Here is the first video of the discussion at Sophia Books. I apologize for the camera angle. It was a small room. Robyn preferred to have me go first, so I got to kick things off. More of these videos are available on youtube. I think will also put them up here if there is interest. Questions and comments are welcome.
The language teacher's role should be to make the learner independent according to Krashen. Rubem Alves talks of encouraging students to fly, of helping them learn things that become a part of their bodies so they do not have to think of them. He quotes the parable of the centipede.
"Once a centipede was asked how he could operate all of his numerous feet in such an orderly manner without getting them confused. The centipede shook his head, shrugged, and said that he had never given it a thought. From that time on, the centipede became unable to move, the legs all got in the way of one another."
Alves wants teachers to create hunger so that students will find their own way. He wants the learners to fall in love with what they are reading, so that they will love reading. He disparages grammar and the other useless dictates of the curriculum. You cannot learn music just from the notes, he says, you first have to hear the song.
Many educators have a different view, one that is, in my view, not useful nor effective. Robyn Matthew falls into that category of educator.
Robyn Matthew wrote a book called Language Logic, Practical and Effective Techinques to Learn any Foreign Language. She and I debated at Sophia Book Store Thursday night. I hope to have some youtubes of the event later.
Let's just say that I am fundamentally opposed to most of the advice in Matthew's book. Her book is based on the assumption that the teacher has to control what the learner is doing.
The thrust of her book is always the same. Get a teacher, take a course, get instruction, learn the concepts of the language before jumping in, learn the words in the dictionary and colour the different parts of speech different colours, and on and on. To her, grammar is essential, and since many people do not even know grammar in their own language, they should learn that first. Syntax (term that most people do not understand) is even more important. She introduces the fashionable term "collocation", relatively recent addition to the long line of jargon invented by linguists and language teaching specialists to describe things that we observe naturally. Collocation refers to the fact that certain words in a language usually appear together with others to form common phrases.
To me it is simpler. Read and listen to things of interest. Study words from this content without worrying about what you forget. Enjoy yourself. Do not think of rules or parts of speech. And steadfastly refuse to analyse syntax or answer comprehension questions.
At times Matthew's impulse to control and advise in every last detail becomes ridiculous in her book.
She declares in the book that there are three levels of difficulty in writing a language;
most difficult-when there is no writing system;
next most difficult-when the writing system is different from yours (then it will take longer and you need instruction she advises) and
easiest-when the writing system is the same. Wow!
She goes to great length to explain that the child learns its first language differently, because the mother spends so much time in one on one discussion with the child etc. . Has she heard of families with many children, or where the mother works ?
I contrast all of this "guidance" with the wisdom of Rubem Alves. Let the learner discover. Encourage the learner to enjoy the music of the language or the interest of the text. Let's learn from the child and the playful way the child explores and learns. Just put in the time.
Let's not destroy the enjoyment of the language with "concepts" and analysis or questions. Let's not make the learner self-conscious like the centipede.
I have imported some Korean into the Chinese section of LingQ. It works OK sort of, but it sure would be nice to have access to a Hangul-Hanja dictionary. Many of the words that I read in Hangul would be easier to remember if I could also input the Hanja into my LingQ widget.
Anyone out there have any suggestions? The best would be if I could just cut and paste the hangul into a box, click and get the Hanja, or even if I could copy and paste the whole text and get it converted into Hanja where applicable.
I have a Macbook. Any suggestions welcome.
While I am at it, here is the Russian intro.
Ana and Mairo, I know there are mistakes but here it is. I took two days off my Russian to listen to Rubem Alves, whom I appreciate more and more, got into the mood, am keener than ever to really master Portuguese, and put this up. I look forward to getting down to your part of the world one day.
Do we learn a language better by finding ways to enjoy it or by studying grammar and syntax. Anyone who has been following this blog knows where I stand on this. On Thursday I will be at the Sophia Bookstore here in Vancouver, to discuss language learning with a person who has also written a book on language learning, Robyn Matthews, author of Language Logic.
I have read Robyn's book. She is passionate about language and feels anyone can learn another language at any age. On both points we agree.
Thereafter we do not agree so much. It would not be right to attempt a detailed summary of her book since I may not do justice to it. It is my impression, however, that Robyn favours taking courses, finding a tutor, learning syntax and grammar, and studying the basic concepts of a language, as a condition to successful language learning.
I will find out more on Thursday evening.
I have been listening to my Rubem Alves audio books again, and re-reading his texts, which I have imported into my Portugese area at LingQ. (I am taking a break from Russian because I want to do a Portuguese video intro for LingQ. I need to get into the mood. Otherwise, every time I struggle to find a word, Russian comes up.)
Here is what Rubem Alves says about grammar.
Se o conhecimento científico de anatomia fosse condição para se fazer amor, os professores de anatomia seriam amantes insuperáveis. Se o conhecimento acadêmico da gramática fosse condição para se fazer literatura, os gramáticos seria escritores insuperáveis.
Mas essa não é a verdade. ...
Gramática se faz com palavras mortas. Literatura se faz com palavras vivas.
"If the scientific knowledge of anatomy were a condition for making love, professors of anatomy would be unrivaled lovers. If the academic knowledge of grammar were a condition for making literature, grammarians would be unrivaled writers. But this is not the case.....
Grammar is made with words that are dead. Literature is made with words that are alive."
I had a post earlier about how learning a language is like falling in love. I really feel that way. Now,it is possible that some people may fall in love with the grammar of a language. I do not deny that. Most, however, do not. They fall in love with other things in the language: the sounds, the music, the rhythm, the words and phrases, the content, the literature, the culture, the people they can now reach out and touch. This can all be done with no knowledge of grammatical terms.
Alves goes on to say;
Existe uma incompatibilidade total entre a experiência prazerosa de
leitura – experiência vagabunda! – e a experiência de ler a fim de
responder questionários de interpretação e compreensão.
"There is a complete incompatibility between the pleasant experience of reading, a vagabond experience, and the experience of reading for the purpose of answering questions of meaning and understanding. "
And he goes on to say about students in a typical classroom:
Foram forçados a aprender tantas coisas sobre os textos - gramática, análise sintática –que não houve tempo para serem iniciados na única coisa que importa: a beleza musical do texto literário:
"They were forced to learn so many things about the texts, grammar, analysis of syntax, that there was no time to be initiated into the only thing that mattered: the musical beauty of the literary text."
And yes, learning a language is first and foremost about listening and reading and, if possible, loving the language. That comes first. If you can manage that, and if you can encourage learners to do that, the rest is easy.
Here is the LingQ Intro in French.
Here is the video in Mandarin
Some time ago I was involved in a discussion with Chinesepod who put out a very successful series of language podcasts. I expressed the view that language podcasts should be exclusively in the target language, the language being learned. Chinesepod felt that English explanations on their podcasts were necessary, as were translations.
When I studied Russian I found Pimsleur most uninteresting because I like to listen over and over to a limited amount of content when I start learning a language. Pimsleur, which is popular with many learners, always has English on their audio material. I also used Assimil, but only to listen to their texts. I did not read the translations, which are a feature of their system. I found them a distraction.
I have always relied on bilingual glossaries or bilingual online dictionaries like Babylon, which we use at LingQ. I just want a quick indicator of the meaning of the words I need to know so that I can get a grasp of the meaning of the text I am listening to or reading. I am quite prepared to accept the fact that the language remains a little unclear for a while. With enough exposure it will get clearer. I like staying in the language I am learning.
What do others think? At LingQ we do offer the 26 episodes of The Power of the Linguist in a variety of languages. We may ask our members to help translate more of the beginner texts into different languages if people ask for it. Hopefully we can reward our members better for helping others.
There is also better and better computer generated translation. Systrans and Babelfish for example. Does anyone use these services as part of their language learning?
Here is the same video intro in Japanese. More to come.
I have been working on a video introduction for LingQ. I posted a podcast here earlier. Now, over the next day or so I will post various language versions of the video.
First here is the English version.
I am still interested in the subject of literacy. I phoned another organization involved in Literacy to try to find out what they do and if LingQ can be used. I was told that literacy was largely a social problem. In other words people with low literacy are people who come from families with a history of violence etc.
I spoke to another person involved in literacy who claimed that it was largely a problem of people having learning disabilities.
The literacy movement claims that nine million people in Canada struggle with literacy. A high percentage of immigrants have trouble with literacy in English and French in Canada. Can all those people be from families with domestic violence? Or do they all have learning disabilities?
I suspect that the majority of these people simply do not read enough because they have not got into the habit of reading.
I also found on one website that of the lowest literacy group in Canada, only 1% would ever seek help. I can assume that this percentage is even lower amongst the groups with better literacy.Even if these people seek help, many quit. It is a bit like the French language programs in New Brunswick, where, after 12 years of daily French instruction only 0.68% can use the language at an intermediate level.
So why are we piling so much money into programs for literacy that will affect such a small percentage of people with literacy problems. Probably that many people would improve on their own. It seems that it should be possible to influence a much larger percentage of people with literacy problems.
I am preparing a video script to use at the LingQ site. I feel that many people who come to LingQ do not have an overall concept of what the site is all about. Here is the text. I record it here.
Comments are welcome. We have translated the text into various languages. I will also put those texts up and record them here.
Hello. My name is Steve Kaufmann.
I'm the founder and CEO of the Linguist Institute and LingQ.
Would
you like to be fluent in another language? I speak 10 languages. Along
the way I've learned one simple truth. To become fluent in a language,
the most important task is to learn the words and phrases of that
language, what they mean and how they're used. This is most easily
achieved through listening and reading, and the efficient study of
words. That is the core of the LingQ system, the natural and yet
efficient way to learn. LingQ's powerful learning process will have you
speaking better than you ever expected.
Some
people think you just need to speak to improve. I know that to be able
to speak well is your goal, but without enough words and phrases you
won't be able to say very much. You cannot just talk your way to
fluency. You need to learn the words, a lot of words.
Other
people think you need to study grammar. However, without first
experiencing the language naturally, you will not be able to
understand, remember or use the rules of grammar.
At
LingQ you will find interesting conversations between real people,
stories and other content to listen to and read. You will learn the
words and phrases in a systematic way, the LingQ way and the language
will become a part of you.
To practice what
you have learned you can submit writing for correction by a tutor. You
can also speak live online with our tutors, during 1 on 1 or group
conversations. Our native speaker tutors will guide you to fluency. At
LingQ You can work on your pronunciation and you can interact in your
new language with other members of our community.
LingQ
is the modern, effective way to learn languages. You will be surprised
at how easy and enjoyable it is. Please take the time to understand the
few simple steps of our system, and you will be on your way to rapid
improvement in all your language skills.
Some recent events have driven home to me the importance of context in language. A CNN commentator made some unflattering comments about China's leaders recently, calling them " the same goons and thugs as 50 years ago". This has caused a huge uproar in China, and has resulted in a law suit against CNN. I cannot find the original transcript right now, but from the context that I saw it is obvious to me that his reference was to the Communist party, not to 1.3 billion Chinese. The Chinese, including many Chinese-Americans are reacting as if this was a racist slur.
Is it just a factor of the language context? Is it the fact that I am more familiar with English than most Chinese and see it differently ? Is this an ideological context? I am more familiar with the idea of autocratic leaders being called goons and thugs. I am inclined to believe that TV commentators would not refer to a whole nation as goons and thugs. People in China are inclined to react differently, quite independently of their familiarity with English. In a way they would like to prove that this an intended ethnic slur, being caught up in an anti-Western mood as a result of the world wide demonstration against the Olympic torch parade. In any case, context is key.
In a similar vein, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor was recently quoted as saying that a major cause of rising food prices was increased food consumption in India and China. She was defending Germany's biofuel program. The article referring to Merkel's statement said that Merkel "blamed" higher prices on changing eating habits in those countries, although these were not her words.
Chinese bloggers have been spreading this story with the interpretation that Merkel was criticizing Indians and Chinese, and wanted them to eat less so that Europeans could drive cars. If you look up "blame" in a dictionary it can imply criticism or impute guilt. However, in common usage we often use it to mean "the cause of some negative result" without imputing guilt. "Chinese industrial growth can be blamed for the pollution". "The poor harvest can be blamed on the weather." One objective factor is the cause of a negative sitution. I tried to explain this on one Chinese website and all I got as reams of dictionary definitions defending their interpretation. However, dictionary definitions do not account for usage.
Obviously, here again, the familiarity with the language context is one factor, but not the only contextual factor. There is also the subjective willingness to believe; in my case, that no sane person would criticize a nation for improving their diet; and in the case of the Chinese, that Western leaders who criticize China on human rights are evil.
Non-profit educational institutions
People in the public educational sector see themselves providing an especially noble service since they are "non-profit" or "not-for-profit". This is true for people in the public university system, community colleges, literacy programs, or immigrant language schools. "For-profit" suppliers of training or education are perceived as greedy capitalist organizations that somehow go against the spirit of education. Money is dirty.
So I am not surprised when I offer LingQ as a free learning tool to an organziation like Literacy BC, which describes itself as "the provincial literacy organization that promotes and supports literacy and learning in the province" that I am told that they only deal with non-profit institutions.
And when I ask them where I might find someone who could tell me if LingQ could be a useful resource for helping the nine million Canadians that they claim struggle with literacy, I am not surprised that they say that I will have to find that out for myself.
After all, why should a non-profit organization, supported by millions of dollars of tax-money and contributions from wealthy individuals and corporations, help a "for-profit" educator, who has invested a great deal of money and time to create a language learning tool, and wants to find out if it would help in the fight to improve literacy? It is one thing to buy computers, books, pens, food, clothing, and everything else they use, from "for-profit" corporations. But to deal with a "for-profit" educator would be to help a greedy intruder onto their holy ground.
But how successful are these "non-profit" language educators? When it comes to second language learning in our schools, not very effective at all. When it comes to literacy I have no idea. However, they have been attacking literacy for years and years, and I doubt if they have made any significant change to the literacy statistics. But I admit I do not know. But I am sure that there are people, among the nine million literacy learners in Canada, who cannot or would not go to a classroom and who might benefit from a free service like LingQ. We do not have any literacy tutors, so that any literacy learner on LingQ would use it free and would probably never upgrade, at least for the foreseeable future.
Today there was an article in the local newspaper about the firing of the president of a public university in Eastern Canada. She has been making $350,000 per year. When I was in San Francisco I read that a new President of the California State (public) University system had been appointed and that he was going to work on making the public universities more affordable for students. His salary was $850,000 per year and he had an official residence which cost $300,000 a year to maintain, with a large staff. Money is only dirty in the hands of other people.
Ryan asks why we do not try to get "not-for-profit" status for LingQ. In fact LingQ is non-profit, but it is not a not-for-profit institution, and I will not make it one. The reason is that I want to find a way to become profitable by creating a service that customers are willing to pay for. If I were a non-profit institution my business model would be focused on how to attract funding and support from government and donors. In other words the needs of the actual users of the service would become secondary. Begging with government, charitable institutions and individuals would become the number one activity. No thanks.
I will be in Japan for one week to meet on lumber and could stay longer. I would like to meet with some of our LingQ members. Please let me know if you are interested in getting together. I will be in Tokyo and Nagoya.
Does anyone have ideas about public speaking or other activities that I could do to help spread the word about LingQ?
I am interested to know if people who struggle with literacy can benefit from LingQ. I have tried to have it evaluated by people in the literacy field. I tried with the Center for Applied Linguistics in the US and was rejected with due arrogance as not meeting their standards for "over-arching pedagogy" or something.
Recently in the newspaper there was a report from two of Canada's provincial education Ministers, including our Minister here in BC,Shirley Bond, affirming their commitment to fight the problem of poor literacy in Canada. This motivated me to call the local lIteracy organization, Literacy BC.
I left a message and no one called back, so I called again. "I was just going to call you," said the lady. I explained what LingQ was and that it could be available free to literacy learners, offering audio, text, and a variety of vocabulary learning functions. I was curious to know if literacy learners could benefit.
'We only deal with not-for-profit organizations." said the lady. "You can see the organizations that we work with on our site". (These were community colleges.)
Community colleges may be public, not for profit institutions, but they sell their services, either on a cost recovery, or for profit basis, or based on government funding. They offer language training for immigrants, do literacy training and sell high cost programs to foreign students.
I said that our model was different, and in some ways competed with these institutions. All I wanted to know was whom I could talk to in order to find out if our system could be considered useful for literacy. Literacy is, after all, identified as being at the core of many social problems. LingQ would be available free.
"Where might I find someone who could tell me if LingQ, free, could be useful?" I asked.
"That is up to you to find out", was the answer.
Literacy is an enormous problem. The fact that the main organization in the fight for literacy, which at its website encourages people to donate money to fight literacy, will ONLY DEAL WITH NOT FOR PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS is a gross indecency. That they would beg for money from the public and then deliberately exclude private sector services that might help fight literacy, just in order to protect certain public sector institutions (which compete with private schools in a part of the market), infuriates me, in particular since what we are offering is free.
I am concerned about literacy in our community and I cannot give our service away. This is not the first time I have come across the hypocrisy of the non-profit sector. I would never give money to an organization that will only deal with non-profit suppliers of goods and services. I know that they are more interested in themselves than in the people they are trying to help.
"Foreign Language Acquisition the Easy Way" Stephen Krashen
My recent conversation with Paul Nation got me thinking. I decided to re-read Krashen. I picked up "Foreign Language Acquisition the Easy Way" which is a short book, fifty or so pages long. It is available from Amazon. I recommend it to everyone involved in learning or teaching language. It is full of insight and research results. I agree with much of it.
The gist is that comprehensible input is the most important thing in language learning, that explicit grammar instruction is relatively unimportant, and even output is relatively unimportant, since learners do so very little of it. What influences learning the most is access to a lot of comprehensible input. This approach has the added advantage of enabling the learner to do a lot on his or her own. It is an approach that makes the learner independent, which should be the goal of every teacher.
Krashen seemed to anticipate LingQ when he pointed out that "narrow listening", the repeated listening to interesting conversations, was very effective and popular with learners. What do you know? LingQ is a narrow listening based system.
Krashen also refers to narrow reading or sticking to one subject matter or author for periods of time. We also suggest this strategy at LingQ.
Krashen mentions a number of examples of learners who struggled to learn grammar for tests and did not improve their communication skills, whereas those involved in "lighter" and more enjoyable input activities improved in all areas, including output. There were some studies that showed input-only students did more poorly on grammar, but it appears that these studies only reflected that fact that there was a much higher drop-off rate in the grammar based or traditional classes. More people stayed with the program when it was made more interesting, so overall the results were much better since more students learned. The strong learners, who did well in the traditional program, probably did a fair amount of reading or listening on their own, in addition to what they learned in class.
Krashen also confirmed my view that comprehension tests, reading strategies, and similar teacher interventions only served to decrease the enjoyment of reading.
There was much wisdom in this little book. I think, perhaps not so humbly, that LingQ really makes Krashen work. It makes a wider range of content accessible for reading, listening, and especially narrow reading and listening. It supports this with a vocabulary learning system, and offers the opportunity for output when the learner is ready.
I feel that output can be important in helping learners notice their own problems and notice words and phrases in the language. It is just that you do not need a lot of it. A small amount of conversation and writing goes a long way. The input activities are easier to do, whenever and wherever you are, and by and large are more stress free and more enjoyable.
I would love to see an experiment with different categories of
learners, immigrants, school children, independent adult learners,
corporate learners, etc.. I would like to see which of these two
factors most influences language success, in other words the ability to
communicate effectively.
a) hours of instruction
b) hours spent listening and reading.
In other words, regardless of whatever else the learners did, the only factor to be measured would be a) hours of formal instruction and b) hours spend listening and reading in the language. I wonder which factor would correspond more closely to language improvement.
I think I know the answer.
Comprehensible input and the "vocabulary acquisition zone"
I have had time to further ponder my discussion with Paul Nation. Nation spoke of the four strands of language learning.
I think these ideas give a structure to language learning activities which is useful to consider. There are some areas where I have a different perspective. One has to do with Nation's definition of comprehensible input. He defines it as content with only one in fifty unknown words. That is 2%! I think is too low to be realistic.
First of all, when you start a new language, and for a long time thereafter, it is difficult to find any content, and in particular interesting content, that meets this definition of comprehensible. For a long time most content will have a much higher number of unknown words, unless you read painfully childish content, which is unlikely to motivate a learner.
Second, the main job in language learning, in my view, is to acquire words and phrases. If you have to read fifty words, for every new word you learn, you will have to read an awful lot in order to acquire a fluency level vocabulary, which I consider to be over ten thousand words.
I prefer the term meaningful input, where the interest of the learner is taken into consideration. I am not interested in reading children's stories with a lot of easy words. I prefer to struggle through the authentic version of some novel, conversation or news report, as soon as I am able, even though there may be 40 or 50% unknown words. Having the chance to listen, as well as read, helps. Having access to an online dictionary helps. Using LingQ helps. Using LingQ for Russian I have seen the % of new words come down from 40-50% to a level of roughly 20% for the novels I am learning. Some podcasts are now down to 10%. Using LingQ, that level is quite comfortable. Other LingQ member have told me the same thing.
So I consider that an unknown word rate of around 10-20% is a reasonable balance between ensuring that the content is "comprehensible" , on the one hand, and that new words are being acquired, on the other hand. It is often more important that the content be of interest to the learner. This assumes that it is a learning assisted form of input, such as reading and listening at LingQ. Reading a book, unassisted, is another matter.
I consider this range of difficulty (10-20% unknown words) to be an ideal "vocabulary acquisition zone", just like the "fat-burning" or "aerobic" zones that we can achieve when running on a tread mill. I think it is an ideal level of difficulty for a language learner.
As Edwin says in a comment to my conversation with Paul Nation, reading and listening and word review using LingQ sort of combines two strands,COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT,and DELIBERATE LANGUAGE STUDY.
I agree with Edwin that the other two strands relate to OUTPUT, so that the two traditional categories of INPUT and OUTPUT kind of cover things. However, I also feel there is benefit in looking at Nation's four strands view of things as well. It provides a bit of structure and helps to flesh out what is involved in learning a language, even if we may not all want to put equal emphasis on the different strands.
By the way, with regard to DELIBERATE LANGUAGE STUDY, I will be continuing with more "brief grammar introductions for the neophyte", such as I did for Russian in a recent post. I think my next one will be on the Romance languages, then something on Asian languages. Stay tuned. I am collecting the responses and will go back and amend these as I go along.
