Language learning: Myths and facts

[A.m.ir]

Myth #1:

"The best way to learn a foreign language is to go to a foreign country"

A lot of people seem to think that being in a foreign country means that you automatically learn the country's language well. Perhaps the most prominent people who believe in this "common-sense truth" are European parents who pay a lot of money to send their children to language schools in England, expecting that they will come back speaking fluent English.

Fact:

Most immigrants in America don't speak English very well, even after living there for 20 years. Many of them have been making the same basic mistakes for decades — for example, saying things like "He make tea?" instead of "Did he make tea?" or "I help you" instead of "I will help you". They typically speak with strong accents, which enables others to instantly classify them as Asians, Latinos, Russians, etc.

The reason immigrants don't do anything about their grammar and pronunciation is that there is little pressure to do so. Other people can understand them despite their mistakes (sometimes with some effort), and are normally too polite to correct them.

The example of immigrants in America reveals a truth that many language learners find quite shocking: that living in a foreign country simply does not make you speak the country's language well. It does not force you to learn good grammar, good pronunciation, or a large vocabulary, because you can do quite well without those things in everyday life. For example, you can skip all your articles when speaking English ("Give me apple", "Watch is not good") and still be able to shop in America or Britain without much trouble.

Being in a foreign country only forces you to learn what is necessary to survive — the ability to understand everyday language and just enough speaking skills to order pizza and communicate with your co-workers or co-students. The rest is up to you, your motivation and ability to learn — which means that you're not much better off than someone who's learning the language in his own country.

In addition, being in a foreign country often forces you to say incorrect sentences, because it forces you to speak, even if you make a lot of mistakes. When you're in a foreign country, you cannot decide that you will temporarily stop talking to people and focus on writing practice (which would enable you to learn correct grammar better than speaking, because you could take as much time as you needed to look up correct phrases on the Web or in dictionaries). You have to speak, because your life depends on it.

By making mistakes, you reinforce your bad habits, and after a couple of years of saying things like "He make tea?", it's really hard to start speaking correctly. It is important to remember that native speakers will not correct your mistakes. Instead, they will try to be nice and try to understand you, no matter how bad your grammar is.


Conclusions

While going to another country may seem like a sure-fire way to master a foreign language, it is not so. Without sufficient motivation, you will learn very little and are likely to end up speaking in an understandable way, but with lots of mistakes. On the other hand, if you have the motivation, you might as well simulate a foreign-language environment in your own home with foreign-language TV and the Internet. Such an environment will be safer, because it will not force you to speak and reinforce your mistakes. Instead, you can learn at your own pace and concentrate on pronunciation, input and writing before you start speaking.

The advantages of going abroad are:

• easy access to native speakers that you can converse with (though you can also find natives in your own country, or you can just talk with someone who's learning the same language)

• the opportunity to perfect your listening skills (trying to understand English-language TV and movies is not quite the same as trying to understand the speech of a teenaged supermarket clerk in Frederick, Maryland)

• the opportunity to learn useful everyday words which are not frequently heard on TV or in movies, e.g. Kleenex, ATM, carpool, parking space, detergent, deli, cereal.

All things considered, learning in your own country will be a safer (and cheaper) option than going abroad, assuming you can motivate yourself and can find opportunities to speak in the language you're learning. After you've learned to speak the language fluently, you can go abroad to polish your listening skills and make your vocabulary a bit more native-like.

[A.m.ir]

Myth #2:

"The best way to learn a foreign language is to speak it"

This is probably the most frequently repeated piece of advice for language learners. You will hear it from teachers, webmasters of ESL sites, and people.

For most language teachers, the goal is to have you talking as early as possible and as much as possible. They believe that they should be quiet during their classes, while their students should have the opportunity to speak.

Fact:

Speaking is imitation. When you speak your native language, you don't make up your own grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. You use the same grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation as people around you.

Similarly, when trying to speak a foreign language, your goal is to imitate the grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation of native speakers, so that your way of speaking is correct and natural.

It's pretty obvious that, in order to talk like the native speakers, you have to listen to the things they say and read the things they write. When you do so, you learn new words and grammar structures that you can use to express your thoughts. As a result, it becomes easier and easier for you to build your own sentences in the foreign language.

By contrast, if you follow the popular advice and concentrate on speaking rather than listening and reading, you will learn few new words and structures and, like so many learners, will be stuck with your limited vocabulary and grammar. It will always be hard for you to express your thoughts in the foreign language.


Benefits of speaking

While speaking practice does not develop your vocabulary or grammar, it does offer a few important benefits:

• It helps improve your fluency (moves your knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation from your "slow memory" to your "quick memory" — however, first you must put something in your "slow memory" through input)

• Communicating in a foreign language is quite exciting and motivates you to keep learning

• It helps expose gaps in your vocabulary and grammar (shows you what you don't know and encourages you to look it up)

What you should do

• If you don't know how to begin your sentence, even after thinking for a while,

• If you stop in the middle of a sentence, and can't continue because you don't know a word,

• If you produce awkward-sounding sentences because you don't know how to say something in a natural way,

• If you often make mistakes and are not aware of it,

...you need more input, not more speaking practice. Such problems show that you simply don't know how to say certain things in the language, and should look at how native speakers say them. More speaking will not improve your vocabulary and grammar; actually, it can make things worse.

From the very beginning, you should spend all of your time on reading and listening (thus acquiring the necessary vocabulary and grammar) until you can write a few simple — but 100% correct — sentences in the language. For example, you can start by writing an e-mail message to someone who speaks the language. (It doesn't matter how long it takes you to write that message. It may be two hours, if you have that kind of patience.)

At the same time, you should study the phonetics of the language, practice pronouncing its sounds, and learn the pronunciations of words.

Then, you should continue getting input and writing until you can produce simple and correct sentences without consulting the dictionary or the Web. This is when you should start speaking — again, slowly and carefully. However, you should still spend most of your time on reading and listening, because input is the only way to develop your vocabulary and grammar.


What happens in language classes

Sadly, the importance of input has been greatly underestimated in the past years. The monopoly of the Communicative Approach in English language teaching means that students are expected to speak in class and write compositions almost from the first lesson, even though they have had almost no chance to absorb the grammar and vocabulary of English. A typical teacher demands output from his students, but does nothing to ensure they have had enough input. A few hours of English classes every week, where the teacher tries to speak as little as possible (to give his students the opportunity to speak), are not nearly enough.

[A.m.ir]

Myth #3:

"It is OK to make mistakes"

If a student in a language class does not want to speak, the teacher will normally assume they are shy, and will encourage (sometimes force) them to speak. He'll tell the student: "Speak and don't worry about mistakes". After all, speaking practice is more important than making mistakes, isn't it?

Fact:

Mistakes are not harmless. Every time you say an incorrect phrase in a foreign language, you increase the probability that you will say that phrase again. Therefore, if you speak with mistakes, you can easily teach yourself bad grammar.

A lot of people think it's more important to improve your fluency than to improve your correctness. If you follow this path, after some time you may find you can speak the language with ease, but it will be largely your own version of the language — not correct language as it's spoken by native speakers. In other words, you may become quite fluent in speaking the wrong way.

Perhaps such a state is more desirable than not speaking at all. But when bad grammar comes to your mind so easily, it becomes very difficult to improve. When you've been saying things like "He go away" for the last two years, it's not so easy to start saying "He went away" all of a sudden.

The point is that it's hard to go from "fluency with mistakes" to "fluency without mistakes". It's much easier to start from "careful, correct output" and then work on your speed to reach "fluency without mistakes".


Conclusions

Making mistakes is not OK if your goal is to speak fluently and correctly.

If you're a person who can't help but make a mistake in every other sentence, you definitely shouldn't speak yet. Even if you have a teacher who will correct your every error, you will not be able to remember such a large number of corrections and will make the same mistakes over and over again. You should rather concentrate on reading and listening, no matter what your teacher says.

If you decide to speak, do it carefully, sticking to phrases that you're absolutely sure are correct.

[A.m.ir]

Myth #4:

"As a beginner, you're bound to make a lot of mistakes"

This is often given as justification of the "Mistakes are OK" myth. The reasoning is that mistakes are a part of learning, therefore it is pointless to try to avoid them.

Fact:

While you cannot eliminate mistakes completely, you can speak and write with very few mistakes, even if you are a beginner.

The trick is to put input before output. If you follow good examples (i.e. build your sentences out of correct phrases and patterns that you have read in books or heard from native speakers), and avoid "uncertain" phrases (phrases that could possibly be incorrect), you will make practically no mistakes.

Here's what this means:

• You should not open your mouth until you see/hear enough correct sentences to build your own sentences correctly. If you can't help but make mistakes, spend all your time on getting input (reading and listening).

• You should look things up on the Web and in dictionaries before you write a sentence, to make sure it's correct.

• If you're not absolutely sure and can't check if what you're going to say (or write) is correct, don't say (or write) it. Otherwise, you may teach yourself an incorrect phrase.

• When reading or listening, pay attention to details like word order, articles, prepositions, and tenses. Compare sentences in the foreign language with equivalent sentences in your native language. Notice how different they are. This will help you realize which parts of your own sentences can be wrong.

The above techniques help you avoid developing bad habits that would be very difficult to cure later on. If you are careful and patient enough, you can learn with very few mistakes and gradually acquire the ability to use more and more phrases that you are absolutely sure of, until you can express anything you want in the foreign language correctly and fluently.

[A.m.ir]

Myth #5:

"You are a foreigner, therefore you will always have a foreign accent"

This line is often used to discourage language learners from studying pronunciation seriously. You didn't grow up in an English-speaking country, so why bother trying to get your English vowels right?

It is related to the Critical Period Hypothesis (see next myth).

Fact:

The fact that most foreigners have a foreign accent does not mean that you have to be like them. Many comedians are able to perfectly imitate the speech of actors, politicians, etc. Renee Zellweger was able to do a perfect British accent in The Bridget Jones's Diary, even though she is from the South of the United States.

There is no reason why you can't speak a foreign language with a perfect, natural accent. You will need at least some talent for imitating sounds (if you can imitate people in your own language, that's a very good sign). However, if you just don't have the knack, you can largely make up for it with persistence and a little technology.

For example, you can record your voice with your computer and compare it with the proper pronunciation (if you're learning American English, you can use PerfectPronunciation for that). This technique helps many learners see where their pronunciation is different from the original and lets them gradually make it more native-like.

You will also need to study phonetics. First, find a resource which has recordings of all the sounds of the language you're learning (like the table with English sounds we have for English). Then, discover which sounds are used in which words by listening to the language and by reading phonetic transcriptions in dictionaries.

Perhaps you will not be indistinguishable from a native in the end, but you are likely to achieve clear, pleasant pronunciation that will give native speakers something to wonder about.

[A.m.ir]

Myth #6:

"If you didn't learn a foreign language as a child, you will never be fully proficient in its grammar"

This is a more general version of the "foreign accent" myth described in the previous article in the series. It has its roots in the Critical Period Hypothesis proposed by Eric Lenneberg in 1967.

Lenneberg suggested that one's first language must be acquired before puberty (about 12 years of age). After puberty, he claimed, neurological changes in the brain make it impossible to fully learn a language. To support his hypothesis, Lenneberg pointed to examples of children who were kept in isolation from others and had no contact with their first language until after puberty. Such children kept making basic grammar mistakes, no matter how long they tried to learn the language.

The Critical Period Hypothesis has been generalized to refer to second/foreign language acquisition, leading to statements such as: "If you don't acquire a second/foreign language before puberty, you will always have problems with some parts of grammar" This causes language learners to interpret their flaws as a neurological necessity and discourages them from trying to improve.

Fact:

Grammar proficiency has more to do with how much input you get than how early you begin learning.

Take my example: I was born in Poland and started attending English classes at 6. Despite my young age (which, in theory, should have allowed me to learn very quickly), I didn't manage to acquire the language. After 9 years of attending classes my knowledge of grammar was extremely limited and I would always make tons of grammar mistakes. Finally, at 15, I started taking English seriously — reading books, using SuperMemo, using dictionaries, etc.

According to many linguists, I was already past my critical period, but guess what — I started making fantastic progress. I was learning faster than I had ever learned as a child. In 2-3 years, I managed to master native-like grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary.

Today, my English is nearly as good as a native speaker's. My writing is natural and basically flawless. After a few days of speaking practice, my accent becomes indistinguishable from that of an American native speaker. When I went to California this spring, I met some people who couldn't believe I hadn't been born in America until I showed them my Polish passport.

I occasionally make mistakes (I'm almost always aware of them), but it doesn't bother me, because I have reasons to believe they would quickly disappear if I spoke English on an everyday basis.

I am 25 years old and I'm sure I could master another European language just like I mastered English. (I'm not sure about Chinese and other non-European languages.) Based on my experience, I certainly don't think I would be "too old" to absorb any part of French or German grammar.

[A.m.ir]

Myth #7:

"Studying pronunciation is not important"

Many language learners assume their pronunciation is good enough because their teacher doesn't correct them too often or because other students can understand them.

Fact:

Those learners are often dead wrong — for two reasons:

• Most teachers ignore all but the biggest pronunciation mistakes of their students. Normally, they just let their students speak and interrupt them only if they just said something completely unintelligible. One of the reasons is that there is too little time to work on each student's pronunciation in class. Another thing is that teachers often don't know how to help students who have poor pronunciation. As a result, pronunciation is the most neglected subject in language learning.

• If you're from Iran and other students in your class are from Iran, too, it will be easy for them to understand you, no matter how strong your Iranian accent is.

Because of the above, if you believe your pronunciation is good enough to communicate because it is good enough for your teacher and other students, you may be in for a nasty surprise when you actually go to a foreign country and try to communicate with native speakers. One of my friends was the best student in his English class in Poland. When he went to work in the United States, he found that Americans didn't understand half of what he said.

What if you're sure you can make yourself understood in a foreign language? Do you have any reason at all to study pronunciation?

Fact:

Yes, because your pronunciation may still be quite far from that of a native speaker. If this is the case, other people will have to make an effort to understand what you're saying, and will not be comfortable with you. They may even avoid you for this reason.

When I went to a language school in England, I myself didn't enjoy conversing with those students from other countries who kept mispronouncing English words. Sure, they would get their meaning across, but it would take me more effort than usual, and I was often forced to ask them questions to make sure I understood them correctly.

The bottom line: When I had the choice, I preferred to talk with people whose accents were close to British or American English. It was simply a much smoother and more pleasant experience.

A related problem is that if your pronunciation is "unnative", other people may unconsciously assume you're slow and treat you in a condescending way — for example, talk to you more slowly and loudly, as if something were wrong with your comprehension.

Conclusions

In conclusion, don't think you can communicate in a foreign language until you've tested your skills on real native speakers (native speakers who are not your teachers). If you're sure your accent is understandable, aim for native or near-native pronunciation, so that people you talk to can have a smooth experience interacting with you. In order to achieve these goals, there's no doubt you will need to start thinking about pronunciation and spend time on it.


Source:antimoon.com