Language Learning Myths
1. Learning a language without much effort just comes naturally to some people.
After about 1,000 hours of effort, the average brain will begin to process in the new language. That does not mean you will be fluent, but rather that you can interrupt a conversation and ask a semi-relevant question. Your question might get people (if they like you) to adjust their language to you, just as when a four year old cuts into an adult conversation. That condescending adjustment made by others on your behalf is key to your being able to hang in any conversation. You can watch the news and, along with the video clues and your own previous knowledge, understand enough to be able to comment on it. Your speech will be unnatural, bordering on unintelligible, and there will still be gaping holes in your ability to understand. At the magical 1000 hour mark, your brain will be synthesizing, though there is no guarantee that anyone will comprehend the product of that synthesis.
Less than 1,000 hours and anything said in a normal conversation in the new language is gibberish; your brain can not so much as process it. Good language learners can get there with maybe only 950 hours of effort. Slower ones take longer.
According to this myth, I’m just one of those lucky natural ones who has miraculously started to, “get it”. But no one has ever been able to produce a person who has put in as many practice hours as me (about 2,000 in Dari) that has not started to “get it”. Progress has been painstakingly slow: my present ability - just surpassing the 1,000 hour level (on good days).
2. Since my Niece has a college degree in French, and my nephew has a degree in Spanish and neither one could ever really speak, learning language is impossible for most people.
A university language degree might require 8 courses, with about 40 classroom hours each. That is 320 hours in the classroom. An excellent student might practice as much on their own as in class, few ever do more than that. So, you would expect to find that University level language graduates’ brains should not normally be able to process the new language, unless they have spent an extraordinary amount of time working in the language outside the classroom. It requires THAT MUCH WORK.
Most people who study a second language never arrive at fluency. Most bilingual people never took coursework in their second language. Most of the world is at least bilingual.
3. The best way to learn a new language is (pick your highly advanced strategy) - total immersion, watching TV, speaking with people in normal conversations, attending meeting with native speakers, etc.. My niece speaks German fluently, and that’s what she did.
People who have survived the odyssey to get to the magical 1000 hour point do not usually stop there. They demonstrated all that perseverance with the goal of employing the language, so they almost always do. They progress and become fluent, which happens after, perhaps 3,500 hours. If you than ask them what strategy worked best for them, they will invariably pick one that worked AFTER the 1,000 hour point. Yes, they became fluent by speaking with nationals in natural paced conversations. No, it won’t work for you (nor would it have worked for them) before the 1,000 hour point. Until you put in that much hard, frustrating work, the strategies that produce real fluency will just be gibberish that never even enters your brain.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
How Life is Engineered
I believe that the Creator chose to enter this world as a man. Most believe that God would never show that degree of vulnerability. I believe that the core of the Good News is that God gave His own earthly life up so that we could live and be holy. Most believe that this is an idea invented in the West.
Coming home from our honeymoon, there were girls in our house waiting for us - long time friends of Hamroz, come to express excitement with us about the wedding (and to spend a night away from home). Upon realizing that they were already inside the house before we arrived, two forces tugged my soul in different directions. One, that everything I knew about life for myself was history. Another, that this is what I was created to do.
Our garden tree sits out in the sun performing a feat that no animal could ever pull off - capturing energy straight from the sun and storing it up as carbohydrates, fats and proteins. It is not designed to use all of that energy, it is designed to store it in fruit, together with vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants and other things animals need (and trees don’t). The tree doesn’t live to feed animals because it has accepted a western mindset; it does so by design.
The struggle to properly express my love for Hamroz is a demonstration of the planetary war between human selfishness on the one hand and life from God on the other. Instead of being cared for on the ISK compound, would I take responsibility to run an independent household (boarders and all, since she wanted ‘em)? Instead of developing my own plans, I will work to establish a family. Instead of that salmon-rich diet, I’ll feed the guests. How sad it would be to live all for myself, yet the alternative is to voluntarily surrender my life.
At the center of every living cell, a huge DNA strand tears itself apart and, sporting thousands of tiny chemical “magnets”, attracts only organic materials (chemicals that have never been alive will not move) to form new strands according to the patterns of its own design. Plants end their lives to be formed into animal flesh. Animals end their lives to be formed into parts of other animals. Everything ends its life to fertilize the earth. Not just in the West – life in Asia works the same way. This surrender of life to sustain life is not weakness, but divinely appointed, very precise engineering. It is the central principle behind all life everywhere.
If the Creator came and lived among us, if He cared enough to participate in the food chain He Himself designed, can you imagine what eating the food His body produces would do to nourish you?
Coming home from our honeymoon, there were girls in our house waiting for us - long time friends of Hamroz, come to express excitement with us about the wedding (and to spend a night away from home). Upon realizing that they were already inside the house before we arrived, two forces tugged my soul in different directions. One, that everything I knew about life for myself was history. Another, that this is what I was created to do.
Our garden tree sits out in the sun performing a feat that no animal could ever pull off - capturing energy straight from the sun and storing it up as carbohydrates, fats and proteins. It is not designed to use all of that energy, it is designed to store it in fruit, together with vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants and other things animals need (and trees don’t). The tree doesn’t live to feed animals because it has accepted a western mindset; it does so by design.
The struggle to properly express my love for Hamroz is a demonstration of the planetary war between human selfishness on the one hand and life from God on the other. Instead of being cared for on the ISK compound, would I take responsibility to run an independent household (boarders and all, since she wanted ‘em)? Instead of developing my own plans, I will work to establish a family. Instead of that salmon-rich diet, I’ll feed the guests. How sad it would be to live all for myself, yet the alternative is to voluntarily surrender my life.
At the center of every living cell, a huge DNA strand tears itself apart and, sporting thousands of tiny chemical “magnets”, attracts only organic materials (chemicals that have never been alive will not move) to form new strands according to the patterns of its own design. Plants end their lives to be formed into animal flesh. Animals end their lives to be formed into parts of other animals. Everything ends its life to fertilize the earth. Not just in the West – life in Asia works the same way. This surrender of life to sustain life is not weakness, but divinely appointed, very precise engineering. It is the central principle behind all life everywhere.
If the Creator came and lived among us, if He cared enough to participate in the food chain He Himself designed, can you imagine what eating the food His body produces would do to nourish you?
Sunday, September 9, 2007
TCA
The phenomenon of Third Culture Kid or, TCK has become an area of sociological study, especially appropriate at International Schools. When children are raised in a country different from where their citizenship lies, they are not really “from” their passport country nor from their host country. They are forced to develop a “Third Culture” of their own invention to live in.
What has not been studied in such detail are the adults who choose to live in foreign cultures. TCK’s have no choice; but what happens when an otherwise healthy adult generates a personal, “third culture”?
Let me describe one aspect of my own “third culture”: cleanliness. American culture is as inflexible as it is omnipresent – if an American develops a third culture, he is in for deep trouble. But if you relax and enjoy yourself overseas, these things develop themselves without you even realizing it. And it’s worse for kids than adults. Really.
I now have strong personal notions about what is clean and what is not; no one shares them with me. The germ theory of disease transmission lies at the heart of my strange notions. This prompts me to wash my hands often, and thoroughly clean my mouth and throat at least daily (brushing, tongue scraping, dental flossing and mouthwash). This accomplished, my whole world is considered clean. If not, another hand washing will always make it so. Good food (whole grains, fresh fruits and veggies, a little light meat) and lots of exercise and viola – expect a 120 year life span.
This concept of clean has worked for me in each of the four cultures I’ve lived in as an adult – though each tried unsuccessfully to impose its own cleanliness standards on me. My dogged individuality has not earned me any respect, but it keeps me out of the sick bed. The last day I remember taking off for illness was in 1980 when they pulled my wisdom teeth. In a submarine under the North Atlantic “clean” meant (for everyone else) having a washed uniform to put on, no matter how much grease was on your old one. Diesel smell was not considered dirty, since everything on board was drenched in it. In six years, never a watch was missed by me for illness. I ran long distance in every port.
In the rainforests of Costa Rica, clean meant mostly being unstained, though not necessarily dry. Each new day found me at my job for another six years.
The Western mind set is incredulous that one might go out in the winter without a thick coat – something that it considers to be the cause of sickness. It affirms that diseases fester in coffee stains. It relies on toilet paper to prevent the spread of fecal infection (though any paper company that claimed it did so would have its corporate buns sued off). It would rather kill germs than wash them off (though our skin was designed for the outer layer to dissolve into soap, not disinfectant). In my third culture, you can be clean without being anti-microbial. Living and working in inner city Philadelphia, you wouldn’t believe the money they paid for my unused sick and personal days.
During three years here in dusty Kabul, the local sense of clean seems to be more ritualistic than practical. Four days were missed to get engaged, but never a meeting skipped for sickness. Let me go wash my hands again. Register me as a pro-microbe yogurt eater.
What has not been studied in such detail are the adults who choose to live in foreign cultures. TCK’s have no choice; but what happens when an otherwise healthy adult generates a personal, “third culture”?
Let me describe one aspect of my own “third culture”: cleanliness. American culture is as inflexible as it is omnipresent – if an American develops a third culture, he is in for deep trouble. But if you relax and enjoy yourself overseas, these things develop themselves without you even realizing it. And it’s worse for kids than adults. Really.
I now have strong personal notions about what is clean and what is not; no one shares them with me. The germ theory of disease transmission lies at the heart of my strange notions. This prompts me to wash my hands often, and thoroughly clean my mouth and throat at least daily (brushing, tongue scraping, dental flossing and mouthwash). This accomplished, my whole world is considered clean. If not, another hand washing will always make it so. Good food (whole grains, fresh fruits and veggies, a little light meat) and lots of exercise and viola – expect a 120 year life span.
This concept of clean has worked for me in each of the four cultures I’ve lived in as an adult – though each tried unsuccessfully to impose its own cleanliness standards on me. My dogged individuality has not earned me any respect, but it keeps me out of the sick bed. The last day I remember taking off for illness was in 1980 when they pulled my wisdom teeth. In a submarine under the North Atlantic “clean” meant (for everyone else) having a washed uniform to put on, no matter how much grease was on your old one. Diesel smell was not considered dirty, since everything on board was drenched in it. In six years, never a watch was missed by me for illness. I ran long distance in every port.
In the rainforests of Costa Rica, clean meant mostly being unstained, though not necessarily dry. Each new day found me at my job for another six years.
The Western mind set is incredulous that one might go out in the winter without a thick coat – something that it considers to be the cause of sickness. It affirms that diseases fester in coffee stains. It relies on toilet paper to prevent the spread of fecal infection (though any paper company that claimed it did so would have its corporate buns sued off). It would rather kill germs than wash them off (though our skin was designed for the outer layer to dissolve into soap, not disinfectant). In my third culture, you can be clean without being anti-microbial. Living and working in inner city Philadelphia, you wouldn’t believe the money they paid for my unused sick and personal days.
During three years here in dusty Kabul, the local sense of clean seems to be more ritualistic than practical. Four days were missed to get engaged, but never a meeting skipped for sickness. Let me go wash my hands again. Register me as a pro-microbe yogurt eater.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Writing
I consider myself an above average writer. Not that I’m a great writer – probably shouldn’t quit my day job - yet among those who have college degrees, my rating would be solidly above average. My GRE scores above the 90th percentile would tend to bear that out. So would your interest in this blog.
Millions of dollars is spent yearly on researching ways to teach children to become better writers. Textbook companies are inventing new programs and producing aids to help children learn. Yet no research produced backs what I consider to be my primary qualifications to teach writing. The kids have a great opportunity to improve in their year with me because I:
1) Am a solidly above average writer
2) Relate ideas to them easily (i.e. can teach)
Why does research fail to prove the obvious? Because industry wide “the obvious” will not work. The education industry has no hope of staffing it’s writing classes with solidly above average writers who can teach – the teacher job market will not produce enough of it. And administrators are interested in “interchangeability” – they don’t want to be dependant on a particular teacher. When one cog is absent, another should be able to substitute. Research and text book companies exist to solve real world education industry problems.
Writing prompt (I invented) for a recent sixth grade assignment: “Take three elements of the plot and develop them in separate paragraphs using cause and effect relationships.” One day is for drafts and editing, on the next day it becomes an open notebook test question.
One of my students, (who has had trouble in Language Arts, particularly writing, his entire academic career, in spite of the fact that he is an avid reader) was drawing a blank (again). We had elements from the plot on the board that they could pick from. They had ten to fifteen cause and effect relationships that they had identified from the text in their notebooks (well, they were supposed to - this guy had only one – but he had been attentive while the others were writing theirs.) Here he is with a blank paper, zoned out into his own private lala land. So I had him pick and write a main idea – he copies one down. Then I ask him to stand up, spin three times in circles and then say to him, “Talk to me, talk to me”.
If he talks to me about his main idea, I listen. When his thoughts stray, I give him the raspberry sound. He does not use cause and effect, but he gets the game and laughs. “Now, student one”, I say (names are changed to protect the guilty), “You are not getting a grade for what’s in your brain or what you say. I’m grading only your paper. Make your paper talk to me. I’ll spin it three times when you turn it in”. Thank God for the International School of Kabul, you can probably get sued for good teaching in the States. No research to back it up, you know.
On test day student one asks me for a favor – can I give him an A in Language Arts? He usually gets D’s in that. So I start to tell him how to earn one. And he turns in one very original paragraph (not three) which has a main idea from the plot backed with several relevant cause and effect relationships. Grade: 78 C+
“Good writing, student one. A little good writing to start the year. If you do a lot of good writing, you now know how to get your A.”
I would like to do a research project that shows the effect of having 1) good writers who can 2) enjoy children teach children writing skills. (I’ve never been hired for the job by anyone who asked me to write an essay first.) Learning= fn (teacher’s writing skills, teacher's comunicative ability) – let’s see if the equation holds. Alas, there is no motive for anyone to fund my research.
Millions of dollars is spent yearly on researching ways to teach children to become better writers. Textbook companies are inventing new programs and producing aids to help children learn. Yet no research produced backs what I consider to be my primary qualifications to teach writing. The kids have a great opportunity to improve in their year with me because I:
1) Am a solidly above average writer
2) Relate ideas to them easily (i.e. can teach)
Why does research fail to prove the obvious? Because industry wide “the obvious” will not work. The education industry has no hope of staffing it’s writing classes with solidly above average writers who can teach – the teacher job market will not produce enough of it. And administrators are interested in “interchangeability” – they don’t want to be dependant on a particular teacher. When one cog is absent, another should be able to substitute. Research and text book companies exist to solve real world education industry problems.
Writing prompt (I invented) for a recent sixth grade assignment: “Take three elements of the plot and develop them in separate paragraphs using cause and effect relationships.” One day is for drafts and editing, on the next day it becomes an open notebook test question.
One of my students, (who has had trouble in Language Arts, particularly writing, his entire academic career, in spite of the fact that he is an avid reader) was drawing a blank (again). We had elements from the plot on the board that they could pick from. They had ten to fifteen cause and effect relationships that they had identified from the text in their notebooks (well, they were supposed to - this guy had only one – but he had been attentive while the others were writing theirs.) Here he is with a blank paper, zoned out into his own private lala land. So I had him pick and write a main idea – he copies one down. Then I ask him to stand up, spin three times in circles and then say to him, “Talk to me, talk to me”.
If he talks to me about his main idea, I listen. When his thoughts stray, I give him the raspberry sound. He does not use cause and effect, but he gets the game and laughs. “Now, student one”, I say (names are changed to protect the guilty), “You are not getting a grade for what’s in your brain or what you say. I’m grading only your paper. Make your paper talk to me. I’ll spin it three times when you turn it in”. Thank God for the International School of Kabul, you can probably get sued for good teaching in the States. No research to back it up, you know.
On test day student one asks me for a favor – can I give him an A in Language Arts? He usually gets D’s in that. So I start to tell him how to earn one. And he turns in one very original paragraph (not three) which has a main idea from the plot backed with several relevant cause and effect relationships. Grade: 78 C+
“Good writing, student one. A little good writing to start the year. If you do a lot of good writing, you now know how to get your A.”
I would like to do a research project that shows the effect of having 1) good writers who can 2) enjoy children teach children writing skills. (I’ve never been hired for the job by anyone who asked me to write an essay first.) Learning= fn (teacher’s writing skills, teacher's comunicative ability) – let’s see if the equation holds. Alas, there is no motive for anyone to fund my research.
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