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November 4, 2011 at 3:40 pm
caleb ho
The site linked to an interesting 3rd party site about a guy, Benny Lewis, that learns to speak new languages fluently in 3 months. Fascinating.
Benny says this about the importance of motivation in language acquisition
“I am doing more than simply speaking, but speaking is always the core. The fact that I know I’m going to use the language for real means that I’m motivated to improve it ever so slightly just before the meeting…When you are learning and using it, and serious about improving, the motivation will always be there.”
From one SLA motivational research paradigm, it appears that Benny focuses on the pragmatic ‘instrumental’ aspect of motivation — how language is useful to his practical needs — in order to feed his social ‘integrative’ aspect of motivation — how language can be used to meet others of a culture whom he respects and has favorable opinions of. Unlike SLA motivational research that I have read about, the two things need not be separated and perhaps should ideally synergize and work in tandem.
Benny also says: “Every day, I get dozens of e-mails from aspiring language hackers sharing their tales of woe with me; they’ve spent a small fortune on workbooks, CD audio courses etc. and have spent probably thousands of hours locked up in their rooms studying tables of rules and vocabulary lists. And they still can’t say anything. Most people think the reason that this happens is because the material/teacher isn’t good enough. Or perhaps the language really is impossible and it’s the “hardest one in the world”… If our study materials were better then surely we’d finally speak!? No: you have to realise that studying a language has a very specific purpose and if you are not aware of this then you may end up stuck in the vicious circle of never speaking: Studying will never help you speak a language, but (as long as you do it right) studying will help you speak a language better.”
This last comment is really, really interesting. What do you guys think about it?
November 5, 2011 at 5:51 pm
Yanjin Li
I personally agree with Benny’s notions on how to improve speaking ability of a second language. During my four year speaking competition journey, lots of students asked me about my secrets of improving my oral English or my oral Japanese. And I always gave them the same answer: there is no secret, what I did is simply SPEAKING out, rather than sitting there reading books. I really believe that language is like a tool, the more frequently you use it, the more professional you will be. I still remember in my freshman year, I seldom left my dorm for study; instead, I stayed in dorm and kept practicing the right pronunciation. When I went to Japan at the end of my sophomore year, I found out I became really fluent in Japanese only three days after I arrived at Tokyo. I felt that I passed the threshold beyond which my oral language skills suddenly improved strikingly. In addition, I experienced a severe headache before the magic happened. Since the start of my junior year, I did not attend any classes but to study by myself. I just did not enjoy the boring content and rigid agenda of those classes, for me, I really do not think memorizing facts and rules only can bring me good speaking and writing abilities.
November 6, 2011 at 7:56 pm
Karen Graf
I always think that language learning should be more like learning to ride a bike. If you want to learn to ride a bike, you don’t read and memorize all the rules and guidelines about riding the bike, you get out there and practice doing it. I think the same can be applied to L2 learning, especially in the TL classroom. Students need to practice the language in a variety of situations and contexts, not just learn about and memorize facts about the language itself.
November 6, 2011 at 8:29 pm
Karen Graf
I found interesting the reflections and perspectives of the adult children on growing up bilingual. The comments that stood out for me most were the idea that vocabulary was not exactly the same in both languages and that they often lacked an idea or word in one language that they could adequately express in the other. This relates to our class discussions and readings about the notion that there are very few completely balanced bilinguals and they oftentimes bilinguals posess certain vocabulary or linguistic skills in one realm (academic, familiar, etc.) of one of their languages and another type in the other language. For example, a child that speaks one language in the home with family and another at school in a more academic setting.
Another comment that the adult bilingual repeated was that speaking two languages was “just the way the world worked for me” and something that was always there. I find interesting the idea that because the two languages were always a part of the child, it was something very natural. This reminded me of when I go out to eat with my family. I speak Spanish to my son, my husband speaks Portuguese to him, we speak English to each other, and then we speak whatever the TL is to interlocutors we interact with. To an outsider it may seem chaotic, but to us, it is extremely natural because this is the way we have always communicated with each other.
November 6, 2011 at 11:55 pm
Jialing Wang
About a month ago, my friend sent me an email about this website. It’s a really interesting website. I was interested in the forms for parents to record the language development of their bilingual children. I remember in one of our readings, it mentions a vocabulary list of the English words children learn first. Most of us know usually the first word a baby learns is “mom”, but few of us know the first 50 words. Maybe there are some certain sequences underlying vocabulary production.
Benny’s story is a really interesting learning experience. He has a strong motivation to learn foreign languages, even though I don’t know where did he initially get those motivations. I’d partly agree with the statement that “studying will never help you speak a language, but (as long as you do it right) studying will help you speak a language better”. I agree with Yanjin’s point that speaking out is the way to make language speaking better. But before that, studying– the process to accumulate grammar and vocabulary– is also important.