You need to learn English before you start to speak in English! I have been working on my Russian over the holidays. I am fighting my way through Bulgakov's "The Life of Monsieur de Moliere" reading, listening and saving words and phrases using the Beta version of The Linguist. There are a lot of new words. Many of them are identified by The Linguist system as low frequency words but I am still trying to learn them. At the same time I am reviewing older, easy content, listening to it, and repeating phrases while I listen. I still do not speak Russian with anyone and have no real desire to do so. I guess I would summarize my philosophy as follows; until I can read and listen to a novel, news programs and recorded conversations in Russian and enjoy doing so, I have no desire to speak with anyone. I might be extreme but I feel there is so much I can on my own to improve in the language, I am not sure that stumbling around in a conversation at this stage in my learning would really help me. I think the same is true for English learning. Maybe I am being unfair. It is true that I do not need to learn Russian, nor to speak it. As learners of English you may have a greater need to produce language output at an earlier stage. You should still spend most of your time on reading, listening, word and phrase review, and imitating and repeating phrases; in other words activities that you can control. You need to do two things; become more in tune with the language, and learn words and phrases. This comes from input activities. When you can enjoy listening to and reading novels and news report, the speaking will come naturally.
I look forward to hearing your views!
Develop the habit of imitating and do not study grammar! You will learn English faster! I will follow up, here, on the previous post which referred to mirror neurons, and discuss how to use this phenomenon when you learn English on The Linguist system. In the example of my previous post, I was able to react instantly to the driver in front of me. I was able to anticipate the intentions of the driver in front of me without thinking. My neurons took over. I believe it was the mirror neurons. The instructions on what to do in that situation did not come from a "grammar book" or a driving instruction manual. It is the same in language learning. We need exposure to the language. Listening and reading are key to creating familiarity with the language, and especially in building up vocabulary. Formalized output exercizes that are found in grammar or text books are not necessary and do not work on our imitative ability. ( See my previous post on the inability of output to improve usage accuracy for a group of English learners in Japan). Instead, repetitive reciting of phrases is, I am convinced, the most effective and easiest way to practice output in the language whenever we want. It is not enough to observe someone driving, although it helps a lot. It is important to also drive oneself, in order to notice what is happening. I believe that in the case of language learning, it is not enough just to listen and read, although this should be our main activity since it is enjoyable (creating flow). It is not necessary to study grammar or answer grammar questions, since these do not work very well, and are stressful. It is, on the other hand, most useful to practice repeating a phrase, at least 5 times each time, immediately after hearing it. This can be done by just stopping the iPod from time to time and repeating the last phrase. Do this with an emphasis on the rhythm and intonation of the language, rather than on remembering the words. This in no way this makes reading and listening and the deliberate and efficient learning of vocabulary less important. It just improves your ability to perceive, observe, hear, notice and eventually imitate another language.
I have posted a few comments here about mirror neurons, those neurons that help us imitate, sympathize with and anticipate what people are doing or going to do. I believe these mirror neurons have a lot do with language learning. Something happened to me this morning that made me think of mirror neurons. I was riding in a car and the person driving the car ahead of us stopped and signaled that she was going to turn right. She was about 10 metres from the intersection and just beside a parked car. There was a parking space behind the parked car. I instantly, almost instinctively, knew that she was signaling because she wanted to back up and park, not because she wanted to turn right. How did I know that? How was I able to anticipate what she wanted to do? I believe that my mirror neurons told me. They were acting out what was going to happen based on my experience of watching people drive, and driving myself. Certainly I was not born with some innate set of driving instructions.
We learn by observing others. Our mirror neurons help us imitate because they fire the same way whether we are doing an action, or simply hearing and listening to someone doing an action. If we watch someone play tennis we start to learn how to play tennis. We just imitate them. The more we see them play, the better feel we have of how to play. Without the opportunity to see others, there is no way a book of instruction on tennis would be meaningful to us. It is the same way with language. We need to see and hear the language, as much as possible. That is how we will develop the ability to imitate the language. I will touch on vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation separately.
I used to record some our members' corrected writing. I never really knew if people found them interesting or not. I am going to record here three examples of one of our member's writing. I will also past the text here so that Linguist members can import these texts into their own files. Jill and I have thought about talking about some of the corrections in our podcast, but I am not sure that is really a good idea. It will depend on the reaction I get here. Let me know your views. Let me know if you would like your corrected writing recorded.
Here is the text.
Advent’s garland
This is about a Scandinavian tradition, but it is also a trend that has spread elsewhere in Europe.
Four weeks before the winter solstice, one creates a garland made of fir branches. It can be hung in the middle of the main room at home. It can be laid down on a table as well.
Four candles are fixed on the garland.
During the first week, one of the candles is burnt for a few moments. Two candles are burnt the week after that, and then three candles are burnt on the third week.
When the longest night of the year finally comes, one burns the four candles together. Thus, as one goes through the decline of the sun, more candles are lit. They somehow take the place of the sun. During the solstice evening, they symbolize the end of winter and they announce the sun's return.
After Advent comes a cycle of twelve days which accompanies the winter solstice. This is the deepest point of the year. The Earth holds its breath.
Throughout those twelve sacred nights, light will be reborn to illuminate a new year.
Outside light and inside light, the action of fire and flame are brought together.
A great calm will settle into homes. This calm will have to sink into each one of us, at least one time a year if we want to look out on the world with new eyes, both clear and faithful.
Maybe, this is a part of the origin of the traditional question:
What are your best resolutions for the coming year?
Is this justice?
Last October the 27th, M. D 58 years old was attacked by three armed burglars who had broken into his house. He was held down on the floor by one of them while the others manhandled his wife. A weapon on his temple, M. D tried to break away from his attacker who was trying to strangle him. During the fight, the victim twisted the gun and it went off. There was a shot however the bullet went into the ceiling. M. D shot at his attacker who in his escape fell through a window. He died soon after. As a result M. D was put in prison the 29th. The crime was intentional homicide! Even though he defended himself and his wife, he was considered a murderer.
His wife has been obliged to move out of their apartment to take refuge in their daughter's house. Many people found that case unfair. The mayor of the town warned the attorney general. At the beginning of last week the government took a look at this case, thinking the place of that honest man was not in prison. A politician from another party disagreed with this position, feeling that the government didn't have to intervene. However the politician was not shocked by what happened to M. D.
Last Saturday M. D was liberated. Good news. What is more is we could hear the family of the deceased bandit shouting on television. Even though their son went to steal and attack someone, they were angry, shouting against the law saying that the law was two sided and so on. Really! Sadly, it is not uncommon for an innocent person like M. D to go to prison.
Justice, did you say justice?
Last week there was another incident like that. Some bandits came in the house of a retired antiquary to steal their valuable stuff. They manhandled an aged couple roughly 85 years old. The son of those poor people, being on the second floor, went down after hearing loud noises. Seeing what was happening to his parents, he went back up to get a gun and to shoot at the attacker who was brutalizing his mother. One of the burglars died.
The same thing then happened to the son. He was put in prison and the old couple had to move out to avoid retaliation by the bandit’s gang. Until now, we have no news on television as to whether he has been liberated or what else happened.
Solstice.
Solstices are and remain two favoured periods in the annual course of the cycles of nature. Throughout the months, the slow and deep breathing of Nature connects Earth and sky with the same future.
Throughout summer and autumn, the days become progressively shorter. Eventually, the sun is present less and less to enlighten men's activities. It seems as if the sun is dying. However, as everyone knows, the disappearance of the sun would be the end of all life.
During the winter solstice, in the longest night of the year, men start a long evening with genuine contemplation. By tending the flame in the family hearth they show their commitment to the return of the sun, and they rely upon the continuity of life.
The sun does not betray their hopes, though. It takes back its elan in the winter sky as it rises day by day, always higher in the spring sky.
When summer comes, the solstice is the sun's triumph. Men celebrate the power of sun with joy.
This study investigated whether giving learners an opportunity for oral output has any positive effect on the L2 learners' acquisition of a grammatical form. Twenty-four adult ESL learners were randomly assigned to one of three groups: an output group, which engaged in a picture description task that involved input comprehension and output production; a non-output group, which engaged in a picture sequencing task that required input comprehension only; and a placebo control group. The two treatment groups were exposed to the same aural input for the same amount of time. Learning was assessed by means of a pre-test and a post-test consisting of production and reception parts. The results indicated that, contrary to our expectations, the output group failed to outperform the non-output group. On the contrary, it was the non-output group that showed greater overall gains in learning. A careful post-hoc re-examination of the treatment tasks revealed that the output task failed to engage learners in the syntactic processing that is necessary to trigger L2 learning, while the task for the non-output group appeared to promote better form-meaning mapping.
Yukiko Izumi and Shinichi Izumi
Investigating the Effects of Oral Output on the Learning of Relative Clauses in English: Issues in the Psycholinguistic Requirements for Effective Output Tasks
I believe that if the output is done in a non-stressful way, like imitating with a focus on the rhythm of phrases, then it does help with grammar, usage and pronunciation.
If you go to my main blog you will see two articles on flow in Japanese and French.
Listening to audio contents read by talented story tellers creates a stronger emotional bond to the target language and is better for language learning. At times it is good to listen straight through to enjoy the sense of achievement in grasping the meaning of a new language. At other times we should stop the MP3 player at every phrase and repeat the phrase to ourselves out loud 5-10 times, concentrating only on the rhythm and intonation and not worrying about words that we forget. If we can reproduce the rhythm and intonation of the language our auditory perception, pronunciation and confidence improve. We also develop a better sense of the little bits, the prepositions, articles, verb and noun forms etc. As much as possible we should listen to whatever we read in the new language and read whatever we listen to, at least until we are past the intermediate stage. Any comments?
I had a first discussion group where we worked on intonation and then discussed it. Satomi and Bruno were there. I will have another session tomorrow on the same subject. I think that rhythm is very important. If you get the feel for the rhythm of the language you will sense which words, prepositions and tenses to use. The rhythm will not sound right if you use the wrong words, I think. Pronunciation will become easier. And the rhythm training may just make you a better language learner. Anyway we will see.
I was doing some rhythm training in my Russian. I would repeat certain phrases on my iPod, listen a few times and then repeat them to myself 4 or 5 times. I placed more emphasis on rhythm in my listening. Then when i sat down to read, I read with more deliberate rhythm. Of course it is only a beginning. I intend to focus more on rhythm in my learning and in my discussions with our own learners.
None of this emphasis on rhythm changes the importance of lots of listening, reading, saving of words and phrases and the review of these words and phrases, and, of course, writing! But the mosts important things is to do things that we like to do, where we feel that the challenge is within our capabilities.
I discovered this site where you can read and listen to a short excerpt of The Little Prince in many languages. Enjoy.
I do not have the time to get into it now, but would ask people to go to my main blog and listen to my latest podcast on flow, mirror neurons and intonation. I would be interested in feedback.
