This follows on from my little rant last week (take that, dead horse!). You might want to read it first (and the posts it points to) for some background.
Another issue raised by The Tyranny of the Textbook is the fallacy that a single source can teach anything of any real complexity. It’s the basis for the “I’ll go to class and listen to the teacher and read the textbook and then I’ll know it” silliness that so many people adhere too, and it’s also the basis for indecision paralysis when it comes to figuring out how to go about studying (after all, if you’re only going to use a single source of information, you better pick the right one!).
In nature, animals (like you and I) need to maintain genetic diversity so that they don’t over-adapt to environments that won’t be around forever. Students need to diversify their sources of information because no single source will be able to teach them everything they need to know (that is, they don’t want to over-adapt to a single source’s style and content).
Some people think that by sticking to a single source (be it a book, audio course, podcast, whatever) they’ll be able to really focus, and by switching things around all the time they won’t focus. This is ridiculous. Relying on a single source means inheriting all of that source’s blind spots, whereas diversifying lets you cover your bases. Besides, any decent materials will cover a lot of the same things (the blind spots tend to be around the fringes), and these things tend to be the core of what you need to learn.
This isn’t limited to language learning. If you trust a single source for anything, you’re not going to get the whole picture. While some sources may be qualitatively and quantitatively better than others, nothing is perfect. But a large, broad collection of imperfect things can very well be assembled into a perfect system, no matter what it is you’re trying to understand.
Related posts:
- Blame the lazy student, not the lame textbook
- In praise of the single use (dictionary) device
- My Cantonese tutor
- Getting started with a new language
- Creating a foreign language listening environment
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Multiple sources has *always* been my #2 piece of advice for language learners.
What’s #1?
Study stuff your interested in, also known as the “Have Fun” Rule.
Definitely a good point that any serious learner needs to know.
The problem is that most college students are not “serious learners” of anything, foreign languages included.
If the university is going to force students to study a foreign language, and the foreign language department is going to create a curriculum that follows a single book, and the typical student is going to buy that one book and nothing else (in order to pass the exam)… then let’s hope the textbook is decent. Because the better the textbook, (1) the easier it is for the teacher to focus on meaningful interaction in the classroom, (2) the better the chances that the students will learn something that might one day turn out to be useful to them, and (3) the rare “serious learner,” who may not yet realize that he needs to branch out to other sources of information, will not be wasting his time.
This really reminds me of when I was working for UC Boulder’s engineering school, tutoring small groups of students in 1st year calculus and physics . I enjoyed the job since I was right there in the engineering lab ready to play starcraft with my friends when I got off work at midnight, but the teaching was daunting. I got the distinct impression from most of the students that they didn’t really care about learning the material, that they weren’t bothered in the slightest that they didn’t really understand high school algebra, exponents or in some cases fractions, and that if there were a way to “buy” their required allotment of credits rather than learning, they would.
My classmates in my Japanese class weren’t so bad. They all had a real desire to learn, and they had goals.