I’m probably not going to show this to my students due to the vulgar language, though I’d argue it’s quite authentic language, particularly for a young guy. He’s certainly got talent.
Of course the first YouTube accent sensation was “21 Accents”
On Language – Learning Language in Chunks
Chunking
By BEN ZIMMER
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.”
via nytimes.com
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.
Do bilinguals have two personalities: a special case of cultural frame switching
Interesting article (http://www.utpsyc.org/Nairan/research/bilingual.pdf)
One of the findings, I find particularly interesting. That is the finding that when speaking English, bilinguals were more extroverted than when communicating in Spanish. That, in itself, isn’t as interesting. What is really interesting was that they seem to stay at around the same rank (in extroversion) in both languages. Meaning, if they are around mid-level for extroversion in Spanish, they will also be about mid-level in English.
This is interesting for me given my (and most language teachers’) observations that fluent English language learners seem to be even more outgoing in English than in their native language. This is particularly true with students in Korea (just my observation, your experiences may differ).
I’ve often given the example of the woman I knew who was quick to swear like a sailor in English, while living in the States, but who, when in Korea, had a difficult time with even civil arguments. Her ability to confront and engage was nearly eliminated in the change of culture/language (which had the most effect is a good debate).
One of the findings of this paper is that she may have about the same rank of extroversion in both contexts, though the level of extroversion displayed differs.
Babel’s Dawn: Is Anything Universal in Language?
The question at hand: do the things that all languages have in common reflect certain universals of human thought and experience, or do they reflect the workings of a universal language faculty? Fifty years ago a third answer dominated: languages are learned from scratch and have no universals. That position, however, is still so out of favor that it is not much proposed in the current quarrel.
The latest dispute arises from a stark denial that languages have any peculiar grammatical universals of their own. It amounts to a total rejection of Chomsky’s core idea that the syntax of any individual language reflects an instance of a universal grammar (UG). Nicholas Evans and Stephen C. Levinson have published a paper in the wonderful journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, “The Myth of Language Universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science” (uncorrected final draft available here). Also published with the paper were a series of responses including many sharp retorts from generative grammarians who still firmly believe in UG. They score their points, but the fact that the issue has returned underlines the basic fact: after fifty years of proclaiming the existence of a UG, we still don’t know what it is. All in all the paper and responses make for a brutal slugfest.
via babelsdawn.com
This is a great post, not just for it’s overview and discussion of the topic, but also for pointing to such a great discussion. I’ve always regretted not reading up more on UG and criticisms, beyond basic linguistic courses. This could be a good start to get back in the game 🙂
On Language – Social – NYTimes.com – and a short post on language change and variety
Leslie DavidBy BEN ZIMMER
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.’ ”
via nytimes.com
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? 😉