Confessions of a Language Addict

"But I already know that..."

2008-07-21T22:41:00.000-07:00

Whether you're a teacher or a learner, you're going to find yourself looking at certain language points and saying, "already covered that." Which is very nice, but that's not the same as knowing something automatically so you can focus on what you're talking about instead of how you're saying it. This is another reason you should use multiple study aids if you're learning on your own.

For more on learning versus knowing and the dangers of over-optimistic self-assessment, visit the ForeignLanguageBlog, from which the post title was shamelessly lifted.

Consolidating and... Kanji?

2008-07-19T22:02:00.000-07:00

A bit worn out on my Assimil Breton, I've been working through Brezhoneg Buan hag Aes (Quick and Easy Breton), a more traditional text. I've worked through the first three chapter (not a whole lot) and have firmed up my understanding of the verb bezañ (to be - it has different forms depending on whether the subject is at the beginning or end, you're describing location, existence or qualities, whether your sentence is negative or affirmative and more...). At the same time, I've been looking up the Breton correspondents to the vocabulary of Basic English (about which more here) and have been both pleasantly surprised by things I knew and embarrassed by things I'd forgotten.

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On a completely unrelated note, I am most assuredly not learning Japanese at the moment, and particularly not the written form. But if you are, check out the Cunning Linguist and Babelhut, who have had some ideas in the last month or so. With reference to Thomas' Babelhut post, I ran across Heisig years ago when I was messing around with Japanese. I never got far with the language, but Heisig did give me a solid read on the kanji that subsequently proved of help with hanzi - even if it didn't teach me the precise meanings and usages, it's great for learning how to look at a character and see what goes into it.

Vocabulary, Vocabulary, Vocabulary - a thought and a tool

2008-07-17T23:12:00.000-07:00

When you're starting to learn a language, one of the trickiest things is building a core vocabulary. For one thing, while you can find word frequency lists, these tell you what to recognize for reading, but not what you actually need to know for basic communication. Speaking of basic communication, a long time ago, CK Ogden proposed Basic English, a subset of English with 850 words that should be sufficient for everyday communication, with the suggestion that for any particular specialty another 100 words of so should be sufficient for specialized communication. This has led to standards for, eg, aircraft manuals, since there needs to be a way to be sure - very sure! - that a non-native has a better than average chance of understanding perfectly for certain technical subjects.

If you're learning English, the Basic English vocabulary makes a darn good core to start with. But it's particular to English (and to a lesser extent to Germanic languages) in its assumptions about how ideas can be combined to form new meanings without an overly burdensome vocabulary. So if you're building a core vocabulary for a new language, the list can give you inspiration for figuring out the sorts of things you'd like to be able to say but haven't thought of looking up yet, but a one-to-one translation into a different language may prove more interesting than useful. Still, the ideas behind Basic English may, as I said, give some sense of how you want to put together your own studies to build a core vocabulary for the language you're learning.

The 850 items in Basic English are here. The Wikipedia article on Basic English and with lots of links to other efforts to simplify English is here.

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I stumbled across a great website the other day - and how could I not, it's at the top of the Google listings for online dictionaries - but I hadn't used it before and have been greatly impressed since I started: WordReference.com. It has the Oxford dictionaries for Spanish, French, Italian, German and Russian, but since you're searching online, not flipping through paper pages, you can get a ton of words, phrases and other entries to look up with a minimum of effort. What I like best of all is it's ability to make recommendations when you give it two or three word phrases for translation. If you're trying to translate idiomatic English and just can't remember which specialized verb+preposition combination does what in the Romance language you're working in, it's great (at least that's been my experience with French and Spanish so far).

Freedom of Speech, Critical Thinking and the Best Way to Learn a Language

2008-07-12T14:42:00.000-07:00

Over at The Linguist, Steve's been looking at critical thinking and freedom of speech. Notes Steve, those who mean well are often the quickest to want both to teach critical thinking and to limit the freedom of speech. This, to me, is like teaching someone to make cookies but forbidding them from acquiring flour and chocolate chips: free speech is the raw material on which one exercises one's critical faculties in a free society.

On the question of critical thinking, I think there's a very basic misconception which leads all sorts of well-meaning people astray: critical thinking is not always a tool for arriving at the right answer so much as a means of finding the right answer for you. If I love to work with my hands and am therefore contemplating becoming an accountant - I'll get to push pencils all day! - critical thinking may cause me to reexamine my premises and become a mechanic or a sculptor instead. In the larger scheme of things, likewise, critical thinking will not tell us whether we should invade Iraq, have national health care or criminalize duck hunting. Absolute answers to these questions don't exist. Critical thinking may, however, help a nation decide whether the decision it makes is congruent with the kind of nation its people want it to be.

Robert Heinlein noted that if it can't be expressed in figures, it's opinion, not fact. But that's countered by the old quip that figures don't lie but liars figure. Most often, the liars who are figuring start by lying to themselves. The other day, a colleague remarked that another person in the company had gone about things the wrong way, perhaps, but that he meant well. I breezily chirped in that Hitler had meant well too, but things could have turned out better where he was involved. I was surprised by the vociferousness with which the response came: "He did not!" To this person, it was inconceivable that a person she conceived of as being evil could have had any intention other than to go down in history as synonymous with cruelty, barbarism and megalomania. This is usually the response I get because if even Hitler meant well, people sense, that means that it's not good enough that their own intentions are good. They also have to make sure that the things they do have a positive outcome and this requires thinking before acting and acting according to a mixture of reason and feeling, not feeling alone.

Critical thinking, per se, probably cannot be taught. It can be modeled, to a degree of course. But when it comes to procedures and processes, critical thinking is better for telling us what not to do than what we should do. An acquaintance with the more common logical fallacies won't lead to you acting according to unerring good sense, but it will keep you from repeating the most common mistakes over and over again: at least if you make a mistake, it will be a new one! But in the end, critical thinking tells us more about whether our conclusions emerge logically from our premises or whether we're using the kind of wishful thinking that says, "I'm very pragmatic: since I couldn't afford a Rolls-Royce on my minimum wage income, I settled for a Porsche and saved $200,000. Now I've got enough to make a down payment on a house!"

The reason freedom of speech is so important is that in a world where absolute right answers are relatively scarce, a people has to work to find the right answers for having the kind of country they want to have and living the kinds of lives they want to lead. You can't have perfect order and absolute freedom - the crazies will use their freedom to disrupt order. But you can't have perfect order with no freedom either - the crazies will step outside of the order and lots of people will follow them. So society has to strike a balance, figuring out what it will put up with and in what measure in return for the freedoms and opportunities for growth that are associated versus the restrictions it will put up with in order to maintain order and security. Societies that decide wrongly - Zimbabwe is a strikingly horrifying example these days - pay the price for not finding that balance. Societies that do better - much of Western Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia come to mind - tend to make the money and live the good life. These are, incidentally, the places where open discussion and even downright nasty discussion can take place in the open and where political and financial marketplaces can quickly determine what citizens and consumers will accept as right for them in the aggregate, if not locating the Platonic essence of correctness.

Aristotle said that the good is that at which all things aim. He meant to say that we all mean to do well, unless we are mad, and that in the long run we'll find our way to virtue and intelligent action by the observation of what reasonable and reasonably well off people tend towards. It's sort of circular - something is good because it's aimed at, and it's aimed at because it's good. But this hit or miss notion does well at explaining how self-causing moralities and notions of justice wind up creating stable and profitable societies that march along across the centuries, adjusting here and there but evolving more than changing outright. Freedom of speech and the exercise of critical faculties in deciding what to do with the content of that free speech have tended to create societies that may not be the best by some objective criteria, but that are the ones that everyone seems to want to emigrate to, and so we're back to the good as that at which all things aim.

The above may seem like an idle meditation. In fact, it is but prelude.

The good news is that what follows is much shorter!

What Steve has to say about critical thinking and freedom of speech dovetails nicely with something closer to our focus here: The Best Way to Learn a Foreign Language. To put it simply, there is none. While we tend all of us to grow up in societies and learn languages according to a combination of assimilation and instruction, we are all different. Our backgrounds are different, our experiences in the world are different, the wiring of our brains varies.

It is safe to say that if someone came up with "the food method" - you eat tuna fish to learn German, roast beef to learn French and rice to learn Russian, and that's all you need to do - you could call that person crazy and say that he had no business being a language teacher. Our critical faculties will tell us that we're unlikely to find a mechanism whereby the consumption of certain foods would alter our environment or perception of it sufficiently to cause a new language to come into our brains. But when it comes to Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, The Linguist and those old Dover Essential Grammar of... books, it's plausible to see them as language learning tools. That given, some will want to say, "Yeah, but which one's the best?" That depends on who you are and how you learn.

A certain company whose name escapes me boasts that more people have learned with that company's products than any other. Given the number of monolinguals in the United States, I'd be keeping my mouth shut or somebody's going to notice that twice as many people bought the CDs as speak Spanish and wonder what happened! At any rate, it's great that we haven't found the best way of learning languages, because if we had, all the people it didn't work for would be in trouble. Instead, there's a marketplace of ideas about learning and marketplaces to purchase implementations of those ideas. So have a look around, see what feels right for you and move on if something isn't working for you. If nothing works for you, you will need to examine your commitment to learning and the dedication with which you study. But the odds are that if you're learning one of the more common languages, the right book or CD set to get you started is sitting in a bookstore or online retailer just waiting for you to discover it. Happy searching. And remember, even if it says you'll learn everything you need to know in ten days, it still might have some good stuff and be worth looking at, even if the publisher's marketing department needs a good scolding.

Personal Update Tired of shirking my Breton studies with Assimil, I've deliberately put them on the back burner for the moment. I'm rereading a lesson every two or three days or doing the scriptorium variation I mentioned the other day. In the meantime, I've gotten a hold of a good Breton dictionary and Turn of the Ermine - an anthology of Breton literature - and have been reading, translating and listening to music. I'll come back to the Assimil in a week or two when I get tired of looking things up and decide it's time to expand my knowledge a little more systematically again.

Notes on Language Learning and Breton

2008-07-05T10:09:00.000-07:00

Language Learning

1. Acting as if... and believing it!
Every now and again, there's some chatter about polyglots past and present. And as soon as the polyglots show up, there are others who will notice the polyglot doesn't speak their language that well. But if you know a language perfectly and never open your mouth, then the person who knows four words poorly and deploys them wherever possible is ahead of you. Likewise, the polyglots who aren't really fluent in twenty languages but can make a reasonable effort at communicating ought be given their due. And we can learn from them: Thinking you're a polyglot won't make you a polyglot, of course. But thinking you're not a polyglot will assure you don't become one.

One of the contradictions of language learning is that you have to have the humility to demure about your abilities yet be willing to put them on display. Je parle français... un peu. Hablo español... un poquito... This requires maintaining a different internal conversation from what you project to the outside world. You need to tell yourself Je parle français très bien so that you'll feel comfortable speaking up even as the words coming out of your mouth tell your interlocutor the absurd Je ne parle pas français, pas vraiment - which is an obvious contradiction.

The point here is to watch your internal conversations closely. Because while you don't want to be one of those polyglots about whom native speakers say "He doesn't really speak my language," you do want to have that confidence that allows you to believe in yourself, believe in your skills and believe in the work you've put in.

Do you find yourself saying I'll never speak... or I just can't find the time to study or This is too hard for me... Or any of the other excuses we make to ourselves for not doing our best? Once you decide to learn a language, you should commit yourself to being an improving speaker of the language - humble about your talents, but not utterly dismissive of them. Keep a healthy internal dialog and things will come more naturally since your feelings about the challenges of learning won't be getting in the way of the actual learning.

Speaking of which...

2. Getting back into learning
Over at the Cunning Linguist, there's a short note on the pain of getting back into language learning when you've been away for a while. If there's one thing harder than sticking to your routine when life gets busy, it's getting back in the groove when things settle down. But the right attitude can help.

Breton
I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but if not, it's worth checking out the courses at Wikiversity. Here's the Language School. And here's the Breton page. Note that for some reason, the Breton lessons are much more developed than for some other languages. Depending on your language, this may be a pleasant surprise or something rather less.

Getting Back to Work

2008-06-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

The other day, I mentioned that I'd sort of stalled on my Breton sans peine and needed to get back to it. The challenge is that I'd been hitting some passages where Breton really thinks things through differently from English - sentences like this:

Hag ur wech erruet en e gampr,
And one time arrived in his room,
e salaou gant dudi
listens (to) with pleasure
ar pennadoù bet enrollet gantañ
the conversations been recorded with him
war seizenn e vagnetofon.
on tape (of) his recorder.

Once he's back in his room, he listens with pleasure to the conversations he's recorded on the tape in his recorder.

Of course we string together long sentences in English too, but we have a different notion of how the pieces fit together. Breton loves to use "conjugated prepositions" - prepositions marked for person, number and (for 3rd person singular) gender - to link up bit of sentences, for example.

Given time, of course, one can not only break down individual sentences but also develop an eye (and maybe one day an ear!) for relating the elements more automatically. The hard part is getting through to that stage. Looking for some way to keep myself moving through the readings while getting something from it, I started thinking about Professor Arguelles' Scriptorium. Says the good professor:

The whole purpose of this exercise is to force yourself to slow down and pay attention to detail. This is the stage at which you should check all unknowns in grammars or dictionaries...

This is exactly what I needed - to slow myself down and think through what I was reading without descending into grammar-translation.

Professor Arguelles' exercise, of course, is for regular use in language learning, and if you've the time and patience I commend his advice to you for broader application. That said, I think this works even for specific passages because it gets you more wholly involved in working with the language - physically manifesting it almost - so that you don't just keep skimming over bits you don't quite get until you suddenly realize you're not quite getting any of it.

One other thing: This exercise, and indeed numerous other exercises, may not be for you when you're stalled. What's important is that somewhere out there, there probably is something that will work for you, or at least that can be modified for you. So check out the links on this site, and on all the other sites, and keep in mind what you're reading. As long as you keep working with the language and keep building on what you're learning you will progress, whatever the tools you use.

So if you're here to kill some time after doing your lessons, take a little time to visit Professor Arguelles's site and see if there's something else you might want to make use of in your learning. But if you're here because you wanted to do something language related but just don't have the heart to crack open your book or listen to your CDs right now, make an extra special point of looking at the Scriptorium and Shadowing technique and maybe at a few other sites till you find something you haven't tried before, or haven't tried in a while. And then, get back to work.

What to do with your old language tapes?

2008-06-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

In my previous post, I mentioned going to European Book Company, but not what I found there. I'd been looking for a multilingual bookstore and was sure there would be one in San Francisco. I just didn't know where. I don't know why it took me so long to get around to googling it, but when I did, there it was.

I'd gone to the bookstore mainly out of curiosity for what I'd find. The website indicated a lot of Assimil programs and I was especially curious about that. One thing I'd intended to get was Using Spanish, the Assimil advanced Spanish course, both for my long-term aim of speaking better Spanish and for the short-term aim of spurring myself to work more diligently at L'Espagnol sans peine. This I found right away.

Going through the foreign language section, I was quite surprised to find passen gentañ ar brezhoneg didorr - the cassettes for Initiation au breton sans peine! Needless to say, I grabbed them up. But what to do with cassettes these days? I got home and found my old cassette player didn't even work. And given that the tapes are old, I didn't want to be going about listening to them over and over anyway.

What to do with your old language tapes

Many of you will know this already. But for those who don't fuss with the computer so much, there's lots of great software out there for recording mic input (or line input if you're using a desktop with a decent sound card - I've got a laptop). What you need are:

1) 3.5mm Stereo Male To Male Cable

2) a full-size cassette player with headphone output (I have the Memorex MB1055 Full Size Cassette Recorder, which works for the purpose)

3) some sort of audio software (I use Audacity - free open-source - for editing and ARWizard - $25, has voice-activation, file-size controls, etc - for the recording, but you could just use Audacity for everything)

Follow these steps:

1) Set the computer volume controls for wave, all and mic around 80%. Mute all the other controls. Make sure any mic boost options are off.

2) Connect the 3.5mm cable from the cassette headphone jack to the computer mic jack.

3) Set the cassette volume at zero, hit play and turn it up until you're getting decent sound through your computer headphones.

4) Rewind cassette, start computer recording with your audio software and start cassette playback.

5) When the cassette is done, stop recording on the computer.

6) Use Audacity or other software to chop up the file into smaller MP3 tracks, usually one per lesson.

Using the steps above (with a shortcut here or there), I was able to get the first two weeks of recordings into the computer and split up into mp3 tracks, one per lesson, in about 45 minutes. Half an hour of that was waiting for the cassette to finish playing.

Note that for some, the instructions will provoke a "duh!" In which case, you already knew how to do this. Sorry, no great new secrets here. If the instructions are confusing to you, check the documentation for you audio software and sound card and play around with them. You'll figure it out.

Disclaimer: Use this information at your own discretion. multilingua.info and Confessions of a Language Addict are for general interest and provide no warranty or technical support for any computer information on these sites.

Random Notes

2008-06-22T11:53:00.000-07:00

Edwin mentioned visiting Sophia Books in Vancouver the other day. For my part, I visited European Book Company in San Francisco yesterday. It has the look and feel of a used bookstore, but with some good stuff in the way of French - and one of the biggest collections of Assimil I've seen outside of Europe. If you're looking for Assimil courses or French children's books, they're worth a visit.

Edwin mentioned that Sophia Books seems to be the only multilingual bookstore in Canada. Here in the US we're not exactly spilling over with them either. But there's also Europa Books in Chicago, which seems to be connected with Schoenhofs in Boston. Finally, for language learning, I'd mention LanguageQuest, which I used to visit in Los Altos before they moved to Mount Shasta.

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I've plateaued on my Assimil Breton sans peine again - happens every so often - so I am reviewing and doing outside reading. Next week, I plan to hit the ground running, but in the meantime, I've been enjoying Breton music, my Spot stories and Peter Rabbit. I've also been fussing with Talk Now Breton, as I mentioned the other day. Remember: if your method isn't working for you right at the moment, make sure you're doing something to enjoy your language. You'll need to either get back on track or find a new track soon enough, but as long as you keep the language in your brain and in your life you're fine for the short term.

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Last note: Thanks to the folks at edufire for recognizing this among their top 20 language learning blogs. You'll see a lot of the others in the link list to the right, by the way. Check 'em out.

Language Immersion

2008-06-16T23:40:00.000-07:00

Whenever I read about language immersion, I wonder if we maybe shouldn't teach people to drive by putting them in a car, sending them out on the freeway and seeing what happens. That's what language immersion is the way that some would go about it.

A couple weeks ago, the LinguistBlogger put up his thoughts on the matter. His suggestion: Language immersion is something you do after you understand the fundamentals:

If you don’t have enough desire to get at least to a solid 2 [limited proficiency] in the target language before you start your language immersion it’s doubtful that you will get much better than that. I recommend getting to a 3 [proficiency] which is entirely possible for most languages. Getting to a 3 first will make it so getting to a 4 [advanced proficiency] in the foreign country becomes very doable and even fun and enjoyable.

The problem is that if you don't have a decent handle on things before you go for the immersion, 1) you won't know what to listen for and build on and 2) you'll probably play it safe, avoiding those linguistic situations that will make you grow.

When I went to France, I had a fair amount of French under my belt. And I lived with a family. So I went from, say, 2 1/2 to 4. I had friends in my program with weaker backgrounds who got a little better at everyday stuff but never took it to the next level. For my part, I came to California at about a level 1 in Spanish. While I talk on a regular basis with native Spanish speakers, my Spanish improves or falters based much more on whether I've been studying than the degree of interaction. At my level, language immersion mainly activates what I know latently but I'm not plugged in enough to automatically assimilate things as they come up.

I've been a big booster of Assimil on this page, and I'd toss out this one point: While raw immersion is a bad idea for beginners, it's a slightly different story with guided immersion. Because of the way we learn and use language, the old grammar translation is usually better for laying the foundation to learn to speak naturally than for actually speaking naturally. But if you intend to "pick up" a language, what you pick up will be sorely limited by the sophistication you bring to the operation. Best to find a method where you work with real language but in a format that eases you into it and helps keep you up to speed with what's going on. If you can find a method where the end of the book looks incomprehensible but the level of difficulty between chapters 1 and 2 is negligible, you might just have something that can take you by the hand and lead you into the language at a pace where one day you'll be ready for a real immersion. Then all you need is the will to keep working with it till you get there.

Talk Now and grammar

2008-06-14T20:18:00.000-07:00

A hundred years ago, I had put to me a question that boils down to the following: "What's the last sound in the following French words - arbres, beaux, prends?" The answer, of course, is [z]. The trick is asking yourself whether that [z] is a sound you add where liaison is called for or a sound you drop when it is not. The problem is that you can take other French words like "est" and you wind up a different sound for the liaison. So the terminal consonant, though rarely pronounced, is indeed there at some level. Otherwise, it wouldn't be available when you needed to make a liaison.

So, how do you say "arbres"? It's arbrez and you drop the "z" if the next word starts with a consonant.

That was a bit pedantic, I know, but it relates to an issue I'm having with Talk Now Breton. Talk Now is a program that teaches a bunch of basic vocabulary through a computer game format not unlike a television game show. Yesterday, I zipped through the "First Words" section, in which we learned among other things that a boat is "bag." We also learned that a bank is "ti-bank" and a credit or debit card is "kartenn-vank." We didn't, however, learn that "vank" is a mutated form of "bank" and we didn't learn that "the boat" is "ar vag." Nor did we learn that in the phrase, "Pelec'h emañ ar malizennoù?" that "malizennoù" is the plural of "malizenn," whose mutated form is "valizenn" (like the French valise). This means that knowing "Pelec'h emañ an ti-bank?" (Where's the bank?) and "Pelec'h emañ ar malizennoù?" (Where are the suitcases?) and "Bag" (Boat) doesn't mean you know enough to ask "Where's the boat?" (Pelec'h emañ ar vag?).

I don't want to fault or single out Talk Now here. It gave me a good refresher for some vocabulary and a few new words as well. But it also reminded me on an important truism: In language, words do not exist in isolation. For French, you learn nouns with the article, that way you've got the gender built in. With Breton, it's trickier - you need to know, eg, "Bag/Ar vag" so that you'll know that "boat" is feminine because it changes after the article. Without both, you wouldn't be sure when and where it mutates.

Whatever language you are learning, it's a good idea to look for the quirks of the language that affect how words are used in combination with other words. That runs the gamut from verb morphology to knowing which prepositions come after which verbs to which measure words go with which nouns, depending on your language. If you're buying a program, be aware that however many words it teaches you, if it teaches them in isolation you've got some work of your own. And if you're making your own flashcards, lighten your load by finding out about some of this stuff first. It's a shame to master 800 words but not be able to use half of them correctly in a sentence.

In the Michel Thomas programs (I'm sure I've quoted this before), Thomas says that what you understand you'll remember. To make your grammar learning easier, eschew learning grammar per se. Instead, find functional sentences where you understand the relationship among the different components. In that way, you'll not just know vocabulary - you'll understand how to use the words of your language to express the things you want to say.

A Little Rebuilding

2008-06-07T23:04:00.000-07:00

In my best weeks, I find twenty minutes a every day to work on language learning - five in the morning, five in the evening and ten at lunch. Under this system, I push forward at lunch, review in the evening and consolidate the previous day's learning in the morning.

Last week was not one of my best weeks. Things were crazy at the office, I was dog tired in the evening and eager to use every last minute of available sleep time in the morning.

I didn't stop learning, of course. I finished up my notes on a Spot story and sent them off to the MyLanguageNotebook.com site. And Peter Rabbit came in the mail on Wednesday: I've read the first five or six pages. And Friday evening, I sat down in front of the computer and listened to Breton, French and Italian music for a few hours. And I found time to do a perfunctory scan of the Assimil lessons most days.

Next week, though, I'll go back and redo this week's lessons. I fear they won't seem as repetitive as they should. But that's okay.

I write a lot about attitude here. And this week I've also been skimming a self-confidence course from uncommonknowledge.co.uk. One of the biggest places where we trip ourselves up in language learning is that when we get off track, we make too much of it. I run across students who miss class for two weeks, struggle in a lesson and proclaim, "I'll never learn X language."

If you've got a program that's working for you, except that sometimes it doesn't work, it's important to ask yourself what's gone wrong when things aren't quite right. As you learn and grow, you'll change, and it may be that what was the right program for you a month ago isn't the right program for who you've become. Or it may be that other factors in your life leave you thinking you don't have time to learn, even though it doesn't really take that much time - in which case it's just a matter of slowing yourself down so you can squeeze in time again. The main thing is to stay a little bit in touch with the language, say with the passive exposure I've talked about in the past, so the connection is still there when you return, whether with your old program or a new one.

So if you're surfing the net and reading language sites this weekend but you haven't found time to study, don't worry too much. Just make sure to get yourself back on track as you go into the new week, and to look for your reasons if the thought of doing so doesn't give your spirits a little lift.

Learning, Understanding and Assimilating

2008-05-31T18:13:00.000-07:00

The other day, the Omniglot mentioned MyLanguageNotebook, a free program for keeping language notes in your computer and online. I gave it a try while reading one of my Breton Spot stories. A few observations:

The program is fairly easy to use. The interface is pretty clear. And since it's a notebook system, not a flashcard system, it's a little better for noting what you're trying to learn than flash card programs, for example.
For me, the drawback with MyLanguageNotebook is with me, not the program. It works as advertised. But it doesn't work the way I work.
Neither, unfortunately, do flashcard programs.
Michel Thomas says that what you understand, you know and will not forget. Conversely, what you don't understand, you probably will forget.
Whenever I set up a flash card program, take notes, etc, what I find is that the information I note divides into two categories: things I already know-and don't need to learn-and things I don't understand whose memorization doesn't help me. Unfortunately, MyLanguageNotebook doesn't remedy this. It just divides into things that I know and don't need to note, and things that confuse me so that I'm not sure what I should note down.

We sometimes hear about the "eureka" moment when what was unknown becomes apparent. When you research these moments, you find out that a lot of prior thought and observation went into preparing the mind for that magic moment when everything fell into place.

What I find, when I'm studying language - or anything else - is that I learn far more from making notes than studying them. The chief benefit, for me, is thinking things through till I've decided what's worth making a note about and what isn't. When I'm done, I can pretty much throw away the notes - they've served their purpose.

Making notes for Spot, I made some nice leaps in recognizing tenses and internalizing the "emphatic" form (he does run vs. he runs). But when I reviewed the notes later, I didn't get nearly as much out of them.

Two points that I'll offer from the mishmash above:
1) If you're looking for a program to store language information that's more free-form than the typical flash card program, try MyLanguageNotebook.

2) Be wary of the idea that you can learn something you don't understand by rote learning; whether you're diligently deciphering with a grammar translation book or absorbing with Assimil, put the emphasis on finding a meaning or logic to what you're learning and the memorizing will follow almost automatically; do it the other way and you'll be like the guy who dreamed in French and wanted to take a course to find out what he was dreaming about.

Update: As I said above, I get more out of taking notes than reviewing them. But re-reading "Spot's Windy Day" with the notes alongside did speed up the process. If you do the re-read, revise thing a lot, this could be a good tool. Incidentally, I heard from Jim of MyLanguageNotebook below. If you've been using this program, he'd appreciate you uploading your notes. I put up my notes on Spot, so if anyone wants to know how to say "it was windy" or "the leaves swirled about" in Breton, today's your lucky day :)

Klask.com, Assimil and real life resources

2008-05-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

The other day, I stumbled upon klask.com, a website with books and music in Breton. Two weeks later, I got Spot's Bedtime Stories in Breton. It's a simple book, but fun, with pictures that make it clear what's being talked about. And what I found is that while children's books in Chinese, Arabic and Kazakh (among other languages over the years) have utterly stymied me, I had very little trouble making out enough Breton to learn of how Spot lost his kite in a tree and Mr. Kangaroo helped him get it back.

Stories about Spot are an easy read, of course. But I think there's another factor in play: Every morning, every evening and many noon-times as well, I've been reading Breton with Assimil. And while it's taught me a lot about Breton, taught me a lot of vocabulary, etc., it's taught me something else: how to read without perfect comprehension. When I finished my first Spot story, I realized that there were all sorts of grammar structures I recognized but didn't know cold, and lots of turns of phrase that were familiar but that might not have been completely mastered. But it didn't matter. And then I thought back on children's books past, and my efforts to understand every word, and to be sure I knew how every sentence went together.

What I'm offering here isn't particularly new or novel. It's something I've known for years. But as I've written many times before, language isn't about knowledge - it's about habit. And when you're coming from a structured textbook where everything reinforces, rather than contradicting, what you've learned so far, there's a tendency to be used to having everything make sense in the context of what you've learned - which makes it hard to let go of that even if you know you should.

My Assimil Breton is full of "this means this, we'll learn why later" comments. It tells you about watching for certain types of mutations, but doesn't push you to learn them up front. And so, when I started reading about Spot, I was in the habit of getting the gist, not perfect mastery of the material I'd learned to date. And so, even though I'm at a lower level, I was reading Breton with the same comfort level as I read Spanish or Italian.

So, two parting thoughts: 1) At some point, if you're learning a language, you're going to want to confront it on its own terms. So look for resources (like klask.com for Breton) that will expose you early to the language as used. 2) When you're learning a language, supplement with a resource like Assimil if you can find one, that way you'll have a sort of set of training wheels for moving from the structured presentation of textbooks to real-life material.

Gratitude, Inspiration and Language Learning

2008-05-19T22:21:00.000-07:00

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
- Tennyson's "Ulysses"

In the last week or so, I've been thinking about the different methods I've used for study, and the different languages I've studied. This started when, via the Omniglot, I visited Professor Arguelles's website. Among other things, he talks about the languages he's stuck with, and the languages he's had to abandon. While I haven't gone nearly so far as the professor, I couldn't help but think, Yeah, me too, as he talked about the realization that maybe you can't learn 'em all, and about letting go of something in which you've invested a lot of time.

The life of a language learner can get frustrating. First you get bogged down with a method that's not working for you. Then you find something that works better and take stock of the time wasted. But it probably doesn't work that way. And even if it does, it's best not to think of it that way.

With Breton, I started with some resources that just didn't work for me, including Colloquial Breton. There was too much grammar and too much enumeration of rules. Assimil has treated me much better. On the other hand, I got the Colloquial Breton because I wasn't picking up what was in the Assimil. The Colloquial book didn't teach me Breton, nor even the grammar. But it gave me enough warning that on my next effort with Assimil I had a better idea what I was looking at. At least, telling myself this, I am reminded of the value of using multiple methods and am able to treat my efforts with Breton as a steady if slow progression.

The same thing goes for the multiple languages I've studied over the years. Spending a summer with Arabic twenty years ago (was it really twenty?) did not make me a fluent Arabic speaker. But it expanded the world I lived in. It exposed me to the idea of languages with a completely different writing system and grammar from English. It pointed me toward a new culture. And it gave me an entrée into Persian and the Turkic languages. Not that I'm fluent in any of these. But with every language I've studied, there have come new cultures, new worlds, new ways of thinking.

I've written a lot in the past about attitude. One of the problems you run into with language learning is is getting on the right track when you've been on the wrong track. Taking a moment to take full measure of what you've learned can put things in perspective and carry you forward. So remember that whether you're moving to a new book or a new language, or even giving a language up, it's key to keep your eye on that expanded world that your efforts have brought you. Then keep moving forward.

Finishing Initiation au breton sans peine...

2008-05-11T10:56:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-04T22:45:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-04-30T17:29:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-25T19:28:00.000-07:00

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.

A walk in the woods to live your language

2008-04-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

Doing textbook exercises and audio drills has its place in language learning. But if your approach to language learning focuses on packing more and more information into your brain, you're going to get hung up on the language in and of itself, when what you're really looking for is a way of expanding your world and your access to the world as others see it. To truly make a language a part of you, it can't be all about learning. It also has to be about living, and letting the language come naturally.

What you need: Vocabulary for colors, basic description and everyday objects in nature; some grammatical structures for talking about weather and describing things, a place to take a walk.

What you do: Note down your vocabulary, write some sample sentences for describing things you might see on a walk, leave the sheet at home and take your walk.

As you take your walk, when you notice things you can describe in your new language, either from what you've put on the sheet or from your other studies, do so. But don't get too preoccupied about it. The idea here is to create a space where you start to live in your language, but without getting stressed about it. The language should be simple and explanatory:

The trees are tall. The grass is green. The weather is lovely today. There are some birds. The sun is warm. The path is narrow.

The point of the exercise is not to drill yourself on language knowledge, but to live it in a relaxing and rejuvenating manner.

On days when I take my "language walks," I find the evening study sessions go easier, more smoothly, because my last association with the language isn't untangling things I wasn't sure about or learning the chapter vocabulary; it's associated with a state of "just being."

The "language walk" can be applied to other things - staring out the window, listening to music or having a cup of coffee in a café. The main thing is that it be a sort of "mindless" activity - one where you can pull back from acting and content yourself with observing the world around you. In this way, you can let your new language groove its way into your brain, making it a way of understanding your world instead being an independent thing you try to learn and understand.

Michel Thomas Mandarin

2008-04-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

Lately, my focus has been on Breton. And I've felt good about how much I'm actually putting into it. But I've felt bad about letting my Mandarin slip. So when I saw that Michel Thomas Mandarin was finally out, I decided to have a look.

The store where I was shopping only had the two disc set and, not knowing how the program would actually be, that was just fine. So far, I've just about finished the first disc.

I've been wary of the Michel Thomas programs made after his death. And the Michel Thomas Italian Vocabulary program, though using something much like the Michel Thomas method, lacked the Michel Thomas style. This could have been a good thing - Thomas was not the most patient man by the time he got around to making the programs. But the Italian program seemed to wander, had the occasional mistake and, worst of all, was relentlessly encouraging in spots. If, as Thomas always said, the responsibility for learning is with the teacher, you don't need to compliment every right answer with "exactly" or "correct" or whatever - you can just move on. Especially since they used native speakers as the "students" to make sure pronunciation was modeled correctly.

The Michel Thomas Mandarin set is taught by Harold Goodman. Goodman isn't Michel Thomas, either, but there's something in his manner that fits this program more into the original mold. His manner is dry, the student responses are followed with the next item,not phatic chatter. And his story about the little old lady who decided Chinese verbs should have only one form, told using a "Chinese person speaking English" accent, leaves you with the impression that Goodman can be every bit as insensitive as Thomas. As with Thomas, I'm not sure I'd like to be in the cabin next to Goodman for a long ocean cruise, but for purposes of getting the nitty gritty of a language and moving on, this is what we're looking for - memorable and to the point.

Goodman is not a native speaker of Mandarin, so the course is co-narrated by Jingtao Deng, who seems nice enough, but also keeps things moving. In addition, the set comes with a card explaining the tones and tricks for remembering them. And the first seven tracks of the first CD are dedicated to understanding what you're getting into with Mandarin and getting a handle on the tones. As a result, the course starts a lot more slowly than the typical Michel Thomas course. But that's okay, because with a language as different from English as Mandarin, getting a firm foundation is important.

In the time I've been studying Mandarin - is it two years already? - I've used Pimsleur, group lessons and a private teacher. In that time, I've picked up a lot. And forgotten a lot. But the tones have always been a horrible problem for me. I won't say that Michel Thomas Mandarin has me speaking fluently and fluidly with perfect tones, but it's given a much better understanding of how to make them and how to keep them straight. I'm at least getting them right in the exercises, if not in real life, and that's a start.

Michel Thomas Mandarin makes use of the building block approach to start putting words and sentences together. While this is mostly review for me, I think it's pretty well sequenced. As with the other courses, if you want to learn conversational phrases and start chatting right away, you're better off with Pimsleur. But for getting a sense how Chinese goes together and how you can start putting it together, the course doesn't look half bad.

If you're brand new to Mandarin and want to learn on your own, I would recomend the Pimsleur Basic set to get started talking and Michel Thomas Mandarin to get a better idea what you're doing and lay the foundations for real communication in Mandarin. If you already know some phrases from travel or talking with friends, but don't have a good sense of the language, Michel Thomas Mandarin is definitely worth trying.

That irritating intermediate stage

2008-04-13T22:45:00.000-07:00

Kelly at DragonFruit is done with her move and getting back into Mandarin. She notes that right now, she's just getting past what she calls "the very irritating ‘intermediate’ stage":

I think every language learner can agree that the ‘intermediate’ stage is by far the most challenging; no matter how much you learn, you still feel like there’s so much more to learn and progress feels minimal at best.

Symptom of the problem: you can read an article on foreign affairs but can't order a pizza. That's sort of where I am with Spanish. The other day in a used bookstore, I picked up a tome on the idea of the hermeneutic code in modern literary criticism. I won't say I understood everything, but I didn't understand any less than I would have if it were in English. (Years in grad school leave me sure of this fact.) Two days later, I was trying to explain to a coworker that while I had been sick I was starting to feel better. I was amazed at how much harder the second task was.

A while back, I met with a client who wondered what it would take to achieve fluency in a language. I said it was really hard to judge. For example, I told her, there was a time when I could easily discuss the theories of Derrida and Barthes in French, but at no point would I have been able to request a monkey wrench. Nor, as I think about it, would I know how to refer to a garage door opener, the float in the toilet or a crack in the sidewalk. And yet, I speak French pretty competently. Really, I do!

When you're starting a language, anything you can manage to say is exciting. When you're fluent, talking is no big deal. The intermediate stage, though, is one big "when am I going to get there, already?"

Kelly asks if others have had the same experience. And how!

Any good ideas for working through it?

Entering the Active Phase of Language Use

2008-04-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

The hardest part of developing language skills is starting to use the language for yourself. There's a lot you can learn from study materials and a lot you can soak up from content in the language. But how do you find your own voice for the language you're learning?

You don't. Not exactly, anyway. While each of us is a unique person with unique personality traits, etc, we're also the product of our environment. When I'm going through the sales process with a prospective customer, in everything from my phrasing to my pauses to my steering of the conversation, I can hear my father talking on the phone in his home office when I was growing up. When I grouse about bad customer service or wonder at the beauty of the mountain, there's my maternal grandfather ruminating on the porch. If you listen to yourself talk for a day or two, you will find family, old friends, the teachers you looked up to and the television stars you thought were cool when you were, say, ten or twelve. The way you bring them all together makes you you, but in many ways you're a composite of them. It's the same with a foreign language.

I wouldn't say that I'm a completely different person when I speak French. But the emphases shift. I am who I am, but I learned how to express that in different contexts, from different people, so it comes out a little differently. Because I lack a lifetime of experience in French, my humor isn't as subtle as it is in English, where I sometimes get into trouble because people mistake my deadpan sarcasm for being what I actually think. But it's definitely understated and ironical, rather than effusive, after the fashion of some people who seemed to share my sense of humor when I lived there. The same goes with most other moods and manners. We learn both language and how to live by imitation, and while we are unique, the way we express the unique combinations of thought and personality that make us who we are is largely by selecting from the various presentations of humanity that we have seen before. You can see this in those who are less sure of who they are by their frequent quotations and imitations of favorite movie characters.

How does this tie into language learning? The other day, I noted that if you find a language program or materials that make you feel that you're living the language, not just studying it, you've struck gold. When you're ready to use a language actively, then, it's time to go prospecting. It's easy, when you're studying, to get hung up on understanding the language and making sure you've learned all the components -grammar, vocabulary and syntax - that went into making the phrase come out the way it did. But for active use, what you need to focus on is, Would I say this? How? It may be that the sentence before you is "The car is blue" or "The duck is yellow," in which case you're probably not overly excited about being able to offer it up when talking to a stranger for the first time. But if there's a chance, even a chance, that you'll need this sentence, bring it alive! Picture your kindergarten teacher patiently pointing to the picture and saying the phrase when you were learning colors. If you're looking at the "Problems with your car" section of the phrasebook, furrow your brow and earnestly explain your plight to the mechanic the same way you would if it were actually happening.

While you're bringing the language alive, it's worth looking for and at materials in a new light. It may be that the grammar explanations are poor, or the ordering of the book is nonsensical. But if, in the dialogs, you see people saying the kinds of things that people you know would say, grab it. Don't use it for study, of course, but do read those dialogs out loud, and imagine yourself recounting a conversation you overheard or had with a friend. In short, in your mind you should try to build yourself a world to live in where you get the same kind of exposure to language that you got growing up, instead of just looking for language information.

Right now, I'm learning Breton, as visitors to this site will know. Among my Breton materials I have Colloquial Breton, the Assimil initiation, the two tome Assimil course and kervarker.org. I still need more background to appreciate the full Assimil course, but in it there are a series of dialogs - a man and his wife discussing the weather, old friends talking about the one friend's time living in the city, etc - that so sound like people I have known that it's like I'm in the room listening in. Likewise, at kervarker.org, there are a few dialogs - especially in chapter 3, that are hardly exceptional but which seem so transparently real that they stick. This is what you're looking for. So if that textbook you've got explains the grammar well, and has a great presentation of grammar, great. But if the materials you're using aren't filled with the kind of language that you can hear being said by you or by people you know, look for something to supplement it. You'll be surprised by the difference it makes when you go from learning the language to hanging out with folks who are speaking it.

This post metastasized from a comment at Josh's Language Geek, where Josh was wondering how to get more out of the active phase with Assimil. Have a look for some of his thoughts on passive vs. active learning.

From studying to living a language...

2008-04-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

The other day, I was writing about the key to languages being not to learn them but to live them. Edwin from Tower of Confusion has been doing just that: He's been hanging around some Francophone cities in Canada. He's back and reports having found the language to come more naturally than he'd thought. Part of what he attributes it to: His time with LingQ.

Now, I've never been to Montréal, but I have been to Paris. And it beats the hell out of LingQ - sorry, Steve. But that's not to say that LingQ isn't without its charms. If one of the forms of communicating in a foreign language is to read, taking a speaker's message off the printed page, LingQ can be a handy device for doing so more easily and effectively than the old style - book in one hand, dictionary in the other. (And you can listen to a lot of the stuff too.)

I think that to get a handle on a foreign language, it's a good idea to learn a bit about the grammar, and about how the language works. And it doesn't hurt to encounter some vocabulary in a more orderly fashion before hitting original texts. It's nice to have a head start on knowing what you're deciphering. So I'm not sure that I would start learning a language with LingQ. But as I noted in my earlier post, we shouldn't confuse language learning with becoming a speaker of a language - one focuses on the learning process, the other on living the language. LingQ is good for helping you interact with the language for real, which is a good step toward being a real speaker. So if you're looking for something to read in your language and readers or foreign magazines aren't doing it for you, give the site a visit. It might just be what you've been looking for.

LingQ, of course, isn't the only tool for getting at home with the language you're learning. Some of the Transparent Language programs are also worth a look. And online programs like ChinesePod and SpanishPod also have a lot to offer (though in different ways). Also, surf around to find online music, or YouTube videos in the language you're learning. Try things out and see what works for you. But if you find a program that, for you, makes the language less a thing you study and more a part of you, know that you've found gold and run with it.

What's the point of language learning?

2008-03-29T17:07:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I mentioned Diana Beaver's nlp for lazy learning. Today I thought I'd share one of her observations on language learning. Asks Beaver, how did we learn our first language to begin with? An answer:

Our attention was on the communication, not upon the language itself. (122)

This leads to a bit of advice for language learning:

Remember: you are communicating - everything else is irrelevant. (123)

When you're learning a language on your own it can be frustrating because it seems like the language is all you've got. It gets too easy to think that if you've learned this rule or memorized that phrase, you've got it. This can especially be the case because that sort of thing is measurable - how many words you've learned, or grammar sections you've covered, or chapters you've finished... it gives you a way of saying, I have done 'x'. But the true test of how well you're learning is how ready you are to use the language and get the results you want from that effort. And if you're self-taught, you might - often won't - be able to do so, at least not on a regular basis. What to do? Pretend. Or, so it sounds more serious, model.

Beaver suggests you imagine yourself to be a competent speaker, or emulate a native speaker, and tell yourself you understand, even when you don't. The name of the game here is to get your mind used to the idea that this is a language you use as a human being, not a collection of sounds that you decode as a student. How do you do that?

I've written (ad nauseam) about self-talk. And I will again advise that you learn the phrases for the kinds of things you say everyday ("I'd like a hamburger and a Coke, please") and practice the conversations in your head as you go about your routines. Automacity is important. But another approach to your attitude, if not your learning, is to "take the language for granted." Put on a movie, but don't try to understand or play the "I know that word" game that beginning learners play. Instead, just watch, and if you try to understand, do so from the action and the characters' tone of voice. Let the language just be there. If you buy a CD, don't translate the songs, just listen until you find yourself singing along. When you get a newspaper or magazine, flip through it the way you would in the doctor's office. As you do all this, keep at the back of your mind the knowledge that one day you may interact as lazily with this language as you do your own and that this, not the language, is what you are practicing.

Obviously, you will have to continue with your studies. If you're learning Russian, declensions will have to be assimilated, somehow. If you're learning a Celtic language (God help you!), the fact that words change at the beginning will have to be dealt with. And if you're learning Chinese, yes, you'll have to learn the character and the sounds. But by taking some time, especially when you're all studied out, to just let the language be there and a part of your life will help you avoid some of the burnout and to be more comfortable leaving something for later if you're just not getting it right now.

The reason these little mental exercises are of value is that as language learners we often get the idea that what we do with these languages - it's even in the name! - is to learn them... not to live them. And so we sit with our dictionaries and grammars and other study material and take account of all we're doing to learn, when the real value of learning is to be able to actually do something else, with your knowledge of the language a necessary component, not the end goal. So if you find yourself either burned out on studying or caught up in the process of your learning, take a moment to redefine yourself not as a learner of 'x' language, but as a speaker of the language who already can do some things (say hi, buy dinner, whatever) but can imagine being able to do much more.

Breton resources

2008-03-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks, I've been working back through Le Breton sans peine from the beginning. I'm back up to chapter 18. Since this is about the third time I've gone through the first 3 weeks, I'm getting pretty clear on what I've covered so far. Of course I'm not following the instructions as well as I might. I should just push through the passive phase so that I can get started on the active phase. But because Breton is so different, structure wise, from the other languages I've studied, this seems to me to provide a little bit of security: even if I haven't learned a lot, I've learned a little bit well. On the other hand, I've been spending a fair amount of time looking for and making use of other resources. My favorite, which I've mentioned before, is kervarker.org. But I've stumbled upon some others and thought I'd post it here so that I'll remember where to find them. If you're learning Breton or another Celtic language, there might be something of interest:

1) Kervarker.org: An English language online course with recorded dialogues.

2) Gwalarn's intro to Breton: An intro to Breton vocab, and to Breton's place in the Celtic family. (In French)

3) Ar bed keltiek (Celtic world): A nice spot to find out about Breton books and courses.

4) Breton-French-English Dictionary: The interface isn't great, but lots of good info.

5) Loecsen.com Breton expressions: Nice interface for practicing some basic phrases. Be sure to use the drop-down for other categories of expressions.

6) Lexilogos Breton: Lots of great links to Breton resources.

7) Lexilogos Bible texts: links to the Bible in lots of languages, including Breton.