The second myth: Learning a language must start in the
studies of the grammar of the target language and the language shall be built
by glossary work in a classroom.
2 Learning
a language must never start
in the studies of the grammar of the target language and the language shall never be built by glossary work
in a classroom.
This special
form of education was developed, when the western societies by romantic reasons,
made the life of antique Greece and the Roman Empire popular and idealized. For
a deeper understanding of these periods, they had to study the forgotten
antiques Greece and the Roman Latin. By the knowledge of these languages the
skilful turned erudite.
None knew how
to speak these languages. So, they invented a theoretical way of describing the
languages and trained speaking rote learning, methods of the universities of
that time.
I call it the Fake language method, as
you just pretend or fake learning a language in using it.
In medicine
and all naming of the nature, they have used the Latin as some kind of lingua
franca. The purpose was to ease the exchange of knowledge international. There
is today a tendency of changing into English.
Before the Fake language method,
people were learning new languages without any problems, when needed, in the
same manner as small children do.
Later, the Fake language method was
made into a standard for all academic language teaching, although speech was
known and really living people for communication existed. The method normally
leaves no trace when stopped using.
Up to today, when teaching languages, all time and
effort in schools and courses is used with so called education with the Fake language method.
They even use it on defenceless children and afterwards they blame the children
for the lack of learning.
Language researchers have often explained the lack of
learning with a theory about some sort of a ”language window”, which is closing
and thereby make it impossible to learn new languages. Compare the diving
reflex on new-born babies, which soon disappears when not used.
Many people have believed in this mythical language
window. There was although accordingly no question of stopping the language
teaching, which would have been logical. Maybe they wanted to train the
children to stand unfair accusations to help them stand their life’s as adults.
Beside the ongoing mistreating at the universities,
millions of people all the time managed to rather easy change their language
through communicating with real speakers of the language. This has been working
since the beginning of times. Already the old Greece know the method and
probably the Neanderthals too. Their languages are unfortunately forgotten, but
at least they were not mistreated in the universities.
To get the reader to understand the meaningless and
deleterious with the Fake language
method, I will in the following text describe real language learning.
With explanations referring back to the Fake language method.
Before the little child is born, it has already been
listening to all the sounds of languages that surround it, that it is almost
full prepared by birth. If more than one language is used around the baby,
there is actually a simultaneous learning of them. The child is receptive for
different voices’ different language use.
The sounds of all the languages in scripts of tones
following one after others (corresponding to some of the words of the
languages, or what the brain of the baby has got out of it). This comes with
notes of rhythm, melody, and all sorted to different voices’ variants of
language. Later on, the baby connects this with its visual experience of the
persons behind the voices.
Learning new languages later in our lives, the first
object is to be of the start position of the new-born baby. We must identify
the sounds of the target language in all ways, including rhythm and melody and
speed, and master the differences, compared to other languages we already know.
The best way to perform that is a language bath (you need no swimming suit).
Just walk around and listen in an area speaking your
target language. Don´t talk or even think in another language. Carefully, carefully listening. Some
people will soon discover you and wonder what you are doing. They
try to communicate with you. Pick some sounds they send to you and send it
back: ”spasibo”, ”uta dobra” or whatever they might say.
In worst case, they start to communicate in English or
any other language you already know. The you must act, as if you are not at all
understanding. It is total focus on the target language.
Some days later, especially if you have had a cup
coffee and eaten some food, and maybe bought something you need, you will
notice a growth of your passive and active languages. Some streams of sounds
you only understand and some of them you can produce yourself.
Sometimes you hear streams of sounds, that are hard to
tell from each other, and sad enough, they also mean different things. Every
language consists of 20 000 to 50 000 central words and of the same
amount streams of sounds.
You must focus all the time on to discover when a
stream of sounds starts and ends. The slower they speak to you, the easier is
it for you.
You will reach the best results if you all the time
communicate about the same things. After some days, your word production accelerates,
and if you totally focus on this kind of collecting of sounds and
communicating, automatically your brain is helping you to a better result in
some months. Your brain is outstanding.
Don´t mix communicating with writing and reading in
the beginning, it´s possible that this would disturb your learning of sounds. I
will try to explain that in detail.
A language comes with dialects. We say that mountains
produce dialects on both side of it. Instead, if people come together the
dialects disappear. The dialects are some kind of changes that a group of
people together make in the use of the language.
There are also individual differences in the language
use. Both dialects and individual differences in language use make the language
change a bit for every generation. The use of words change, grammar change.
Now, if you listen to different people’s use of
English, you usually hear from which country they come. This is, they don´t
discriminate the sounds of their own mother’s tongue from those in English
perfect enough. In a way that often is the fruit of the Fake language method and the classroom
work, that the students never are able to repair in their following
communicating.
But you are
smart enough to stay out of that and start at communicating directly with
people talking your target language.
I often praise the Swedish system of not dubbing
foreign language TV programs and films. It saves billions of dollars every year
for us. But I will here give you an example of a collective language problem in
Swedish. By spelling there are some international common solutions in the European
alphabet. Most languages spell the sound [u:] u and the sound [o:] o. Not so in
Sweden. This results in the following problem:
Most Swedes mistake the pronunciation of the letters u
and o in any foreign language, causing a lot of misunderstanding. Their brains
use the same reading as in Swedish. This does not happen to people learning languages in a proper and
natural communicating way.
Adults are better in language learning than children. The
new-born baby needs around five years to get a full working language. Adults
normally make it in much shorter time, when they are given a fair chance. Why
is the difference? Well, the child has to learn a lot on which the language is
built. A lot of logical stuff among others. The adult already master that.
Beside the audial communication with other people, we
use the language to think with. But if we, like a child, don´t understand the
thoughts, then the language has problems.
The thoughts, and our stored films, the dreams, are
actually a perfect way to judge your personal language acquisition. The very
day you start to dream in the target language, you have started to build a
total functional target language. As long as you still think in some of your
earlier languages only, all language acquisition is a kind of translation. A much slower process.
What´s the difference between the glossary work in the
universities and the training you get in communicating the target language with
real people? Much is about the unreasonable idea of all students learning the
same words, when their needs will be individual in their communication. Surely,
you can guess some central words, that all speakers need. Maybe some thousands
of words.
In the communication with real speakers of the target
language, you will, for sure, pick up the pronouncing of the words much better,
with all the differences in personal language use you meet. But you will also hear
them pronounced in phrases, rather than single words. This changes the stream
of sounds dramatically, sometimes.
Your initial communication will be built on things as
your personal needs and things that interest you, and this can´t be covered for
all students in a classroom.
An ocean of time and money has been spent on
developing books for classroom studies, ruled by a teacher. It was although
worse than money in the sea. It worked in way blocking the real communication,
whenever the students had the chance for it.
Many students, including me, with the highest marks in
the work of the target language in school, discovered that we had to start
again from the very beginning, meeting people and trying to open a
communication with people. We had almost no support from all we for some years
had learned in the classroom. Waste of time!
As young I myself copied the Fake language method from other teachers. But I
realised soon, that it was not working properly. Compared to communication, it
didn´t work at all. I started to use communicating with some of my classes. But
as a teacher you often have to follow the stream. The parents, pupils and the system
expect you to be like most others.
Under 40 years I have, along with my studies and
research of learning, collected what people have left of three or more years in
school, studying a target language. German, French, Italian, Spanish. The answers are sad. Some
people still have some phrases. They keep them living by using them on
vacations in Spain or France. But most people have nothing left.
After a typical minute of thinking, they say sometimes: ”Aus, bei, mit, nach,
zeit, von, zu” and maybe that they generate dative in German.
You must agree on the meaningless waste of time and
money.
Now, Sweden is a blessed country, not dubbing TV
productions and films in foreign languages. When the Swedish people watch TV
and sometimes movies with English spoken voices, they are all object for
passive language learning. As English also is an important part of Sweden,
around ten percent of the offices use almost only English, all people change
these passive skills, like the little child, naturally to active skills easily.
The results are better than in other countries.
Old persons like me were hold back by our taking part
of the Fake language method.
Today, most people in Sweden speak and understand
English. That goes for children from 3 up to any age, actually. If you in homes
for old people can communicate with them In Swedish, English will also do. The
change is fantastic. Beside the work of TV and films, the Fake language method in the universities
and schools all the time tried to stop the change. But the power of not dubbing
was too strong.
How do I know, that the change just not is a product
of the the Fake language method?
Well, as a start language change work automatically for anyone, as long as they
stay out the classrooms. Millions succeed. Secondly most kids don´t manage
their classroom studies with the
Fake language method. It is really not possible to learn a language to a
useful level that way. But some of the students, luckily enough, come to
communicating situations outside school and succeed. The preschool kids have no
problem at all with the Fake language
method!
What about all the language teachers? Yes, they need
other tasks to take care of. But changing all the language education will take
some time.
The schools develop more advanced language to the
children for professional use. This goes for any language.
But the forms need to be updated to suit the use in
our communicating society. All target languages must be used in modern medias,
to prepare the students for their professions. Homepages, Own talk shows,
slides, maybe own weekly short presentation in front of the class in the target
language.
To get into communicating situations, the students
often need help and support by the education system and parents, to get in
contact with reliable and suitable persons all around the world. Today, the
need of travels is reduced a bit by programs like Skype.
All language acquisition will be individual at any
time. But to accept that, we also need to take the consequences. One is that
classroom training in the target language is stone age.
In our communication society, we have free access to
media. This must not only be used for language acquisition, but for all kind of
knowledge building for the students. Normally they do a lot of that by themselves,
but in education we can help them to master media and open discussions of
situations and solutions. The power of our students is great, as soon we give
them the possibilities and show them the goals. They will build their view of
the world from real people.
All kids, and normally ex kids, are receptive for what
they see as important around them and try hard to learn it. Sometimes you see
even new things coming up and make all people focus on it for short time, like
a fad or craze.
Even when kids are threatened or shot at, they
continue their learning.
It is sad that the human brain still is not prepared
enough for learning write and read. We have to tweak and fix with the brain to
get it working in the best manners. Add to that, that all our brains are
different and that some are learning better in one way and others in another.
If now the master uses one method for all his disciples, and to that many too
many disciples gather around him, to save money, it´s not working out so good
sometimes.
Usually the students already know writing and reading
from their first languages. But sometimes the target language has another
alphabet than that the student had by growing up. I won´t write about it or
discuss it here in this text.
I sometimes see mistakes by schools in language
acquisition for immigrants with this topic. Language acquisition for immigrants
are done in the same manner as for any humans, so there is a great need for
change. I have met immigrants, who after three years of study can´t communicate
with you.
Writing in the
target language is never done through workbooks in the classroom.
It´s done with free writing from the special interests of every single student,
and mainly by using digital media. As the writing follows a developed spoken language,
the grammar is already there.
Also, the free reading, formed by the individual
interests of the students, is both developing reading and spelling. Better grammar is reached in the
individual case by more communicating and more reading in the target language
To support the free and interest powered reading,
normally access to internet is enough. Out there you have all kind of texts in
any language. But initially we need difficulty adapted literature of some
different kind.
The best beginners’ books go with audiobooks and
textbooks in a package. The student reads the text and simultaneously listen to
the audio. This will lead to a better pronunciation, especially as the student
can stop and repeat for any wishes. Hereby they get reading by interest, spelling, grammar, melody, rhythm
and correct sounding and speech. Words learned in a meaningful context.
Video films with under texts and speaking in the
target language are as good as the text/audiobooks. By the way, the
textbooks/audiobooks don´t need to be produced printed on paper. Probably they
are cheaper distributed as computer programs or e-books of some kind. The very
best is of course if they are paid by central resources in the society, or by
sharing the costs internationally.
Funny videos with songs are super for kids of any age.
Try them with retired people and you see what I mean. Music videos are good for
language acquisition.
The governmental institution must be alert on saving
money in international producing and sharing the costs. The same productions
can be used in different target languages, when detailed planned.
The mismatch between what actually happens in the
classroom and how learning actually takes place has been known for a very long
time. The first protests came up already in the 18th century. As a
young teacher in the beginning of the 1970-ties I already had read about most
of what I base my educational texts on. Magazines like KRUT and some of the
Swedish school governments reports pointed on impossible solutions.
Rather often the teachers themselves got the critics
of wrong methods. But those bringing up the critics, most often suggested
impossible changes, because they lacked knowledge in how we learn. Later years
studies on the work of the brain has med everything much clearer. Still a lot
of inadequate requests are put to education.
We all over the world lack proper evaluation. We need
inside evaluation from the student. Normally evaluation is done from the
outside. And information goes from the classroom up to some researcher and
maybe reformed back again. There is a need of fast and effective horizontal
spread of information, pupil to pupil, teacher to teacher.
The real development
of the future education is nothing for some researchers. Let the students and
the teachers loose to evaluate and reform after results.
Start with giving all children from entering
pre-school an email address, and some annual code for information at the right
level. Here you have an effective channel for many kinds of information.
Much of the problems with education is to plan what we
are supposed to learn. Some still think that we shall learn hymns by heart. I
do agree, as long as you often attend to services in the church. If not, I see
very little use for it.
Most pupils in Swedish schools learn far too little
practical things in most subjects. Worse than that, many of them leave school
believing they are no good. The most important task for the schools and the
teachers is to get the pupils to believe in their possibilities and growth of
skills and knowledge. Progress
is the cause of the following progress!
How is it possible to give the pupils marks, if they
do different things all the time?
I´m convinced that it´s bad idea to choose which
students to get further education by marks. The right way to do it is by tests
before entering courses, if needed at all. But I also see no difficulties in
judging the quality of produced home pages, WEB TV programs and short speeches
in the target languages, produced by the students.
All the time, when the students have failed to fulfil
the demands from the school systems, you have to look for the explanation
outside the pupils. The capacity of a human being is almost without limits. By
giving the pupils some letters, classifying their personal problems, they try
to tell us that the problem is inside their brains.
I say that the problem is more inside some researchers’
brain. I only met in all my years a lot of capacity, and most of the time a lot
of energy to learn. Every brain is unique. Yes, but also every brain I met on
any human being in the world, was enough for learning.
As long as the person owning that brain believed in
it. If not, step one is to make them see their progress and to start believe in
that the stars are the limit.
Usually bad results are produced by bad methods like the Fake language method. Or
lack of support or other kind of mistreating of pupils and children.
All parents must begin to demand that their children
are to be given pre-schools and schools with modern methods leading to good
learning.
Goa the 5th of February 2017 Lennart Warenius
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar