > > good, why can you buy it only in Poland and not worldwide?) i have heard
              > though
              > >
              > > that it is being developed for, i think, Italian, or was it Spanish?
              >
              > If it were any good, then they would have adopted the scheme a long long time
              > ago.

              There are plenty of good products of good firms which for a long while have
              not been exported. i don't think you can say if something's good it will be
              universal.
              >
              > >
              > > >
              > > > Metoda Callana adresuje pamiec KROTKOTERMINOWY - polegajacy na fors
              > owanie
              > >
              > > > pamiec do pamietania slow zgodnie z regulaminem - dopiero po miesia
              > ca
              > > > rozumiesz, ze juz nie idziesz do skutku ta metoda, ale juz pieniedz
              > y sa h
              > > en i
              > > > czujesz ze poprzez wydane pieniedze i dotychczasowa wysilke, i tak
              > musisz
              > >
              > > dlaej
              > > >
              > > > skorzystac z tej blednej metody.
              > >
              > > i don't believe that people would carry on doing something they don't bel
              > ieve
              > > in (and furthermore pay for it) if they realised it was no good... would
              > you?
              > >
              >
              > Of course they would! A fool and his money are soon parted, Marcus.

              Once or twice perhaps, but surely interminably only in the case of the
              seriously mentally disadvantaged! ?
              >
              > Why do you suppose that they offer 14 days? It's no coincidence, Marcus.

              at the Callan schools i worked at, students were given i think 30 days to
              pay, as is standard practice for business transactions in the uk.
              >
              > It's all about getting the most in, paying, and then getting a large fall-out
              > rate later. That way you get paid for what you don't even need to do. Super
              > profit. IN a market where there is huge motivation to learn English, a course
              > that focusses on the short-term memory and has lousy materials, as
              unattractive

              might i add that the fall-out/ drop-out rate was v. low.
              >
              > as they can possibly be made (on purpose of course - any of us on the
              computer
              > would make nicer materials in a few minutes, but this is precisely the point)
              > is the ideal money spinner. It would never work for languages less in
              desparate
              >
              > demand and the province of the discerning learner, and so we don't find that
              > sort of materials for those languages.
              >
              > They get their money back in 14 days with short-term systems or they don't
              have
              >
              > to pay for the first 14 days to see how they like it but the short term
              systems
              >
              > are typified by the fact that for those first 14 days they will SEEM to work
              > better than a long-term memory course (if you want to know why in scientific
              > terms, read Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968).
              >
              >
              > > >
              > > > Pokaz mi jedna osobe, ktora ta metoda wyuczil jezyk do konca, i pok
              > aze ci
              > >
              > > > czlowieka, ktory uzywal raczej swoja metoda a tylko bral podrecznik
              > Calan
              > >
              > > jako
              > > > zrodlo slownictwa - a nawet tacy sa rzadcy.
              > >
              > > i had a group of such people, even perhaps two groups. and i believe it c
              > an
              > be
              > > seen that othergroups too progress to such a level.
              >
              > Do you accurately remember your fall-out rate?

              i remember that it was particularly low. the students (the great majority of
              whom were very intelligent people) may have left for personal reasons, i.e.
              moving away from the town, family/ personal issues, etc. even that number
              was low...
              >
              > > >
              > > > Totalna katastrofa - nawet pol instruktorow wie ze to sciema, ale p
              > odoba
              > > im
              > > sie
              > > >
              > > > bo dostaja tych samych studentow ponownie,i nie musza sami wymyslic
              > lekcj
              > > e.
              > > >
              > > > Kazda opcja jest dobra, ktora adresuje pamiec dlugoterminową, i kto
              > ry daj
              > > e
              > > > przyjemne kolorowe materiałe - te materialy Callana sa tez ponure i
              > nudne
              > > .
              > > 100%
              > > >
              > > > bad neurolinguistic programming!
              > > >
              > > > - Discuss.
              > >
              > > i am insterested though what strategies you would recommend for aquiring
              > usable
              > >
              > > knowledge to the long term memory. I look forward to hearing from you.
              > > Marcus.
              >
              >
              > OK, here we go. And kindly, when you see that this works, credit my theories.
              >
              > Uncle Davey's "Golden List" methodology for learning to the long-term memory.
              >
              > 1. No reliance on mnemonics and no creation of strange methods to try
              > and "visualise" words in contexts. No "think of a cat in a cot and you'll
              > remember that Polish for "cat" is "cot". - These are the ways by the way that
              > Daniels gets phenomenal results over two weeks but they never last. Just as
              > well, if they did, they would create a learner who, when he came to fluency,
              > would not be able to say "kot" without thinking a
              • usenetposts Re: How to learn to the long-term memory! 02.04.06, 13:38
                marcus_anglikiem napisał:

                >
                > > Of course not!!! What do they know? Have they read Hermann Ebbinghaus' "U
                > eber
                > > das Gedaechtnis"? Have they read Atkinson and Shifrin on the short-term
                > memory?
                > >
                > > Have they kept up to date with the latest theories about the reinforcemen
                > t of
                > > synapsal pathways? Have they even studied NLP? Not many have, not many pe
                > ople
                > > have even the rudiments of the discipline of cognitive psychology and tho
                > se
                > who
                > >
                > > have would never fall for the guff in the first place.
                >
                > i can't believe it! do you know how and why superglue works. no! (here i
                > apologise if you actually do and invite you to think of your own example)
                > but you know full well that it works and so you use it.

                I'll use a different example. Before people knew about superglues, they thought
                that the existing glues were good enough, and bought them. If someone becomes
                aware of the benefits of learning languages to the long-term memory, then will
                certainly not waste their time with short-term memory methods.


                > to say that students are incapable of having sound judgement on the
                > methods of learning which suit them sounds to me like very of the whole truth
                > of the matter...

                And so it is. Tis verily the whole truth thereof, if that is what you were
                trying to say.

                >
                > sure teachers and educationalists can study and improve methods of teaching,
                > but then they present various methods to the students and the students make
                > a choice. much like politics. or do you believe how to run a country is much
                > too serious and complicated a matter for the minds of the dumb electorate and
                > that we'd be better off without all this 'voting' business ?

                There are no alternatives to giving one person one vote. There are possible
                alternatives such as weighting the vote for the taxes a person pays, and quite
                frankly I would prefer that.

                Now the kind of argument that you are using here is like saying you would not
                ban a person from using his right to vote, so let him also spend his money as
                he wishes.

                My answer to that is that I wouldn't dream of making it illegal to sell Callan.
                It is the right of every person to spend their money on a lousy product sold to
                them with lies as well as to vote for a party which is lousy in performance and
                tells them lies. It's a case of caveat emptor. So I am advising buyers not to
                fall for Callan and waste their money in the same way as I would advise them
                not to vote for Corwin-Mikke and waste their vote. But if they choose to
                anyway, that's their right. If you choose to teach Callan, that's your right.
                And it's my right to tell you my opinion that there are much better ways, and
                why I think that. It's your right to listen or not listen. It's your right to
                place all the counterarguments you want to. I am listening, interested, and
                ready to handle your counterarguments if you choose to give them.

                <snip>

                > Firstly, if a student finds a method not the best for him/herself, he/she
                > may choose another. this does not mean the method is bad! it means simply
                > that one method may not be suitable for all. agree ?

                I disagree. There is no biological difference between the students. The only
                difference is whether he takes the party line approach to it when he goes home,
                and crams it into his short-term memory, or has the instinct to take it a bit
                slower with a cup of tea, and not repeat too often, in which case his ratio of
                long-term memory effect to short term memory effect, and therefore his long
                term value added from his study, will be higher.


                >
                > Oh, and Callan, and other schools too i'm sure, give a couple of lessons
                > for free to see it in action before any question of payment is made.

                I know that they do. I've researched this. The typical behaviour in Warsaw is 8
                free lessons, 4 a week. Then the bill comes, which you have to pay, if you want
                to carry on. And they will, because bang on 14 days they don't yet realsie that
                they are about to lose most of the impressive progress they made in that time.
                <snip>
                > There are plenty of good products of good firms which for a long while have
                > not been exported. i don't think you can say if something's good it will be
                > universal.

                That was then, this is now.

                <snip>

                > > Of course they would! A fool and his money are soon parted, Marcus.
                >
                > Once or twice perhaps, but surely interminably only in the case of the
                > seriously mentally disadvantaged! ?

                It is rational to try again if you blame yourself, and not the method, for
                their failure. They think it is a question of their will power, like the people
                who start their fiftieth failed diet.

                You say they are mentally disadvantaged, and you are right. They are mentally
                disadvantaged because they do not understand the optimal way to learn
                languages. But they are not disadvantaged vis-a-vis the norm, as the average
                man in the street has no more idea than they do.


                > >
                > > Why do you suppose that they offer 14 days? It's no coincidence, Marcus.
                >
                > at the Callan schools i worked at, students were given i think 30 days to
                > pay, as is standard practice for business transactions in the uk.
                > >

                Payment times are a separate matter. I think you are trying to avoid the point,
                here.

                > > It's all about getting the most in, paying, and then getting a large fall
                > -out
                > > rate later. That way you get paid for what you don't even need to do. Sup
                > er
                > > profit. IN a market where there is huge motivation to learn English, a co
                > urse
                > > that focusses on the short-term memory and has lousy materials, as
                > unattractive
                >
                > might i add that the fall-out/ drop-out rate was v. low.

                Well, what I find from people here who talk to me, and from people writing in
                these forums, the majority of people who tried learning with Callan did drop
                out, although mainly they blamed themselves, which is one of the things that
                annoys me about the system.

                I'd be interested in knowing what official stats you can find comparing drop
                out rates on Callan to other methods, and whether they have been independently
                verified, and I challenge the Callan organisation to produce such independently
                verified statistics.
                <snip>
                > > Do you accurately remember your fall-out rate?
                >
                > i remember that it was particularly low. the students (the great majority of
                > whom were very intelligent people) may have left for personal reasons, i.e.
                > moving away from the town, family/ personal issues, etc. even that number
                > was low...

                And those who left, did they get refunds?

                Now you may be simply a brilliant teacher. In that case, the appalling standard
                of Callan is not having its full effect. In which case, I would like you to
                experiment with my method. It's free. I'm not gonna charge you a bean to use
                the Gold List method, and to use all my ideas with your students. All I want is
                to help people learn how to learn languages.


                After this point there were no other comments, but I am afraid that it may have
                cut off on you.

                Maybe if you like we could take a few of my 22 paragraphs at a time and you can
                give me your rebuttal.
        • lmblmb Callan = good marketing 04.04.06, 21:40
          > Okay, you ain't gonna like this, but here comes what I think of the Callan
          > method (reprinted from an article I wrote on Maggie's group)
          >
          > W ogole nie polecam tej metody Callan, jeszcze bardziej, nazywalbym to oszustwo
          > .
          >
          > Prosze mi powiedziec, jezeli to jest dobra metoda, dlaczego jest tylko do
          > angielskiego, a nie do wszystkich jezykow?
          >
          > Metoda Callana adresuje pamiec KROTKOTERMINOWY - polegajacy na forsowanie
          > pamiec do pamietania slow zgodnie z regulaminem - dopiero po miesiaca
          > rozumiesz, ze juz nie idziesz do skutku ta metoda, ale juz pieniedzy sa hen

          Podpisuje się pod tym. Uczę angielskiego zawodowo. Do tego samego worka wrzucam
          też metody firmy Berlitz - więcej w tym marketingu niż nauki.

          Niestety Callan i Berlitz jest dla tych, którym się wydaje że zysk jest bez pracy.
          • usenetposts Re: Callan = good marketing 05.04.06, 10:34
            lmblmb napisał:

            > > Okay, you ain't gonna like this, but here comes what I think of the Calla
            > n
            > > method (reprinted from an article I wrote on Maggie's group)
            > >
            > > W ogole nie polecam tej metody Callan, jeszcze bardziej, nazywalbym to os
            > zustwo
            > > .
            > >
            > > Prosze mi powiedziec, jezeli to jest dobra metoda, dlaczego jest tylko do
            > > angielskiego, a nie do wszystkich jezykow?
            > >
            > > Metoda Callana adresuje pamiec KROTKOTERMINOWY - polegajacy na forsowanie
            > > pamiec do pamietania slow zgodnie z regulaminem - dopiero po miesiaca
            > > rozumiesz, ze juz nie idziesz do skutku ta metoda, ale juz pieniedzy sa h
            > en
            >
            > Podpisuje się pod tym. Uczę angielskiego zawodowo. Do tego samego worka
            wrzucam
            > też metody firmy Berlitz - więcej w tym marketingu niż nauki.
            >
            > Niestety Callan i Berlitz jest dla tych, którym się wydaje że zysk jest bez
            pra
            > cy.


            No, masz racje. Ale cala ironia jest, ze aby uzyskac wyniki tymi metodami
            trzeba by bylo 2-3 razy wiecej pracowac, anizeli z metoda, ktora bezposrednio
            adresuje pamiec dlugofalowa.

            Czyli tak jak biedny placzy dwa razy, leniwy robi 2 razy tyle pracy.
          • ianek70 Callan = crap marketing, cheap courses 05.04.06, 11:16
            > Podpisuje się pod tym. Uczę angielskiego zawodowo. Do tego samego worka
            wrzucam
            > też metody firmy Berlitz - więcej w tym marketingu niż nauki.

            Ja się zdecydowanie nie zgadzam - przecież w reklamach Callaniści zawsze
            opisują, na czym polega ich metoda, i nawet najbardziej idiotyczny idiota
            widzi, że to kompletna bzdura.
            Ale ponieważ metoda ta jest tania (bez książek, bez kwalifikowanych lektorów),
            cieszy się ona wielką popularnością wśród firm, które zmuszają pracowników do
            takiej nauki.
            • usenetposts Re: Callan = crap marketing, cheap courses 05.04.06, 12:35
              ianek70 napisał:

              > > Podpisuje się pod tym. Uczę angielskiego zawodowo. Do tego samego worka
              > wrzucam
              > > też metody firmy Berlitz - więcej w tym marketingu niż nauki.
              >
              > Ja się zdecydowanie nie zgadzam - przecież w reklamach Callaniści zawsze
              > opisują, na czym polega ich metoda, i nawet najbardziej idiotyczny idiota
              > widzi, że to kompletna bzdura.
              > Ale ponieważ metoda ta jest tania (bez książek, bez kwalifikowanych
              lektorów),
              > cieszy się ona wielką popularnością wśród firm, które zmuszają pracowników do
              > takiej nauki.

              He. Dilbertoza w pelnym wydarzeniu.
    • aire1 ooops! 06.04.06, 11:01
      I meant Polish for foreigners!
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