Language learning research

[jonnyharman]

You could try to understand research the research, and know where it's from, etc, before refuting it.

[jonnyharman]

Maybe you could try to understand what the research claims, and where it's from, etc, before refuting it.

[funkiwi44]

While it often seems that much research into language pedagogy is merely stating the obvious, it is incredibly important that we continue this research. Steve, while your own ability at learning languages is admirable, it does not make you an expert on how people learn languages. It makes you an expert on how YOU and people like you learn languages. Research tells us that there are many people whose styles and abilities (and needs) differ. Your anti-research dogma is unhealthy, to say the least.

[lingosteve]

@funkiwi44 It is one thing to disagree with me, but my views are "unhealthy"? I think it is wasteful to spend so much educational money on research which has not contributed to any improvement in the performance of language teachers. It may even be unhealthy.

[funkiwi44]

@lingosteve I agree that there is much research which is unworthy of funding. However, that's no reason to descredit all pedagogical research. Of course research has contributed to teacher performance. Teacher education is informed by this research. Surely any teacher will tell you they benefited from such courses. Traditional methods such as grammar-translation proved insufficient and impractical for many learners. This is fact. Isn't TBI working for new migrants there in Canada?

[lingosteve]

@funkiwi44 Immigrants are not learning much English, except on their own. The system is totally monolithic, everyone has to learn the same way, the way the teachers want to teach. Are you joking?

[funkiwi44]

@lingosteve Actually, yes. I know how you feel about TBI :P Okay, another example: I first heard about your business when I found your publication of "the three keys to language learning success". One of those is to notice what happens in the target language. The emphasis on this was due in large part to the work of Richard Schmidt and his noticing hypothesis. Didn't take long to find some useful research, did it?

[lingosteve]

@funkiwi44 My observations about noticing have nothing to do with any research and are entirely based on my own experience. I have never heard of Richard Schmidt. It is obvious that we need to notice, that certain things just pass me by and it often takes something to help me notice. Research?

[funkiwi44]

@lingosteve Actually you quoted Mary Ann Lyman-Hager on noticing. For some people, the idea of noticing is not obvious. Some even have notions of subconscious learning, and that exposure alone is sufficient. Subjective experience is fine for guiding our own learning but to guide others we need evidence that it works, and that is what researchers are trying to gather.

[lingosteve]

@funkiwi44 I take it back, On reflection these three elements were first spelled out for me the lady who heads of the language department at the U of San Diego whom I heard speak at the ACTFL conference in that city. It immediately struck a chord. But I should not think that any great research is need to support this observation.

[lingosteve]

@funkiwi44 Have you any evidence that language learning results in schools are better than 20, 50 , 100 years ago?

[funkiwi44]

@lingosteve In front of me, no. But then, results in exams are worthless if you lack communicative competence and communication is your real need.

[lingosteve]

@funkiwi44 But despite all the research and additional funds spent on language training, the results in our schools are still just as abysmal and Swedish kids learn by watching English TV before they reach high school.

[funkiwi44]

@lingosteve You could be right (evidence please - no wait, that would mean conducting research). And that is why the area of autonomous learning and online learning is an exciting new avenue of research. Kids are learning through online games and by being part of online communities. We can help them use effective strategies at learning, communicating and building safe social networks. Research doesn't have to be stuck in the classroom.

[evelioto]

La grammatica è il fondamento strutturale della nostra capacità di esprimerci. Più siamo consapevoli di come funziona, tanto più siamo in grado di monitorare il significato e l'efficacia del nostro modo di usare il linguaggio e gli altri. Può aiutare a promuovere la precisione, di rilevare l'ambiguità, e sfruttare la ricchezza di espressione disponibili in inglese. E può aiutare tutti - non solo ai docenti di lingua inglese, ma gli insegnanti di qualsiasi cosa, per ogni insegnamento è

[evelioto]

Грамматика люди ассоциируют с ошибками и корректность. Но, зная о грамматике также помогает нам понять, что делает предложения и абзацы четким и интересным и точным. Грамматика может быть частью литература обсуждений, когда мы и наши студент

[crussher2]

Bine! Vorbiti Romaneste?

[merinejo]

Steve started out the conversation and then dissapeared. He he he

[AtomikNY]

Well, I rather enjoy linguistics as an intellectual pursuit, and even got a degree in it. But you are right, Steve, linguistics terms will not teach you a language. They can certainly help you to wrap your mind around certain concepts when you first encounter them, but if you want to really internalize the language and make it feel natural, the only way to do that is ultimately through listening, speaking, reading and writing.

[drushtvo]

So if you can read your Chinese then Portuguese paper. Do you think that even further advances in technology will allow multiple languages to combine? Possibly forming a new language?

I am an Australian born Macedonian with Macedonian born parents and I find myself mixing Macedonian words into a sentence that started off English and vice versa. You must too.

I have currently begun to learn Japanese and I think that when my proficiency gets as great as the other two it will meld in also.

[illasduck]

I do believe this is happening all the time, and historically some languages can probably derive their roots from two completely unrelated ones. Just look at the incredibly high number of Chinese/English loan words in Japanese, or X European language words in English.

[gutaraneko]

We often forget that over the half of the world's population is bilingual. As Steve pointed out, the vast majority of those people learned to communicate naturally by exposure to the target language. I agree that many teachers over complicate the quite simple process of language learning.

[saxquiz]

I agree with you. The "good ole days" are a myth. Today is better than yesterday, and tomorrow will most certainly be better than today.

[CommodoreV]

The problem is the same problem faced by scholars in the later years of the Roman Empire. The development of grammar and rhetoric put the focus on form rather than content, divorcing practicality from theoretical knowledge. In the late Roman Empire, scholars became more and more separated from the people, creating a wide gulf between the laypeople and the intellectuals. I fear the same is happening now.

[daysin1234]

I agree with Steve on how all this "research" has overcomplicated language learning.

Personally speaking my grandmother came from europe in the 1950s, never spoke good english yet her native language was a Romance Language and she spoke an additional 2 Romance languages better than she spoke english.

She never had overcomplicated resources like we do now and she never studied them.

[MacOSY]

JeanMichelAbrassart is right, linguists study how languages work, not how people should study them.

[zocurtis]

Steve, I wanted to know if you ever tried the Michel Thomas course and what you think about them. Can you do a video? Thanks.

[yuriythebest]

I'll take this one step further- I have zero faith in "institution/class based language learning" - don't get me wrong, if you are also learning that language out of your own free will and doing additional things in it like watching tv in it/lingq/pimsleur/etc then sure you have a chance, but getting "good grades" in a language in school and thinking you will be able to speak it is self deception

[JeanMichelAbrassart]

You're deeply misrepresenting linguistic simply because linguistic is not the science of "language learning". It's just the science of language. Most of the work done in that field doesn't have a goal that would be something like "improving language learning".

Most of your criticisms are aimed at what is in fact pedagogy, and not linguistics. And a lof of people in pedagogy would agree with what you say (like that sudent's motivation is a key aspect)...

[madaozeki]

You put it a lot more succinctly than I did :-) Thanks!

[xnightxamex]

how did people learn anyway? how were they exposed to other languages? i cant even imagine it without the internet.

[coolsteven2]

Well i think learning has more to do with how the individual students learn. I have a hard time learning just from speaking. But i know people who learn alot better when its just spoken. The thing i HATE about these "linguistics researchers" is that alot of the time they have NO idea what the hell they are talking about. Like saying that Chinese and Japanese are the most difficult languages, thats bias. They don't think OUTSIDE of the research...Also the AMOUNT of new vocab you learn also matter

[NephilaClavata]

There's a story about these merchants hundreds of years ago whose ship got stranded in Korea and they became stuck there. They lived there and after a few years, a ship from their home country came and by chance found them there, and in that time, they had learned Korean and were fluent in it. Those merchants probably didn't pull out a Korean phrasebook or take Korean 101, and there were no textbooks to teach them, they just learned out of necessity, as people have done for hundreds of years.

[NephilaClavata]

I agree, you don't truly need all this research and books and programmes to help you learn languages, I mean they can help, I'm not denying that, but it isn't necessary. Millions and millions of people through ought time didn't use any books or games to teach them, they were just exposed to it and were willing to learn it, and sort of "picked it up".

[madaozeki]

The Universal Grammar approach, at its simplest, merely aims to determine what's different about our brains that enables us to acquire human languages, whereas other creatures can't. There must be some difference there, and that's what linguists consider Universal Grammar. The massive variation found in human languages is beside the point. It all serves as data for the linguist trying to figure out the underlying structures that permit the acquisition of all these things.

[madaozeki]

Disclaimer: I personally think Chomsky's specific theories are a crock of $#*&.

It's unclear whether the pure theoretical research being done is in any way applicable to language learning techniques, and their use by applied linguists is certainly suspect, largely misguided, and often wildly misinterpreted.

I do agree with your general points, of course, but it's not the fault of theoretical linguists. They're operating mostly at cross-purposes to language teachers.

[madaozeki]

One final point: I definitely disagree that linguistic research is a waste of time. Language is certainly worthy as an object of study in its own right, even if you're not interested in learning to speak other languages fluently.

What is wrongheaded is the assumption (by applied linguists and language teachers) that any of that research is relevant in their field.

[lingosteve]

Chomsky does not say that we have a universal ability to pick up on patterns and learn them. He says we have a grammar.

He does not talk about human's ability to communicate. He talks about a universal grammar. So does Stephen Pinker. I do not buy it. I am not alone.

[madaozeki]

"grammar" has a VERY different meaning in the context of theoretical linguistics than it does in the context of language learning and class in school. "grammar" in the Universal Grammar sense has nothing whatsoever to do with terminology or declensions or conjugations, etc. Rather, it simply refers to precisely what structures are in the brain that allow us to acquire the range of human languages out there. Pinker talks about "The Language Instinct", which again is precisely the same thing.

[madaozeki]

"grammar" in the Universal Grammar sense is not a list of rules and exceptions, etc. Whether it's instantiated as general cognitive abilities combined with pattern recognition skills, or whether it's something else is a matter for debate. The fact that humans do possess SOMETHING in the brain that differentiates us from other animals is not up for debate. Whether that "thing" is qualitatively different, or merely just more of the same but more developed, has not been resolved.

[madaozeki]

Chomsky DOES talk EXTENSIVELY about humans' ability to communicate. In fact, his latest theory is that "grammar" is simply the single function of recursion. He (and others) argue that that's the only important thing distinguishing human language from animal communication systems.

[madaozeki]

Note that "recursion" has nothing to do with systems of noun classes, adjectival agreement, etc. Again "grammar" in the sense of theoretical linguistics is NOT what we're all familiar with. It's just an unfortunately-chosen term that causes confusion in laypeople.

Regardless of agreeing with you on virtually everything you say, I do think it's unfair to lump theoretical linguists in with language teachers and educators. They are not the same group of people by any stretch.

[Bortrun]

I don't think this is really an accurate understanding of universal grammar. Maybe it's the word "grammar" that is the problem. Universal grammar has to do with the fact that there are certain language patterns/possibilities which are not found in any existing language. Why is that? Or, there are certain things which are found in all languages. Why is that? How does our language faculty work? That's what linguists are investigating.