Tag Archives: languagelearning

On Language – Learning Language in Chunks

Chunking

I wondered how much — or how little — his grasp of basic linguistic etiquette is grounded in the syntactical rules that structure how words are combined in English. An idiom like “Make yourself at home” is rather tricky if you stop to think about it: the imperative verb “make” is followed by a second-person reflexive pronoun (“yourself”) and an adverbial phrase (“at home”), but it’s difficult to break the phrase into its components. Instead, we grasp the whole thing at once.

Ritualized moments of everyday communication — greeting someone, answering a telephone call, wishing someone a happy birthday — are full of these canned phrases that we learn to perform with rote precision at an early age. Words work as social lubricants in such situations, and a language learner like Blake is primarily getting a handle on the pragmatics of set phrases in English, or how they create concrete effects in real-life interactions. The abstract rules of sentence structure are secondary.

In recent decades, the study of language acquisition and instruction has increasingly focused on “chunking”: how children learn language not so much on a word-by-word basis but in larger “lexical chunks” or meaningful strings of words that are committed to memory. Chunks may consist of fixed idioms or conventional speech routines, but they can also simply be combinations of words that appear together frequently, in patterns that are known as “collocations.” In the 1960s, the linguist Michael Halliday pointed out that we tend to talk of “strong tea” instead of “powerful tea,” even though the phrases make equal sense. Rain, on the other hand, is much more likely to be described as “heavy” than “strong.”

First, the They Might Be Giants children songs the author talks about will soon be in my collection. I’d never heard of them before.

Second, I’m a big believer in chunking. Interest and research findings ebb and wane in this area quite regularly. Regardless, of contrarian findings on the pedagogical focus of chunking, I think it is essential for the improvement of fluency and is a good approach to vocabulary learning.

Also, his suggestion that corpus-based findings will drive language learning materials for the near future is right on. Why wouldn’t it. One can argue about the corpra being used, but not with the approach. Don’t learn the language though up in the author’s mind. Learn language that is being used for non-learning purposes (authentic materials).

Nice to see this piece in the NYT.

Students learn English using virtual reality

Media_httpwwwkoreatim_abbce

I have to say that this is nothing really new conceptually. This is essentially the interactions that have been taking place is SecondLife for years. The interface is different though. This is likely using something similar to Playstations video or Microsoft Kinect.

The latter is probably the one that will have the most impact on a project like this. Kinect (with the Xbox) will make interfaces like this much easier for developers to integrate into their software.

From the article, I can’t tell what the role of the guy in the picture is. Does this software require a real life dialog partner? That could be cool for practicing more realistic dialogs between language learners, even without the teacher. Otherwise, I’m wondering what the purpose really is. Having smart bots engage and respond would be much better overall.

Babbel Adds Speech Recognition To Aid Language Learning

Babbel Adds Speech Recognition To Aid Language Learning
by
Steve O’Hear
on
Jun 23, 2010

Babbel, the language learning site, has added “realtime” speech recognition to enhance its practical application and enable users to fine-tune their pronunciation skills. This pits the service up against more traditional players such as TellMeMore or Rosetta Stone, says the company.

This could be really cool. I like babbel and I think that even though speech recognition is not great, it can still add some needed emphasis on pronunciation.

Arizona Grades Teachers on Fluency

PHOENIX—As the academic year winds down, Creighton School Principal Rosemary Agneessens faces a wrenching decision: what to do with veteran teachers whom the state education department says don’t speak English well enough.

The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English.

State education officials say the move is intended to ensure that students with limited English have teachers who speak the language flawlessly. But some school principals and administrators say the department is imposing arbitrary fluency standards that could undermine students by thinning the ranks of experienced educators.

Really, they are not grading on fluency. At least in this article, fluency is not really addressed. They are really looking at some sort of target accent and grammar use measures. I’m really wondering if the WSJ just didn’t report this with enough accuracy. I can’t imagine that they (the Arizona DoE) would be that messy in proposing evaluation measures.

Honestly, I don’t know what to think of this. The racist scumbags are out in force if you take a look at the comments section, and this is enough to make anyone thing this is a bad idea. However, it is much more than an issue of race or even language identity. This is the ongoing, knock-down, drag out fight on the issue of NESTs (native English-speaking teachers) and NNESTs (non-native English-speaking teachers) in ESL classrooms.

This debate has been hot in TESOL for many years. The growth of interest/belief in World Englishes has kept it at the forefront of criticism, theory, and practice discussions in recent years.

Ordinarily, I fall on the side of the NNESTs on this argument, but my opinion differs depending on the context and the goals of the organization. The policy, at first glance seems reasonable. Teachers with an accent or grammar that impedes communication, should be removed from the classroom (Arizona is only proposing that they are removed from ESL classrooms). This is completely reasonable, BUT….

Oops, we now have the problem of rating these teachers. Should all teachers be accessed by this measure? That would only make sense. There are plenty of native English-speaking teachers out there with terrible grammar and writing skills (also referred to in the article). We should get rid of them to. Or, should the people evaluated just have to be as good as the worse of the native English-speaking teachers? That would set a low bar, wouldn’t it?

What about a teacher with a heavy Scottish accent? I mean, have you ever seen Trainspotting? It may be English, but it’s pretty tough to understand for most Americans. I’d even venture to guess that most Americans understand English with a heavily influenced Spanish accent better. Really, we hear it much more often. So, the Scottish are out. While we are at it, the English, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans should be out, too. If they don’t speak American they shouldn’t be teaching our fragile children. Oh wait. Canadians. They’re out too. What’s up with that “aboot” thing. That ain’t American, ya know? They’re gone.

OK, so I lapse into a good deal of sarcasm. The question is left unanswered, though. What is the target? This is the slipperiest of slopes in a country where there is no standard. No matter where you live, everyone will insist that their English is standard. That doesn’t mean it won’t impede comprehension when interacting with students from other regions. If we have this much variability at home, what is the standard that we shoot for?

I don’t outright disagree with the Arizona policy; however, I am doubtful that they can come up with a fair assessment of these abilities that take into account the many factors that make a good teacher of English.

Class Struggle – Why waste time on a foreign language?

Why waste time on a foreign language?

[This is my Local Living section column for April 22, 2010.]

My online discussion group, Admissions 101, recently exchanged verbal blows over foreign language courses in high school. Most of us defended the conventional wisdom. Learning another language improves cognitive development, we said. It enhances academic skills, encourages a sense of the wider world and looks good to colleges.

But the dissenters scored some points. “It is a waste of time and money in our schools,” said a parent who remembered seeing empty language lab stalls. A high school teacher said that “language study is complete nonsense for most people. I’d wager close to 80.percent of kids taking foreign languages in high school do so because they have to.”

How much do they learn? There is little evidence that many students achieve much fluency in high school.

It wasn’t until I decided I wanted to be a reporter in China that I got serious about grammar, vocabulary and accent in a foreign tongue. It was very difficult, another reason why high school language students don’t get very far.

How students still look good on their report cards is easy to explain. Because much of the world is striving to learn English, Americans wonder why they should bother to learn other languages. We talk about the importance of foreign language learning to our national security, but we don’t mean it. If if we need speakers of exotic tongues, we import them.

You can tell right away this guy is in Washington, D.C. in the way that he talks out of both sides of his mouth. Take a stance, man!

He makes some great points, but let’s read around what he said to eek them out.

(1) Language learning is best accomplished when it is based on an immediate need or desire to learn (job, deployment, girlfriend/boyfriend).

(2) Isolated high school programs do little to produce “fluent” speakers of the language. Anyone will tell you that it’s a tall order for someone to become “fluent” in 4 years of minimal study. This is why feeder programs are essential. We should be teaching languages from kindergarten in K-12. Before that, parents should be teaching their kids foreign languages from birth (slight exaggeration, but only slight).

He’s overall tone is very negative towards language learning (for the general public–applying to universities). He states that we (the U.S.) imports foreign language specialists when we need them. That is absolutely true. However, he sees the past with little insight into the future (or the present). It’s not that we have to worry about who will do the language work in the States, we have to worry about marketing ourselves and getting jobs abroad. Do you really think that being monolingual (even if it is the “global language” of English) will get you very far? Hell, most of these companies are headquartered in non-English speaking countries these days.

You want to go into finance? Learn Chinese or another East Asian language.

You want to go into technology? Multilingual Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners, and Asians are going to eat your lunch.

You want to go into science? ….ok, you can probably get by with English-only, for now.

Why waste time on a foreign language? I’ll tell you why. Even if your parents were clueless enough not to prep you early to learn a second language (any language), exposure to language learning in school can start you down the path of figuring out how to learn languages. It can plant the seed of interest, or at least, get you to better know yourself, your interests, and how you best learn.

Sometimes, I just want to smack some sense into these myopic buffoons. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll knock their blinders off so they can see that there is a world outside of their suburban hell.

Wow, that rant felt good.

On Language – Social – NYTimes.com – and a short post on language change and variety

Leslie David

In our Web-driven era of social media and social networking, we are all learning more sophisticated ways to “socialize” that go far beyond cocktail-party chatter. But being social in the 21st century can sometimes be downright unsettling.

Consider the anxieties over a linguistic trend that The Wall Street Journal’s Overheard column expressed last month. “A new catchphrase in meetings is ‘let me socialize that,’ ” The Journal wrote. “No, they aren’t suggesting they will see if they can get a government bailout. Or introducing some left-wing political theories to business. Instead the phrase means ‘I’ll discuss this with my colleagues and circle back to you.’ ”

Fun (for the linguist in me) treatment of the word “social”.

The changing uses of words makes it difficult to teach language. Regional, age, and SES differences (to name a few) all influence language use. This is why learners fluent in English can have such a difficult time communicating at a fast food restaurant, in the dorm with undergraduates, or with any language variation outside of the standards they have had exposure to (difficulties many native speakers face as well).

How can I teach a language that is always changing? As with most teachers of English, I focus on academic language that, while it changes over time, is more much resilient to change than less formal domains. I fall back on standards (as ephemeral as they are) to provide a foundation.

The foundation is not enough, though. Standards create expectations that, when challenged, cause communication to falter. This is where variety comes in. Language variety increases exposure to language outside of your classroom standards. It’s faster/slower, drawl/clipped, enunciated/mumbled, male/female, formal/informal, and all the other wonders of language variety. Working outside of your classroom standards can encourage skills to process non-standard varieties, thus providing tools to learners to interact with the greater world of English speakers.

Most of us in EFL contexts are preparing learners who are less likely to interact in English with someone who sounds just like us than they are to encounter a fast network of global English speakers. In my neck of the woods, Korea, learners are more likely use English with Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Taiwanese, Malaysian, and Thai speakers of English than they are with Americans, Canadians, and speakers from the other (preferred) English-speaking countries. The reality is that we do them a disservice if we teach them otherwise.

This post went way off topic, but I’m procrastinating, so whatcha’ gonna do? 😉

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