My language experience-Entry One

I remember my first serious classes in English as an adult. They had put me in the very beginners class despite my moderate knowledge of the language since I was a language student at university too. So the information taught was too easy for me. But I remember I was so motivated to learn more and do it as soon as possible that from the very first classes I began to make everything relevant to my learning and looked for words that I did not know in English from the corner pictures of the book or the foot prints to the furniture of the class and the words the teacher used or the gestures she made, I tried to find their equivalents in English. Later on I started taking notes from the teacher's instructions and felt great joy whenever I could land a new word from her speech. When others contented themselves with what the book or the teacher taught, I strove to find the meanings of the words in an English-English dictionary where from my own volition decided to learn the new terms I came across in the definition of the new concepts as well. I had made it a habit to learn the recent expressions in full sentences by either improvising or copying their usage examples from the dictionary or the text itself. I had pinned half page squared papers in between the pages of my book on which I kept endless records of added locutions with their meanings and citations and the new designations found in the definitions of the current words themselves. Some times I would use up pages before I am done with a single fresh utterance! Through the book I have used many such papers for anecdotal simple back and forth dialogues between my teacher and myself or one of the students using an original word order that sounded interesting to me and which I intended to learn and use. In my more advance classes where the teacher deliberately started the class with small talk and where most of other students were shy or not prepared to talk or would not think of anything to say, I would have prepared and memorized jokes and anecdotes from my favorite hard-to-reach magazine (because foreign magazines were scarce back then in Iran and I believe they still are) : "Reader's Digest". I did not care if they are amusing or if anybody laughs at the punch lines which for the most part were not what as Iranians we were used to since it came from a totally different culture. In that class, I recall I had a very fastidious rival who would start the class by her nugatory scuttlebutt to which only the male teacher would listen with pretentious interest that was in fact directed towards her charms as a very young, made up and flirtatious girl. I particularly remember this episode of my class when after a couple of such insipid class starter yarns the teacher very bluntly asked me and surprisingly not her, a favour not to tell any more of these chestnuts for which I got a bit disappointed. Instead of losing hope, I started to think of other stories like what had happened to me during my absence from the class and most importantly I would prepare for it so I could ask questions about the tidings for which I had not found a correspondent in English. To this day I regret why I did not report his discriminatory behavior to the manager of the institute. In spite of all the adversaries from the lack of adequate number of English magazines to such unfair teachers and institute managers who only thought of their own profits when they put me in a beginner class despite my adequate knowledge to start off a bit further on the scale; I am proud of my perseverance and creativity and ingenuity in coming up with ways to increase my vocabulary and my flexibility in using different structures of the language. I want to possibly surprise the readers of this blog by asserting that I have written this piece by constantly consulting the online thesaurus and google searching for additional expressions of the terms I already knew to avoid repetition and to still learn dewy words and phrases. I am proud of this too! This self-regulated, lifelong learning of the languages!

This piece was the first in my recent series of self-given assignments which I like to continue through the guidance I get from the end of each chapter of : "Principles of learning and teaching."

Three final learnings

Yesterday I finished this book: How Languages Are Learned and here are the last pieces of information I learned from it:

1. That the best time to have my child srart learning a second language is around the age of 10 when (s)he has already improved gramatically in his/her first language. The question is considering that my husband and I speak persian as our first language living in a country where the first language of people is English; which language would be my child's first?
2. That teachers like parents tend to change the structure of their spoken language intuitively according to the progress their students make in learning the second language. To me, that was an interesting finding.
3. That when teaching a second language, especially in the immersion contexts, teacher's correction of students' errors in the form of "recasts" often is received unnoticed and as part of the conversation. So the teachers should grab the students' attention by indicating directly before the correction what they are going to do; like the following suggested interaction: "I understand what you say, but here is how you can say it better...".
   

Babies language and Grammar gene

At the beginning of the language instinct's chapter 9, one gets flabbergasted at the possibility of babies starting to talk right out of their mommies' wombs. But somehow the author leaves the matter unsolved after mentioning two or three such incidents reported in some magazines. He simply dismisses the possibility for some scientific reasons that are tied to how languages are learned by children. Through the rest of the chapter we are introduced to a clear sketch of different stages a child go through in his mission to develop what is already embedded in him as language instinct. Our assumptions about the true effects of motherese on helping the child fix his incorrect grammar are adjusted when the author puts forward the idea that motherese is useful insofar as it provides a two way collaboration in using the language helping the child develop his own language system. The child does this through a process of trial and error building up the language trees in his mind starting from simple branches. For this he needs to reach into his innate repertoire of grammar and use the most general forms in all languages. He would notice them by hearing his parents' speech. So correcting a child's language would show no effect unless the child realizes the underlying grammar through the aforementioned process.

When the assumption of the child language development processes is done with, the author turns our attention to an interesting evolutionary question:"Why is that the ability to learn the language fades away as one matures. The answer has to do with how the evolution theory works. The evolution premise chooses which benefits should stay with humans at what costs. For example the old age is the cost we pay for the benefit of youth. Likewise the ability to learn a language in an early age is the benefit we get (so we enjoy having the language for a longer time during our life span) at the cost of not being to speak a second language fluently at a later age.

In chapter 10, we get to learn which parts of the brain are involved in storing and producing the language so far as the science can say. It is interesting to know that all the tiniest parts of the language from the words, phonemes, sounds and so on each with their subgroups have different locations allocated to them in different parts of the brain. These locations that vary in different individuals are interconnected through a very organized network of neurons and synopses which act as paths for transferring language data. These paths get strengthened in the child's brain each time they are correctly used to convey a message through language. The language instinct containing the general language grammar guides the correct use of the language and therefore forms the correct paths. So contrary to the wrong assumption mentioned in the beginning of the chapter, there is no grammar gene making all that to happen, but a network of neurons and synopses reinforced through the use of correct grammar made possible by the language instinct.

This hypothetical sophisticated circuitry and its highly organized utility explained by Pinker has hugely contributed to my quest on how languages are learned. Although it might not be true for second language learning, at least it gives me some understanding as how the brain might also work in the case of SLL. So if before I suspected that the memory does all the job, now I have a wider perspective thanks to Pinker.

As far as genes are concerned, we know with a high probability that some genes interfere with the language "circuitry" and its function in brain and produce Specific Language Impairments (SLI). The linguists say so, because they find no environmental evidence to affect the patients with SLI.

Having read these two chapters I have found myself curious to know more about the effect of evolution on language learning ability. As well I would like to follow more closely any scientific advances made on the neorolinguistics.

Some hope and hints

What I failed to mention in my previous post was my conclusion to one of the second language theories cited in the book. My reckoning could be auspicious for non native teachers of the second language ( NNS). According to the interactionist theory, one of the recent psychological ones; second language learners advance in levels of a language more effectively by interacting with those who are more knowledgable than them. This is where the theory of the "zone of proximal developement" by Vygotsky comes to attention.(P.44) This very theory coupled with the interactionist position entice me to resolve that the NNS teachers, contarary to the general belief, can be and are the reliable candidates for instructiong SLLs (Second Language Learners). They can simply be considered as more knowledgable interlocutors- the critical part to the efficiency of this theory. This, however, cannot overlook the other positive aspects of having a NNS teacher, like self-experience, sympathy, structural knowledge and so forth.

On the whole I beleive that a native speaker becomes eligible to be compared to an NNS teacher in other aspects of teaching, only if he has acquired at least a second language and is knowledgable in the structure of the language he is teaching (It is anecdotal that some native speakers of the language due to the lack of grammatical studies of the language, are ignorant of the grammar rules and therefore not neccessarily suitable for teaching their native language.). Otherwise, an NNS teacher is no less than a native one.

Other valuable material in this book for me is the areas of study which the authors claim have not been yet fully explored. These reports can be a source for me to start my own research in the future:

As stated by the authors, although much has been done on the expansion of the learning style assessment instruments; far less research has studied the interaction between different learning styles and success in SLA. (P. 58)

Also, little research investigates the effect of learners' choice of strategy on how successful they would be in learning. The authors though emphasise that a non-flexibale belief in a certain startegy is detrimental to the process of learning. They suggest that teachers showcase an array of strategies and encourage the students to use them along with their self-chosen ones. This point was especially valuable to me to make sure I provide a variety of strategies in my book for the teachers of a second language. Because personally I believe that taking advantage of as many sources as available is the key to successful learning. (P. 59)

And prolonging my learning process, here are the other points I found worth knowing:

*The differences in aptitude of SLLs and their effect on second language learning has cuased the educators to introduce the special programms for the learners of French in Canadian schools in which different apptitudes are treated by their accordingly designed programms. This, although not financially possible for every school, can give a hint to the teachers to consider varying their teaching strategies and their classroom activities to cover the range of aptitudes in their classes. (P.54)

**"...early intensive exposure to the second language" as said by the authors may result in the "loss or incomplete development of the child's first language." (P.68) Mothers! Be aware!

And over to my final analysis and wondering:

In the section dedicated to the effect of age in SLA, extensive research (including that of Johnson and Newport 1989) shows that the learners of English who started their learning at a relatively young age of 10 to 15 have shown significant success compared to those who started it at an older age. What these reaserches neglect,and in my eyes are very substantial is the decision for determining the starting point of the process of learning. In these studies they have completely ignored the amount of English to which the candidates were already exposed before entering the United States. They assume that the learning have simply been started as they have entered the United States as immigrants.

Another thing that makes me wonder is that I think the effect of four to five years of study in an exclusively English environmnet like that of a high school is also ignored in these researches. (P.64)