The Linguist On Language

Interesting research by Dr. Paula Tal all, co-director of the Center for Molecular and Behavioural Neuroscience at Rutgers University has established that poor readers are usual y people who have trouble decoding sound effectively.

Oral comprehension

The international y-recognized expert on literacy Thomas Sticht has written that "oral comprehension typical y places an upper limit on reading comprehension; if you don't recognise and understand the word when you hear it, you also won't be able to comprehend it when reading. This tel s us something very important: oral comprehension general y needs to be developed in our youngest readers if we want them to be good readers."

This is also true for foreign language learners.

Teachers have traditional y focused their efforts on teaching learning skill s, reading skill s, inferring skill s, decoding skill s, grammar skill s, writing skill s etc. Stephen Krashen was one of the first foreign language teachers to point out that an emphasis on comprehensible input leads to better language learning results than an emphasis on grammar and correction. Krashen has long championed extensive reading as an essential tool for increasing language skill s.

CHAPTER XII: CULTURE AND POLITICS

When we learn a new language we learn about its culture. That is one of the main attractions and rewards of language learning. We get involved with a new world, with a new way of looking at things, with new events and stories. However, people remain people, and the differences between people should not be exaggerated. Having learned 11 languages, and now being able to enjoy these different cultures, I am even more convinced of the similarity of people wherever they live.

Culture

I attended a conference of the Canadian Council for the Americas yesterday. I am, in fact, a director of this organization, the goal of which is to promote relations between Canada and Latin America. There were presentations by diplomats, and there were some 200 or so business people and academics in attendance.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I have been much more involved with Asia in my career and it was fun to start to know more about the countries and people of our common hemisphere.

One of the people I chatted with is completing a PhD in intercultural communication. She explained to me how important this was. I replied that language certainly made it much easier to understand the point of view and the culture of other people. She insisted that one needed to learn how to communicate with people of another culture, with or without the language.

I have never understood all the fuss about communicating with people of another culture.

Am I supposed to behave differently, become a different person, try to take advantage of some knowledge of this person's culture to gain some advantage? It all sounds a little manipulative to me.

As I speak another language, some aspects of my behaviour change. But I do not think

"this person is Chinese, or Brazilian therefore I will behave differently." I am just me, trying to figure out if I like the person or not. Usual y our true personalities will come out and we either get along or we do not, regardless of culture.

I think that anything useful in the way of intercultural training for dealing with people from a particular culture can probably be written down on one sheet of paper. The rest is just part of people interacting. I cannot see how this can be the subject of a PhD study.

Cross-cultural communication

I sometimes hear language teachers talking about cross-cultural communication as if it were something that the language teacher needed to learn in order to be a more effective teacher.

I do not believe this to be the case. It is the learner who must learn, not the teacher who must teach. The will ingness and ability of the learner to cross into another culture is vital to success in language learning. The learner needs to be good at cross-cultural communication, not the teacher.

Culture and language

Marcelo in Brazil asked me the fol owing questions:

1. If you are bilingual - does your character change with the language you are speaking?

2. How closely are cultural and national identities defined by language?

3. And what impact will the ever-increasing domination of English have on the way the world communicates?