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?
Are you struggling to learn a second language? Does “I can’t” feature in your excuses for not learning something new?
Well, your excuses are no longer valid, because according to a new study, you can learn a new language! Cambridge neuroscientists have found it takes just 15 minutes to learn a new word -all you need to do is listen to the word 160 times in that period. The brain will form new networks for that word which are tasked with remembering it.
The research was conducted not to help people learn a language, but to assist stroke patients in recovering their language skills. The study has been completed with healthy volunteers but the researchers hope to move on to test the theory in stroke patients also.
Dr Yury Shtyrov and his team made the discovery after placing electrodes on the heads of 16 healthy volunteers to monitor their brain activity.
First they recorded the pulses generated when they listened to a familiar word. Then the volunteers were made to listen to a made-up word, over and over again.
Initially the brain had to work hard to recognise the new word. But after 160 repetitions over 14 minutes, the new memory traces were “virtually indistinguishable” from those of the already familiar word, said Dr Shtyrov.
He said: “What this suggests is that practising language is important. Every little helps.
“Just perception – listening – is helpful. Our volunteers didn’t repeat the words.”
Getting them to repeat the words would “probably extend the new neural networks” to the part of the brain tasked with speech, he said. (Source: The Telegraph)
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
There’s an interesting opinion piece in The Observer today about the demise of the study of French in universities in the UK, and why this should not be allowed to happen.
A lot of the writer’s arguments could also be applied to other languages. French isn’t just spoken in France, it’s spoken in countries as far apart as Canada and Senegal – Spanish is an example of another language whose speakers are spread all over the world. So just as the French of Senegal won’t be the same of the French of Quebec, so the Spanish spoken in Spain isn’t the same as spoken in Peru – different cultures and different meanings.
I also like what Hussey has to say about the benefits of studying another language:
What studying French has really done for me is to provide me with a new mental landscape. French writing, from Voltaire to Sartre to Houellebecq, has a hard, confrontational edge to it, driven by big ideas, which does not exist in the same way in the English-speaking world. This is why French literature has appealed to English writers of a certain “outsider” stripe, from George Orwell to Will Self. This is a political phenomenon as much as anything else. For a working-class intellectual (which was how I rather cockily fancied myself as a student) to speak and understand French is to short-circuit many of the stupidities of class prejudice in the UK.
Studying another language not only enables you to connect with speakers of that language, it allows you to “access the world beyond the Anglosphere”. You may learn something new – you may start to see the world in a different way. So what are you waiting for?
I couldn’t resist this story of an adorable border collie who can comprehend the names of over 1,000 objects.
The dog’s name is Chaser, and she has been taught by Alliston Reid and John Pilley in a series of experiments which have been published in the journal Behavioural Processes. Chaser learned the names of 1,022 objects before she stopped being trained because of time constraints on the authors. From Science Daily:
This study demonstrates Chaser’s ability to learn the names of proper nouns, and her extensive vocabulary was tested repeatedly under carefully controlled conditions. The authors admitted that she remembered the names of each of her 1022 toys better than they could. Chaser’s ability to learn and remember more than 1000 proper nouns, each mapped to a unique object, revealed clear evidence of several capacities necessary for learning receptive human language: the ability to discriminate between 1,022 different sounds representing names of objects, the ability to discriminate many objects visually, an extensive vocabulary, and a substantial memory system that allowed the mapping of many auditory stimuli to many visual stimuli.
Reid compared Chaser’s language learning ability to that of a child’s:
“This research is important because it demonstrates that dogs, like children, can develop extensive vocabularies and understand that certain words represent individual objects and other words represent categories of objects, independent in meaning of what one is asked to do with those objects.”
Further research is needed to see if the results can be replicated in other breeds of dog, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to use this theory when training your own dog!
I posted a couple of weeks ago about the Ofsted report that highlighted the limits of language teaching in secondary schools in Britain. Now the Education Secretary has indicated that a modern foreign language may once again become compulsory at GCSE level.
A national curriculum review has just been launched in England, with Education Secretary Michael Gove stating that English, maths and science should be the core subjects pupils should study up to 16. From the BBC News article:
When asked whether he was “leaving the door open” to making modern foreign languages compulsory at GCSE, Mr Gove responded with an emphatic “yes”.
He added: “We have given people a nudge with the English Baccalaureate towards a certain set of academic subjects.”
“Beyond that we want to have an informed debate.”
To gain the English Baccalaureate pupils need good GCSEs in English, maths, science, a modern foreign language, and either history or geography.
Studying for a language GCSE was no longer compulsory after 2004, and the years following saw a large drop in numbers of pupils taking a language, to the dismay of many. The debate will surely continue.
I don’t mind admitting I’m incredibly lazy when it comes to things I should do, but don’t have a strict deadline for. This even extends to language learning – if I hadn’t signed up for a class (which I feel obliged to go to), then my intention to learn Spanish would never come to anything.
So when I came across the Me No Speak series of books, it struck me as a great idea – but also one that means my latent lazy tendencies would come to the fore.
The Me No Speak books are filled with pictures and phrases that travellers can point to instead of trying to find the word in the local language. Their tagline is “When you can’t say it, point to it.” They cover a range of destinations, from France to China and Turkey to Thailand.
I’m glad to see that the creators of this series still think people should attempt the local language, but it seems to me that people would be more likely to put this in their bag and use it as a replacement for the local language. One of the things I enjoy overseas is all the nodding and smiling that happens when two people don’t speak each other’s language but are trying to communicate anyway. The surprise element also makes for good stories – you think you ask for a plate of noodles and instead a plate of something else appears, that turns out to be delicious anyway (or not).
Has anyone used one of these books? Did you find it helpful?
A new Ofsted report has highlighted the limits of language teaching in secondary schools, according to a BBC News article.
Whilst the report said the initiative to introduce modern languages to primary level pupils was doing well, language lessons in secondary schools were described as “weak”. It further stated:
“Reading was not taught beyond exercises in course books or previous examination papers and teachers made insufficient use of the wealth of authentic material that is available to develop students’ speaking, listening, writing, knowledge about language, language learning strategies and intercultural awareness.”
From 2004 languages were no longer required at GCSE level. Since then the number of students taking a modern language GCSE has fallen from 61% in 2005 to 44% in 2010. This is unsurprising to me – I took GCSE French and was in the top class. My teacher made the effort to engage pupils, particularly in speaking exercises, but my fellow pupils rarely spoke up. French was seen as something to be endured rather than an enjoyable way to get to know another culture.
It seems the current crop of students feel the same way. There is hope though:
[Inspectors] also said pupils’ enjoyment of language learning in primaries was “clear”.
“They were usually very enthusiastic, looked forward to lessons, understood why it was important to learn another language and were developing a good awareness of other cultures,” the report said.
I wonder what is different between the way languages are taught in primary and secondary schools? From my experience I would say that a GCSE class is focussed more on learning from a textbook, with not so much emphasis on interacting with others and learning about culture. Language classes I’ve enjoyed in the past (outside of school) have engaged students through exercises such as singing and sharing food – perhaps this is something for secondary school language teachers to consider?
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?
English is sometimes described as the world’s first global lingua franca, spoken by an estimated 370 million people as their native language and many more as a second language.
But in a country which has 22 constitutionally recognised languages, how important is it for the population to learn English? That is the question debated by schools across India.
..the debaters portray English as either the smouldering dog-end of colonialism or the passport to economic growth, as evidenced by the IT and service industry explosion.
But there are unexpected angles.
One team highlights the need for English to liberate Dalits – the Indian underclasses, formerly “untouchables” who can use English to vault over the social barriers of the officially banned caste system.
The pressure on rural teachers not equipped to teach English to a sufficient standard is highlighted.
The disastrous attempt to enforce Hindi as the national language of India in 1965 is cited as a reason why English could be the language of Indian unity. (Source: BBC)
There are many angles to this debate, and we could see it repeated around the globe as English continues to spread.
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.