The Linguist On Language - Having Fun Learning Languages

Learning to accept our achievements.

Here is an article that I recently wrote for lifehack.org on this subject.  This kind of relates to the issue of accepting what we achieve in language learning, at every stage, even while striving to improve.

Slow and fast recordings, different points in time, all help me notice.

The golden trinity of language learning are your attitude, the time you are prepared to spend with the language, and your ability to notice. Now Alsuvi, one of our Spanish content providers has developed some techniques that help train the ability to notice, at least to judge by my reaction to his Spanish material.

Alsuvi records interesting Spanish content, and some of it like Ciencias en pocas palabras is at normal speed and then at slow speed. There is no question that if you listen once at normal speed, which provides an overview of the meaning, and then listen again at slow speed, you really start to notice a lot of things, vocabulary, tenses, meaning etc.. If you then read the content and save words and phrases, and listen again, you notice even more.

Now Alsuvi has added another twist. He has written and recorded texts in a collection called Puntos de vista that tell the same story from different time perspectives. I saved the different tenses in my lesson page at LingQ. Different forms of the verb show up yellow in different passages, depending on the time perspective. This helps me to notice.  And now I am going out to buy a few things and will listen to the audio and notice some more.This will help the brain get used to these patterns.

Thanks Alsuvi. Remember to work on your ability to notice, in order to be come a better language learner.

 

Posted via email from Lingosteve's place

Errors

Download podcast: Enjoying errors

It started with a question about whether I confuse similar languages, which I, of course, do from time to time.I decided to do a video where I answered the question and went on to talk about errors.

The gist is that the brain can only deal with the massive amount of information and experience that it receives by sacrificing accuracy. It looks for similarities, metaphors, patterns.

I am my brain. I prefer to cover more things, more languages, more content, and sacrifice accuracy. I would rather listen and read more in the language, than try to nail down my errors. I also made a few errors in the video.

Language discrimination

Do employers discriminate based on language ability? Of course they do. Survey after survey shows that communication skills are at the top of the list of attributes that employers are looking for. The conclusion, in my view, is that immigrants need to work harder to improve their English skills. The government also needs to be more straight forward in pointing this out to immigrants. The idea that an "officially multicultural" Canada which supposedly "celebrates diversity" discriminates less than, say, a "melting pot" like the US, is just nonsense. The work place is a like a team, and therefore needs to be a melting pot.

 

A recent study reported that

"Across the board, those with English names such as Greg Johnson and Michael Smith were 40 per cent more likely to receive callbacks than people with the same education and job experience with Indian, Chinese or Pakistani names such as Maya Kumar, Dong Liu and Fatima Sheikh."

"Sixteen per cent of those with English names received a callback, compared with 11 per cent for applicants with Pakistani, Indian and Chinese names who had the same level of education and job experience.

The callback rate dropped to 8 per cent for those with foreign-sounding names who had been educated outside Canada but had Canadian job experience. It dropped to 5 per cent for those who also lacked Canadian job experience."

 According to Globe and Mail writer Marina Jimenez, "The findings not only challenge Canada's reputation as a country that celebrates diversity, but also underscore the difficulties that even highly skilled immigrants have in the labour market.

"Moreover, there was nothing in the study to reveal whether the “foreign-sounding” names were those of immigrants or of people born in Canada, suggesting that the offspring of immigrants also face name discrimination. "

To me there is nothing surprising in the report. It has been my experience that immigrants tend to have poor English skills. What is more they are not motivated to put in the effort required to really improve.  This kind of report, unfortunately, just reinforces that attitude.

I say this as an employer that has always had around 30-40% immigrants as employees. Nowadays the majority of job applicants for many jobs are immigrants. A few years we posted for a job and of over 40 applications received, entirely from immigrants, only 4 were in correct English. Most of the applicants were graduates of Canadian universities!

The fact that the report did not track whether the job applicants were immigrants or people born in Canada does not "suggest that offspring of immigrants face discrimination" as Jimenez suggests,  it just means that the report did not track a very important bit of information. In other words are people being discriminated against because of their name or because they are immigrants and not likely to speak English well?

The author of the report, Prof. Philip Oreopoulos, a University of British Columbia economist , had the following to say

“Unfortunately, the study shows an applicant's name matters considerably more than his or her additional education, multiple language skills and extracurricular activities.

There was only marginally less discrimination for jobs with less of a need for speaking and writing skills, such as accountants, computer programmers and web developers. "

Well, in my experience, accounting, programming and web developing do require good communication skills in English. As for multiple language skills, they are not relevant to most jobs and probably best left off the resume.

As for discrimination, yes there is discrimination. If I go to a Japanese restaurant run by Koreans, I find only Korean employees. Minority employers hire their own, largely. This was once explained to me by a recent Chinese immigrant in these terms. "This is not discrimination. It is just the Chinese employer expects that a Chinese person will work harder". ( OK. Now I understand)

Large employers have their "diversity" programmers, but most small and medium sized employers hire people they are going to be comfortable with. It need not mean the same ethnic background but it does mean very good communication skills and the ability to fit in. 

Larger "ethnic" employers may also want to give "their own" a better chance. I buy computer equipment at two stores here in Vancouver. London Drugs, which is owned by a third generation Chinese Canadian, and Future Shop which is owned by Iranian Canadian interests.  Guess which store has more  staff of Chinese origin and which has more staff of  Iranian origin?

I think the average Canadian employer is, by and large, more open minded than employers in other countries. He has to be, that is the labour market here. In Toronto, people of part British origin are only around 50% of the population according to a 2001 census, but those of single English, Scottish, or Irish origin  were less than 10%. This share would be even lower today. So the employers who were surveyed here are more than likely not to have an English name themselves. Certainly the vast majority of job seekers do not have English sounding names.

To me the only useful conclusion here is that immigrants need to work harder on their English, and need to accept that there may be some discrimination, but these are obstacles that they can overcome. They may want to consider taking on an English names, at least for work, but that will not help much if their English skills are not good enough. They should sign up for LingQ!

Here is some more information on the report from a CTV report with some additional comments from me in italics.

Oreopoulos said they used websites such as Workopolis.com, Monster.com, Craigslist.com and Jobbank.ca to find the postings to send resumés to.

"In that big pile of 100 resumés that they receive, two or three of them in there are the ones from my study, so it doesn't disrupt their everyday process of making a decision on who to hire."

But they still had 100 resumes to go through. That is an important point.

He found that resumés with foreign names could only improve their chances of getting a job if they had Canadian or British work experience.

In fact, callbacks nearly doubled with the addition of just one previous job in Canada.

So is it the name?

Twenty per cent of the resumés with foreign names even listed fluency in English, French and their mother tongue, but Oreopoulos said "it did not seem to make a difference at all."

No one is going to say they are not fluent in English. What does that mean?

Another interesting finding was that, Chinese resumes that had English first names increased the chances of getting a callback.

He said his study only represents a trend for small to medium sized businesses.

Bigger firms, such as banks, have their own application forms on their websites and because of time restraints he could not include them in his study.

If the opportunity presents itself, he said he would like to do more research grouping businesses into categories based on size and comparing English names to other European names.

He suggested the government could offer more help to recent immigrants "get their foot in the door" at their first job.

How about making the immigrants responsible for their own language skills? Fund them directly, reward them for success, publicize success stories and stop beating the discrimination drum. Stop funding surveys like this one that just cost the tax payer money.

How do we motivate learners?

The following is from a college English teacher who is using LingQ in the classroom. I will post his email here and look forward to any comments. I will comment in subsequent posts.

Hi Steve,

How are you doing?  I have been busy keeping up with my work at the college here.  Thanks to your advice and the great resources at LingQ, my students and I have been able to enjoy studying and thinking about many topics in the Dr. Laura section.  I use it for my writing courses and the students are getting used to the site for studying.  I still haven't imported the Academic Word List though.  I need to figure out how to do that.  This semester is off to a good start though and I appreciate all your help.

I also enjoy hearing your ideas on the youtube videos.  It is refreshing for an English teacher to notice how much jargon and needless complications there are in the field of TESOL.  I have often wondered about my role as a teacher and I liked the "teachers" video you posted.  Teachers' main roles are to inspire and guide. 

One thing I am starting to notice with having my students use Lingq is that students will only use that tremendous resource for the homework I assign.  This is not just with Lingq, it is a common fact in most courses that students will perform just enough to meet the minimum standards that the teacher demands.  I tell them to study a Dr. Laura article and write what they think of her advice and why (and so on) and that is all they do.  As much as I encourage them to listen and download the audio to their mp3s, when I take a survey to see if they even listened once only a few in the class raised their hands.  What this leads to is the teacher thinking of more and more clever ways to force students to study (such as only providing the listening or doing listing dictations or even monitoring activity online with learning management systems and actually checking if they listened and reward with grades) and the students finding the easiest ways to satisfy the requirements and nothing more.  It is a very passive system of learning for the student.  So, how can we change this attitude?

You strongly recommend having students select their own materials to study and I think that is great.  So far in my writing courses I have told the class what to study and prepare for so that in the lesson we can talk about it as a class.  What this actually amounts to is me calling on students to answer my comprehension questions about the reading (I know it makes them nervous and does nothing for their acquisition but what else am I going to do in class?).  If everyone had studied a different article then we would not be able to work as a class on something.  I could simply give them quiet time in class to use the computers to study a resource of their choice on LingQ and call students one by one to have personal mini-conferences with them.  Actually I already use the last 30 minutes of my lessons for personalized writing instruction.  I call a student up to my desk and we sit down together and I correct parts of the writing they submitted for homework and they ask me any questions they might have.  It works pretty well but if I cut out the class discussion on the reading homework then all 90 minutes will just be individual counseling and it would be tough to call it a "class".  I would probably get some criticism from students and other teachers as well.  It is an interesting idea though and I reckon it would be better than what I have been doing. 

Just having them select their own study material would begin to make them more independent learners.  Now they only do what I ask them to do on Lingq and nothing more.  It reminds of the book "Punished by Rewards" and how we can be taught to treat an already pleasurable activity as "work" when we are rewarded for doing it.  So when I tell the students to do something and agree to give them a good grade if they do it, I turn the already fun act of study into work - into something that have to do to get a good grade.  This basic system is flawed isn't it.  The student should first want to learn something and the teacher should be a helper, guide, supporter. 

My next question then is how do we fix this flawed system?  What can I do in my classes to get students out of this passive role of being "made" to study something they already wanted to study in the first place.  Make the grade for my courses based entirely on attendance?  If you come you pass?  Whatever else you do to study is just for your benefit?  That may be a better approach.  Some might say that I have to set a minimum requirement to pass my course and then reward students who go beyond that but that is still the "punished with rewards" system of education.  By, lowering the bar so low that just showing up earns them a passing grade perhaps this system can be broken and students will realize that the pressure is off now and that if they are going to learn anything then it will have to start from them and come from their efforts not from what the teacher tells them to do (because that doesn't matter anymore - with no grades).  Are there any other ways to turn passive learners into active learners (especially in a college setting)?  I would love to hear your ideas on this, perhaps in a youtube video. 

Thank you,

Attentiveness and language learning

Attentiveness, the ability to notice what is happening in a language, is essential to language learning success. How much of what is done in language teaching and learning is directed towards increasing the learner's attentiveness. If we are serious about sports we spend time on our conditioning, strength, flexibility etc. What about our language learning fitness? Attentiveness is a large part of that fitness.

I notice that learning any language increases my general level of attentiveness to other languages. I am not sure which learning activities stimulate my attentiveness the most.

Certainly concentrated listening helps my listening. I have been doing a lot of listening since I discovered Echo Moskvi. I decided to do a little Portuguese today. (There is a chance that I will travel to Brazil next January for the wedding of the daughter of a friend. So I decided that I should really put more effort into Portuguese) .

What do you know? After a long absence, my ability to understand Portuguese had improved. I felt that I was in a state of alertness listening to the Portuguese content that I had downloaded from LingQ. I felt that the state of alertness was similar to alertness that I feel when I listen to Russian. My Russian listening is conditioning me to listen to other languages.

I feel that my attention to examples of the different words and phrases that I have saved and tagged and edit and looked at, is making me more alert when I hear these cases in Russian. I am starting to feel the inevitability of the connection between a particular ending and a particular meaning. Yet when I go to speak, I am under more pressure and cannot easily produced these endings. If I were not so lazy I would write, where I could refer to the declension table while writing. That would also make me more attentive and more alert and might help the transition to speaking correctly.

We will see. I may write more. I may speak more. I may just keep on doing what I am doing.

My goal, however, is to speak Russian with the cases 75-80% correct within 3 months without sacrificing confidence and comfort level when speaking. I suspect that my attention to the cases will make more alert and attentive over all and help me remember words in general.

How to learn any language in less than an hour

Here is a little counter suggestion to Tim Ferriss' popular post entitled How to learn any language in an hour which sets out some rules on how to choose which language to learn, rather than, as the title implies, how to learn one.

I have expressed my views on the usefulness of this advice earlier. However, I think the idea of having an easy test to determine which language to learn is not a bad idea. So here is my suggestion. And I have borrowed Ferriss' poetic license of implying that this post is about learning a new language, when it is really about choosing a new language to learn.

With an online dictionary, and an audio file, and if you know the meaning ahead of time, I believe it is possible to listen to, and understand the following, in any language. The word English just needs to be changed to whatever language you are talking about, let's say Turkish.

If I listened to the following in Turkish a few times and look up words in an online dictionary I would get an idea about the language and whether I wanted to continue.  I can stop reading and listening whenever I want.

On the other hand if I get keen,  I can even try repeating the text to myself a few times. I can try pronouncing Turkish. I think it would not take long to figure out if I wanted to study Turkish. It would probably take less than one hour.

The audio file of the text, in English, is only one minute and 23 seconds long. Does anyone want to do this for their own language and post it here ? I would love to try it, and to have other people try it. Or is this just a dumb idea? Anyway, here goes.

Which language should I learn?

I want to learn a new language. Which language should I learn? Should I learn English? Why  learn English? Do I like English? Am I interested in English?   Do I have friends who speak English ?  Do I need English for my work? Am I going to be in a country where they speak English?

If I do not have a good reason to learn English, I will not learn.

But I want to  learn English.  I want to understand English when I hear it. I want to learn to read , speak, and even to write English.

Who can teach me English ? Where can I find a good school ? How much will it cost to go to school?

Maybe I do not need a school. I think I can find help on the Internet.  If I learn on the Internet it will cost less and, after a while, I will be able to speak.

How long will it take to learn English ? It could take a long time. I do not mind. I think I will enjoy it.

Why study languages?

There are various schools of thought on how to learn languages. I am pretty persistent, probably to the point of annoying some people, in explaining my views about language learning.

I think a bigger issue may be why we study languages. We all recognize the importance of motivation to language learning success. I would be interested to hear what motivates people to learn languages. Please send a comment and let me know.

What motivates you to learn another language? or

Why are you not motivated to learn another language?

Let's stop teaching languages in schools.

Here is the podcast
LingQ launches tomorrow, Aug 1!
Recently I had a conversation at a local sushi bar. The person beside me was originally from Japan and had lived in Canada for over 30 years. His English was OK but not great. He commented that Canadians who go to Japan learn English better than Japanese who come to Canada. Of course this is not always true but it is often the case, even though Japanese people have up 10 years of English in school.

Most English- Canadians take French in school and cannot speak French. Tens of thousands of Canadian public employees have been sent to language school and did not become fluent in French. I have former colleagues in the Diplomatic Service who studied Chinese or Japanese and are unable to use the language. Yet Canadians who go to Japan to teach English often come back fluent in Japanese. I have two of them working for me in my lumber business ( we export lumber to Japan)

I have even read that graduates of French immersion in Canada do not become bilingual , and that it makes no difference whether they start in grade 1 or grade 7. Certainly the many ESL schools funded by government to teach immigrants English here in Canada, do not produce fluent speakers, and in fact have very little real impact.

It is impossible to teach an unmotivated learner. I do not mean motivated to get a better job or pass a test, but motivated to speak the language well.Why not stop trying?

I propose that we offer children comparative language as a subject in grades 1-7. This would consist exclusively of listening to and reading stories. No marking, not output expected. Children could choose one or two languages a year. They would be able to change every year or stay with the same languages. The purpose would be purely exposure.

Thereafter language would be optional. The students could continue with this exposure approach but would be asked to concentrate on one or two languages. They would be expected to start writing and speaking. But the main thing would remain listening and reading.

If the emphasis were on choice and pleasure, perhaps a larger percentage would end up genuinely motivated to learn. And once they decided to commit to learn they would be more flexible and better prepared for success.

In any case what we are doing now in schools does not work for most students.

The Linguist Method

Here is the podcast

As we prepare to roll out the new LingQ system in August I have been trying to summarize the learning principles that are behind LingQ. Here is what I have come up with. I would appreciate any feedback.

“A linguist is someone who enjoys speaking more than one language”
-Steve Kaufmann

LingQ (www.lingq.com) is a learning system based on The Linguist Method.

The Seven Principles of the Linguist Method.

1)    Enjoy yourself: Enjoy the experience of learning. Enjoy the language you are learning. Choose a language to study that you enjoy or find ways to enjoy the language you are studying. Choose content that you like. Do learning activities that you like.
2)    Focus on input first: Listen and read. Get used to the language. Do not feel you have to produce the language. Just get the language into you. Listen often while doing other tasks, wherever you can. You can also listen while reading, or you can just read.
3)    Learn words: Notice words and how they are used. Do not worry if you forget and relearn words. Notice which words come together in phrases. Do not worry about explanations of grammar, they will not mean much until you have had a lot of input in the language.
4)    Set goals and be efficient: Take advantage of modern technology. Use MP3 players, computers, online dictionaries, the Internet, LingQ, as well as books, audio books and other resources. Set goals and measure your progress towards these goals.
5)    Communicate naturally without fear: Start expressing yourself only when you are ready. Aim for constant improvement, not perfection. Notice which words and phrases cause you trouble so that you can work on them on your own. Write and speak naturally and keep it simple.
6)    Have fun with pronunciation: Imitate what you are listening to, the words and phrases, as well as the sounds and the intonation of the language. Record yourself and share this with others, including your tutor. Exaggerate and have fun, but do not worry about how you sound.
7)    Join a community: Find friends who speak the language you are studying and friends who are learning that language. If you cannot find them where you live, find them on the Internet. You can even help others to learn your own language and you will get better at learning languages. You will become a linguist.