Another back issue of the class journal:
(This will actually serve to catch us up to today)

2/7/04
Tuesday’s 426 class really helped clarify for me the differences between the behaviorist, cognitive and constructivist approaches to language learning. I’ve been able to think a bit more clearly about the style of my Japanese class. It strikes me that many of the exercises we do in the book are very cognitive. However, they incorporate aspects of the other styles as well. For example, we are supposed to use tapes in conjunction with the book. A portion of each lesson on tape is dedicated to a dialogue that, in the book, is the kickoff for each lesson. The dialogue sets up the vocabulary we are to learn, and the grammatical constructs. We use the tape along with it so that we can hear native speakers speaking the dialogue. This feels constructivist to me. We are thrown into the language, without knowing much of the vocabulary and grammar. We get to listen and feel.

Later in the lesson, the tape guides us through a set of exercises. One of the exercises is called a transformation drill. The tape reads a sentence for us, while we read along in the book. We are asked to use a new grammatical form to change this sentence into the desired sentence pattern. This is very cognitive, in that we are generating a new sentence pattern based on grammatical knowledge. However, it has a bit of the behaviorist in it as well. We repeat the same pattern over and over again. It’s a drill, and it really drills in the desired grammatical pattern. While we are using our cognitive skills to suss out the right answer, the repetition of the pattern is used to make sure we don’t forget it.

Over all of this, we have the sound of a native speaker or two, immersing us in the genuine sound and texture of the language. This provides the constructivist frosting on our cognitive cake. It makes the use of the textbook much more experiential. We get to perceive with more than one sense. The language gets to sink into our brains through multiple holes.

2/16/04
In all of my foreign language experience, I’ve always had a good accent. Years ago in Germany, riding a train full of fellow EuroRailers (many of them German), I was often asked what part of Germany I came from. Granted, I was traveling with several Germans at the time, and using my German daily. Knowing more about phonology, I now realize that from early on in my language learning I had the ability to extrapolate and apply phonological rules. It’s not just about being able to hear a sound and repeat it, it’s about knowing when to use that sound versus a phonological variant.

I have heard that vowel pronunciation is the most important thing in sounding like a native, but I don’t think I agree with that. Particularly in languages that make heavy use of voiceless stops and affricates (German, Russian, etc.) I think that fine points of articulation really count. They’re not phonemic, but they can make or break your native accent. If just one stop is little too dental, not quite enough retroflex, you’re out of the game. Even supra-segmental distinctions like fortis versus lenis will make your accent suspect if misapplied.

It’s not just phonology that makes you sound native though. Sentence intonation patterns, prosody, and stress are also important. Next to phonology however, the easiest way to sound like a native is to hem and haw like a native. Knowing what to do with pauses and interstitial spaces is absolutely key. If you’re fishing for a word in Japanese and you say “umm, uhh,” instead of “ano” or “mmm” (for example) it doesn’t matter how good your accent is, everybody knows you’re not a native. You have to adopt the conversational mannerisms of the culture.

Speaker inhibition can be very detrimental to language learning. One of the advantages that children have in language acquisition is that they tend to be very vocal and uninhibited. The typical adult (starting around puberty) is going to be conscious of being judged based on performance in the foreign language. This can rapidly turn into a no win situation in terms of performance in the second language: if you make mistakes, you’re judged negatively, if you perform very well you’re also judged negatively (by your peers). The language student is left in a limbo of mediocrity, where competence might be exceedingly good, but performance will always be limited. I believe that this phenomenon shows itself most readily in accent, in that having a poor accent is and easy way to limit your performance in a language without affecting your grades.

Inhibition can not only prevent you from performing to your fullest potential, it can also keep you from learning as much as you could. If you’re afraid to speak, you don’t get practice in the very area where you might need it most.

Understanding the effects that inhibition can have on language learning can help to overcome them. One has to simply choose to not be inhibited. We’ve all either heard of or experienced the “Drunken German” phenomenon. We might hear a friend say, “Well, I know a little German, but it’s much better if I’m drunk”. I have heard this so many times (and experienced it once or twice) that I have come up with a hypothesis to explain it: When people are drunk, many of the self limiting mechanisms fail. People say stupid things when they’re drunk because they aren’t checking themselves. They say German things when they’re drunk for precisely the same reason. Your brain knows most of what it’s been taught, but performance is limited by over analysis, checking, and ultimately embarrassment. All of these things are lacking to varying degrees when intoxicated.

If we could maintain the drunk mentality while sober, our abilities would skyrocket. It’s all about fun, it’s a non-threatening situation, everybody is as drunk as you are and just as likely to say something stupid. Everybody will be equally embarrassed tomorrow, but we’re all having fun right now. That’s the way to learn a language. That said, I’m still afraid to speak a foreign language. Even one I know fairly well.

The biggest problem I have with second language learning, aside from being self-conscious, is remembering everything. I can learn new grammar fairly quickly, pronunciation doesn’t pose much in the way of problems, but remembering all those damned words is hard. This is a case where I believe that behaviorist training methods could work very well for me. I should be spending a few hours a week with flash cards, but I just don’t have the time or energy to do so.

Adults have some advantages over children in terms of second language learning. When children learn a second language it is usually an accident of the environment. They spend a lot of time immersed in that second language because somebody else decided that their life was just going to be that way. Adults rarely have the opportunity for that kind of immersion. Instead the adult has to choose to learn a second language, sign up for a class, take time outside of daily life to learn, and practice deliberately.

I don’t think a child would have the attention span to do this. If we put a child into an adult language class, we would likely see a “Pop go weasel” effect. The learning would have no relevance to the child because it is so outside of daily life. The child, depending on the age, may also lack the cognitive ability to learn a language systematically. Adults are pretty good at this. Adults are able to understand the commitment that they have chosen for themselves. They have the attention span to sit and practice on their own, and the ability to abstract language from daily life and still understand its relevance. They also have cognitive abilities that allow them to learn a language without spending a hefty percentage of theirs lives completely immersed in it.

2/22/04
If I had to classify my approach to learning a foreign language, I would probably say that I am more Ausubelian than Skinnerian or Rogersian. I think it’s difficult to draw clean lines between any of these approaches, in that they all seem to borrow from one another. All three of them have appealing aspects, but I agree very strongly with Ausubel’s idea that it is important to incorporate new learning into an existing cognitive structure. Making connections with personal experience makes it much easier to “think” in the target language, as you are drawing from the same set you would use to speak your native language.

In considering this, it has brought to mind one of the major differences between adult and child second language acquisition. As stated above, children usually learn a second language because it is a part of their lives. There is often little or no specific effort given to the learning process, it just happens. Adults on the other hand, have to go to a classroom and spend hours outside of their lives, specifically attending to second language learning.

It strikes me that, according to Ausubel at least, the children, by the nature of their learning experience are almost guaranteed success, whereas the adults are almost assuredly doomed to failure. This is because the children are learning a language within the context of their own lives. They are attaching the language to real situations they have personally encountered. The adults are making up situation in the classroom. Their textbooks ask them to imagine they are riding a subway (which they have never done) in a city they have never been to, asking strangers about the best places to buy breads and cheeses they have never tasted.

The adult experience in the second language classroom can be so far from the daily experience that it is almost impossible to make connections with existing paradigms in the mind. Thus, the adult can remember the vocabulary long enough to take the test, but not long enough to book a flight to ride that subway to taste that cheese. I believe that it is vital to make the material in a second language class relevant to the students’ lives.

I have noticed in my Japanese class that we are often asked questions not about Japan or sukiyaki, or Muji, but about what we watch on television, what we like to cook, where we live. This allows us to speak of our own experiences, and makes it possible for us to tie the vocabulary and structures we are learning to those experiences. This in turn makes it easier for us to remember what we have learned.

I'm currently taking a course in Second Language Acquisition. It's all about how people learn foreign languages. One of the tasks we've been assigned is to keep a journal. We are to relate the course material with experiences from our own lives. All of us are currently studying a foreign language, and many of us, including myself, have studied several others at some point in the past. I'm going to use this blog (at least in part) for the journaling process. Some of the things that will be mentioned may seem devoid of context. That's because you're not in my class. I'll try to make everything as clear as possible. I have already written the first few journal entries, and will be posting them here in order. Starting now:

2/2/04
I have been studying foreign languages since I was in eighth grade. That was nineteen years ago. I have definitely seen a change in the way languages are taught. I started German in 1985. My teacher was Estonian, her father had been in the SS. I’m not sure if she told us that just by way of general background, or if she was hoping to instill fear. In any case, her teaching methods, and the methods of most of my German teachers throughout high school and college, were very firmly grounded in the Grammar-Translation method. I think there may have been a little effort to update the method and stress conversational skills a bit, but I still remember many of the drills we had to perform. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the dative prepositions in German, or the declension of the definite articles, weak and strong adjective endings, or the basic patterns of strong, weak, and mixed verbs. I have table upon table of German grammar in my head, and you know, I like it that way.

I appreciate the need for conversational skills in a foreign language, but I do believe that there’s a place for Grammar-Translation style drills and memorization. Particularly in highly synthetic languages like German, Russian, or Latin, where you have multiple cases with different articles and endings. While memorizing these things may not help you get your point across, it will certainly make the experience of conversation easier for the person with whom you’re trying to communicate, and in the case of Russian or Latin, where word order is more flexible, mincing your cases can pretty quickly turn a sentence into something really crazy.

For the last year and a half, I’ve been studying Japanese at San Francisco City College. The first semester I went in very excited, and found it to be very challenging for a few weeks. Once I got the hang of it though, the challenge faded, and I started to lose patience with the pace of the class. The second and third semesters were much more difficult, and more than satisfied my need to be challenged. I’m always very excited at the beginning of a semester. I really want to be good at Japanese. I want to be able to read and write as well as speak, and I know that will be very difficult. I have a friend who has lived in Japan for three years now and still doesn’t consider himself to be literate.

I like and respect most of my classmates. Many of them have been in the same class with me for at least one semester, so I have a good idea of their abilities. I’m used to being one of the best students in any given language class, and to be fair, languages come pretty easily to me compared to many other people, but the people who are in my Japanese class are very smart, and very dedicated. I might be among the best in terms of grade, but there are several people who have better speaking skills (many have Japanese spouses), and at least a couple who are just really, mindbogglingly good at languages. I prefer to be in this sort of environment. It’s a bit of a kick in the ego, but I deserve it. The best part is that people are engaged. It’s very difficult to learn in a classroom full of morons. They ask stupid questions or are afraid to ask anything at all. The people in my Japanese class care about what they’re doing. They participate actively in class, ask good questions, and have good attitudes.

The teacher is aggressive and very difficult. She’s not out to get anyone and she seems to have a very good attitude towards her students, but she makes us work. The class is conducted primarily in Japanese, except when important grammar points would be missed without English explanation. People who have not had her as a teacher before seem to find her difficult, but once you’re used to her, she’s great. She doesn’t always understand the nuances of the questions being asked her. I’ve found this to be fairly common among my Japanese teachers, all of whom are native speakers of Japanese, and sometimes not so good at English. This can sometimes lead to tense situations with a student asking the same question over and over again and always getting the same response from the teacher and yet never really getting a satisfying answer.

The approach to teaching Japanese at CCSF seems to be informed by a bit of the cognitive school and a lot of the constructivist. There’s a splash of memorization here and there, but it’s not really stressed. The goal seems to be to get us talking: genuine, spontaneous communication. This is fairly challenging for me. Although I love foreign languages and have a self professed talent for them, I’m very shy about speaking them. I’m much better at memorizing tables and things and passing tests. I’m glad that I’m pushed to speak more, but I don’t always enjoy it. There are definitely places where I feel like the old school choral drills would be helpful to me. I want to go through all the verbs I know and recite the forms in order: ikanai, ikimasu, iku, ikeba; kakanai, kakimasu, kaku, kakeba; etc. I want to do it with the voice of the whole class behind me. I want to do it a hundred times. That way when I have to use one of these verbs, I’ll remember what it sounds like in the form I want. We don’t do that sort of thing though. The tests are about writing full sentences, answering questions about scenarios, or often questions about ourselves and inserting the appropriate relational (postposition) into a given sentence (the most difficult thing you can do in Japanese in my opinion). I could go through on my own and memorize the relational for each verb, but we’re not really given the tools to do that. Even most Japanese dictionaries don’t have the most commonly used relational in the entry for the verb. So to memorize this would be an incredible amount of work, as I would have to track down example sentences for every verb I know showing the relational. I don’t want to do that, and I can’t understand why something so straightforward isn’t presented in our textbook, or at least in the dictionary. My guess is that although the relational is specific to the verb, it is tied to the noun and is therefore considered to be a property of the noun. This isn’t the place to analyze the analysis of Japanese grammar though.

Yesterday was a mindnumbing blur. The alarm went off at 5:30am so my wife could catch her flight. Of course with her puttering around I couldn't go back to sleep. Then our son woke up. I tended to him while my wife finished packing, sending and receiving the last few emails, etc. He went back to sleep and I came out of his room with just enough time to see the cab pull up out the front window.

I managed to get back to sleep, but not for very long. The boy was due at the nanny's at 9:30, and if I wanted to make it to my professor's office hours I had to head straight for school. I had to stop at home and pick up my books, then grab an egg tasty and a double capp first.

Parking was the next obstacle. I had hoped to have enough time to study for my test (something the professor called a "learning exercise." Alas, it took 20 minutes of driving to find parking (in the ramp), then a walk down three floors to find a working ticket machine. When I finally bought my parking ticket I climbed straight up the guard rails between the ramp levels to get back up to my car.

I got to the sociolinguistics prof's office and found that I had a half an hour to kill. I tried to look through my notes, prep for the test, but it didn't go very well. The Prof and I had a lovely conversation about register, networks, politeness strategies, and two year olds (she has one too). Then straight to the test.

The test was 75 minutes, and in spite of knowing the material fairly well, it was not pleasant. "Learning exercise" is just marketing. It was a test, no, a trial. I had twenty minutes of rest after the test, then 75 minutes of lecture on social networks and different perspectives on variation within speech communities. Great stuff when you're well rested and happy. In my condition, well, I can think of things that would have suited me better at the time.

I got home just in time to go pick up the boy. Then dinner, play play play, and the hour long fight before bed. So it goes in the life of a grad student, husband of rising internet star, and father.

This blog is primarily going to address linguistics related issues, particularly those which are relevant to my classes. Watch this space to get my perspective on all things language related.

Oh, and just for the record, because this week is this week: I think it's vital that we protect marriage FOR EVERYBODY. So how about a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the same rights to our friends in the LBGT community. Now, away from politics and on to language...