Answers
Dec 05, 2012 - 10:46 PM
Dec 05, 2012 - 11:24 PM
Dec 06, 2012 - 01:38 AM
People do NOT need someone to tell them that a task is hard. Many start a task then feel the pressure of it and quit. If they feel that the task is difficult on a shared level, versus an individual level, then they may decide to stick with it. A great case and point is exercise. It is a difficult tasks for many. However, if they have someone sharing the experience then the chances of them quitting are less likely.
When does "difficulty" become a negative?
When the individual decides it is too hard to accomplish. Trials are what makes us grow.
When does "suffering" become a negative?
This can drive you further to your goal.
"Negative" is a state of mind. Someone telling you that a task is going to be difficult is not negative.
Your focus would be better directed towards people who automatically deduce "difficulty" with "negativity". This is something that many suffer from. They are afraid to roll their sleeves up and get their hands dirty. It saddens me that this thought process is encouraged. Teachers prep students for success but not for failure. Failure is not a negative. However, it is implied to be so. So the student fails and experiences a negative reaction to it because "Success is the only positive". Do you see the flaw?
I am happy when a Doctor tells me "This will sting a little". Generally it's a lie and it hurts like hell, but I did have an expectation of pain. Now imagine if the Doctor said nothing. You're completely unprepared and your reaction is going to be much different.
It is the same with what happens to us in life and learning.
Take the negative thought out of self and there will be no negativity.
This has been your fortune cookie moment... brought to you by me.
Dec 08, 2012 - 03:32 AM
@John, thank you for the tip.
@Chapley, I approach challenges the same way. Tell me I can't, and you will see me do it just to prove you wrong. But, my point in what I bring up is this. Don't tell me it's hard, don't lead me to expect that it's difficult. Let me decide what is hard to me, and challenging to me. Everyone learns differently, and we all have different starting points. What you may have a hard time with, I might breeze through. But if the instructor tells me to expect that I will have a hard time, and I believe that, guess what? I will have a harder time, whether or not it was actually necessary or would have happened otherwise, because I believe it is hard. That's more time, effort and energy required to accomplish the same task, unnecessarily. It's also going to lead to more people giving up when they may not have otherwise. It's not the best way to approach teaching, especially with something as complex as a language.
Not everyone appreciates a challenge. Not everyone believes or is confident that they can deal with challenges. The more challenging they believe it will be before they even start, the more defeatist they tend to be. Whereas, if the student believes that they are capable of doing anything that they want to do and choose to do, challenges will be met head on and persisted through more frequently.
In approaching the subject in the way she does in the audio component (I'm only through lesson 5 of Level 1 in the software, so I can't really comment much on that), Sonia more than once creates the expectation of difficulty for all where that expectation does not necessarily reasonably apply to all. She creates the belief that it will be harder than it might actually be otherwise. This is a detriment to learning.
There is no such thing as failure if you persist. That's got nothing to do with what I'm bringing up. It's along the lines of driving up a mountain on a 6% grade or a 10% grade. You can get to the top either way, but one is going to be more difficult than the other, and since you have both as options, and they both get to the top of the mountain, why make it harder than it has to be? You don't even get the possible benefit of "getting there more quickly", as a 10% grade might offer.
For the record, doctors are among the worst offenders in this area. The majority of them have no training in the psychological aspect of interacting with patients in a way that encourages healing. When a doctor tells me I will feel a sting, it hurts; when I am not paying attention, and the doctor just goes about doing what he/she is doing, I feel nothing. The expectation of pain is a large part of what creates the pain, in that case. This concept applies to varying degrees to many other things a doctor must do.
This is easily proven by a number of means, one of which is the experimental pain relief subliminal I currently have in testing, which removes the expectation of pain and replaces it with the choice to let go of and turn off pain. The result? Most people testing the program are getting excellent pain relief, and we even have reports of cases where they get better pain relief with it than their doctors can provide with drugs. Pain, like many things, is largely a function of belief, choice and expectation, and at least can be mitigated to a very large degree by a proper approach or response. Hypnotists have known that for more than six decades.
Again... the whole point I am making is that without the negativity, the job becomes easier. We don't have to sit around and sing songs about how easy it is... but it will be easier if we don't start off expecting it to be hard before we have experienced for ourselves whether or not it actually is.
Dec 08, 2012 - 01:37 PM
The issue starts when a negative is perceived. When I heard her refer to the difficulty then my first thought literally began with "Maybe for everyone else...". Why did I think that? (I know the clinical term :P). It is a matter of perception.
Changing one's perception is the key to removing negativity from the equation. If I mentally refuse to acknowledge a situation/event as a negative then it does not exist. Sure, it will be seen as otherwise by an outside observer but my thought process is completely different.
So, by saying what she did is a negative then you're actually perpetuating negativity. Difficulty only becomes a negative when you CHOOSE to view it as so.
Don't get me wrong... I've been conditioned since birth to view things as a positive or negative... it can be quite the struggle to perceive everything as a positive.
I will give you something that's been with me since I was 16:
This is the play dough life.
We all start out as little white balls of play dough. Each and every experience we have is represented by a different color and as we experience we add more to the ball. Many of us start stacking on darker colors early. The white ball we started out as starts to become darker. Sometimes there's so many dark experiences that the ball turns black.
People with this life aren't hard to spot. They will generally cast a shade on people around them.
However, sometimes someone without the dark experiences comes along and starts to cast light on the darkness.
The only way to change the color is to start putting more white on the ball. So we start adding more white play dough. Soon the the dark colors start to fade. More and more white (positive) is added till the ball is white again.
The ball has grown exponentially now. A far cry from what it started out as. However, if you cut it in half you will see little dark ridges. If you pay attention to these ridges then you'll see that the ball would not be the size it is now without them. In some cases the ball may be a fraction of what it could be without them.
So, how could these layers be a negative if the outcome is a positive?
Dec 08, 2012 - 09:39 PM
Now, if the instructor says, "Oh, wow, I can't believe you actually decided to learn German!", what is this saying to the subconscious mind? It says, "Uh oh, the instructor, whom we believe, because she is teaching us this, is indicating that we have made a mistake in trying to learn this, and that we can expect it to be difficult and painful to do so."
At that point, guess what the subconscious mind does? It accepts this as a sort of waking hypnotic command, and... makes it fit the expectation! The negativity is obvious. However, if she had said, "I'm so glad you decided to join me in this wonderful journey learning German, a rich and beautiful language," would there be any expectation of difficulty or failure? No. And there would be no subconscious fear response, and no subconscious "let's execute the command we understand, which is to make this fit the description given of being difficult and painful."
The difference here from what you are saying is that you are assuming that all this is taking place on the conscious level. At the conscious level, we have a very different sort of awareness than at the subconscious level. The conscious mind can understand logic and think logically (which is what you are basing your argument on). But the subconscious mind is the seat of the (irrational and illogical) emotions, and it is incapable of complex or even fairly simple logic. To make up for this, it is absolutely literal, and it will faithfully execute ANY and EVERY command it understands and accepts. This is a big part of why we have a conscious mind: to act as a gatekeeper and filter out the stuff that wouldn't be good for the subconscious mind to execute, such as "I must eat more, even if I am already 600 pounds."
But there are ways around the gatekeeper, and one of them is to convince the conscious mind that the speaker/writer is so much more knowledgeable and experienced than the listener/reader that anything they say is to be taken as truth. When I talk to a teacher who I am learning from, do I critically analyze everything they are trying to teach me and then reject large amounts of it? No, that would be preposterous, because that's not how to learn. Instead, I let go of the gate and allow this new information to flow freely into my mind, where I automatically record it at a subconscious level, and then try to remember it consciously.
And because of that, and the literality of the subconscious mind, and the fact that repetition strengthens subconscious programming, if I am listening to a CD that tells me, every time I listen to it, "Oh, this is hard, you are going to have to suffer and struggle to get this!", guess what happens? If I listen to it enough times, that message is going to sink in and be accepted at the subconscious level as truth, even if I try to reject it consciously, and then it will be executed and made to be my reality.
And this is why I am saying that negativity does not have a place in teaching. It makes things more difficult than they have to be, unnecessarily, and increases the probability that people will give up, stop trying, or fail. And this company, Fluenz, has a great product, but this product has this flaw, and anyone who has a head on their shoulders would want to know about this flaw and fix it. Which is why I bring it up. If they know about it, they can fix it - if they choose to.
There is a big difference between being unrealistically positive ("Oh, this is all going to be effortless for you!" - Rosetta Stone), negative "(Oh wow, what were you thinking trying to learn German? This is almost impossible." [The implied message of what Sonia says in the introduction of the first level CD]) and realistic ("You can look forward to being challenged in ways that are fun, enjoyable and will produce a sense of accomplishment, as long as you stick with it."). To maximize the success of this company, and their customers, you want to go with an approach of realistic without being negative.
Feb 06, 2013 - 08:29 PM
I take it as an encouragement to study hard and take things seriously.
Jun 08, 2013 - 02:24 PM
Jun 19, 2013 - 03:25 AM
Jun 25, 2013 - 11:29 AM
learning a language and then proceed to hit you with a bunch of silly games to keep the process "fun". They are
almost worthless. They are appealing to the lazy side in all of us and they have to lie to cover that up. Give Fluenz credit for
not pandering as so many programs do and taking on this misconception head on. I also believe that keeping expectations
on the low side is not such a bad idea either. Language programs are learning aids, not magic pills. Learning a language
is like going to the gym. It takes hard work, dedication and oodles of time to get "ripped". Buying nice workout gear, taking
supplements, and looking for shortcuts ain't gonna cut it. You have to sweat. What's wrong with understanding that???
Mar 07, 2018 - 11:37 PM
Mar 08, 2018 - 03:50 PM
Mar 09, 2018 - 02:34 PM
I've done two levels of the French audio disks and at no where in time did Sonia and the tutors degrade our learning.
Do you have a transcript? What did the German disk audio say?
Please don't take the sentence "this is going to be hard" as something negative. Everyone has different abilities, and yes it may be hard at first.
But "this is going to be hard" should not be taken into something that people should feel degraded about.
It is just a prompt.