User:Chuck Smith/Pedagogical evidence for Esperanto

I'm putting this here so I can later go through it and put some of the information into the Esperanto wikipedia article. This is also here to answer the following question from talk:Esperanto:

Could somebody please give a reference for the study mentioned in the entry that it pays off (or at least is no hinderance) to learn Esperanto as the first language. -- HJH

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Chuck -

There's quite a bit of evidence, but it's very difficult to set up scientifically controlled experiments with people as subjects. The case is often overstated.

There is a booklet available in which the various experiments are reviewed - I haven't just got a copy to hand, and I can't just rememember the title :-). Ah - I've just found a reference to it:

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Intertempe, jam estis klare el euxropaj eksperimentoj ke Esperanto helpas al la lernado de euxropaj lingvoj ( ref: Edward Symoens 'Al nova internacia lingvopolitiko: la propedeuxtika valoro de Esperanto' Esperanto Dokumento No. 28-29E (1992). La tiutempa situacio en Sxtato Viktorio prezentis idealan sxancon por fari similan projekton kun la akronimo EKPAROLI.

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That's in http://www.education.monash.edu.au/projects/esperanto/97ekjb2.htm.

I did a review a few years ago on funding for such research projects. That's in my articles section at http://www.mintex.demon.co.uk/art.

I think that one of the best controlled and documented experiments was the Eccles experiment way back before my time. There's a paper on it - I'm sure it's referred to by Symoens. Many experiments are flawed, sometimes because the option of language is voluntary, and so one cannot ensure a random selection.

He did write the experiment up somewhere, but I don't think it was scientifically controlled. I must have the documentation for it somewhere. The results are entirely in line with the Eccles experiment though.

I've mentioned this one in the course because it's a matter of personal experience, rather than a scientific discourse. I later got to know him personally (he died shortly after helping me to trace the picture of Nikolaj Rytkjkov at his school).

Bear in mind that any language will help in learning another - it gets easier as you learn more languages. So a knowledge of Dutch will speed up learning of German, but no-one in their right mind would teach Dutch specifically to teach German, because learning German is quicker than learning Dutch and then learning German. The point about Esperanto is that you can learn Esperanto in a fraction of the time, and so the total time can (probably) be reduced.

I personally think that much depends on how the second language is taught. If it's related to the Esperanto that the students have already learned, then it's likely that that will be speeded up much more that if you just throw them into an unrelated class. On the other hand, if the language class is of the standard that you see in many British schools, where the grammar is not explained properly, it's likely that the Esperanto speakers will latch on to it much quicker. On the other other hand, they may get bored and frustrated because they are ready to progress at a different level. I've seen these phenomenae with my own children.

Also, there seems to be nothing about how the degree to which one learns Esperanto will affect the learning of another language. I doubt whether an advanced course for people with a conversational knowledge of Esperanto would help them very much in learning a further language. But if the course were designed to gain fluency in the basics, and to understand the principles of how grammar works, then stop, then I suspect that the cost-benefit would be greater than for a normal Esperanto course.

So it's really a highly complex issue, and one is not really free to study children in laboratory conditions.

I hope this helps. Please feel free to use it (perhaps on the Wiki) as you feel fit.

Regards, Ian Fantom.

See also : Chuck SMITH