The Linguist - language learning should be fun

What we need in language learning

Rosetta Stone raised over $100 million dollars on the stock exchange. Now they are opening retail stores to showcase their learning system. A system that I would not recommend because it does not take you very far, and because it requires you to sit in front of a computer too much of the time.

 Governments spend billions of dollars on language education with minimal results.

On the other hand there is just a limitless supply of interesting podcast and other audio content on the Internet. I have been helping myself to the Portuguese content at TSF. The only problem is that there are not transcripts such as I can find at Echo Moskvi for my Russian.

What we need for language learning is the following.

1) Convince learners that they need to leave the learner content behind as soon as possible. i.e. within 3-6 months.

2) Stop wasting money on text books, schools, conferences, linguistics research, language teacher training, and spend the money on transcribing all the wonderful content that is available free of charge on the Internet.

3) Show learners how to find content of interest, and how to learn from it, meaning mostly listening to it in a concentrated fashion.

A bit extreme perhaps, but then............

The foolish things that people say

I have subscribed to google alert for a variety of terms including "language learning". As a result I was able to read the comments of Sacha Trudeau, son of Pierre Trudeau, former Prime Minister of Canada. Sacha Trudeau was giving a speech at the University of Western Ontario and said " not speaking more than one language can make you myopic, just look at the United States" and that Canadian blingualism was worth as much to Canada as the Tar Sands".

I have no problem with silly people saying silly things. Why are they invited to talk at universities and why are they reported on in the newspapers?

I speak 11 languages and have never assumed that people who do not share my interest in languages are less intelligent, myopic or otherwise to be looked down upon. I do not know if all the violin virtuosos, skilled artisans, research scientists and successful entrepreneurs are multilingual.  Some are and some are not.  I know some pretty outstanding people who are unilingual, and some pretty stupid people who speak more than one language, like Sacha Trudeau.

My other passion, the forest industry.

Last week I visited Northern Alberta to take part in a Directors Meeting for Manning Diversified Forest Products. The weather was somewhat colder than Vancouver, -5 celsius, (but then it was 25 below at this time last year).

I love the forest industry, the smell of the sawmill, watching each log being processed into lumber, seeing the enthusiasm of our conscientious work force always making sure everything runs smoothly,  and finally seeing the young trees grow.

Whatever may be the truth about global warming, there is no doubt in my mind that we should be using more forest resources for building and for energy. We should reduce the use of non-renewable resources which go into steel, concrete, plastic, and all of the hydrocarbon-based energy resources. We do not have the right to deplete these resources in a few hundred years, given that the history of the human race will probably be measured in the hundreds of thousands of years.

There is an enormous oversupply of softwood resources from the temperate coniferous forests of the world, and these resources are growing faster than demand, everywhere, both in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.

So for the sake of the environment, and for the forest industry which has been suffering a severe recession for a few years, USE MORE WOOD!

Here I am with some of the trees that we brought in this winter.

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Whoever visits our forest in  80 years will have many more trees to harvest than we have. Here is  a picture of me amongst some trees that were planted about 9 years ago and with a little tender loving care grow well even in this harsh northern climate.

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Here is a picture of me in front of the sawmill.

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In language learning, mistakes are good, correcting them is bad (sometimes).

Let's talk a little more about correcting mistakes in language learning, since it seems to have attracted a lot of attention here.

I stated earlier that we should not correct unless requested to do so, and even then as little as possible, when a learner is speaking, although we can be a lot more thorough in correcting writing. Corrections while speaking are best provided after the discussion, and in any case the objective is to make the learner attentive, and not to expect instant improvement.

The main benefit of correcting is that it makes the person correcting feel good. There are also learners that feel that if they are not corrected they have not had a lesson. However, I think that correcting has to be done mostly in writing and we have to be realistic about what it can achieve.

Let me explain why I believe this is good advice.

Let's look at some very obvious errors, ones that are easy to point out and explain, and which rarely result in improvement.

English

1) The third person singular in the present tense in English takes "s". Most learners know this at some level, and yet continually get it wrong.
2) Learners often say "I listen him" and I point out time and again that it is "listen to" and yet the learner does not change.

French

Gender

Mandarin

Tones

Further examples include Chinese people speaking English, regularly confuse "he" and "she" because there is not such distinction in spoken Chinese. German speakers use "since" like "seit" in German. I can point it out and nothing changes. "It is many people here" say the Swedes,  and the list goes on. Correcting and explaining does not help very much.

I can look at tables of verb or noun endings and while looking at the table think I have learned something, yet when I go to speak I cannot remember a thing.

So what is the solution? In my view it is only through lots of input, lots of listening and reading, lots of noticing, lots of reviewing of phrases, and a little of correcting and grammar review, that we start to develop the right instincts and produce the language more accurately.

When speaking, it is important not to destroy the enjoyment of communicating that the learner is experiencing. That is much more important than any minor correction that the learner will usually forget anyway.

When we look at a written summary of key words and phrases that we have misused in a conversation, or when we look at the correction of our writing submissions, we are not under any pressure and feel no stress. We can concentrate and observe. We can save these key words and phrases for review and then look for them in our listening and reading.

So I say corrections can be helpful if done properly, and that means mostly in writing.

Two gaijins getting along in Japanese

Here is the video that Keith captured of our recent skype conversation. Part 1 Part 2

Does it help to correct mistakes in language learning ?

Krashen feels that correcting language mistakes is a waste of time. He has done research to show that it does not lead to improvement. He is apparently also concerned that too much correction will create what he calls affective filters, in other words, emotions, that prevent us from learning. He may be right. I do not know.

I agree that language learning is a process which relies a great deal on our attitudes and emotions. I have also observed that correcting people while they speak has little effect, since the speaker is usually focused on speaking and cannot take in the correction. The learner usually repeats the mistake almost immediately, even after repeated correction. Apparently correction is similarly ineffective even in the long term according to Krashen.

I also know that people often know when they have made a mistake, and may not make that mistake all the time. Often they will gradually overcome their mistakes on their own, and come to speak more correctly. They may also be quite satisfied with their current degree of accuracy in producing the language.

Often when I post a video at Youtube, in a language other than English, there will be people who come along and correct me. I must admit that I find it annoying. I appreciate people telling me how to say things that I obviously struggled to say, like "wash the dishes" in my recent Russian video. However, telling me that I overuse this or that word, or misuse certain constructions, is essentially useless and unwelcome.

Making mistakes is a valuable part of learning, but only if we are aware that we are making mistakes. So it is helpful to be made aware of mistakes. So what should we do?

My rules are as follows.

1) Never correct unless asked by the speaker to do so.  The idea of perfect strangers correcting my use of language, on youtube or anywhere else, strikes me as just rude, and certainly not helpful.
2) Even if asked to correct, keep it to a minimum, or the learner might become discouraged.
3) Correct writing much more strictly than spoken language. People often make mistakes while speaking that they may not normally make. In other words it is hard to always perform at one's best while speaking.
4) If possible, provide a few comments after a conversation, (and that is what we do at LingQ) and not during the conversation.
5) The objective of correction is not to bring about an immediate improvement, but to help the learner notice what is happening in the language, and where his or her gaps are. This provides an incentive to notice the language more, while listening and reading.

So, in my view, some correction is a good thing if done right, and if we do not expect immediate improvement, nor consider mistakes to be bad. In fact mistakes are good, we need to be made aware of them, but in the right way.

Pour aimer une langue il faut l'aimer

Pour apprendre une language; il faut l'aimer.  Malheureusement, l'enseignement des langues à l'ecole souvent fait tout pour empêcher qu'on puisse aimer la langue.

Some ranting in Russian

Some thoughts on language learning in Russian.

In praise of passive vocabulary

I have heard people say that they can only learn a word if they use it. I do not agree. I know far more words passively in my foreign languages, than I use actively. There is nothing wrong with that. I enjoy my listening and reading and feel that understanding what I hear and read is essential. I do not mind struggling to find words when I speak. I find that the more I listen and read, and review my words and phrases, the greater my passive vocabulary, and therefore the greater my potential active vocabulary. When I have more opportunity to speak, I find these passive words gradually migrating over into the active category. Here is the podcastDownload Passive vocabulary

Beginner language content, introductions and the like.

What kind of content do we need when we start learning a language? Can we learn how to introduce ourselves, or what to say in a restaurant, at the train station and other such situations?

I do not think so. I do not think this kind of content is necessary, although there is nothing wrong with it. It really depends on what the learner is interested in. The point is that the learner needs to get used to the language through a lot of exposure. The learner is unlikely to remember a set of phrases for different situations. As soon as a real person talks back, the learner is usually lost. So what to do?

Download Introductions or watch the video.