Bryan Murphy's Blog - Posts Tagged "learning"
How not to ...
Coming soon: How Not To Learn A Foreign Language. In 10 easy steps. Watch this space.
Murphy's Laws are on the way
It will soon be time to learn how NOT to learn a foreign language. I’m going to make the fruit of my decades of endeavour and experience online. Watch this space!
Murphy's Laws
HOW NOT TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Even when you live in a country where the language is spoken
Failing completely to learn a foreign language need not be an impossible task, especially for adults. Close adherence to the following ten precepts will give anyone a good chance of succeeding in failing:
*** 1. Opt to stay mono-lingual
*** 2. Choose a hard language to learn
*** 3. Grow as old as you can before you start to learn it
*** 4. Minimise your motivation
*** 5. Develop avoidance strategies
*** 6. Limit input
*** 7. Avoid instruction
*** 8. Develop coping strategies
*** 9. Do not persevere
*** 10. Get the hell out
Let us now look briefly at each of these in turn.
[to be continued] Please share.
Even when you live in a country where the language is spoken
Failing completely to learn a foreign language need not be an impossible task, especially for adults. Close adherence to the following ten precepts will give anyone a good chance of succeeding in failing:
*** 1. Opt to stay mono-lingual
*** 2. Choose a hard language to learn
*** 3. Grow as old as you can before you start to learn it
*** 4. Minimise your motivation
*** 5. Develop avoidance strategies
*** 6. Limit input
*** 7. Avoid instruction
*** 8. Develop coping strategies
*** 9. Do not persevere
*** 10. Get the hell out
Let us now look briefly at each of these in turn.
[to be continued] Please share.
Murphy's Laws
HOW NOT TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
In Ten Easy Steps
1. Opt to stay mono-lingual
We all probably have room for improving our use of our mother tongue, or at least for keeping up to date with its changing colloquialisms and expanding technical vocabulary.
If you cannot completely overcome the temptation to pursue a foreign language, at least stay away from countries where the language is spoken.
This manual is based on my almost total failure to learn Thai, even though I lived and worked in Thailand for several months, which inevitably made it harder not to learn.
If you must learn a foreign language, stick to just one, because learning one foreign language will help you to learn others (Klein, 1995).
By increasing your general linguistic awareness, by making you more aware of the possibilities outside your mother tongue, and by giving you experience of what works and what does not work in the language learning process, learning a second language will make it harder for you not to learn a third language. Then you’ll really be in trouble.
In Ten Easy Steps
1. Opt to stay mono-lingual
We all probably have room for improving our use of our mother tongue, or at least for keeping up to date with its changing colloquialisms and expanding technical vocabulary.
If you cannot completely overcome the temptation to pursue a foreign language, at least stay away from countries where the language is spoken.
This manual is based on my almost total failure to learn Thai, even though I lived and worked in Thailand for several months, which inevitably made it harder not to learn.
If you must learn a foreign language, stick to just one, because learning one foreign language will help you to learn others (Klein, 1995).
By increasing your general linguistic awareness, by making you more aware of the possibilities outside your mother tongue, and by giving you experience of what works and what does not work in the language learning process, learning a second language will make it harder for you not to learn a third language. Then you’ll really be in trouble.
Murphy's Laws
HOW NOT TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
In Ten Easy Steps
2. Choose a hard language to learn
Languages differ from each other in several ways, including syntax, sounds and semantics. The US Foreign Language Service’s classification of languages according to the time it takes its employees to learn them shows that those languages objectively closer to English are likely to be learnt faster. So unless there is something really special about diplomats and spies, choose a language far from your own.
However, languages also differ in less obvious ways. I recently tried to learn Bulgarian, and one of the hardest parts was learning to nod for "No" and to shake the head for "Yes". Try it. It really is very hard if you have spent your life doing the opposite. So choose a language with radically different paralinguistic features, preferably embedded in a culture (or cultures) very different from your own.
If possible, too, choose a language that has a different script from yours. Chinese is ideal, with its thousands of ideograms, even though their components are not as random as they might seem at first. Thai is pretty good, with its many consonants and vowels, even though most of the letters are actually phonetic. And if you opt for Serbo-Croat, choose the Serbian version, which is written using the Cyrillic alphabet, rather than the Croatian version, which is written with straightforward Roman letters.
In Ten Easy Steps
2. Choose a hard language to learn
Languages differ from each other in several ways, including syntax, sounds and semantics. The US Foreign Language Service’s classification of languages according to the time it takes its employees to learn them shows that those languages objectively closer to English are likely to be learnt faster. So unless there is something really special about diplomats and spies, choose a language far from your own.
However, languages also differ in less obvious ways. I recently tried to learn Bulgarian, and one of the hardest parts was learning to nod for "No" and to shake the head for "Yes". Try it. It really is very hard if you have spent your life doing the opposite. So choose a language with radically different paralinguistic features, preferably embedded in a culture (or cultures) very different from your own.
If possible, too, choose a language that has a different script from yours. Chinese is ideal, with its thousands of ideograms, even though their components are not as random as they might seem at first. Thai is pretty good, with its many consonants and vowels, even though most of the letters are actually phonetic. And if you opt for Serbo-Croat, choose the Serbian version, which is written using the Cyrillic alphabet, rather than the Croatian version, which is written with straightforward Roman letters.
Murphy's Laws
18 February 2013
HOW NOT TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
In Ten Easy Steps
Step 4. Minimise your motivation
Unless you want to do something with the foreign language input you get, your mind will probably treat it simply as "noise" rather than "signal". This makes motivation crucial.
When I arranged to come to Thailand, my motivation was very high, for I planned a very long-term stay.
However, between fixing a job and arriving, I had a 3-month contract in Sofia to fulfil. In Sofia, I had a wonderful time, so that when I finally arrived in Bangkok, I had half a mind on getting back to Bulgaria. This impulse to escape was exacerbated by an awful first week in Bangkok, dealing with jet-lag, insomnia, the heat, dust and stench, the pollution, the gridlocked traffic and being billeted in student-type accommodation. My “integrative” motivation therefore rapidly fell to near-zero.
There remained the intellectual challenge, the fact that attempting Thai would be grist to the mill of language learning experience and understanding. However, in instrumental terms, keeping a good hold on English looked as though it would be of greater long-term benefit than learning Thai. Paradoxically, I can now manage a fair imitation of "Thai English" but barely a whisper of real Thai.
HOW NOT TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
In Ten Easy Steps
Step 4. Minimise your motivation
Unless you want to do something with the foreign language input you get, your mind will probably treat it simply as "noise" rather than "signal". This makes motivation crucial.
When I arranged to come to Thailand, my motivation was very high, for I planned a very long-term stay.
However, between fixing a job and arriving, I had a 3-month contract in Sofia to fulfil. In Sofia, I had a wonderful time, so that when I finally arrived in Bangkok, I had half a mind on getting back to Bulgaria. This impulse to escape was exacerbated by an awful first week in Bangkok, dealing with jet-lag, insomnia, the heat, dust and stench, the pollution, the gridlocked traffic and being billeted in student-type accommodation. My “integrative” motivation therefore rapidly fell to near-zero.
There remained the intellectual challenge, the fact that attempting Thai would be grist to the mill of language learning experience and understanding. However, in instrumental terms, keeping a good hold on English looked as though it would be of greater long-term benefit than learning Thai. Paradoxically, I can now manage a fair imitation of "Thai English" but barely a whisper of real Thai.
Murphy's Laws
HOW NOT TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
In Ten Easy Steps
Step 5. Develop avoidance strategies
Reduce your need to use the foreign language.
Get a job in which you use your own language all day (such as teaching it or writing it), preferably one in which you are surrounded by fellow speakers and/or by local people who are happy to speak your language and expect you to do so, too.
If you're in business, get your company to hire a competent interpreter for you.
Make sure you live with, or close to, speakers of your own language.
Socialise with people who speak your language and are happy to do so.
Shop in supermarkets, where silent transactions suffice. Eat at home or in self-service places or places which cater for tourists and their strange languages.
Do not initiate exchanges in the target language.
In Ten Easy Steps
Step 5. Develop avoidance strategies
Reduce your need to use the foreign language.
Get a job in which you use your own language all day (such as teaching it or writing it), preferably one in which you are surrounded by fellow speakers and/or by local people who are happy to speak your language and expect you to do so, too.
If you're in business, get your company to hire a competent interpreter for you.
Make sure you live with, or close to, speakers of your own language.
Socialise with people who speak your language and are happy to do so.
Shop in supermarkets, where silent transactions suffice. Eat at home or in self-service places or places which cater for tourists and their strange languages.
Do not initiate exchanges in the target language.
Murphy's Laws
HOW NOT TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
In Ten Easy Steps
Step 6. Limit input
In addition to what you learned in Step 5, avoid radio and TV in the target language.
The Internet and cable or satellite TV can keep you informed and entertained in your own language.
If you make the mistake of watching your favourite programmes dubbed into the local language, your knowledge of programmme format will make situations easy to predict; this will help you to guess the meaning of the language, which, unfortunately, might cause you to learn some of it.
Be canny: for instance, English football fans in Thailand could watch live Premiership matches on Indonesian TV, so that the language and language awareness they pick up would not be Thai.
Read a good deal, but only in your own language. Bangkok, astonishingly, has three English-language daily newspapers, as well as English-language libraries and bookshops.
Talk shop while socialising. This will prevent the people you talk to from giving you information about the target language and culture.
If you must talk about such things, try and do it only with people whose language awareness is low.
Try to hang out with people who, if they are aware of the local culture, do not like it.
This will further help to keep your integrative motivation usefully low, always providing you can stand such people.
In Ten Easy Steps
Step 6. Limit input
In addition to what you learned in Step 5, avoid radio and TV in the target language.
The Internet and cable or satellite TV can keep you informed and entertained in your own language.
If you make the mistake of watching your favourite programmes dubbed into the local language, your knowledge of programmme format will make situations easy to predict; this will help you to guess the meaning of the language, which, unfortunately, might cause you to learn some of it.
Be canny: for instance, English football fans in Thailand could watch live Premiership matches on Indonesian TV, so that the language and language awareness they pick up would not be Thai.
Read a good deal, but only in your own language. Bangkok, astonishingly, has three English-language daily newspapers, as well as English-language libraries and bookshops.
Talk shop while socialising. This will prevent the people you talk to from giving you information about the target language and culture.
If you must talk about such things, try and do it only with people whose language awareness is low.
Try to hang out with people who, if they are aware of the local culture, do not like it.
This will further help to keep your integrative motivation usefully low, always providing you can stand such people.
Murphy's Laws
HOW NOT TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
In Ten Easy Steps
Step 7. Avoid instruction
After an interim of strange doubt, the value of foreign language teaching to foreign language learning has been re-established.
Accordingly, it is best avoided; particularly if you are by nature analytical or enjoy the role of disciple.
If you feel compelled to go through the motions, select a teacher who will talk to you in the literary version of the language or give you false information about it in your own language.
Ideally, choose a teacher whose personality clashes with yours, who is unreliable about showing up, and whom you pay either little or nothing (so that you will not be determined to get your money’s worth.)
Make the arrangement as informal as possible, so that you do not have fixed, definite times for study, and so that you can cancel frequently.
Translate and be damned. Formulate everything you want to say in your own language first, and translate it badly, i.e. word for word and with scant regard for context.
Insist on having as much of the target language you encounter as possible translated (badly) for you.
Target language videos, discs and tapes are best avoided, but if you do have such things, do not use them to practise the things that parroting can help you with, like phonemes, tones and formulaic language (set phrases); use them instead to try and analyse the language.
Use books to practise reading aloud: unless you intend to be a news-reader, this is a fairly useless, excessively difficult exercise - it is hard enough to do it well in one’s own language, and trying it in a foreign language is an excellent recipe for failure.
In Ten Easy Steps
Step 7. Avoid instruction
After an interim of strange doubt, the value of foreign language teaching to foreign language learning has been re-established.
Accordingly, it is best avoided; particularly if you are by nature analytical or enjoy the role of disciple.
If you feel compelled to go through the motions, select a teacher who will talk to you in the literary version of the language or give you false information about it in your own language.
Ideally, choose a teacher whose personality clashes with yours, who is unreliable about showing up, and whom you pay either little or nothing (so that you will not be determined to get your money’s worth.)
Make the arrangement as informal as possible, so that you do not have fixed, definite times for study, and so that you can cancel frequently.
Translate and be damned. Formulate everything you want to say in your own language first, and translate it badly, i.e. word for word and with scant regard for context.
Insist on having as much of the target language you encounter as possible translated (badly) for you.
Target language videos, discs and tapes are best avoided, but if you do have such things, do not use them to practise the things that parroting can help you with, like phonemes, tones and formulaic language (set phrases); use them instead to try and analyse the language.
Use books to practise reading aloud: unless you intend to be a news-reader, this is a fairly useless, excessively difficult exercise - it is hard enough to do it well in one’s own language, and trying it in a foreign language is an excellent recipe for failure.
Murphy's Laws
HOW NOT TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
In Ten Easy Steps
Step 9. Do not persevere
Be influenced by this article.
Rosenthal and Rubin (1978) showed the strong impact that one’s own and other people’s expectations can have on learning.
So expect to fail, and let other people know you expect to fail.
When you have a frustrating experience, take it to heart.
My experience has brought home to me the fact that motivation is dynamic, not static. When it ebbs, let it go.
In the last resort: [see step 10]
In Ten Easy Steps
Step 9. Do not persevere
Be influenced by this article.
Rosenthal and Rubin (1978) showed the strong impact that one’s own and other people’s expectations can have on learning.
So expect to fail, and let other people know you expect to fail.
When you have a frustrating experience, take it to heart.
My experience has brought home to me the fact that motivation is dynamic, not static. When it ebbs, let it go.
In the last resort: [see step 10]
