Stephen van Vlack

Sookmyung Women`s University

Division of English Language and Literature

English in the Era of Globalization

Fall 2007

Week 4 - Answers

Trimnell 2003, Chapters 9, 14, 15, and 17

1. Do you think Trimnell`s notebook method of learning vocabulary is effective? Why or why not?

Keeping a language notebook is a potentially effective way of learning or studying a language. Words or word-like units are the stuff that language is made of. Interestingly, it is also the stuff that thought is made of. It is possible to expound on the importance of vocabulary for a very long time, but I think we are all well aware of the importance of vocabulary in language use. In this same vein, we are also very much aware of the potential power of a well designed and regularly implemented vocabulary notebook. The problem, though, is that we need to create this vocabulary notebook based on what we understand about the very nature of vocabulary and how it is proposed to work not only in language but inside the brain. Bearing these points in mind it seems that Trimnell`s vocabulary learning method is veery old fashioned and lacks efficacy. What this single item type of vocabulary learning really does is turn people into translation machines, and not very good translation machines at that.

There are two big things to remember in the creation of an effective vocabulary learning book. The first is that `word units` are not always words. They may be more or less. The other thing is that words alone are rather useless. Words or word units co-occur with other units to form what are called collocations along the lines of ice coffee. You need to record this type of information in your vocabulary notebook. In order to do this, the first concern and maybe the simplest thing would be to call it instead of a word learning book, we can call it a lexical learning book. The idea is that in reality it is very hard to make a distinction between what we call a free morpheme or word, such as do and a bound morpheme, such as un-. Linguistically they act in very similar ways, particularly when we take this up a notch and observe how words are connected with other words, as in the sentence/phrase do it. Looking at the word do as being the central part of both these different constructions, we can also look at its relation to the other parts. In both cases the other morpheme (either -un or it) are working together with do to form a solid linguistic unit or a chunk (of a kind). This no point in going over syntactic or morphological differences because native speakers do not actually do this. The simple point is that both undo and do it function as single linguistic units in both language and the brain and need to be learned in that way without an inside analysis necessarily of their structure. So we get the basic idea behind linguistic units as opposed to words and chunks. It is, therefore, time to move on to the basic idea of collocations.

The idea of collocations simply states that all linguistic units in a language are limited in the choice of what other linguistic units they are able to form partnerships with. We know from what was said in class that the meanings of words depends on the other words which come either before or after. Well, collocations have a lot to do with this. No word in any language is able to be used with any other word. There are restrictions. Sometimes these restrictions are extremely tight, as in the well-documented case of the English word (adj.) addled. For most English speakers addled can only be used to as an adjective to describe such nouns as eggs and brains, supposedly upon some sort of association between eggs and brains. So, in English you cannot have addled hair, or an addled chair, or even an addled bear. You can only have addled eggs or maybe addled brains. That is one extreme case of an adjective which has an extremely narrow collocational range. Others have extremely wide collocations ranges like the word happy. As expansive as the collocational range of happy may be we must also acknowledge that it is not infinite. You may have a happy birthday or meet a friend on a happy occasion, or even find yourself in a happy place, but can your pencil be happy? There seem to be restrictions on how we can use happy, not necessarily based on linguistic rules but based on culture and usage. Finally, in relation to collocations we have the extreme example of what can call a delexicalized word. A delexicalized word is one which is used to so often that it really has no restrictions at its collocational range and because of this gives up any kind of particular meaning. A delexicalized word is, in essence, a word which does not have a core meaning. An example would be a word like good. We can use the word good to modify virtually any noun in English, but it should be clear that the meanings of good varies dramatically according to the word that it is modifying. So a person can be a good mother, or maybe a good killer, and she may live in a good house, in a good neighborhood, on a good mountain, surrounded by a good river. Looking at this list we should understand that the good used in these five examples really represent five different goods in that each one awakens different sets of meanings for each of the nouns it modifies. Think about the attributes of a good mother against the attributes of a good killer, or a good river for that matter? They are all different.

The point that I am taking so long to make here is that your word learning book should not just consist of an alphabetized list of translation equivalents. That`s like putting a jigsaw puzzle together with pieces that don`t really fit exactly. It is important to remember the translation equivalents are really just approximations and will never be more because all words have multiple meanings and almost an infinite variability in their shade of meaning and their uses are tinged by the cultures/situations in which they are embedded. All words come with a wide range of baggage which helps define them. We, therefore, need to include this baggage in our language learning and the best place to do so is in an expanded type of word learning book; a book of lexis. This book should have page size entries or maybe multiple pages for some of the more basic or frequently used words you encounter and should include major as well as morphological variations of the word. This may be a little but hard to organize at first but the effects on language learning should be dramatic.

2. How do you think the list of possible jobs Trimnell give in Chapter 14 might differ between the US and Korea?

Obviously the situation between countries is going to vary, and one of the main differences between the US and Korea will be the availability of simply falling back on English. For most Americans, using English is a simple no-brainer and it is expanding out from English which is the hard part. For Koreans, using English is already relatively difficult, which makes expanding out from English that much more difficult (maybe). Trimnell mentions several different promising professional areas and we will go through each of them one by one citing both similarities and possible differences between Korea and the US, when they do exist.

Sales

Linguistic prowess in sales seems to be a basic universal. If you want to sell in a local market you need some local knowledge and of course this means exposure to and a certain degree of proficiency in the local language. Jobs in sales will always be out there because sales is the bread-and-butter of every company.

Human resources

The basic idea underlying human resources and globalization is that large multinational corporations hire people from different areas of the world with different languages. These people will turn up not only in the head office and major regional offices, but more importantly in a lot of local offices as companies become more global. In a major corporation there may even be different languages used in different local offices, out of a simple necessity. These large corporations therefore need people to work in management who understand some of the different languages of their employees, even if there is a working language (very often English) within the company. All too often the working language often only relates to the upper management echelon and not to the lower management people who probably will not be proficient enough in English to do everything in that language. These lower management people must also be dealt with effectively to get the best performance. Human resources management, therefore, is a growing field in a globalized world where companies hire the best possible workers out of a global pool of employment. In Korea, we might not need to worry about this because it is assumed that locals will take care of local language issues and Koreans will be taking care of English and Korean.

Law

For companies operating in different areas of the world, a knowledge of local law is an absolute prerequisite for setting up any kind of business operation. If a company does not know the local law than they do not know when they are violating any of those local laws. While a large corporation will often hire out a local law firm to help advise them, they may also still retain someone within the company who they can trust to help manage and deal with local law issues in congruence with the local law firm they hire. They need someone to watch their back. So there are jobs both within companies for lawyers who have language skills as well as within law firms. A lot of law firms live off large corporate accounts most of which come from foreign based companies. A lot of sensitive documents appear in multiple languages and lawyers need to be able to look these things over.

Purchasing

Purchasing is basically the opposite side of sales. In order to sell something you need to buy something first from somewhere and at the best price possible. The bottom line in this highly globalized economy is that the raw goods that are used to manufacture finished goods come from all over the world. They need to be bought from somewhere and, more importantly, by someone. Companies therefore need someone who can not only sell in local markets but also procure raw materials or partly finished goods from local markets. Language skills are especially important here because the buyer wants the best price. Getting the best price often means making things easy for the seller and language is an important part of this. For a company, being able to buy goods directly from a seller typically results in a much lower price for those goods, but you need to be able to negotiate in the seller`s language. Having someone in a company who has proficiency in the local language makes a huge difference for companies which need to purchase materials abroad. There are, therefore many jobs in this area especially in countries like Korea which are quite poor in natural resources and at the same time very rich in human resources and technology.

Public sector (government)

Not only companies but also governments need to deal with other regions of the world. In fact, we could say that really half of what a government in this globalized world needs to do is deal with other governments. In such a scenario the need for government officials proficient in a variety of local languages is readily apparent. What may just be apparent to us in Korea now is the burgeoning need for government officials stationed within Korea to be able to deal with large numbers of non-Korean speaking residents of Korea. The number of foreigners residing in Korea is on a dramatic rise as laws quickly change along with aspects of the Korean economy. The time was that in the past, work permits were only granted to foreigners to be either teachers or high level management of foreign companies. Now not only are local companies hiring foreign talent as managers and office workers, but there is a huge opening in so-called low-level jobs such as construction and even low-level service jobs. This means that the government has to somehow be able to deal with increasing numbers of foreigners living in Korea who have quite different linguistic backgrounds and therefore linguistic needs. While for the moment the assumption is that it is enough for government employees to have some control over English, again because English is the lingua franca, a vast array of new issues are soon going to come to play over human rights and linguistic rights. We really are just seen the tip of the iceberg in this.

IT

The IT industry is in a really interesting industry to discuss in relation to Korea because Korea has really bucked the trends of the rest of the world. Rather than being a consumer of foreign IT companies, Korea has developed into a world leading IT economy. Koreans are arguably the most IT savvy people in the world. This means that the Korean economy has not only been able to rebuke foreign attempts to enter into the Korean economy, but is actually an IT exporting country. Once more because Korean IT companies are good, though local talent is not being drawn away from the local market as we see in places like India and the Philippines, where all the good workers end up being pulled away to work in foreign companies. In Korea, then, the real concern is being able to sell Korean IT technology in local markets and is really just brings us to sales.

3. Do you think the tips in chapter 15 for finding a job would work here in Korea or in your local country?

In this chapter there really are two sections, the first section focuses on different pathways to finding a job for overseas and the second mentions possible jobs or really just one job. It should be clear that for Koreans in a much smaller economy than Americans the path to finding an overseas job, or a job which brings you into contact with foreigners is much easier than for Americans. Virtually every Korean company both large and small will have some overseas connections. This is an inevitability based on the size of Korea (relatively small) based on the size of its economy (quite large). In effect, Korean leaders have to be both multilingual and global. This is the only thing which will keep the Korean economy going in the future as the local market just isn`t big enough to sustain an economy the size of the Korean economy.

As for possible jobs Trimnell really only mentions translating and interpreting. I hate to be pessimistic about this because I know there are so many people who want to be translators or interpreters (remember they are two really different things which require really different skills to make sure you are able to distinguish between the two of them) but there really aren`t very many official jobs within companies for translators or interpreters yet. What Korean companies nowadays tend to do is either subcontract for translations and interpretation or they simply grab someone within one of their offices who has a high ToEIC score or some overseas experience and forces them to do some translation or interpretation even though it may have nothing to do with their actual job. Based on this we can see that it is hard to enter a company with your qualification as just a translator or interpreter. Most companies also need people who know their products which means anyone who wants to do the translation or interpreting should have some specialized content knowledge. That would help people get into companies, but again companies aren`t really hiring people just for translation or interpreting. That is not to say that in the future large companies won`t become more concerned with the quality of their materials and seek out better sources for translation and interpretation. This will probably happen.

4. Which of the sources in the buying guide of chapter 17 seem the most effective based on your experience?

Your decision might be based on which of the four skills you think is the most important in addition to your perception of the role of grammar. Looking at these resources we can see that they tend to focus on either the written form of the language or the spoken form of the language. While many people in learning a foreign language prefer to start with written forms, I would suggest that if your goal is being able to communicate that you do focus on spoken forms first and only after you have reached a certain threshold level of proficiency in speaking and listening should you then move on to written and spoken language. The reality of the situation is that written language and spoken language are in fact different. Unfortunately, many of these out-of-the-box language courses failed to make any kind of distinction between written and spoken forms. Since the languages of writing and speaking are different and speaking is primary (written language is really an abstraction from the forms of spoken language) than really to be a good reader and writer one should first have mastered elements of spoken forms.