The Linguist On Language

I had a post earlier about how learning a language is like fal ing in love. I real y feel that way. Now, it is possible that some people may fal in love with the grammar of a language. I do not deny that. Most people, however, do not. They fal in love with other things in the language: the sounds, the music, the rhythm, the words and phrases, the content, the literature, the culture, the people they can now reach out and touch. This can al be done with no knowledge of grammatical terms.

Alves goes on to say;

"There is a complete incompatibility between the pleasant experience of reading, a vagabond experience, and the experience of reading for the purpose of answering questions of meaning and understanding.‖

And he goes on to say about students in a typical classroom:

"They were forced to learn so many things about the texts, grammar, analysis of syntax, that there was no time to be initiated into the only thing that mattered: the musical beauty of the literary text."

And yes, learning a language is first and foremost about listening and reading and, if possible, loving the language. That comes first. If you can manage that, and if you can encourage learners to do that, the rest is easy.

The language teacher's role should be to make the learner independent according to Krashen. Rubem Alves talks of encouraging students to fly, of helping them learn things that become a part of their bodies so they do not have to think of them. He quotes the parable of the centipede.

"Once a centipede was asked how he could operate al of his numerous feet in such an orderly manner without getting them confused. The centipede shook his head, shrugged, and said that he had never given it a thought. From that time on, the centipede became unable to move, the legs al got in the way of one another."

Alves wants teachers to create hunger, so that students wil find their own way. He wants the learners to fal in love with what they are reading, so that they wil love reading. He disparages grammar and the other useless dictates of the curriculum. You cannot learn music just from the notes, he says, you first have to hear the song.

You cannot push on a rope

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

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

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

It is impossible to teach an unmotivated learner. I do not mean motivated to get a better job or pass a test, but motivated to speak the language wel . I doubt it. Maybe we should stop trying.

Curiosity

Many people attribute language learning success to talent. Of course, the talent for language learning may vary from person to person. The important question is whether talent is the most important factor in determining language learning success. I do not think it is. Wel , then what is?

One has to be open. It helps to be outgoing and unafraid of making mistakes. Al of that is true, but it is also true that learning and speaking a foreign language is stressful and tiring. Why would people deliberately impose this stress on themselves?

Perhaps it is necessity. But then there are many examples of people who have a strong need to improve their language skil s, who can earn more money if they improve their language skil s, and yet they do not learn. Often they real y do not try very hard, or if they do try, they do not succeed.

If I think about the good language learners that I have known, who exist in every language and cultural group, what they al had in common was curiosity. They were curious about another culture. They were interested in another language. That was what enabled them to accept the stress of learning and speaking a foreign language, and to overcome the obstacles.

So, for a teacher, stimulating that curiosity and maintaining it is the number one responsibility.

We all have our price