Orlando's Ideas on Language Learning

Plugging along with limited language skills

Orlando — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:01:40 +0000

Similar to my previous post, I’m still thinking a lot about how we use our “limited” foreign language skills. Recently I was in Vienna, Austria, where I had a chance to practice my German. My German skills are basic, enough to get around and do some daily tasks, but not good enough to really be comfortable. Add to that, since this was my first trip to Austria, there were tons of things that I didn’t know how to do in town.

Whenever you go to a city for the first time, there is an adjustment period when you have to figure out how to get to places, how to figure out the public transportation, where to buy necessities, what kind of food to try, check out what’s happening in town, etc. Even in your native language, this adjustment period is difficult. There is a part of me that loves to experience the newness of being in a place for the first time. But there is also a part of me that finds it all stressful, although an enjoyable stress to be sure.

The main point of the post today is to remind ourselves that when talking in another language, we are going to have to GUESS a lot. People will say things faster than we expect, they will use phrases that we don’t know, and we’ll hear vocabulary that we have not learned. There are going to be tons of times when we have to go with the flow of the moment, infer things from the context, and simply GUESS at what they are saying. We then react, and work through it. For example, if something costs 13 and we heard 30, we give them 30, and then they tell us that it was really only 13. Little by little we figure it out. The point is, if we don’t guess at 30, we never get to the exchange. Linguistics call this “negotiation of meaning”. We actually have to go through the give and take, the exchange of information, and the narrowing down of the meaning.

What we probably don’t realize is that we actually do the same thing in our native language. Much of our communication is based on reacting to what we think we heard, and then we make adjustments along the way. For example, at dinner somebody might ask that you pass them the salt. Even if you didn’t hear them correctly, you start passing things there way. If you hand them the pepper, they will reaffirm that they really wanted the salt. It happens all the time. Bottom line: It is OK to guess, in fact, it is required.

BTW, as an aside note, I was amazed at how often during my 5 days in Vienna that as I opened my mouth to speak, I actually had to control myself to not say Chinese words. There is something about the fact that since neither my German or my Chinese are strong enough to hold themselves on their own, and since I have been focusing so much on Chinese, it was actually hard to control. I can’t believe how many times I answered people with “dui, dui, dui.” I mean, how hard can it be to say “ja” in German! I’m sure that it didn’t help that there are a million Chinese tourists in Vienna. I talked to a lot of Chinese tourists in Vienna too.

Note about the photo: I enjoyed the street performers in Vienna. A couple of times I was called out of the audience to participate in the performance. This, btw, is nerve-wracking because I never knew what I was getting into and the whole time praying that I could understand what they were saying to me!

Expanding your circle of experiences

Orlando — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:33:08 +0000

During the 7 weeks that I have been in Argentina, it has been fun for me to test the Argentine-Spanish world. This is the first time for me to be in Argentina (hard to believe, but I finally made it). My own level of Spanish is such that I can easily slide by and not actually learn more. So, the secret for me is to put myself in new situations, ones that force me to use words and hear new forms. Two brief examples:

First, a few months ago I cut my foot on a piece of glass. Over the past few weeks it as become infected and a weird growth has begun to grow. I was going to just wait to have it looked at when I return to Austin. But then I realized that this gave me a chance to go to a clinic and see a doctor. (My wife Tonia thinks that I am crazy. It’s not the condition of my foot that convinced me to see the doctor. It is the chance to experience a doctor’s visit in Argentina that got me to go to the doctor.) I won’t bore you with the details about my foot, but I will say that it was a great chance to learn new vocabulary, talk to the office staff, the nurses, and the doctors. Great language learning experience.

Second, our light switch in our apartment broke the other day. ”Yes,” I thought, a perfect chance to go to the ferretería and have to buy the parts and together with the apartment doorman, replace the light fixture. Once again it was a great chance to learn some new vocabulary, and force myself to talk about new topics. BTW, the joke at our home in Austin is that no home improvement project can be completed with just one trip to Lowe’s (or home depot). The same is true in Argentina! We had to return to get more parts.

I do not wish ill health on you, and I hope that your apartments function properly. If not, however, I encourage you to take advantage of these moments to improve your foreign language experience.

Practice Speaking a Foreign Language

Orlando — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:35:19 +0000

As I write this post I have been in Argentina for the past week. Prior to that I was Rio de Janeiro for a few days too. In both cases I have been surrounded by North American students who are studying a foreign language. In Rio I was observing students who are enrolled in a summer program that is sponsored by the University of Florida. Both graduate and undergraduate students from a number of US universities take classes at IBEU in Copacabana. What impressed me most was their dedicated focus to try to speak the language. It is one thing to try to speak Portuguese with the Brazilians, but these students were also speaking Portuguese to each other. It takes impressive self-control to artificially use Portuguese when surrounded by others who are also native speakers of English. Then I arrived here in Córdoba, Argentina to accompany our students from the University of Texas. Once again I have seen how hard the students buckle down and try to speak Spanish, even among themselves. Way to go gente!

Often we hear of the disadvantages that are associated with learning a foreign language as an adult. But in these two instances I have also seen one of the advantages, that is to have the ability to artificially “pretend” and speak the foreign language with your peers. Granted, most of these students are intermediate to advanced level learners and so they are able to get their messages across. Still, their desire to get better is matched by their self-control. A second observation I have made is that it has been much easier for these students to speak with each other in Portuguese and Spanish because that is how they first started. From the moment they arrived, they started speaking to each other in their new language. Once started, they have been able to keep it going. So, adult learners, it’s a matter of self-control. This is something that the students in Brazil and Argentina have been able to show me over these past two weeks. Thanks for the demo, it has inspired me to try and do the same.

Learning languages with a 2-year old

Orlando — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:05:52 +0000

I just got back from spending a few days in Taipei, my first trip to Taiwan, it’s night markets, museums, mountains, and great food. I had a wonderful time, and as far as language learning is concerned, an interesting experience. I stayed with some gracious friends, Jarom and Linda McClellan, who also have a small son named Jadon. You might say that Jadon and I are both learning Chinese at the same time.

My trip also coincided with the recent release of the TED video of Deb Roy’s experience where he video recorded over 90,000 hours of his son’s first three years of life. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. So, child language acquisition was also on my mind. Anyway, there are two main observations, which I already knew but which were reinforced by the experience.

First, kids work hard to speak. There is nothing passive about child language acquisition. Jadon was a non-stop talker, playing over and over again with sounds and words. As adults we often talk about how easy it is for children to learn a language, but that is only partly true. They work at it hard, non-stop, and over and over again. You wanna learn a language? Try putting in just a small portion of the effort that little kids put into it. Of course part of the issue is that their cognitive development coincides with their linguistic development (I already know what a donkey is), but either way it was amazing to watch.

Second, adults model words to kids in slow, emphasized, simple, and repeated ways (is that a cow? do you see the cow? can you say cow?). Knowing it was temporary, I kind of enjoyed being exposed to vocabulary that way for a couple of days. (No, I’m not advocating that adults should learn vocabulary like first language learners.) Anyway, both mom and dad would repeat words, modeling things for Jadon. I recall specifically one instance where we were playing “it this your nose? is this your mouth? is this your ear?” and I was also playing along. Suddenly I noticed that when Linda again repeated the phrase, her tones for erduo (ear) were different from mine. I actually found myself adjusting my tones, based on mommy’s modeling during the game. Here I was, going through the experience just like a little kid. I actually felt a little jealous that as adults we don’t get the adjusted motherese spoken to us more often.

Thanks Jadon, I can already imagine the conversation that we’re going to have some day in the future when I tell him of the days when we learned to speak some Chinese together.

Listening vs. Speaking

Orlando — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 14:25:07 +0000

I have returned to Beijing with our UT MBA students and so once again I find myself trying to practice some Chinese. It has taken me a while to catch on to something that I hadn’t overtly thought of previously. With all of the other languages that I have studied (Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, and German) there is a phase where I could understand more than I could say. This was especially true when I tried to learn some Italian. There are so many cognates between Spanish and Portuguese that also help in understanding Italian. From the very first day, I could understand a good portion of what people were saying. Even with words that I had not studied at all, many times there was a good chance that the Italian equivalent was predictable. So, a good part of the vocabulary was learned by association with similar cognate words.

In the case of Chinese (and to a lesser extend Japanese), however, things are reversed. In some ways I feel that I can almost speak at a higher level than what I can understand. That’s a new experience for me and again it is related to vocabulary. Learning vocabulary in Chinese is such a different experience and a large part of it, I believe, is related to the fact that there are very few cognates. If you don’t know how to say a word in Chinese, there just isn’t much to go on. When speaking you can work around the word you do not know, but when listening there is almost no hope for understanding a new word. That is so unlike the romance languages where context often helps out enough to figure out the unknown words.

So I find myself trying to find a new strategy for learning vocabulary. Educators generally say that input (language that you hear) becomes intake (language that you begin to understand) when context provides you with enough background. I’m not convinced that context alone is enough when learning a “non-cognate” language. Vocabulary in cognate languages happens almost without even noticing that you are learning new words. Now, however, I need to exert a conscience effort to focus on vocabulary. In the meantime, speaking is almost easier than listening comprehension.

Riding the metro in St. Louis

Orlando — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:28:43 +0000

Tonia, my wife, and I have been spending a few days on a vacation in St. Louis. I can’t say that we’ve been practicing our foreign language skills a lot, however there has been something that once again reminds me of context and background knowledge and how it affects our listening comprehension. We’ve been riding the metro around and before each stop the driver announces the connecting bus lines. Tonia and I keep looking at each other with a sense of “Was that English?” We simply don’t understand a word that the driver is saying. Why is that? It’s because we are unfamiliar with the neighborhoods in St. Louis. So, what comes out is something like, “Bus 57 to blah blah blah, bus 34 to blah, blah, blah, bus 78 to blah, blah blah.” So much of our listening comprehension is tied to our previous knowledge of the context or situation.

I know that if I were in a foreign country, going through the same experience, I would be blaming my lack of listening comprehension on my limited proficiency in a foreign language. However, this trip to St. Louis has been a good reminder that often it isn’t my limited proficiency in a foreign language, but my limited background knowledge. That is what affects our ability to understand.

The picture: Out at the Cahokia Indian Mounds.

I’m going to Austria – in September

Orlando — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:00:53 +0000

There is nothing like a planned trip abroad to bring back the language learning juices! My last trip to a German speaking country was in 2006 when I spent a few weeks in Germany (thus the picture with my dad, Wolfgang, in Berlin). Last week I was invited to participate in a conference that will be held in Viena, Austria, in September of 2011. That is 10 months away, but already I feel the difference, that is, in terms of my study of German.

Not that it is totally on purpose, but I have my “actively learning” languages and my “passively maintaining” languages. On the active side is Chinese. I am specifically learning new vocabulary, meeting with tutors, listening, reviewing, and redoing tons of lessons, it’s an active attack. On the passive side is German and Italian. I often listen to German and Italian podcasts, music, etc., but there is no real effort to retain the information and I almost never repeat lessons a second time. It’s more just a brief check to hope that my German and Italian skills don’t totally disappear.

Well, all that changed last week. Even though it is 10 months away, just knowing that I’ll be going to Austria has perked the interest and increased the level of intensity. Now it is not enough to simply listen to podcasts and music. It’s time to review, retain, and practice. Instantly I found myself speaking more German to colleagues and friends who speak German. I have cracked out the old textbooks and I have started repeating some of the podcast lessons.

All of this reaffirms to me that language learning is tied to two great principles. First, motivation is a gigantic factor. It’s just amazing to see how much attitude affects learning. We all know that, but it’s been fun to feel that again. Second, learning is enhanced when it prepares you for something real (as opposed to academic and artificial). There is a real sense of “I’m gonna need this stuff.”

Wish me luck, I’m going to Austria–and I’ll be speaking German when I get there.

The inverted pyramid

Orlando — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 22:20:54 +0000

Language experts often compare levels of foreign language proficiency to that of an inverted pyramid. As the image (based on the ACTFL proficiency scale) illustrates, at the beginning level (“Novice” in ACTFL terms) there is relatively little space. It doesn’t take much effort to go from a Zero to a Novice. A speaker at an elementary level (officially “Intermediate”) needs to know significantly more than the beginner. As learners get into the Advanced and Superior levels of language proficiency, each new level represents a significant jump in the amount of things that a speaker must do. Progress from an Advanced to a Superior level takes a lot more work than progress from a Novice to an Intermediate. Thus, the inverted pyramid.

I mention all of this because I find myself confronting this reality. As I continue to review and practice German, Italian, and Chinese, I really am learning new forms, vocabulary is growing, and listening comprehension is improving. However, despite the fact that deep down things are progressing, a good part of me feels “stuck” in my level. Some days it is discouraging.

So I want to remind myself (and others):

1. Relax, paragraph-level tasks really are more difficult that sentence-level tasks.

2. Relax, it really does take time to build more vocabulary, especially in languages that don’t have cognate forms.

3. Relax, grammatical nuances take time to appreciate.

All of this reminds me of a Peanuts cartoon that I saw some 25 years ago. Linus said something like, “We have not been able to answer all of your questions. Indeed, we have not been able to answer any of them completely. In some ways we are just as confused as before. However, we believe to be confused about things at a much higher level and about things that are much more important.“

That totally applies to language learning. When I try to speak German, for example, I still hesitate and bungle through just as badly as I used to, but part of it is because I am hesitating and bungling through higher-level tasks. (BTW, when ACTFL testers perform proficiency exams, if the candidate starts to break down at a higher level, the tester returns to questions at a lower level to see if the candidate can also go back to performing the tasks correctly.) Who knows that every so often we need to do the same thing with the foreign language that we are studying. Go back down to some of the simpler tasks that we can perform. Just try to come back up again soon.

Image – http://www.languagetesting.com/scale.htm

How about we speak Italian together?

Orlando — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:49:07 +0000

I recall an experience a few years ago when I asked a friend of mine, who is from Barcelona, how he decided when to speak Catalan and when to speak Spanish. He told me that many times it depended on which language was part of the first encounter. If he used Spanish the first time he met someone, most likely Spanish would forever more be used together. If they used Catalan the first time they met, chances were that they would always use Catalan. He said that once you begin in one language you almost never change to another later.

I have seen that pattern myself. There are Brazilians that I speak with only in Portuguese, others only in English. There are Chileans I speak with in Spanish, others in English. There are Chinese friends that I continually practice Chinese with, others with whom I only speak English. Once the pattern is set, it rarely changes. And it isn’t really an issue of proficiency. That is to say, we don’t automatically go with the language of highest proficiency. I have friends, for example, who speak to me in German, even though their proficiency in English is much better than my German.

So, why am I thinking of this? Last week I met a new MBA student here at UT who is from Italy. When we started talking I could have done things in Italian (although my Italian isn’t all that great), and he gave every hint that we could speak Italian together, but somehow we started in English. Now I’m disappointed to think that we’ll forever be locked into English together. Similarly, lately I have noticed that even though I have made some progress in my Chinese proficiency (slow but sure), I still use English with the people that I first began associating with in English. It’s like we have zero tolerance for messing with our pattern.

It also has me thinking about the context of those encounters. Since I met this Italian student here in Austin, I’m sure that this fact had something to do with our initial use of English. Had we have met in Milan, chances are that our first encounter would have been in Italian. There is also an issue of assertiveness or concern for others. Would I assert my desire to practice Italian on this person? It almost seems selfish on my part. It makes my need to practice Italian more important than the real life interactions that I’ll have with this student. Still, he would have gladly spoken in Italian.

So, what to do about it… Do you see in the picture how aggressively I am getting ready to get on the subway in Beijing? Well, I’m going to take the same approach when I meet people for the first time. If I want to speak Italian, I had better get started from the get go. Maybe it’s not too late with Giorgio.

Psyching myself up to practice Chinese

Orlando — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:58:18 +0000

I just got back from Beijing, having spent 6 weeks there. As soon as I got back, the next day I was participating in a video conference with an amazing group of language experts (more details on that another day) and as part of the discussion they asked me how my Chinese language progress was during my stay. We ended up talking about how sometimes people emotionally get ready for language practice and how other times people check out emotionally.

Case in point: As I mentioned in the previous post, while in Beijing I spent part of the time with a host family. I recall one afternoon when I was about to go home for dinner, but I was emotionally worn out that day and so I decided that it would be easier to go get some dinner somewhere else. Dinner at home would have meant that I would have had to speak Chinese the whole time and that day I had reached my limit of “daily practice.” Sure enough, I grabbed a little dinner somewhere else and arrived home that night late enough that there wasn’t much more time for extra conversation. It was weird because the exact reason that I had decided to stay with the family was to get personal practice time and here I was “avoiding” the situation. On the other hand, I remember another evening when I knew that I’d be home in time to watch the cooking show. My host family loves to watch the cooking channel and it was alway a good time to chat with them about food. I found myself rushing home to make sure that I was there in time to watch TV with the family. So one day I avoided going home to get out of practicing and another day I rushed home to made sure that I’d have time to practice.

As we talked during the video conference about how disappointed I was at myself for not taking advantage of every opportunity to practice Chinese, one of my colleagues said, in essence, “Give yourself a break Orlando. You’re just human. We don’t learn languages like machines.” It sounds like pretty good advice in general. Learning to speak a foreign language is not like turing on the ON button. Give yourself a break every so often. When your daily limit is reached, it’s OK to check out for a while as well.