Honestly, studies seems a bit open-ended. This could relate to schoolwork or studying a language, rather than scientific documentation on the subject. On the other hand, scientific-research is clear, direct, and can't be misinterpreted.
A few hours ago, I commented on a question with a simple example for OP. It was a partial answer, with no evidence, no research, et cetera. I was told that I should refrain from answering in the comments.
More recently, an OP asked whether certain studies had taken place. I quoted a lengthy but...
We are still in our first day of private beta, and we already have tons of single-language questions. I propose this as a new close reason, under off-topic:
This question is off topic because it refers to a specific language rather than acquisition of languages in general. Please see the crit...
Do we really we really need the self-learning tag. It has many uses but none of it's uses show a true need for tag. It's is rather redundant as it doesn't specify anything about the question or help narrow down the question into a group.
We could change it to autodidactism, thus making it more obscure. This way, if there is a genuine use for it (which I could imagine, for instance, if a user is asking a question very specific to resources available for use on their own), we could add the tag, but it won't be selected often by users who see it pop up as a option.
I'd imagine there's a difference for some questions whether you are taught it by structured education, or just by studying the vocab, grammar, characters
We're starting to see a pattern emerge of people turning "Is X effective?" into "What are the pros and cons of X?"
I think this is a good direction to go. Providing a list of pros and/or cons is (more or less) objective.
My question is, should the pros and cons lists be separate questions?
On ...
I was waiting for this site, since ages. I feel it has a huge scope for graduating into a fulltime site.
Only time will tell! But, the first few questions are a pretty good start, especially we have some very experienced users, like Flimzy, Gilles, Quill, etc :)
Maybe I just quibble about the detail, but in my opinion the process of learning my own native language is still considered to be "language learning", hence it's sufficient to asking here. I think changing the site name to "Foreign language learning" will avoid this.
What's your thought?
I have just cast two reopen votes for those closed as "primarily opinion based (POB)" because I think it is very grey area where you can't define which is POB and which is not on Language Learning.
People have their own methods and preferences in studying and learning other languages and I beli...
If it's obvious that it's the chat room, then I would petition for it to have the name "Language Learning" or something of that sort but display in a different language each time it is seen ("Aprendizaje de Idiomas", "Sprachen Lernen", "изучение языка", etc.). The English default can be used in ...
There are classifiers in Chinese, also known as measure words, for each noun. I think that it is a good idea to start learning them when I do not yet know very much nouns, so that that won’t be a burden later. On the other hand, this will slow down the process of learning Chinese significantly an...
I don't see why they need to be off-topic.
The process of learning a new language is highly language-specific. For example, the problems one encounters while learning "Hindi" is completely different from the ones while learning "French".
So, please don't consider them off-topic. It might cripp...
My question, is whether we should have this prerequisite, and if so, what should it be?
IMO the very reason ELL's questions are pretty crappy is the lack of a prerequisite for such a site with the likeliness of attracting low quality contributions.
I was referred here by someone in WorldBuilding.SE because I'm working on learning Icelandic.
I had an idea for a question about listening to the radio in the target language, but I couldn't come up with something that wasn't opinion based or too broad.
@IͶΔ I didn't have one in particular. I've just found IPA incredibly handy in learning how to pronounce Icelandic so wondered how far I could push that topic on this SE.
Before learning English, I had acquired fluency in Persian and I'm a native speaker of Azeri Turkish. Neither language has articles, but I didn't find myself in trouble deciphering their usage in English; my intuition in using or not using them has been adequately accurate.
However, on ELL, I've...
It's a big day, and I know you folks have been waiting. You've been cleared for graduation by the Stack Exchange Community Team! Aviation met our threshold for graduation-worthy sites and after a review, the Community Team determined that you're good to go. Reaching 'mature community' status is a...
What is the Sandbox?
This "Sandbox" is a place where LanguageLearning.SE users can get feedback on prospective questions they wish to post. This is useful because writing a clear and fully specified question on the first try can be difficult. There is a much better chance of your question being ...
I don't understand why so much of these questions are closed. A lot of questions on Mathematics Educators also ask for how to teach some subject; they are mostly answered form experience form the other teachers there.
What is the Sandbox?
This "Sandbox" is a place where LanguageLearning.SE users can get feedback on prospective questions they wish to post. This is useful because writing a clear and fully specified question on the first try can be difficult. There is a much better chance of your question being ...
I'd understand if I asked for all the resources, but I was asking if there were any lists of resources, which is something that has a clear, objective answer
There's a lot of debate going on about questions and tags for individual languages. Personally, I think they should be on topic, as most people on here will be learning (or teaching) one or more specific languages.
However, one idea might be to lean more towards language groups, such as Romance...
Has any research been done on how effective it is to have a language learning course in school before starting to learn many second languages?
Such course should include learning about several techniques (e.g. flash cards) that have been shown to be effective.
I was going to answer a question on how to learn pronunciation without help from native speaker - which I did - but then I wasn't sure if I should do it because my primary base is my own experience. I did give the same advice to some friends but none of them tried my method. I also see that other...
@IͶΔ It wasn't on Open Science, but that site had in ~ two weeks less questions than we have now. (Consequentially, that site didn't reach public beta)
@IͶΔ well there is no scope, or help center, or anything to specify good questions from bad questions. It's up to us to choose what's on-topic and off-topic on meta. I guess over time it'll get better.
I think the largest problem is that phrasing questions like "should I ..." makes them primarily opinion based, while exactly the same question without that sentence are on topic.
Which is probably two thirds of the closed questions.
Along with some questions that are closed by people who think that single language questions are off topic.
In countries where the main language is not a world language, students often learn second languages in school.
Has any research been done on how effective it is to have a language learning course in school before starting to learn these second languages? Do students who have had a language lear...
I wrote some more on defining the line between good subjective and bad subjective. I'll post it here just in case anyone has any disagreements or questions....
> The difference is your claim or choice can be backed up by experience or another form of expertise whether it is your own. If the question is tagged studies you should probably cite some research papers but otherwise. If your choice or opinion can be backed up by something, which applies to the general population which isn't a poll, you can provide your own experience if it is solid evidence, but make sure you elaborate.
@wythagoras perhaps just saying "Does taking language in school help when learning another language?" would do it
I notice a lot of questions asking about whether certain tools are "useful" or "effective" or which languages are more "difficult"/"easy" to learn. Though these questions may seem imprecise and vague or opinion based (ie. what does "useful" mean?), it seems that if the interpretation of these wor...
I posed a question asking about a common terminology for the site which led to a discussion about what the consensus interpretation of some common words would be on the site for asking questions. This is one of those follow up questions to better define the scope of our site and to provide future...
Two days into private beta and we notice that a lot of problem in posts that leads to no answers or closure is due to the fact that some terms are subjectively defined. See Should we have a set of terms that have a specific meaning on this site?.
A good way to deal with this is ask querents to u...
My experience with other language sites is that it is inevitable that certain easy-to-choose tags that aren't particularly useful end up on thousands of questions and then cleaning them up later is an ordeal.
I think it would be really great to have one place to discuss the tags we want for the ...
Currently a lot of questions are being closed as "primarily"-opinion bad. We've started to come up on a consensus on what counts as
"primarily"-opinion based but we need to decide on exactly what subjective questions we want to allow and what we want our site scope to be. Judging by previous met...
I've been involved with matheducators.stackexchange.com and a little bit with expatriates.stackexchange.com. I've noticed that both had very high activity during private beta and then about half as much activity during public beta (which makes sense, because people are trying to get the site goin...
We are language learners or, at least, so does the title of the site says. But are questions related to the other side of the process also accepted?
It could be parents trying to teach their kids, teacher trying to improve their techniques, etc.
So far, and I'm not any expert on private beta run out, I see many question which intends to be reference question... essentially broad and opinion-based, and absolutely failing the "real problem that you faced"
@bilbo_pingouin I've been in quite a few private betas; this is a common pattern in the private beta, but on this site it feels like it's more common than average
@Gilles exactly, people aren't teachers, but they are programmers... so if people did learn a few languages, they are essentially the programmers of LL
@bilbo_pingouin Why do you keep insisting on saying everything is normal while it isn't? You're comparing a 9 million user base to a 200 one. On SO, the majority isn't professionals, but there are enough not to get the site shut down.
I think we shouldn't be too harsh about requirement of specialists... but on the other hand, I find that all questions about "efficient" ways should be closed: unclear what you are asking, too broad, POB, you name it.
it might be related to the fact that several millions people are programming every day, when language learning is a niche study where a few thousands are active?
I'm not saying that everything is good on the site... but on the other hand, expecting language learning specialists among 200 SE users (most/all of them active on other sites) was not realistic
@Gilles if you exclude those who do not have access to SE. Those who only learned one language, those who suffered during their mandatory teaching of language at school... I'm not sure there are that many, no.
@Gilles while that's only partially true, have you ever seen a conference of language teaching researchers? I did about physics teaching... and that wasn't very impressive... in term of the number of people involved.
and don't forget that language specialists are called linguists and are related to another site. Language teaching specialists are fewer still.
@Gilles, in France: tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/browse/domain about 9,000 thesis for social science, out which linguistic is a fraction... and more than 7,000 of biology alone.
@IͶΔ that's a problem of many new sites, IMO. When you look at the proposals, many of them would just fit in an already existing site... same for some already launched.
@Gilles language teachers, though (much) better than average are not necessarily familiar with studies about the learning process as such. They can often only provide their own experience, sometimes limited from one language to another one. And anyway, according to meta, answers shouldn't be solely based on personal experience.