Finishing Initiation au breton sans peine...

As of this morning, I have finished Assimil's Initiation au breton. It's a wonderful book, and I wish they made more like it. The typical "sans peine" series is conversational, and over the course of it, you can pick up a lot. That's the case with the actual Breton sans peine program in two volumes. The problem is that while you assimilate a lot of language, it's trickier picking up structures. I've found that Assimil works best for me for languages where I already know some vocabulary and structure but just can't make the transition from conscious knowledge about a language to unconscious use of the language. Yes, there are manuals in the grammar-translation style, or the quasi-communicative, quasi-grammar translation variety found in Teach Yourself and Routledge's Colloquial texts. But the Initiation has been fantastic because in lieu of drilling and explication, it deliberately guides you to pick up the basic structures of Breton as a matter of habit.

The only languages I truly speak unconsciously are English and French. English, of course, is my native tongue, so that's easy. French is a slightly different matter: I speak imperfectly, but naturally and fluidly. For example, when I use the subjunctive in a subordinate clause or the imperfect in describing a situation in the past, it's not because I've remembered the rule that requires it and selected the appropriate form; it just comes out of my mouth according to my internalization of the grammar rules and of what I've heard. It may be right (most of the time), it may be wrong (occasionally), but in either case, I'm on autopilot.

When I'm speaking Spanish and Italian, things shift. In Spanish, for the present tense and everyday things, at least, I just talk. But when I use the future or the preterit, for example, there's a lag and I have a sense that my brain is processing, looking up what form is called for and consulting the table to find it. In ways, I know more Spanish than many of my Spanish-speaking clients know English, but they speak English more effectively because even if their habits are bad - only speaking in the present tense, messing up articles, etc, - at least they've formed those habits so they can focus on what they're communicating instead of how. My Italian exists even more as knowledge - I'd be much more comfortable translating Dante than explaining to a barista that I'd gotten the wrong change. It's not to say that I can't use Spanish or Italian. I use Spanish all the time, and Italian occasionally. But I am often quite conscious of the fact that I'm speaking a foreign language.

My Breton, of course, is far from perfect. Or even adequate. But that said, the Initiation has laid down some grooves in my brain. Structures that utterly baffled me when I started I can skim through with ease. "Ema ar glaw oc'h ober" - Is the rain at doing - reads as "It's raining now," as does the more emphatic "Glaw a ran" - Rain does. A sentence like "Ema ar mestr-skol e-kichen an ti-krampouezh" - Is the master (of) school be-side the house-crêpes (The teacher is next to/near the crêperie) doesn't bother me in the least. This was not the case when I started with Le Breton sans peine, and certainly not the case when I tried at the exercises in Colloquial Breton.

The question is, what does one do since Assimil doesn't make these wonderful Initiation courses for most languages? I've written in the past about self-talk (ad nauseam), about the language walk, about making language a part of your life, and more. But there's something I've been missing. Some months ago, I wrote about the transition from "unconscious incompetence" to "unconscious competence" in any learning process. I think it's fair to say that the typical textbook takes you from "unconscious incompetence" - knowing nothing - to the edge of "conscious competence" - you have the tools to do it right if you follow the steps and think things through. But I've always assumed - and it's something I've oft heard expressed - that the transition from "conscious competence" - knowing how to say something - to "unconscious competence" - just saying it - was something you had to wait for. If you really want to speak a language, you're supposed to learn enough to use it, then go to the country and after a while you'll discover that "Hey, I'm talking and I wasn't even thinking about it!" But is there a way to do this deliberately?

The Initiation course hasn't made me competent in Breton, not by a long-shot. But it has made me competent for certain tasks, tasks that were proving utterly maddening with other materials. This leads me to think, first of all, that the best thing to do with those grammar drills in the old style books is to do the exercises once - or look up the answers in the back - but read the answers aloud several times. And it makes me wonder if the real value in putting full sentences in a program like Anki isn't to learn vocabulary in context, but to see the same sentence structures time and again.

I'm going to have to give some more thought, myself, to what to take from all this, and to see whether it gives me the motivation to put together some new study materials for myself. But in the mean time, based on the positive sense I got about the Initiation text, I wanted to put the idea out there that if you're having a hard time moving from understanding your textbook exercises to speaking your language comfortably, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to go live in the country for six months or forget about it. If you've got the time and money, and circumstances permit it, I'd go for it in a heartbeat. But too often, the autodidact doesn't. Which means you should keep your eye out not just for interesting materials that keep you engaged, but maybe also for materials that help you pick up grammar the same way we so often look for materials that help us pick up vocabulary.

Orality and Literacy

I was wandering through the bookstore today when I came upon a title I hadn't looked at since undergrad - Walter J. Ong's Orality and Literacy. Ong was looking at a problem that affects students of linguistics and comparative literature: the extent to which the assumptions of a literate culture affect our understanding of non-literate societies. But there is much in his opening chapters that might give food for thought to students of language.

In oral cultures, you can't write things down in books, so both knowledge and, er, literature, have to be maintained in ways more conducive to memorization. Hence epics with set meters or rhymes. Hence apprenticeships where a student learns at the side of the master. One of the things that goes with this is smaller vocabularies: you can't look up words in non-existent dictionaries, so oral cultures have to stick to less specialized and more figurative ways of communication if they want knowledge to be transmitted across time and space. This pops up in, er, literature too - lots of stock figures like wine dark seas and the Shining Achilles because these a) are easy to remember and b) have the right meter so that if you forget what the bard you heard the story from said you've got something you can drop in on the fly.

In literate cultures, language ceases to be what people say to one another and becomes a thing unto itself. Written - and recorded - language outlives the context in which it was uttered, indeed outlives its speakers. This creates an interplay between the language as maintained in writing and the language as used by its current speakers. We can write "I cannot" or even "I can't" for the three words "I can not" because these were in use before the writing of English became standardized. But we can't write "I'm gonna," even though it's what we say. And then, if we're giving a proper speech, we can't say "I'm gonna" because it's not what we'd write. Likewise, the French can and must write "je ne sais pas," even though the "pas" had no negative meaning and just reinforced the "ne" when it came into use. But they can't write "chépa" even though it's what they say all the time, because it's not what they were saying when the language came to be widely written and it doesn't represent the three words that have merged into one unit of thought, ie, "I dunno." And when they're giving a formal speech, they can't say, "chépa" because that's not what they'd write.

The interplay between the written and spoken word has both its advantages and disadvantages. The first advantage is clear enough - at least until recently, most language learners got their start with a book. The downside is that whether you're starting with a book, CDs or DVDs, if you're from a high literacy culture, you're going to be looking for rules and patterns that on the one hand will help you make sense of the language but on the other hand can lead you to trying to make more sense of the language than is there to be had.

In studying Breton, one of the most frustrating things for me has been the lack of a written standard. It's not just that there are four dialects. It's the presence of multiple writing systems, and that every time I get something new for Breton, it's using a different one. However, the more I've worked with Breton, the more I've found myself reading sotto voce and piecing together what's going on with the language. But it's been a struggle, and a big part of that struggle is because I wanted to make Breton work the way English does in terms of its set forms - except that English actually doesn't.

I mentioned that in oral cultures, the poets and rhetoriticians would memorize certain stock phrases and epithets that they would then string together. That made me think of the debate over whether to learn words or whole sentences with one's preferred flashcard system. It might even be worth it to put small conversations on one's flashcards, that way the language exists in context. Working with Assimil, and reading text on the internet, etc, I'm finding that I learn a lot more by being around the language than I do in conscious study. That's why neither Talk Now nor the Colloquial program have done that much for me. That's not to say that beginning materials are unneeded, nor that we should retreat to some pre-literate mindset to learn language. But when we learn, we should keep in mind that even the greatest materials, whether written or recorded, are just an entrée into something that goes beyond what can actually be captured however many books and materials we might buy.

What's the best language learning method for you?

Maybe there isn't one. Edwin, who can't pull himself away from the How-to-learn-any-language forums (I'm kidding), ran across something interesting the other day. A commenter at HTLAL says:

It’s interesting, because some people think some of this methods are the BEST and some of them think the same methods are useless, boring …or the WORST. Thinking about that, how is it possible such a level of contradictions between people who have succeed learning languages.

Edwin sums up what he sees as the gist of the post:

The creator of the thread proposed that there is no best method in language learning. The most important factor is TIME and LOVE devoted to the target language. He was not talking about different people might have different best methods. He was simply saying that even for the same individual, there is no such thing as ‘best method’ in language learning. Provided he is spending time with the language and keeps himself motivated, no matter what method he uses, he will get there one day.

I think this is about right. Here's the thing: Every individual has a different learning style. And to the extent that our experiences change who we are, we are a different individual every time we come to a new language or a new method. When I was first learning French, I was in a class that meandered between Communicate Language Teaching and Grammar-Translation, but with a strong Grammar-Translation component. I learned a lot about English, as well as French, and benefited enormously from being able to see in sharp relief where English and French did things similarly and where they did them differently. But today, having seriously studied a half-dozen languages and fiddled with lots more, such an approach would be most painful. Some of the languages I study are too far from English - or French - for the approach to be useful. And others are so close to English - and/or French - that it would be wasted time when a note that "here's how you do the comparative; practice!" would do.

When I started Breton, I was baffled and searched high and low for something that would tell me more about what was going on with the grammar. Now, working through the Initiation au Breton sans peine, I'm skimming the grammar explanations - I don't care because I'm following what's going on and, in talking to myself, I'm finding that the structures pop into my head anyway. A moderate bump in confidence and competence showed me that what I thought I needed wasn't what I needed at all.

Regular visitors to this site will notice that it tends to, er, wander a bit. I'll put up a lot of information on an idea for a few weeks, and them I'm off to something new. I think the novelty aspect has a big role to play here: it boosts the enthusiasm, which keeps you giving your learning extra attention for a while. And lo, when you energetically and enthusiastically work at something, you get results!

This is not to say that what I've written in the past should be ignored, that it's not really useful anymore, or whatever. It means that it's not quite right for me where I am right now. But if it sounds new, or different, or useful to you, it might be what you're looking for, at least until you get burned out on it and try something else. The neat thing here - and I've counseled this before - is that language learning isn't about following a method; it's about getting in sync with and enjoying a language.

In this light, the debates about which method is best are silly. But if they keep people talking about new things that others might not have tried yet, they're still useful. Ignore the bombast about who's best, then, and keep reading the forums and blogs. You might just find what you are looking for now in spite of everyone's best efforts to settle what's best left unresolved.

Spaced Repetition Systems

What others are doing with SRS:

Right now, Edwin is making the move to Anki for part of his studies - based on the content he's working on at LingQ. However, he liked the simplicity of JMemorize. Josh at the Language Geek, meanwhile, is back to putting word lists into Anki, with a few tweaks that he hopes will help. Visit his page and you'll find lots about Anki, SRS and ideas for making it work. [Update: And here's a long review of Anki from the Cunning Linguist that I'd missed.]

The other day, though, David at HackYourLife.org had his own thoughts on what's right and wrong with SRSs. Basically, says he, the right algorithm for an SRS probably needs to be a lot more complex than a computer implementation of the Leitner cycle, because the number of cards you're working on and the periodic neglect of your flash cards both present variables that can throw your productivity, enjoyment and continued use of the system out of whack. As he notes, "life happens," and when it does the computer doesn't do the best job of recognizing what you really need to work on. This is especially the case, I'd say, from the enthusiasm angle, never mind the pedagogy angle.

When I was using Anki everyday, I thought it was great. When I missed a few days because life had gotten busy, it just wasn't the same when I got back. At first, I didn't go through all the cards for the session. Then I stopped using it altogether - not a conscious decision; it's just that the spacing between repetitions, as it were, got broader and broader till a couple weeks had passed.

SRS without a computer or flashcards? A makeshift approach:

Lately, I've been working on my own sort of spaced repetition program. It's actually a lot less sophisticated, though. My system is based on the Assimil text I've been using for Breton. Here's what I do:

• When I get up in the morning, I skim the previous day's lesson and read through the lesson for that day.
• At lunch, I do the lesson properly, reading the text and all the notes and doing the exercises.
• Then, at night, I reread the text for the lesson and skim the text for the next day's lesson.

All in all, I'm reading each lesson five times: two preliminary skims, a proper reading, and two confirmatory skims. Because four of the five readings are skims, the content sort of lulls its way into my mind without getting too tedious. The preliminary skims prime me for what's coming up, so for the careful reading I already have a pretty good understanding of what's going on and can concentrate on the elements that are most troublesome. The confirmatory skims assure that I'll remember most of what I've learned, but again without getting hung up on my studying.

Finally, at the end of the week, before I do the review chapter, I skim through the lessons a sixth and last time. In the past, I've really liked Assimil programs, except that I'd find myself going a certain distance, running short on time to truly work through a lesson or two, and then getting off track and having to repeat a week or two.

With this system, I'm spending 5-10 minutes in the morning, 5-10 minutes in the evening and 10-15 minutes at lunch. I'm actually spending more time than I used to with Assimil courses, but because of the way it's broken up, it's less trouble to squeeze it in. Most importantly, the Sunday re-read and review allows me time to review wherever problems crop up on a day when I have more free time. As a result, I can keep moving forward during the week in the knowledge that there's a system in place to catch things I've missed on a regular basis, not when all of a sudden problems start cropping up and I don't remember when I learned a particular point of grammar or series of vocabulary to recuperate it anymore.

All SRS all the time?

Whether spaced, or not, repetition can, of course, get repetitive. Even tedious. In the past, I've talked about the importance of using multiple materials and approaches to keep from getting worn out. And I hold to that. Outside of my Assimil schedule, if I have some free time I listen to music - for fun (see "From Studying to Living a Language"), take or gather material for "Language Walks", work through Breton verse and make sure I've understood trickier points of the language with the more grammar oriented Colloquial Breton. But using my new study routine, I'm finding the same thing that Anki offers at its best - a way of mastering old material and pushing forward into new material without getting bored by the old or (overly) confused by the new.

Do note: What I talk about in this post seems best suited to Assimil. But I think it could work with many Colloquial and Teach Yourself programs. However, with those texts that have 3 or 4 conversations in a chapter, I'd do a conversation a day, not a chapter a day. As always, language learning is all about what works for you. But if you're convinced that you've got a good and thorough textbook, only you're not managing to take advantage of all you think it has to offer, you might want to give this approach a try.