The Linguist - language learning should be fun

More on grammar

How much attention do we need to pay to grammar in language learning? In my view, not much. Download Grammar 2

I spend very little time on grammar and I have learned to speak 10 languages. I find that listening and reading, and focusing on words and phrases, is a more productive and enjoyable way to spend my time. I said so in my previous post.

In response, Liam, representing I believe the views of people who like grammar, and  those who teach grammar, made a comment to my previous post in which he said that to learn the subjunctive in Spanish or adjective endings in German we can either

"1) Memorize the tables and use them while speaking, constantly referring to them in your head

or 2) Not learn the grammar and fool yourself into thinking you're learning the language "naturally", which only kids under the age of 5 can do with any proficiency."

But it all depends on our goal. If our goal is to communicate, to understand, to learn lots of words and phrases so that we can express ourselves, maybe the niceties of the subjunctive in Spanish or adjective endings in German do not matter that much. Maybe they can wait.

I tried memorizing declension tables in German, and it was only when I stopped doing that, and focused on listening and reading, that my ability to communicate in German improved. I do not refer to tables and usually find that I can handle the subjunctive quite easily in French and Spanish, although the third person singular of various tenses can give me trouble if I have been away from the language. It just does not come out automatically the way I would like, at times. But I am all right with that and do not think that memorizing tables would help me. Besides it is boring to memorize tables, so I choose not to do it. I get lots of compliments on my German, Spanish and French.

I would say that the kind of language learning proposed by Liam is responsible for the generally poor results that are achieve in class room language instruction. While Liam may learn best that way, I think he is in the minority. I believe, with Krashen, and with Manfred Spitzer, that the brain does not do as well with the explicit explanation and learning of rules and tables, but rather the brain will figure these things on its own, with enough of the right kind of input. Occasional reference to grammar can help, but memorizing the tables, in my experience is an ineffective way to spend one's language learning time.

The role of grammar in language study

The role of grammar study in language learning.Download the Podcast on Grammar

What is the role of grammar study in language learning? Stephen Krashen says that grammar based learning is not very effective and I agree. We will get used to different aspects of the grammar of the new language according to a natural order that is part of how brains learn. With enough input we will figure out how the language works. The more we learn, the more we are able to learn, according to Krashen.

Spitzer, in his description of how the brain learns, would seem to agree with Krashen. Yet I know from my own experience that there is a place for grammar study.  I deal with grammar as a reference resource and there are two stages of grammar reference.

1) Before starting a new language I sometimes, although not always, look at a summary of the grammar of the language I am going to learn. This is easy to do today. You just have to google "summary Swedish, (Dutch, Japanese or whatever) grammar" or the equivalent in your native language, or a language you know. You will find a wide choice of sources to choose from. Pick the one you like, probably the shortest one will be the best. Read through it without trying to remember too much. I mean a quick review of about 15 minutes. It is just to get an overview of the language before you start.

2) Throughout the period that I am studying the language, whenever I feel the urge, or am curious about something, I refer to grammars. Today this easily done online. You can even google "French verbs" or "Russian cases" to find specific sites to refer to from time to time. I do not do this too often. I do not know how much it helps, but I admit to being curious to look things up and I know that I discover things that I had not noticed or figured out simply from input.

And that is it. That is all the grammar you need - a first time review, and occasional references or additional reviews. Remember, the goal is not memorize or learn the rules or explanations or tables, but to review them so that you will have an easier time noticing the language as you hear it and read it. This will help your brain eventually learn the language naturally.

I must say, however, that this grammar study does not amount to more than 1%  of the time I spend on learning a language. Mostly I listen and read, and then review my LingQs, and talk with my tutor at LingQ.

Stephen Krashen and language acquisition

Stephen Krashen's five hypotheses on language acquisition are the cleverest description I have read about how languages are learned. Most academic research on language learning just seeks either to come up an article for publication containing unnecessarily complicated research and theories, or to justify the massive involvement and intrusion of teachers on what should be a natural learning process. Krashen debunks much of this. If more people followed his precepts we would have more people speaking foreign languages and fewer language classrooms. Here is just one short gem amongst many from Krashen in his little book. "If we provide students with enough comprehensible input, the structures they are ready to acquire will be present in the input. We don't have to make sure they are there;we don't have to deliberately focus on certain points of grammar. If this corollary is correct it meanbs the end of grammatically based language teaching." Download the Krashen podcast

When do we master a language ?

Can we master another language? Can we master our own? Can we achieve native-like fluency in a second language? What do these terms mean?

In my previous post I said that we can never master a foreign language.

Julien commented that we cannot even master our own language, so we are even less likely to be able to master a second or third language.

Rob had this to say in his comment to my post.

"but it is very possible to speak and write correctly at a native level. I think this type of message should be promoted rather than telling a student he/she can't reach that level. Belief is a huge part of language learning. I guess it depends on what your definition of "perfect" is. If you mean a person can't know any one language in its entirety then I agree, if you mean that a person can't learn a second language to native-level fluency then I wholeheartedly disagree."

Well, first of all, let's say that I agree with Julien. Master is the wrong word. But it is true that some people speak their own language well and others speak their own language poorly. There are differences in how well people speak their own language. When I am in the presence of people who expresses themselves well in their own language well, I am always impressed. I am referring to people who have a large vocabulary, who speak with precision and express complicated ideas simply and clearly. It does not  matter if their accent is from this or that region. We hope that our tutors at LingQ are all in this category. Many ESL teachers I have met do not speak their own language, English, well.

I know there is the view, amongst some, that everyone speaks their language equally well. According to this view, people with a limited vocabulary, who use a lot of "you know" "like" etc. are communicating as well as anyone else. I gather that Stephen Pinker, renowned linguist and Harvard professor, is of that view. I am not of that view. We all have an equal ability to learn to speak well. But to realize that potential we need to read a lot, and to spend time with people who use the language well. And ideally we do that from an early age.

As to achieving native like proficiency in another language, I do agree that it is something to strive for.  However, it is rarely possible to achieve a level in a foreign level that is as impressive as that of a proficient speaker of the native language. We rarely if ever sound as natural as even a poor speaker of that language.

It is pointless to compare the non-native speaker to  a native speaker. If someone listens to me speak a language and says, "but I can tell that you are not Chinese or Japanese or French". I say, well of course you can. I am not! The way the native speaker speaks is my model, what I strive to emulate and imitate, but I do not expect to fully achieve it. I visualize myself as a proficient speaker of that language, but I am not disappointed when I am told that I do not sound like a native.

We can never completely master a foreign language.

I spoke to one our LIngQ students, Reinhard from Austria, in Swedish. I suppose that I speak Swedish better than Reinhard. I have spoken it a lot. I have listened to many audio books and read a lot in Swedish. Reinhard has only been studying Swedish less than a year with us at LingQ. Yet there are words that Reinhard knows that I do not know. There are word forms that he may get right that I might get wrong.

Some people may know how to wish people Happy New Year in Swedish and I may stumble trying to say it. Yet I am fluent in Swedish, very fluent. Most Swedes are suprised at how fluent I am  and speak to me in Swedish without hesitation.

So the lesson here is that we are never never perfect in another language, and perfect error free communication is not the goal. So we should not be marked down for making mistakes in tests. We can have mistakes pointed out. I like to improve my Swedish and having mistakes pointed out, especially in writing helps me to become more observant, more attentive, when I listen to Swedish. Eventually I make fewer mistakes. But I do not worry about making mistakes. Mistakes are useful.

Multilingualism and the economic crisis.

Will the present economic crisis diminish the prestige of English and bring about more multilingualism?

Here is the podcast.

European travel log part 4: The Holy Roman Empire

I have been busy and have not kept up my travel notes from my recent European trip. So here is the next installment. When I last left off, I had just climbed aboard a train in Verona, destined for Augsburg, near Munich.

As we left Milan and proceeded through Trento, Bolzano, Innsbruck and on to Munich, I realized that I was really going to be touring through the Holy Roman Empire, an area where people speaking mostly German, but also Italian and Czech, as well as other languages, had been ruled by various Kings and Princes, and that here had been may wars fought wars in the name of different royal houses, and in the name of the two great branches of the Western Christendom, Protestantism and Catholicism.

Yet ever since Charlemagne, there had existed an overarching vision of a German mission to unify Europe, or at least a great part of it, as the successor state to the Roman Empire. It was said apparently that the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, as it was called, was neither Holy, nor Roman nor an Empire. The vision if a unified German speaking state remained a goal, at least for some of the ruling powers. But in reality German speaking Europe remained politically disunited, while other European states established themselves.

When I visited the Medieval squares of Augsburg or Prague or and when I saw the magnificent Cathedral in Cologne, or when I saw the hill just outside Prague where the 30 years war began, I did have a sense of the cultural connection between those cities.

Of course it was left to Prussia, with its capitol in Berlin, to finally unite much of the German speaking part of Europe. Austria, and therefore Prague (at the time under Austria)  were left out of this united German state. And after World War I a new Czechoslovakian state was created, but its capitol Prague, now the capitol of the Czech Republic, retains plenty of evidence of German cultural influence, in its buildings and in some of its most famous literary figures like Kafka.I gather that ever since the Middle Ages Prague has been the scene rivalry between Czech speakers and German speakers. But most of history consists struggles of on kind or another.

I enjoyed all the cities for different reasons, but Prague, with its pedestrian streets and Medieval atmosphere, is the most unique and probably the one that I would most recommend to visitors. Munich and Berlin would be close seconds, for different reasons.

And I do recommend traveling with a Eurailpass and staying in inexpensive hotels in the old Holy Roman Empire.

Multilingualism and Mr. Sanchez

A person named Mr. Sanchez challenged me to do a video in 10 languages, and if I did he would tell all his ESL friends about LingQ, so I did. Unfortunately I left out Italian, and I made a number of mistakes in Spanish and Russian that I think I would normally not make. It does take a little bit of focus to get the patterns right in different languages. Switching from language to language in such a short period of time probably confuses the poor brain.

LingQ tutors

The previous post sparked a discussion about tutors, and  LingQ tutors. I wanted to repeat here one of the comments I made on the previous post, since I do not think many people read all the comments, and I think the question of the role of a tutor at LingQ is an important one.

Our tutors are competent speakers of their own language, and they are enthusiastic about language learning.Their role is, to paraphrase Krashen, to encourage the learner to become independent. That means to make them enjoy the language, to help them to understand how to learn a language, to encourage them and to provide feedback. Yet, in fact, the good tutors tend to create a kind of mutual dependence with the learner, as they get to know each other. Each is anxious not to disappoint the other.

I should add that, in addition to all the input based activities at LingQ, the tutor's reports from the learner's discussions and writing submissions, highlighting the learner's mistakes, do increase the learner's awareness or attentiveness, and are an important part of the learning process.

Our tutors do not resemble school teachers who have a need to teach a curriculum, nor do they resemble research oriented professors at a university. The latter are often pursuing obscure subjects of interest only to their peers. But not all professors are like that. My interest in languages all stems from a French professor at McGill University by the name of M. Rabotin.

The tutor can be a model and inspiration. The learner is trying to learn the tutor's language, and therefore to emulate the tutor's cultural behaviour to some extent. We learn better from examples and models, than from explanations. The tutor's role is important, even in a system which tries to encourage the independent learning spirit of the learner.

Are your teachers certified?

We are often asked at LingQ if our tutors are certified, or what their qualifications are. Many of our tutors are, in fact, certified teachers. However, I consider that to be irrelevant. What matters is their enthusiasm and their competence in the use of their own language. I think that competence in the subject being taught, and enthusiasm, are more important than any teacher's degree of certification. It is interesting that several studies in the US have shown that teacher certification has little influence on the success of teachers.