1. Some Background Principles
Who should read this?
Have you ever noticed that learning and using a new language can be
emotionally demanding? That's for sure. We can make it better by good mental
health practices, but we can't make it emotionally undemanding.
So we've been thinking, since it is going to be emotionally demanding no
matter what, why not make it intellectually undemanding? Now you may find that
you like it to be intellectually demanding. Maybe that helps your emotions. You
are an outstanding student, and your ability to learn stuff better than the
rest of us is a real encouragement to you. You love languages courses, and you
like them to be as demanding as possible. Or you love reading complicated
grammar books and doing all the exercises. Question: Is this working for you?
Are you steadily getting better in the language you are learning (as measured
by your ability to use it conversationally)? Then accept the heartfelt
congratulations of other readers and us, and put this paper down. We've known
people who have become famous as language learners through endless hours of
intense study combined with intense efforts to use the language in real life.
What we have to say is for those of us who are tempted to envy them.
Or perhaps you are just hanging around with people and you are making good
progress in the language. We know a guy who learned Urdu really, really well
just hanging around with buddies in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (We kid you not.)
We know another guy in Canada from Russia who is an excellent public speaker in
English, fifteen years after starting. He refused to take ESL courses, because
he hates studying languages. He noticed after nine months that he could speak a
lot more English than many of his friends who had been full time ESL students
for the same nine months. If you're doing great without doing any special
"language learning activities" beyond communicating in real life,
then accept the heartfelt congratulations of other readers and us, and put this
down. What we have to say is for those of us who are tempted to envy people
like you.
Whew! Are they gone? Now they are kind, well meaning people, and we love
them, and are happy for them, but they intimidate us. Now we're left with the
80% or so of us who are unable to remove the emotional demands from language
learning, and so we really might like to limit the intellectual demands.
Now we are a pretty traditional family. Angela bore and we raised six
children. Four of them are out of the nest. What we are about to share has
grown out of our recent language learning experiences. One of us (Greg)
previously wrote a number of papers on field language learning. Those reflected
what Angela and Greg, and a number of colleagues in the Language Project of the
Church of Pakistan, learned about language learning between 1986 and 1990. For
people who have read those essays, this can be taken as a partial update. Those
papers contain a lot of detail. That is one reason for the present paper.
Getting started in language learning shouldn't be so complicated. What we have
to say here is based on our recent experiences in what Greg has elsewhere
called a "challenging" language learning situation: the early months
of learning Russian in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. At the outset of this project
our ages were 13, 47, 10, and 47, respectively. It has been nearly 100% a joint
project. Learning Russian is part of our shared family experience.
1.1. Four cute language learning principles you won't forget
We often see requests for information which go something like "I want
to start learning language X. Can someone please recommend a good
textbook?" Or "Does anyone know if there are courses in language X
taught in my area?"
1.1.1 Communing
A language is not an academic subject. A language is something that happens
between people in flesh and blood. That is where it is. That is what it is. No
more. No less. Individuals experience the world individually. That is called
perception. Communities experience the world together. That is called language.
Thus the first cute principle is Communing. And here is a golden rule to go
with it:
Golden Rule C ( for "communing"): Join with people around
experience using language.
For example. If you are a beginner in Language X, and someone points to
various objects in the room, and says what they are called, then you are
joining with that person around experience using language. This is sometimes
called here and now language. Or suppose you are more advanced in language X,
and are showing someone a photo of your father's store. You attempt to describe
parts of it to your friend. She has trouble understanding you and tries to help
you clarify what you are saying. But you then need her to clarify what she said
in her attempt to help you clarify. Back and forth you go, until she has
figured out what you are trying to say. Or perhaps she has the photo and you go
back and forth figuring out what she is trying to say. Same difference. It is
sometimes called negotiating meaning. In negotiating meaning around the photo
you are joining with people around experience using language. Or suppose you
are more advanced yet, and someone is telling you a lot that you didn't know
about events in your new community during the previous ten years. That is the
experience of the community. Communities have lots of experience that is only
shared largely indirectly by means of language. Person A has the experience.
Person B shares in it only because person A told him about it. And person C,
who has never even met person A, shares in this experience too, because person
B told her about it. Now you are getting people to share the community's
experience and knowledge with you. You are still joining with people around
experience using language. From beginning to end, progress comes as you join
with people around experience using language.
Come back to all those people who say, "I want to learn language X;
where can I find a textbook?" What would be a better first question for
them to ask? Try "I want to learn language X; where can I find some
speakers of language X?" How rarely people ask that. How odd.
1.1.2 Understanding
The second cute principle is the principle of understanding. You need to
understand things that people say in language X. And that gives us the second
golden rule.
Golden Rule U (for 'understanding'): Pay attention to large doses of things
that people say which you can understand.
Now you may be thinking, how can you understand a language that you haven't
learned yet? Piece of cake. We'll see later that you can set up activities
which will get people to say lots of things to you that you can understand. And
we'll just suggest a few simple activities.
Can you see why this golden rule is important? You want to learn to speak
Language X in a manner similar to the way that its current speakers speak it.
Well then, you have to hear what they are saying. No language could ever be
captured in a textbook. If you go on and on in this language, eventually you'll
have understood people speaking it for many thousands of hours. You will
"pick up" an awareness of the kinds of things people say. Even quite
early you'll often be saying to yourself, consciously or unconsciously,
"Oh, so that's how they say that." If you haven't started yet you
might find that hard to imagine. But let us get you there.
You may notice we haven't said anything about memorizing words and
sentences. Memorizing is a great activity for certain purposes. But for most
people it is time consuming, and time spent on memorizing is time taken away
from communing and understanding. You can progress more quickly if you skip the
memorizing and get on with the communing and understanding.
1.1.3 Talking
The third cute principle is the principle of talking. There are various ways
the third golden rule can be formulated. How about this?
Golden Rule T (for talking): To become good at speaking you need to speak a
lot, putting your own ideas into your own words.
There is an additional step to get from being able to understand something
to being able to come up with it when you need to say it. If you do things
right, then your language ability will be something like the following diagram,
at least for the first few years:
Figure 1: [picture graph where comprehension is greater than production]
Now language learning doesn't always work this way. If this same learner,
instead of communing, understanding, and talking, had chosen to memorize
"useful expressions" and vocabulary and "model sentences"
and rules, and subsequently to talk, and then commune, and then understand,
then her abilities might be better expressed by the following diagram:
Figure 2: [picture graph where production is greater is comprehension]
Now we can't prove that this is true, but that is what some of our language
learning felt like, and we know plenty of others who describe their experience
in similar terms. (There are exceptional people who do really well this way,
but we told them to stop reading after the first paragraph or two.)
1.1.4 Evolving
The final cute principle is evolving. By this we mean that your ability to
use the language changes over time, and along with it, you will want to change
your approach to communing, understanding and talking. Thus the final golden
rule is as follows:
Golden Rule E (for "evolving"): Adapt your language learning
activities to your current level of language ability.
Which brings us to the topic of what are the few simple things to do to
learn a language.
1.2. Things to do to learn a language
First, what are the key resources you need to locate? A textbook, you say?
Bzzzz! Ah, but you knew better. A human, you say. Chime! One or more fluent
speakers to join with around experience. Next, you need some time to meet with
those people. Third, you need some experience to join around.
One of the authors has written quite a bit about how to find people, and the
kind of people to find in the paper "Leave Me Alone! Can't You See I'm
Learning Your Language" But we continue to see repeatedly that a key to
organizing your early language learning is the way your native speaker friends
understand their role as your helper and co-communer. Explain to them that you
need a friend, not a teacher. People base new roles on ones they already know.
"Teacher" may seem to them to be the obvious one. Don Larson reminds
us that "mother, father, uncle, aunt, older sibling" are closer to
what you actually need. You need someone who will talk to you in such a way
that you can understand her, and who will help you along as you struggle to put
your own thoughts into words. That's all you need. If the person can read
English, let her read this very paragraph if you'd like. She will be
"teaching" you in a sense, but not in the sense that she is likely to
have in mind. So it is better to call it something like "language
practice". And call your language sessions "visits" rather than
"lessons". The youngest of the authors emphasizes that even the word
"sessions" gives too serious a tone to what we have in mind by
"visits". We find that in meeting with three different friends there
is one with whom we are more formal in that we tape recorded the visit. The
other visits are just visits.
1.3. Now what do you do with your resources?
So now you have people, or at least one person, and you have agreed to meet
for, let's say, one hour three times a week for language practice. Next, what
experience should you join around? Well, let's start with the physical objects
of everyday life. Of course, these will vary from culture to culture. But every
aspect of life is full of objects. Think of rising in the morning in the
authors' culture. Objects: bed, pillow, blanket, sheet, pajamas, robe, belt,
slippers, door, bathroom, toilet, sink, soap, washcloth, towel, shower, water,
razor, toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, curling iron... The point is, life is
full of objects.
People can recognize objects. You have some memory of what it is that beds
look like, and you use that to recognize beds when you see them. Let's call
this memory of what beds look like a "mental image" of beds. You also
know the sound of the word "bed", so that you can recognize that word
when you hear it spoken. To know the word "bed" is to have a link in
your brain between the memory of the sound, and the memory of what a bed is
when encountered in the world. So you want your language activities to lead to
forming many such links between the sound form of words and the mental image.
Perhaps the best and quickest (to say nothing of funnest) way to do that is to
have the actual objects present when they are talked about. It also enables you
know what is in fact being talked about!
(Don't take the mental image business too literally if you are relating the
word "dog" to a dog that you can see, or even a toy dog that you can
see, or a stuffed dog, or a picture of a dog, then you are making the right
link. Later when you hear the word it will call up the "image" even
though you may not experience any vivid mental picture.)
Switching from beds to dogs, the following diagram is an attempt at
illustrating the way the word for "dog" will be represented in your
head. Learning this word is a matter of getting two things to become very
strong: item 1 in the diagram, the memory of how the word sounds; and item 2,
the link from that memory to the mental image. We are assuming that the mental
image itself is already there, though this may not be the case when there
involve new cultural objects or actions. And there is a further matter of using
the word in your own speech once it is strong enough that you can retrieve it
and speak it as you need it. This is a matter of getting what comes out of your
mouth to match your memory of what the word sounds like (that is to match item
1 in the diagram).
Figure 3: [Picture of sound waves on the left, representing "memory of
the sound form of the word representing 'dog'". Picture of a dog on the
right, with a line connecting the two.
Initially your memory of the sound of the word (1 in the diagram) is likely
to be weak, and the link between the memory of the sound and the mental image
(2 in the diagram) is likely to be weak. But something will have changed in your
head, just the same. With some words, your memory for how they sound may become
strong first, while the link to the mental image remains weak. You hear the
word, and think, "I recognize that word, but I can't think of what it
means". In other cases the link to the mental image may be strong, so that
you start to say the word to express that meaning, and suddenly you realize
that you are not exactly certain of how it sounds when spoken. Eventually both
the memory of how it sounds and the link to the image become strong, and then,
once you have used that word a few times in your own speech, it will be a
secure part of your language ability.
Names of objects are by far the easiest things to learn first, so "go
to town". Gather up a whole bunch of the objects of everyday life, and
take them to your native speaker friend for your language learning visit. And
collect more at her house. (We actually think it is better at first to have her
come to your house, but this is not essential.) Or go outside with her to find
objects galore, some of which, of course, cannot be gathered up. This brings us
to the simple activities. All language learning activities, whether for
beginners, or for advanced learners, have one or both of the following
purposes:
�
to enable you to hear (with understanding) how native
speakers talk
�
to encourage you express your own thoughts in your own
words as best you can in your new language
2. The Simple Activities
What follows contains the main meat of this paper. It is the part that you
may want to come back to.
2.1. Simple activity 1: learning names of objects:
Take twenty objects and put them on the table in a clump. Remove two from
the clump. Your friend tells you, "This is a glass and this is a
spoon". You are now understanding the language. She then asks "Where
(or which) is the spoon? Where is the glass?" You respond by pointing.
Then you take a third object from the heap, add it to the first two, and
continue in the same way. Pretty soon she is asking you randomly to point at any
of the twenty objects. You now have a (weakly implanted) vocabulary of twenty
words.
2.1.1 Interlude -- Some commercial resources for extending simple activity
1:
There are many variations of this activity. And it feeds into others, such
as the Lexicarry activity (simple activity 2). They are easy for your friend to
learn, and what you are doing quickly comes to make perfect sense to her. It
may come across a bit like a "teaching 119 activity, but not a familiar
one. You will find more natural ways of building vocabulary later by simply
conversing about objects and pictures, and yet you can profitably come back to
this activity whenever you feel discouraged about slow vocabulary growth. Are
you an intermediate level learner who has grown discouraged feeling you haven't
made much progress for a long time. Then grab one of the tools listed just
below, and conquer a few hundred new vocabulary items. That ought to give your
spirits a lift.
The following books are sure winners. If you visit the ESL (English as a
Second Language) center of a major university you may find others.
Lexicarry: An illustrated Vocabulary Builder for second Languages, by
Patrick R. Moran (1984, 1990) Pro Lingua Associates,15 Elm Street, Brattleboro,
Vermont 05301. PH.: 802-257-7779
Action English Pictures, by Noriko Takahashi; text by Maxine Fauman-Prickel
(1985, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs 07632)
The Basic Oxford Picture Dictionary, by Margot F. Gramer. (1994. Oxford
University Press.)
This is better for early language learning than the New Oxford Picture
Dictionary.
Actionlogues, by J. Klopp. (1985, 1988. Sky Oaks Productions, Inc. P.O. Box
1102, Los Gatos, California 95031. Ph.: 403 395 7600)
Longman Photo Dictionary, by Marilyn S. Rosenthal and Daniel B. Freeman.
(1990, Longman)
Word by Word, by Steven J. Molinsky and Bill Bliss (with Germadi G. Borbatov
for the EnglishlRussian version. 1996, Prentice Hall.)
Picture It! Illustrated by Richard Toglia, no author listed. (1978,
International communications Incorp., Tokyo; 1981, Prentice Hall)
Most of these are designed for ESL, and so they have editions available in
various European (and sometimes Asian) languages. But that is neither here nor
there, since we are interested in the words in our friends' heads, and in their
communal sharing of experience. For our purposes all that matters is the
pictures (and our friends-- who matter infinitely more than the pictures).
2.1.2 Extending simple activity 1 -- simple activity 1a
Some of these books also come with instructions as to how to use them. We ignore
those instructions and use them in ways that suit us. Now the pictures in these
vocabulary books will function as the objects did in simple activity 1. Your
native speaker friend can first tell you what is happening in two pictures:
"This man is waking up. This man is getting out of bed." Then she can
ask you, "In which picture is the man waking up? In which picture is the
man getting out of bed?" (Or she might simply say "He is getting up.
He is getting out of bed.) You can respond by pointing. Then she adds another
picture. Then another. Before you know it she has you responding by pointing to
any of twenty pictures which she asks you about randomly.
Now these vocabulary building techniques are supposed to be simple, and they
are. Some snootie language learning specialists will say condescendingly,
"But those aren't information questions. They are merely display
questions." But if you can acquire, without drudgery, many hundreds of
vocabulary items in a few weeks, what do you care what they say? Just think
what you are accomplishing. First, you are forming a strong memory of the sound
form of each word. Second, you are forming strong links from the memory of the
sound form to the mental image of the item or action. (Review the diagram above
if this is unclear.)
By the way, verbs appear to us to be considerably more difficult to acquire
then nouns. This doesn't surprise us. To acquire the word for "dog",
"cat", or "man", you need to link the sound form of the
word to the mental image of a dog, cat or man. By contrast, you can't have a
simple mental image of "running". You must have an image of a dog,
cat, or a man (or the like) first, and then you can have it be running. So
linking the sound forms of action verbs to their mental images is naturally
more difficult than linking the sound forms of concrete nouns to their images.
We think it helps to act out the verbs as you hear them some of the time. (The
reasons are a bit complicated.)
But be patient. Whenever you are understanding your native speaker friend as
she talks about objects and activities, learning is occurring. Learning often
does not go through to completion all at once. Each time you understand a word
used in reference to an object or situation, your memory for the sound form of
that word gets a little stronger. And your link from that sound form memory to
the mental image of the object or situation also gets a little stronger. Time
spent understanding language is never wasted. Don't get discouraged if you
cannot recall a lot of words when you want to use them. That will come. You
just have to understand them enough times to make them strong enough. And as we
say, by means of simple activity 1 (including 1a), you can quickly come to
understand many hundreds of concrete nouns and verbs used in simple but natural
utterances. And we have (only) a few more simple activities.
2.1.3 How do you get enough repetition with these simple activities?
It may take many times hearing a word and associating it with the mental
image before both the memory for the sound form and the link to the mental
image will be strong. At first, your native speaker friend will have a hard
time believing how many times you need to understand a word in a meaningful
context before it becomes strong enough in your head to function property
there. We have found certain ways to increase the amount of exposure we get to
whatever we are learning. For one thing, since there are four of us, two adults
and two kids, our native speaker friend can do everything once with each of us,
while the others watch and listen intently. Then we can engage in a
"race": Our friend says the word and we race to see who can point the
most quickly. This provides a lot more repetition. Finally, we can have more
than one friend whom we visit, and do the same activities with different
friends. Or we could let our friend read this section, and then take our word
for it that we need a lot of repetition. There is a Russian proverb which says
that repetition is the mother of learning.
O.K So far we've been building a large vocabulary of words that we can at
least understand when we hear them in context But obviously, we need to be able
to say some practical things too. Simple method 2 will help us with that.
2.2. Simple activity 2: talking about stuff in Moran's Lexicarry
It might seem odd, when we have such a small number of simple activities to
share, that we should devote a whole activity to a single book that you'll have
to order if you want to do the activities. But Moran's Lexicarry (details
above) is the best single all in one language learning resource that we have
come across. Now the nay sayers will rise up and shout, "But it is too
culture specific". Well, as soon as they produce better tools that are
more appropriate to specific parts of the world, we'll stop recommending
Lexicarry for those parts of the world. For reasons we can't figure out, we
decided to demand considerably less than perfection in such matters. And
actually, the pictures are plain enough that in many instances culture specific
changes could easily be made using a pencil.
The first lengthy portion of Lexicarry contains comic style ststrips.
Typically there are three frames per story, and the stories have comic style
bubbles with the words missing. The stories illustrate approximately sixty
common language functions and communication situations. During our first month,
we like to concentrate on learning to understand, and so we can use the story
strips in the manner of simple activity 1. Our native speaker friend begins by
telling us what each person might be saying in the stories and then asks us
questions like "Who is saying, 'May I help you?'; who is saying, 'I'm
sorry'?". In a few moments, by using activity 1 with the Lexicarry, we can
recognize ten new useful expressions.
But simple activity 2, really kicks in once we start talking more (in month
two). You can still begin the Lexicarry activity as with activity 1, but then
adding a talking step. You learn to understand half a dozen new story strips
(the number that can typically be viewed at once). You each take your turn at
pointing in response to your friend's questions. Then you have your race.
Finally, and this is the new step, you can each take a turn at trying to tell
each of the half dozen story strips. You don't tell them verbatim from memory.
Rather, you tell them in your own words as best you can. It is a struggle, but
your native speaker friend helps you out at every step by expanding or
recasting your broken utterances. For us, once again, we get to do this four
times, if we wish, each taking a turn while the others watch and intently
listen. If you are all alone, then you really will want to have three or four
separate friends to visit and do this with. And/or you can tape record your
visit and listen to the tape over and over.
That's it for activity 2. Simple, eh?
So now you're growing this huge vocabulary of concrete nouns and verbs (and
adjectives too), using activity 1, and you're learning all sorts of useful
things to say in activity 2. But the world of experience that you are communing
around is not just a matter of objects and actions, or nice things to say in
social situations. It is a story in the making. And so you might as well start
learning to relate language to stories. But they need to be stories that unfold
as you talk about them. You are not nearly at the point where you can cope with
stories about what you cannot see.
2.3. Simple activity 3: working your way through books monolingually
This is the simplest activity yet. You go through children's picture story
books, page by page, with your native speaker friend. You verbally point out
anything that you can describe in your own words in the new language (even if
you can only make a stab at it). You ask about things you cannot say, (by month
two you can easily say "What is this?" or "What is s/he
doing?" in your new language). Set your timer or stopwatch and tell your
friend, "For the next twenty (or thirty) minutes we are only going to use
your language." After the twenty (or thirty) minutes are up, you can use
another language that you share (such as English) to ask about things that
puzzled you. For but for those twenty minutes, no matter how much of a struggle
it is, you do not depart from the new language.
You may question the importance of sticking to the target language. Well, we
find it extremely helpful. As soon as we let English in, the whole exercise
goes out the window. We must be forced to try hard to do as much as we can in
our new language. Otherwise it quickly becomes a conversation about the language
rather than one in the language. Now once you are gaining some fluency this may
be less of an issue. But while you are seriously needing to develop some
fluency, it is an issue.
For this activity you need to collect children's books. At least we've not
yet seen an adult book that serves the purpose. The ideal books have a sequence
of pictures which tell a complete story without words. If there are lots of
words, even if the pictures are wonderful, the pictures alone will probably not
tell the whole story. You want the pictures to tell most or all of the story by
themselves. Actually, the best book we found for getting this started did have
words, but very few, and we covered them with Post It note papers. The title
was Hallo! How are you? It was the story of a little bear who was on his way
home from somewhere, attempting to greet all and sundry. Various other events
occur along the way and at home.
This is really a month two activity, when you already have a vocabulary of a
few hundred items, and have been understanding them in context in simple
sentences for a month. You may not be sure exactly how much you know or how
well you know it, but whatever it is, you want to put it to work as you get
into serious talking. You should be able to come up with children's books
either by visiting bookstores (there are tons of children's books in bookstores
in Pakistan, for example), and by raiding the collections of friends whose kids
have outgrown the books. We found Hallo! How are you? in a city library book
sale. New children's books can be quite expensive, but you might be able to
share with other language learners. Two of our early books were
Hallo! How are you? By Shigeo Watanabe, illustrated by Yasuo Ohtomo.
(1980,The Bodley Head, London, Sydney, Toronto; first published by Fukuinkan
Shoten, Tokyo.)
The Big Fat Worm by Nancy Van Laan, illustrated by Marisabina Russo (1987,
1995, Alfred Knopf.)
A book we spent two or three hours in was a version of Goldilocks:
The Three Bears, by Paul Galdone. (1972, Houghton Mifflin)
Then we were able to talk much more readily about the following book:
Deep in the Forest, by Brinton Turkle.(1987, Dutton Children's Books)
It is a completely wordless book which happens to have the story of
Goldilocks in reverse. It is about a little bear who goes into the house of
three humans who are off on a walk to let their porridge cool.
Other good wordless books include the following:
Pancakes for Breakfast, by Tomie dePaola (1978, Harcourt, Brace &
Company)
Good Dog, Carl, by Alexandra Day (1986 41so, other books in the Carl series.
Simon & Schuster)
And these Puffin Pied Piper Books by Mercer Mayer
Frog on his Own (1973)
Frog Goes to Dinner (1977)
A Boy, a Dog, a Frog and a Friend (With Marianna Mayer, 1971)
One Frog Too Many (With Marianna Mayer, 1975)
Hiccup (1976)
Ah Choo (1976)
0ops (1977) (Dial Books for Young Readers, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New
York 10014)
(We don't recommend that you use Mercer Mayer's Frog, Where Are You? since
we have a secret purpose for that, which would be fouled up if you were to use
this as a language learning book.)
At a later point, some books by Japanese children's illustrator Mitsumasa
Anno will provide an enormous number of language learning opportunities. The
one we have used is Anno's Journey (1977, Putnam & Grosset, 200 Madison
Avenue, New York, NY 10016).
But these are just ideas. We're sure you can come up with children's books
that we'll wish we had come up with.
2.4. Simple activity 4: Role cards
For this you need a partner, or other helpful person, in addition to the
native speaker friend with whom you are going to be practicing the language. If
you are a solo language learner, you can adapt it. In the form we do this one
of the learners writes on two cards. One card is then given to the native
speaker, and one to the other language learners. A simple example might go like
this:
Figure 4: [Native speaker's card: "You own an ice-cream store. Your
chocolate ice-cream is very popular, and you have just run out." Language
learner's card: "You are craving chocolate ice-cream. Go and get a cone at
the ice-cream shop."]
It is crucial that neither the native speaker nor the language leamer know
what is on the other one's cards. Now here is another one which we used for
Russian:
Figure 5: [Native speaker's card: "Olga: You live in Moscow. You do not
know even one word of English. In the apartment next to you a Canadian widow
and her two friendly sons recently moved in. They speak broken Russian. You
want to get them to help you learn Engl. Call on them now. Arrange to visit
with them every day for the purpose of learning English." Language
learner's card: "Angela, Ambrose, and Chad: You have recently moved to
Moscow. You need someone with whom to practice Russian for one hour every day.
Your neighbor Olga is very sweet, and she does not know one word of English,
which makes her an ideal person for you to arrange to talk with. Arrange to
meet with her for one hour every day to improve your Russian."]
The basic concept here we have taken from Strategic Interaction, by Robert
J. DiPietro (1987, Cambridge University Press). The role cards have some shared
information and some unshared or conflicting information that will add a
problem that must be solved in your new language. Our ice cream example could
be used quite early. At advanced stages, the role cards can be as complicated
as you like.
At all stages, once you have finished the activity you can trade role cards
to see what the other person was trying to achieve. Then discuss what both of
you did (early on, this discussion can be partly in English or some other
language that you and your native speaker friend know well.) It is helpful if
you taped or videoed the activity. Then you can go over the tape or video with
your native speaker friend and tell her "This is what I was trying to say
at this spot. How might I have better expressed myself?" And she can
explain things to you that she had said during the activity and you were unable
to figure out, even with her best efforts to clarify for you. But the activity
itself should be strictly carried out in the new language as a way of forcing
you to talk.
2.5. Communicating across information gaps
Simple activity 4 is really the first of our four which incorporates the
important principle of the "information gap". That is, this activity
creates a need which can only be fulfilled through the exchange of information
in the new language. We do other activities which meet this condition. For
example, we sometimes have two identical sets of objects on the opposite sides
of a barrier (such as a cardboard box). Learners on one side of the barrier
arrange the objects. The native speaker describes what they do, and the
learners on the other side of the barrier attempt to arranged their objects in the
same way based on what the native speaker tells them. We do the same thing with
something called TPR kits (described in the catalogue of Sky' Oaks Productions,
P.O. Box 1102, Los Gatos, California, 95031 1102). These contain a plastic
picture, for example, of the interior of a two-story house or the main street
of a town. In addition there are reusable plastic stickers of many objects and
people found in such locations. Again, we ignore the instructions that come
with the kits, and just use them for information gap activities. That means we
always need two of each, although you might find ways to achieve the same thing
with a single kit.
At a later stage, we do our information gap activities in such a way that
the native speaker is on one side and the learners are on the other. The
learners have information which the native speaker needs in order to perform
the task. In addition to arranging objects behind barriers, or TPR kits, you
can use simple line drawings. Make two drawings that are partly the same and
partly different. Your native speaker friend must ask you questions to find out
all the ways in which your drawing is the same or different from the one you
gave her. We find it is less demanding if the native speaker is the one needing
the information to perform the task, and the learners are the ones providing
the information in response to the native speaker's probing. This provides a
lot of opportunity to understand language that you have never heard before, and
thus to notice ways that native speakers express themselves. At an even later
stage, you can reverse these roles, and the balance will shift from this being
more of an understanding activity to being more of a talking activity.
3. Odds and Ends
The main meat of this paper is over. But we feel we need to address a few
questions readers may be wondering about.
3.1. Can technology help in all of this?
Some helpful tools for enriching and extending the above activities are tape
recorders, cameras, and camcorders. If you tape record many of the activities
above while they are being performed, you will be able to add many hours of
listening pleasure to your few hours each week with your native speaker
friends. This can be a wonderful reinforcer, increasing the rate at which those
sound forms and links to mental images become strong in your brain. For
example, you can go to bed half an hour early, and listen to the conversation
you and your native speaker friend had over one of your children's books. You
can also have your native speaker friend tell the stories (in the
straightforward sense) of any children's books you have worked through, and
record those as well.
Cameras are also a wonderful tool. On one occasion in Pakistan we were able
to take about 100 photos of normal every day life settings and activities in
two hours. With a little planning, most of the simple activities above can be
adapted for use around photos.
Camcorders have an even richer potential for making sound to experience
links available for repeated exposures. But although the potential is
impressive, we don't want to push this beyond many of our pocketbooks and
living situations.
3.2. Grammar and pronunciation?
Some people will have a hard time believing that doing these simple
activities will result in language learning unless there are also grammar
lessons. In fact there may be mild evidence in support of a limited role for
"focusing on form' as a means of improving one's accuracy in the new
language. However, grammar may be more important than this for some people,
since they seem to have a psychological barrier to language learning without
grammar study. For such people, we recommend our paper Kick Starting Your
Language Learning: Becoming a Basic Speaker Through Fun and Games Inside a
Secure Nest. People with this need can also read grammar descriptions in
addition to their normal language learning activities. However, if there are no
descriptions available, they will need to postpone producing one until they
learn the language! They might keep brief notes of the aspects of grammar that
they notice while learning the language.
If some people feel a need to "understand the grammar", other
people are in the opposite position. Rather than the absence of a focus on
grammar being intimidating, they find that grarnmar is intimidating. They will
be relieved to know that language learning can proceed steadily through the
above activities without their "learning the grammar".
You might have wondered where grammar fits into the above picture of mental
links between sound forms and mental images. We talked as though you understand
a noun by connecting it to a simple mental "picture" of sorts. What
is popularly called "grammar" involves aspects of language that are
used 1) to organize simple images into simple "scenes", and 2) to
orchestrate "movies" that are built out of connected sequences of
simple scenes (what is you get when you understand a story, for example). Your
language learning cannot depend on your understanding how this works, because
no one really does. You mostly need to trust your brain, believing that it will
sort this all out. And for the most part it will, without a lot of help from
you, as you keep improving your ability to understand increasingly difficult
speech. It is a natural growth process, at least for the most part.
As for pronunciation, it is important to develop a thorough and crisp
awareness of what the language sounds like when spoken by native speakers.
People who attempt to learn languages by memorizing and drilling tend to do a
lot of speaking before they are hearing the language clearly. There own
pronunciation then becomes the basis for the memory of the sound forms of the
language. We don't recommend that. We think that throughout early language
learning understandingshould predominate over speaking, and especially during
the first month. This way you can at least be aware of the fact that your
speech differs from that of native speakers, and gradually tune your
instrument. Beyond this, some training in phonetics is great, especially if it
is oriented toward the language you want to learn. If you do not have such
training you might benefit from the help of someone who does, and who has
learned this language as a second language. However, not having phonetic
training in no way cripples you.
3.3. Reading and Writing?
We are a bit unusual here. We distinguish between language learning in the
narrow sense, and second language literacy and composition skills. Certainly
the development of literacy and composition skills are closely tied to, and
significantly effect, language learning in the narrower sense. Reading often
feeds directly into speaking, provided you are at the point where you can
figure out new words from context, and the writing system is fairly closely
tied to the pronunciation system. And literacy and composition skills may be
essential (eventually) for you as an educated member of your new speech
community. For beginners, you may have difficulty finding any reading materials
appropriate to your level of language ability. We see no need to rush into
reading at this stage. Once you know more language you can develop reading
fluency more quickly, primarily by just reading a lot. If the language has a
complex writing system, then you might prefer to postpone reading and writing a
few months anyway, until you know enough of the language to understand what
your literacy teacher is saying. We don't recommend receiving your literacy
instruction in English (or any other language except for the language you are
learning). But these are topics for another day.
3.4. These activities are impossible in your situation?
Now, you tell me, the speakers of the language you are learning are all
monolingual, and they cannot understand pictures or photos, plus they believe
that photos steal people's souls, and therefore they kill photographers, as
well as people who make tape recordings (they torture people who make videos).
Furthermore, it is against their cultural rules to talk to you until after you
know their language.
A few thoughts on situations where structured language learning activities
are impossible. Our first thought is that it is a characteristic of severe
discouragement to feel that "all is hopeless; everything is impossible;
and nothing can possibly work." If you are in this condition, then I
wouldn't pressure you. Think about what you have read, ruminate over it, pray.
Go fishing (and reread this when the fish aren't biting). You may come up with
some small solutions which will grow into big ones.
But no. You aren't at all discouraged. You just know that structured
language learning activities are not possible in this monolingual situation.
This need not be tragic as long as you stick to the principles of communing,
understanding, talking and evolving. People will talk to you in ways that make
it possible for you to understand what they are saying with the help of what
you see, and the general context. So just engage in such communication for many
hours a week. You will progress.
But in many other difficult situations, structured activities such as those
described above will make the difference between learning a language and not
learning it. This is especially true if you cannot be immersed in a community
where the language is spoken, and even moreso if you only have sporadic access
to native speaker friends (in which case the use of the technological aids
takes on some urgency).
3.5. But you're a language TEACHER!
Wonderful. You probably chose that line of work because you enjoy seeing
language learners succeed. You can easily apply the CUTE principles, because
you're the teacher. Now in many cases, you will already have a raft of ideas
for language learning activities which are similar to our simple activities and
you use them regularly. You are already into "leamer-centered" ways
of doing things, and you train your students to take responsibility for their
own learning. Nothing more need be said.
But if you are a more "traditional" teacher, then you may want to
consider re-educating your students with regard to what your role is, that is,
if you decide that you would like to start helping them to join with you around
experience using language. You may also want help them to develop leamer
autonomy. That is, as time goes on, the students would increasingly take
responsibility for how they want to join together with you around experience
using language. You can begin by giving them some experiences to build on. For
example, you might do simple activity one with them the first day, using a pile
of objects that you provide. After that, each student can bring several objects
that they would like to learn to talk about. Or students can make role cards
for other students to use, either with one another, or with you taking one of
the roles. Some students will have learning goals that are important to them
right from the beginning. By responding enthusiastically to their goals, you
can use them as models for other learners who need to learn to take more
responsibility for planning their learning.
3.6. Or you're a STUDENT in a language school or language course?
Depending on the nature of your course, you may want to go ahead and do
something like our simple activities on your own, outside of class. If you do
this, say, two hours per week with a native speaker friend, you may find that
you progress more quickly in the language than is the case when you limit
yourself to your course activities.
3.7 God bless busy moms.
We have noticed that language learning can be a special challenge for busy
moms. We feel our approach can make a big difference. For one thing, Dad can do
all the work of getting language learning visits set up and prepare the
language learning activities. If both desired and possible, the native speaker
friends can come to the learners' home for the language learning visits. If Mom
can manage, say, an hour a day for such visits, they will give her a refreshing
break from other activities. Now if the baby starts to fuss right in the middle
of an activity, it is up to Dad to get distracted, making sure that Mom remains
free to enjoy the activities to the hilt. If the activities are tape recorded,
Mom can listen to the tape later, while Dad prepares supper or does the dishes.
If there are older kids or teens, then they should participate in the daily
hour (or two) of language learning activities. This means that the activities
must be designed to be interesting and engaging for all ages. That is O.K,
because the extra effort to make things fun and interesting may benefit the
adults' learning more than the kids'. Having children involved is a good way to
force yourself to do good language learning!
Now every couple and family is unique, and it may often be the case that Mom
and the kids will want an equal chance to plan and direct the language learning
activities. That is fine too. It is just that Mom needs to be assured that if
need be, all she has to do is be present when the visits happen, and take part,
and she will make good progress.
3.7. What it's like to keep evolving
We think it is amazing how language ability grows. For your early language
learning visits, it will take a lot of planning in order to have rich
experiences of understanding and talking. But in a few months you will be
hearing volumes of language that you can understand, as long as your native
speaker friends are making a good effort to be understood by you. Yet even
then, structured activities can be beneficial, helping you to quickly fill in
gaps. But as you continue to join with people around experience using language,
you will move out into the open plains of culture learning. You will find
suggestions in our paper Language Learning in the Real World for Non-
Beginners. In brief, you tend to move from being able to understand speech
about the here and now, to being able to understand other language with
familiar content (such as stories about events that are familiar to you), to
being able to understand concrete language with unfamiliar content (such as
stories about events that are unfamiliar to you), to being able to understand
"fancy" language, like oratory, poetry, academic language, etc.
But don't make language learning too complicated. Simple activities 1-5 can
keep you profitably busy for months, moving you steadily forward. We recommend
that you at least do those activities. Some people can provide you with much longer
lists of language learning activities. We prefer to suggest a smaller number of
carefully chosen ones-ones that we feel are especially powerful and relatively
pleasant for a wide variety of people (including some of you who were supposed
to have quit reading on the first page).
When you meet for an hour or more with a native speaker friend, it is good
to switch activities fairly steadily. Other activities like Total Physical
Response (see the books and materials available through Sky Oaks Productions,
P.O. Box 1102, Los Gatos, California, 95031 1102) offer lots of ideas. And once
you're into this, you'll be inventing your own activities that fulfil the CUTE
principles. Changing activities can make the time more fun and interesting for
both you and your native speaker friends. Evaluate the quality of each language
learning visit by the "laugh ratio".
And that's it. We have suggested five simple activities that you can use on
a regular basis. Now you will need to follow the following five steps:
1) Establish contact with one or more native speakers.
2) Schedule a language learning visit
3) Plan your language teaming activities for your visit.
4) Conduct your visit.
5) Repeat 2-5 (and sometimes 1)
Five activities. Five steps. And you're on your way.