I’ve been asked to write about language learning, so I’m honoring that request.
Back in Ukraine, one of my professors of English shared with us the story of his recent trip to the UK. (This was in 1995, and people were starting to travel.) Professor Sergueyev had 18 years of experience teaching English at the university level. He was a published scholar who was considered one of the best professors of English linguistics at our prestigious university.
“I was alone at the hotel,” Professor Sergueyev told us, “and I decided to go out for a pack of cigarettes. But I didn’t manage to make the purchase. At the store, I had no idea what to say, and I didn’t understand a word of what was being said to me. There has to be something wrong with the way we teach languages around here.” He looked very sad and almost broken as he was saying that.
The method that was used exclusively to teach foreign languages in the USSR is known as “the grammar-translation method.” The way it works is as follows:
the teacher lectures students about the grammar of the target language, the students memorize grammar rules, and then translate separate sentences into the target language. We spent a lot of time talking about the language, but never speaking the language itself. As a result, our vocabulary was completely passive, and our knowledge of the idiomatic expressions was non-existent. The difference between “go out”, “go by”, “go without”, “go against”, “go after”, for instance, was unknown to us.
When I started my methodology of foreign language teaching workshop in Canada, I discovered that languages were taught in a completely different way in North America. The instruction was conducted on the basis of the communicative method. Its central tenets are the following:
– only the target language is spoken in the classroom from Day 1.
– the teacher doesn’t lecture but, rather, let’s the students speak.
– the time dedicated to explaining the grammar is reduced as much as possible. You learn the grammar AFTER you learn to speak, not before.
– the teacher needs to spend as little time as possible pontificating behind the lectern. Instead, s/he approaches the students who work in small groups and speaks to them individually (in the target language.)
– a language doesn’t exist outside of a culture. This means that the instruction materials should be as culture-specific as possible.
– at least 80% of class time should consist of students communicating in the target language.
The methodology seminar was a little like a sex workshop. “You’ve got to learn to relinquish control,” the instructor kept saying. “Stop trying to control everything, just let it go. Don’t keep correcting the students all the time, relax, have fun, it will only start working when you stop worrying whether it will work.”
All of this sounded completely unbelievable to me.
“No,” I said to my methodology professor. “No, no, no, no, no. I will feel like a total idiot, marching into the classroom and speaking nothing but Spanish to the students who don’t know a word of the language.”
“Just give it a try,” the prof said with a kind smile.
I tried the method even though I was convinced it would be a disaster. The results shocked me: by the end of the semester, my students spoke the language. Of course, their speaking skills were quite basic but even the worst students would have no trouble making purchases in a Spanish-speaking country. After just 4 months, they were more comfortable with the language than my professors of English back in Ukraine.
If you want to learn a foreign language, I have the perfect recipe for you: speak and read. Use every opportunity you have to communicate with people in the language. And try to read something in it every day. Put on music in the language as much as possible. If you have a TV channel that broadcasts in the language, leave it on in the background.
And remember: speaking a language is like achieving an orgasm. You have to lose the fear and relinquish control. Forget how it will make you look, forget about making a mistake, just enjoy the process.
Clarissa's Blog 
Thanks for writing about this! I appreciate the reminder to read every day. I’m trying to learn Attic Greek and I’ve got to remember to read it daily.
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// only the target language is spoken in the classroom from Day 1
Even if students don’t know ABC? Never even write a translation or a word on the blackboard? Do students, at least, have lecture slides / materials / words before to be able to check in a dictionary?
When we immigrated, the teacher of Hebrew at courses for new (adult) immigrants didn’t speak Russian, but the studies followed a textbook and people could consult a dictionary.
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Obviously, both English and Spanish use the Latin alphabet, so we never had a problem there.
I prefer to explain words, rather than offer translations. Often, I just show what the words mean. Students are free to use the dictionary, of course. The trick nowadays is to get them to take their noses out of the Google translator.
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Fun fact: because of numerous immigrants in Israel there was (probably still is) a special newspaper in simple Hebrew and at more advanced stages of the course people read it too. I mean a real newspaper, not created by the course’s teachers or anything. In English there surely are such newspaper(s) too.
Have you ever brought articles from such easy-Spanish newspaper(s)? Seems a fun activity. Or written them yourself?
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Newspapers in Spanish are hard to read. They are written in this difficult formal language, so I reserve newspaper articles for more advanced courses. But I have a selection of short fictional texts that I offer starting from Beginners I. I believe they need to be given texts to read as early as possible.
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So, learning every language is like learning your first language.
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You are absolutely right, David. The goal is precisely to imitate the conditions where one learned to speak one’s first language as much as possible.
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@el
“Even if students don’t know ABC? Never even write a translation or a word on the blackboard? Do students, at least, have lecture slides / materials / words before to be able to check in a dictionary? ”
Did you know your first language when you’ve born?
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I think there is a big difference. Children’s brains, esp. newborns brains, do work differently. For adults it’s harder to learn a new language. F.e. I heard that 12-13 is the cutoff age to learn speak a new language without an accent.
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I’m still not sure about the accents. I believe they are hugely psychological. My father learned English after the age of 20 and even before he spent a single day in an English-speaking environment, American scholars he met during conferences were absolutely convinced he was a fellow American. (His last name is Jewish, so it didn’t give out his origins).
I started learning Spanish at 23. Just two minutes ago I was speaking to these Dominican boys who were convinced I’m from Spain. I have also made portenos (Buenos Aires Argentineans) believe I’m one of them. We even exchanged memories of our neighborhood in Buenos Aires where we all grew up. 🙂
But in English, a language I speak my entire life, I do have a Russian accent. Sometimes, it becomes very strong, sometimes it disappears. It’s all very fascinating.
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A funny observation: here at the resort, I distinguish Russian-Americans from people straight from Russia immediately. The immigrants have this inflected language, while the Russian Russians 🙂 speak in a very flat tone. My Russian often becomes very Spanish-inflected. For instance, I start placing the tonal emphasis on the last word in the sentence, which regular Russian doesn’t have.
This is fascinating stuff.
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I think the accents depends not on your knowledge of language, but how close is the diction and pronounciation of your first language to the second one. I imagine for you, Russian/Ukrainian diction is much closer to Spanish, including the same sounds for vowels, than English diction. My first language is Slavic and I can have a perfect accent in e.g. Italian or German, but in e.g. English and Swedish there are sounds that I can not reproduce properly, because they don’t exist in my native language. And I won’t be able to reproduce those sounds, not because I can not learn the languages, but because I can not ever hear them, since my ear wasn’t trained as a baby to hear those sounds.
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Unfortunately, I would say that the method through which I was taught French was closer to the Ukrainian one. As a result, I can’t think fast enough to hold-up a conversation.
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I might not say it exactly like this to my middle school ELLs 😉 but I do encourage them to just communicate with out fear.
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My friends who do natural language processing (i.e. learning/processing text with computers) tell me that from their observations in the wild grammar as understood by academics is not really there in actual language outside of some very formal and well composed texts. According to them, in the past they went to great lengths to “teach” the rules of grammar of a given language to the computer only to find more text breaking them than actually complying with them.
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Thank you! What do you think about modifying this method to teach dead languages? For example Attic Greek, like the first commenter, or other classical or medieval languages, where the goal tends to be reading fluency, not speaking.
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When I was learning Latin, I approached it as one would a field in mathematics. Every sentence was an equation I had to solve.
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DEH, Phil Damon, whom I believe you will remember, taught Latin with the audio-lingual method when I was a child and that was a current alternative to grammar and translation. I am told Latin is now taught communicatively but I have not looked at textbooks. I think a reason to teach productive and not just reading skills is that it imparts more permanent reading skills.
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We were taught Latin (at Yale) on the basis of this completely ridiculous system where we spent all the time learning to translate a single text. Then, at the exam we had to translate a portion that had been covered in class. Which meant that you could get by simply by memorizing this single text.
That course was one huge waste of time. And then everybody wonders why the Classics departments are dying.
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Can you comment on learning a language when you don’t at some point have an opportunity to visit someplace where you are immersed and forced to engage with native speakers for an extended time?
Also, what do think about “self-study” approaches?
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This is a good question. When I was learning Spanish, I really wanted to do a Study Abroad immersion program but I had no money and there were family circumstances prevented me from going, as well.
However, I did learn to speak the language very fluently without ever living in a Spanish-speaking country. All you need to do is find a native speaker and do a language exchange with them: for an hour each day you speak first their language and then yours. It’s useful, convenient, productive, and, best of all, free. Nowadays, one can find a native speaker who wants to learn your language and share theirs online and chat on Skype. This is a much better strategy than paying for something like Rosetta Stone which is expensive and doesn’t produce great results.
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I assign 30 minutes a day of television to graduate students and M.D. residents for whom English is a poorly spoken second language. I get the feeling that the Chinese often teach languages in the Russian methodology.
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This is a brilliant idea.
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