Blink

I just finished reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I'm back at the Taipei Public Library, waiting near Shida for a track workout. I had hoped to find another book he's written - The Tipping Point, but I couldn't find it. I still can't read very much in the library - I looked the book up in the catalog (in English) but the libraries are listed in Chinese and I can't tell which one I'm at. The other problem is that the books are very much out of order. If you have a call number, be sure to browse the shelves above, below and even next to the one where it should be. In fact, I often see books that are off by 100's, so if you have the patience, you might just want to scan the whole section.

Back to Blink. I liked it - an easy read with lots of interesting cases in it. He mentions some online tests you can take (5-15 minutes) at https://implicit.harvard.edu. I took a few to see how I would compare - I did end up out of the norm for one test, where I ended up associating Asian Americans with America more so than Europeans. I would attribute this to 1. me being Asian 2. having spent most of the last 12 months in Asia or with Asian people. However, on some of the other tests regarding other races, genders, etc, I did just as poorly as the average test taker, which was eye opening for me. I like Gladwell's suggestion of seeking out positive associations to change your Blink attitude. I just have to figure out what negative associations I have and then find out how to reverse them.

Another interesting book I read the other week was about using computers in Language Education (I forgot to write down the author and title). The book was from the early 80's when computing speed and space was still extremely limited. But even worse than that was the limitations of the software designers, in creating very one dimensional programs, that ended up not being much better than putting a student to sleep in the classroom with a boring drill lesson. I'm not familiar with how things have developed in the last 20 years, but I know ShiDa still uses books that suffer very much from the same problems that he discusses in the book. I have the CD that comes with Practical Audio-Visual 1, and it is just a reading of the text. We watched part of the VCD in class one day, and it was mildly entertaining in how bad it was. I like the idea of interactive learning, encouraging practical use over memorizing grammar rules, and increasing listening skills. Of course it all depends on intent - I'm not sure I had much intent for French when I was a kid besides fulfilling a language requirement. I definitely came out with reading and writing skills. I went to France and could read books from the library but it was hella hard to listen to conversations. Now that I'm in Taiwan, I have a stronger preference to learn listening and speaking, along with some reading, and the traditional method is not conducive to that. Luckily, Zhang Lao Shi takes time each class to have conversations with people and I find this vastly improves my listening and speaking skills.