The Linguist - language learning should be fun

Learners stories # 9 Nobuo Part 1

I have been remiss in not posting more of these. Here is the first part of a discussion with Nobuo, who took an unusual approach to language learning.

TOEFL TOEIC その他英語試験について

英語試験必要ですか？聞いてください。ご意見お願いします。

McGraw Hill's TABE is approved by NRS.

Here is the podcast

Language testing is a colossal waste of money, to put it simply.  McGraw Hill's TABE language testing system has been approved by the US Department of Education. This adds yet another language testing system to a crowded field where TOEIC, TOEFL, IELTS and others compete for the the money that schools, teachers and students seem prepared to spend on an activity that seems to me to be a distraction from language learning.

Words or phrases?

Should we learn words or should we learn phrases? There is increasing realization that it is important to learn phrases. There has been some research to show that we learn languages in chunks, which I guess corresponds to phrases. I agree that learning phrases, getting used to recognizing phrases that regularly appear in the language, is important. We need to give our brain enough exposure to these phrases, in contexts, and in our Flash Cards or other deliberate study activities, so that they start to become natural to us. That is the easiest way to get comfortable with tenses, prepositions, case endings, and all the other things that are so different from language to language.

However, words, individual words, are also important, very important. They are the basic building blocks of the language. We need a lot of them. Many words are connected to other words so that the more we know, the easier it is to pick up new words without even noticing it, incidentally.

So my conclusion is that we need both. That is why we ask people in LingQ to save both words and phrases. That is why we capture phrases every time a learner saves a word. The other great thing about words is that it is easy to measure a learner's progress in terms of words saved, known, and learned. We will eventually build a test to confirm that our learners really know the words that the system says they know. But even if the word count is not accurate, being aware of the number of words you are learning is a stimulus to continued effort.

Words and phrase...both!

The future of education ?

I received the following bit of spam today.

Hello sir ,

                We are from India and we provide Math Online Tutoring To  US students as per there standards ,we are group of tutors here to  help students for math .We provides one-on-one Live Online Math tutoring and homework help for grade K-12 as well as Math preparation for SAT & ACT test Guided by the tutor, and backed by state aligned curriculum, assessments and individualized tutoring plan, it has the flexibility to offer 24X7 services, round the year.we can provide you A free trail session to know how we work ,For our service we just tell you that thousands of students are improving their grades in schools and high stake exams.  Tutors are patient, kind and professional. They are subject experts and care about the unique needs of each child.

You may take a   Trail session with us any topic of your choice.

Thanks
kanpree

Let's assume kanpree gets someone to vet his English. (He could even join LingQ). If I received this message in proper English and my child needed help in math, and kanpree was inexpensive and good, for sure I would be interested.

I hope that India gets lawyers who are familiar with Canadian law, and even financial managers who are less greedy and cheaper and better than the people at Lehman Brothers, why wouldn't I use them. If we can have just about every thing we buy in stores made in China, why shouldn't we buy services from India?

Part of the reason why managers at the big banks and financial corporations on Wall Street make so much money is the lack of competition. Bring on competition.

What about employment in our own economies? There will be other activities. Unemployment and poverty is far greater in India than in North America. Give them a chance to earn. 80% of our jobs in North America used to be in agriculture and now it is 3% We will adjust.

Good for you kanpree. You are an entrepreneur. You may well have a marketable service. I think I will send him some promotional material about LingQ.

The Corporation

The Corporation is an anti corporation propaganda movie produced in Canada. I was made aware of the movie by one of our LingQ members. I checked out their website. There is a feature video which shows a school teacher (who drives a nice car) telling us that he watched the movie  "a dozen times" and then invited the producers of the movie to his classroom, where we see young kids being brain washed with the presentation of a one sided and simplistic portrayal of the evil corporation.

I find this appalling. Any self-respecting teacher of impressionable 12 and 13 year olds should have the professional responsibility to present different points of view, and to not impose his own prejudices on his students.

To judge by the website, the movie is being promoted at schools, and the producers are seeking donations. There is even an admonishment on the website encouraging people to buy the DVD from them,("we need the money") which is strange since the movie is available on  youtube, albeit with an introduction where, again, the producers beg for money.

The movie itself begins by saying that corporations were created 150 years ago ( I guess they had never heard of the great banking and trading corporations that were started will before that time). The main theme of the movie is that corporations are bad. Yet the population of the world today is 6 times larger than 150 years ago, people live twice as long, are healthier and better educated, and for all those reasons probably happier. Much of the improvement in people's living conditions is the result of products and services created by corporations.

That there are some lazy people, dishonest people, or bad practices in corporations is not surprising. That is human nature, and those same features are to be found in all human institutions. The advantage of the  corporations is that there are so many of them, and they are constantly having to change and adapt. Old ones die and new ones appear. Corporations create the wealth in our society and we cannot do without them unless we want to revert to state control of resources and economic activity and we have seen the results of that. Corporations, and people who work there, pay most of the taxes that support schools and other public institutions.

Films like The Corporation this are a healthy part of the discourse on our society, as long as other points of view are also presented. A film like this should not be promoted at school children as some kind of revelation of the truth.

What we probably need more of is corporations running the education system for profit. This is happening in Sweden, yes socialist Sweden, where a corporation is setting up schools which meet the national school curriculum and receive the same funding per child as the public system. This creates choice and introduces innovation, and the parents and children, not some school administrator, decide if the service is good or not.

It is not the institution of the corporation that is bad, but a lack of competition that protects the "bad apples" that is root problem. Unfortunately that is even more the case with our education system.

Which is correct, this or that?

I was directed to a Forum on the Russian blog hosting site Live Journal where people, mostly learners, discuss in English about Russian. There was one question on which case form should be used to say  17th and 18th centuries. Apparently the teacher had used one case, whereas some people thought it should be another case. The question was put to the Forum and there were many answers, some from native speakers.

I knew what sounded natural to me, because I have listened to so much content about history. I have no idea which case this is or why it should be used. I just know what sounds right. In all of my language learning, over 10 languages, I have never asked "Is this right, or is that right?" or "Why is this right (or wrong)?"  I admit that I do occasionally (every 6 months) leaf through a short grammar book for about 30 minutes to reflect on what I have been experiencing.

I know that I will eventually get a  feel for what is right. What is more if I am told what is right and why, it may not help me that much. I will probably forget what is right if I do not have the opportunity to hear and see the construction often.

How do others feel?

Your favourite grammar book.

Grammar is a bit like the map of a city you are visiting as a tourist. If you are new to the city, as a tourist, you probably only want a simple map that you can look at quickly, before setting out on a tour. Then after wandering around a while, you want to look at the map again. Now it has more meaning, and you can get into more detail. The more you visit the city, the more meaningful the map is. When you live in a city you often need more detailed maps or map books.

To me grammar books are like that. They should be simple guides.The ideal grammar book is short, around 100 pages or so, divided into easily researchable chapters. The key features of the language should be presented simply, with examples. Explanations should be kept to a minimum. Exercizes and drills are avoided entirely.

What do others think?Please tell me some of your favourite grammar books for different languages, whether they match my criteria or not.

To improve literacy skills, first improve listening skills

"Listening has been identified as a critical work-related skill but it has

been almost totally ignored in national assessments of adult literacy. 2008
is the 100th anniversary of E. B. Huey's 1908 classic book, "The Psychology
and Pedagogy of Reading" in which he stated that, "The child comes to his
first reader with his habits of spoken language fairly well formed, and
these habits grow more deeply set with every year. His meanings inhere in
this spoken language and belong but secondarily to the printed symbols...."

It seems incredible that such an obvious truth, and one that was described 100 years ago, has been neglected in the fight to improve literacy. The less well I read a language, the more I vocalize when reading. Listening, or hearing, or auding as you put it, is the foundation for learning to read, whether for our first language, or for subsequent languages. The power of the MP3 player makes auding easier to do than ever.

Here in Canada there is much public posturing about fighting literacy. There are spelling bees, and  book reading promotions. Much money is raised by well intentioned people. The results are disappointing.

I believe that far more could be achieved if there were one website with a vast collection of sound files and transcripts, of all kinds. These should consists of ordinary conversations between people of different ages and interests,radio programs, songs, articles on different subjects, including civics, and even university courses. The download of the sound files and text files should be free and their distribution unrestricted. The site should be the subject of a massive promotion campaign. Friendships and mentoring relationships could be built up via such a site.

I often hear that the adult ESL learner or person with low literacy cannot afford a computer or MP3 player. I do not believe this is a real obstacle. There are libraries, schools, and other places to access computers. An MP3 player is not expensive. It is simply a matter of getting people to realize that they need to listen in order to read, and after listening they need to read.

How long does it take to become comfortable in another language?

How long does it take to achieve some fluency in another language and how do we get there? I get this question all the time. I should point out that fluency is a vague term. You will never be perfect. There will always be words you do not understand, and constructions that you get wrong, and times when you struggle to express yourself as elegantly as you would like. Language learning is a Sisyphean task.

I think you need 60-90 hours to get over the initial strangeness of the language, and to start learning from authentic content (i.e. not just created for learners), another 180-360 hours to get comfortable with authentic language spoken around you, and then at least another 180-360 hours to be able to express yourself comfortably. This depends on the language and how you study.

I am assuming you study the way we do at LingQ, one hour a day, following your interests, and focusing on listening, reading and vocabulary review. The speaking and writing activity starts at a low level, no more than 30 minutes a week in total, and grows with each period.

I wrote a series of three articles on this some time ago, for a website called Pick the Brain. I am going to develop these ideas into a speech that I can make at libraries and elsewhere for interested people. I have  a short Power Point presentation to help me.  I attach here a link to the power point presentation (4 slides) and to the original series of articles.

Note: The link to the Power Point presentation does not seem to work so you will have to read the article. Sorry. Unless someone can help me get the link working. I saved the Power Point presentation to the Web and linked to the URL here at Type Pad. But it still does not work.