Re: dilemma of cache: two types of image

Doug Schepers wrote:
> 

> What is missing is some evidence that this is a genuine need (or even 
> desire) by a number of people, such that it is worth the time and effort 
> needed to standardize it, rather than a "pet peeve".  This is why I 
> suggested you gather together this information.

Jonathon.  I don't know if you've been watching the documentary series 
"Can't Read.  Can't Write" on Channel 4 TV, in the UK, recently, but 
that demonstrates that different people need different techiques, and 
that there are lot of fully illiterate people who do have the potential 
to learn to read and write conventional alphabetic languages.  That 
means that your icon based languages, particularly when used as the only 
visual language, are only appropriate for some of your 20%.

My impression is that the presenter's "pet peeve" is "look and say" 
teaching methods in schools, and his primary method is synthetic 
phonics.  However one of the subjects was found to have difficulty with 
recognizing letters by sight, but could recognize them by feeling the 
shape, and he adapted his teaching to make use of that ability.

I don't know how the class was selected, which may compromise the making 
of quantitative inferences, but some of them went from zero to pretty 
fluent in a very short time.

Part of your case needs to be to properly quantify the number of people 
who would have the ability to learn to write with your visual languages, 
but not have the ability to learn to write conventional written languages.

Your functional illiteracy figures are misleading, because they include 
a lot of people who can write, but not well enough for a job that 
involves formal writing.

Actually, in context where computer assistance is available, writing is 
becoming a less important skill, because you can use speech recognition, 
combined with reading.
-- 
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.

Received on Tuesday, 29 July 2008 08:05:33 UTC