Language Museum

We’ve all made mistakes in our target languages, some of them embarrassing. The Johnson blog at The Economist asked readers to share their most depressing moments on the path to fluency – here are a few gems:

Hydriotaphia - I also have a Japanese story. Having just returned from a year of intense language study, my girlfriend, two other Japanese-proficient friends and I decided to order in Japanese at an Izakaya in NYC. Of course, having been served our oden (if I recall correctly), I tried to ask our waitress whether there was any spicy mustard (karashi) available. Unfortunately, I in fact asked her whether she had a boyfriend (kareshi). Neither my girlfriend nor the waitress were pleased with me.

Faedrus - One of the more famous mistakes English speakers make when learning to speak Spanish is to use the term “embarasada” – which means “pregnant” – when trying to say “embarrassed”. I had been speaking Spanish for about 15 years when I actually made that mistake at a dinner party, although I certainly knew better. I was – to say the least – embarrassed after I said it. But actually I just felt like an idiot.

My most embarrassing moment so far was in Spain, when I was buying something in a clothes store. The transaction went well until the assistant asked me in Spanish if I’d like a bag. I had no idea what she asked (although I suppose I could have guessed in the context) and my brain went completely blank – I couldn’t even say “sorry, I don’t speak Spanish”! The pressure really got to me as there was a queue behind me. Eventually the assistant guessed that I spoke no Spanish and waved a bag at me whilst repeating her question. As soon as I’d paid I escaped from the store very quickly!

Like Johnson’s writer and many of the commenters though, I find that native speakers often appreciate you making an effort in their language. Try not to take yourself too seriously, and laugh with the locals if you make a mistake!

Quite some time ago on this blog, I admitted to not being completely au fait with apostrophes.

Nothing much has changed in the intervening time, mostly because I don’t have the time to sit down and memorise the rules. I still have no problem with contractions (“it is”, “it’s”) but struggle sometimes with possession.

I have a feeling that this will change though, as I’ve discovered an excellent new resource. This comic from The Oatmeal is both handy and amusing – the best kind of reference tool! An example: “I saw two kittens riding a goat. Goats are great for transportation.” Very cute illustrations too. Take a look!

Learning by rote seems an old-fashioned idea, something that was done in the Victorian era, when canes were used liberally.

But it is still used in schools today, if in a different way. Part of the education process is learning how to remember chunks of information, whether for an after-school play or an exam. Some argue that in our information age, there is no need to remember anything as the answer is just a few short clicks away.

This misses the point though. Whilst information is more easily accessible today, nothing quite beats having the answer to hand, an automatic response from the depths of your brain. When you’re in a conversation in your second language, there is no time to stop and look up a word you don’t have. It would break the flow and you may lose more words.

So how do you keep those words in your brain? London black-cab drivers are a good example – they need to learn ‘The Knowledge’:

London black-cab drivers need a detailed knowledge of a six-mile radius of Charing Cross station. They learn 320 routes, and all the landmarks and places of interest along the way. The process can take three to five years, and dropout rates are said to be around 80%.

Nick O’Connor, from Essex, is making good progress after 22 months of study. He says: “It doesn’t need a specific person or a specific brain. It’s just about being structured and having the motivation to get up every single day and go out on the bike [to research the routes]. I’d say anyone could do it.” (Source: BBC News)

Structure and motivation. Learn a little bit of your target language every day. Make sure you put some time aside to do it. Soon you will have ‘The Knowledge’!

Having written previously of the benefit of songs when learning a language, I was interested to come across this blog post about why songs should be used more in the classroom for young learners.

The writer, Devon Thargard, opens with an anecdote about his first day teaching kindergarten and how he engaged the children through a simple song. He then goes on to explain some other benefits of songs as teaching tools. One benefit that particularly interested me is:

Songs create a positive atmosphere.
Just as we take great care in decorating our classrooms to make them warm and conducive to learning, we should think about how we are decorating our classrooms with audio. Learning a foreign language can be stressful for anyone, especially young learners. Fun, simple English songs playing as students enter the classroom help create a welcoming environment. (Source: OUP ELT Global Blog)

My class takes place on a Monday evening. Most people come to class straight from work so, depending on how their day went, they are pretty tired and ready to sleep. We often go straight into learning new vocabulary – perhaps if we had a song to walk into class to, we would start in a more positive mindset, which would also help us learn more.

Does your teacher use music to set the tone for your class?

In my last Spanish class before the Easter break, my teacher made us do something rather odd. We were practicing saying new words and sentences aloud, and she was not happy with our pronunciation. So we were told to put our pens or pencils in our mouths.

Our teacher explained that having a pen in our mouths would make us focus on what we were saying and enable improved pronunciation. She seemed to think it was a well-established technique for improving speech, but I’ve done a quick search and can’t find any research to back this up.

Personally, I found this unhelpful as I was more focussed on the pen not falling out of my mouth than what I was saying! Has anyone else heard of this technique or had success using it?

It’s often said that some languages are harder to learn than others. Tonal languages such as Mandarin for example are supposed to be more difficult for native English speakers who have no experience of listening and speaking in this way.

This reasoning is supported by the US State Department, who “compile learning expectations for a number of languages based on the amount of time it takes a native English speaker to achieve speaking and reading proficiency”. The good people over at the Voxy blog have compiled an infographic from this information to show which languages are rated ‘easy’, ‘medium’ and ‘hard’ and the length of time it should take to achieve proficiency.

What do you think of the infographic? Do you agree that it will take less time to learn Spanish than Japanese?

Via: Voxy Blog

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2011: The holiday’s over and now is the time to set yourself some language learning goals for the year ahead.

These goals don’t have to be your typical New Year’s resolutions – let’s face it, those never last anyway. That’s because New Year’s resolutions tend to be fairly general (“I’m going to eat healthier” or “I’m going to learn French”. To make sure you achieve your goal, it needs to be smart.

I don’t mean your goal has to be clever, SMART is an acronym – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. Take for example the goal “I’m going to learn French” – this is not specific (it doesn’t state how you will learn or where you will learn). It’s not measurable – what do you mean by ‘learn French’? It’s possibly achievable – but only when you’ve defined what level of French you want to achieve, making it not realistic. And it’s not timely as there is no specified period in which to learn.

A better goal would be “I will sign up for beginners Spanish classes by the end of January”. This is a specific goal – to enroll in a class. It is measurable – by the end of the month have you signed up for the class? It is achievable – you can find a class that fits around your schedule and sign up for it. It is realistic – aiming to sign up by the end of January gives you time to find a suitable class, which also makes it timely.

Once this goal has been achieved, you can set further goals for yourself. “I will attend my class every week until the end of the semester”, for example. Or “I will complete my Spanish homework every Saturday afternoon”.

Give it a try – what are your goals for the year ahead?

Sometimes learning a second language can be a lonely experience. Plenty of time spent with learning materials and doing homework outside of class can make it feel like you’re not connecting with others.

The video below offers a chance to hear what your fellow language learners think about studying a second language. The students in the video answer questions like “what is the most difficult part about learning a language?” and “do you have any fears when learning a second language?”

Do you agree with their opinions?

New research appears to show that difficult-to-read fonts make for better learning.

The study at Princeton University employed volunteers to learn made-up information and then try to recall it. The results showed that the volunteers whose information was in harder-to-read fonts were more likely to recall the information when tested 15 minutes later. From BBC News:

Researchers found that, on average, those given the harder-to-read fonts actually recalled 14% more.

They believe that presenting information in a way that is hard to digest means a person has to concentrate more, and this leads to “deeper processing” and then “better retrieval” afterwards.

It is an example of the positive effects of what scientists call “disfluency”.

“Disfluency is just a subjective feeling of difficulty associated with any mental task,” explained psychology Prof Daniel Oppenheimer, one of the co-authors of the study.

“So if something is hard to see or hear, it feels disfluent… We’d found that disfluency led people to think harder about things.

“When we found that in the lab, we were very excited, because it has obvious implications for the classroom.”

The study was repeated on high school students, and the results showed they scored higher in classroom assessments when given learning materials in harder-to-read fonts.

If you find it difficult to concentrate on written language learning materials, perhaps changing the font could help. Has anyone tried this? It sounds quite distracting to me.

Playing games is a fun way to improve in your target language. Someone recommended to me the language game website Digital Dialects, and I thought I’d share the tip!

The site features interactive games in 60 languages, from Afrikaans to Zazaki (spoken by Zazas in eastern Turkey). As well as the languages you’d expect (French, German, Spanish), it has some other more unusual ones – Tibetan and Cebuano, to mention a couple.

The games are suitable for learners at beginner to intermediate levels, and are fairly simple, focusing on word categories such as colours, food and clothing. In the Spanish section, which I’ve been using, there are also a couple of activities for more advanced learners and some verb conjugation games.

Give it a try, and I’ll be on the lookout for some more online game sites.