The Linguist On Language

5. When you learn natural y, you will feel motivated by your own success.

Motivation is the basic motor of learning. Success is motivating, as is praise. Any teaching activity which creates frustration, such as traditional grammar based language learning, can demotivate the learner. In a natural learning environment, the main task of the teacher is to encourage the learner to become independent of the teacher, rather than to impose tasks or explanations on the learner.

 Many of us want to learn another language but are skeptical of our ability to do so, because we have not done it before.

 As the strange language starts to acquire meaning through our listening and reading, our brain feels a sense of reward at this new and unexpected experience. This is highly motivating.

 Give language learning a chance, the results will be better than you think.

6. When we learn, we change. We need to accept this change.

When we learn, our neural networks change, physically. When we learn a new language, we adopt some of the behaviour patterns of another culture and our personalities and our perceptions change. Many of the difficulties that grown-ups face in language learning come from a resistance to change. It is often more comfortable to fol ow the patterns and pronunciation of our own language, rather than to commit to fully imitating the new language.

 Children are not afraid to change. Moving to a new country, they learn the language of their new friends without hesitation.

 Older learners have a stronger vested interested in their own identity, and in what they already know.

 Al learners benefit from the help of an encouraging tutor and an enthusiastic group of fellow learners, in order to overcome these barriers to learning.

The brain and our attitude

Last night I went out for a bit of sushi and wine (yes red wine not sake) at the Chiyoda restaurant in downtown Vancouver, certainly one of the best Japanese restaurants in Vancouver. The people beside me turned out to be brain researchers, or rather researchers in cancer of the brain. There was one American, one Japanese, and one Singaporean. I butted in to their conversation.

We covered a lot of ground, from feminism to cultural issues in different societies etc. But, being single minded about language learning as usual, I asked them about the influence of our will on learning.

They confirmed that this was a known phenomenon known as "forced plasticity." The brain is not hard-wired. You can change your brain. You do it with motivation and concentration. You can "force" the plasticity of your brain with your will .

This is scientific confirmation of something that I have always felt. In language learning, the bottom line is you. Not your innate genius for language learning, but your desire, your commitment, your will ingness to let go...in other words, your attitude.

Mind over brain

In Jeffrey Schwartz's book The Mind and the Brain, he points out just how adaptable the human brain is. Research has shown that this adaptability or plasticity continues throughout our lives. The brain is constantly retraining and rearranging itself in response to different stimuli. He describes clinical examples of how people can use mindfulness to will their brain to change its neural circuits. This is mind over matter, or since the brain is matter, maybe it is mind over mind or matter over matter!! I am not a scientist, obviously, just curious.

Schwartz shows from actual clinical experiments how people who have some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) can in certain circumstance train themselves away from that behaviour. In so doing they actual y alter the metabolism of the OCD circuit in the brain. I remember as a child that my father could wiggle his ears and I could not. However, by spending a lot of time will ing my ears to move, they eventual y did. Mindfulness therapy at work!

Schwartz talks about "mindfulness-based cognitive therapy" and a four step treatment process. The four steps are Relabel, Reattribute, Refocus and Revalue. It begins with the patient not blaming him or herself for the disorder but recognizing that it is a function of the brain circuitry sending some faulty messages. By accepting that the circuitry was playing tricks, the patient was better able to resist the irrational obsessive impulses when they arose.

I am still digesting this book but I sense it has applications for language learning. If language learners are constantly discouraged because of their inability to express things correctly in a new language, or their inability to remember words when they need them, or to pronounce properly, or the fact that they freeze when they have to speak to a native speaker, this discouragement is only building up tension and making learning more and more difficult.