{"id":1283,"date":"2012-03-18T02:37:06","date_gmt":"2012-03-18T01:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/?p=1283"},"modified":"2023-01-24T11:22:38","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T10:22:38","slug":"about-the-importance-of-coutning-what-counts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/about-the-importance-of-coutning-what-counts\/","title":{"rendered":"The importance of counting what counts when learning Chinese"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Have you ever felt that your teacher is correcting the wrong things or that she says that one thing is all-important but then ignores that when setting grades anyway? Have you tried measuring your own progress and found that it’s not easy to quantify language learning?<\/p>\n

We humans seem to like counting things, we like to measure ourselves and our surroundings. Counting language learning is about quantifying something which can’t be easily quantified, so in this case counting by necessity equals simplification. This process is not simple and can be done in many ways.<\/p>\n

In this article, I’m going to argue that the way in which we count learning has huge impact on the way we learn. We will look at two examples: formal grades and self-assessed studying and see that even if they are both meant to be measurements, they have significant influence on the way we study.<\/p>\n

Formal grades<\/h3>\n

Everybody knows that the way grades are set determines how students approach the subject being taught. This is more true for compulsory education than it is for grown-ups attending courses in their spare time, but it’s still a widely known phenomenon.<\/p>\n

Language learning consists of many different skills, but it’s seldom the case that all these cases are being formally graded, leading to some parts being more emphasised than others.<\/p>\n

The problem is of course that humans are lazy (or smart) and only do what is required of them. Even diligent students (a category people tend to place me in, for instance) look closely at what is required. Perhaps they do more than that, but if they care at all about grades, they are still affected by which grading criteria are being used.<\/p>\n

Let’s look at two cases:<\/p>\n