A very slow pace…  Still the effort is nice…

I kinda feel bad for her, but it’s all too common in Japan……

Not the model, mind you…

I find myself in the odd position of nodding my head in agreement to the UK paper The Independent, whose sports’ page writer, Emily Dugan, also questions the plausibility of Mr. Capello’s plans to acquire English “in a month.”  She lists some means by which he may plan on doing so, but personally, I’m going with Theory #5: he’s overreaching, and will pour lots of time, money, and effort into learning English, slightly improve in a month, get exasperated, and then do what everyone else does — learn slowly and steadily over the years as he lives/works in England….

Learn English in a month???  Sounds…  ambitious…

Quote: Timothy Blake, managing director of the London School of English is sceptical that fluency can be reached in any language in a few weeks.

I share the skepticism.  Language learning is a years-long process.  Now, it is necessary to state a couple of advantages that Mr. Capello is going to have:

1. He’s not starting from scratch.  He’s obviously learned some before, so he can build on prior knowledge.
2. He’ll be fully immersed from January when he arrives at his job in England.
3. He’ll have significant financial backing for learning the language.

Still, even with all these factors, a month is simply an unrealistic time frame to do much more than to solidfy some daily use phrases.  Even after a few months, he may become conversant, but “fluency” is still something that varies from conversation to conversation.  One will always come across phrases that one doesn’t recognize.  For example, I consider myself basically fluent in Mandarin — I don’t have any difficulties in daily conversation, but there are still occasional breakdowns.  Just the other night, I was trying to explain a sword forging process (one of those subjects that simply doesn’t come up all that often) to a Chinese friend, and I found myself having to circumlocute (explain around unknown vocabulary) and codeswitch (change into English) a lot.

Anyway, good luck Mr. Capello!

You interested in learning Chinese?  Check this out.  It sounds promising!  (It looks to only cover jian ti zi — simplified characters– though.)

The article is written to encourage Indian nationals to seek careers in Indian languages, but most of the article could be applied to any country and any language.  Enjoy!

Ummm… Yes….

 Via an OpEd in SouthCoastToday wherein a teacher whines about the inherent “unfairness” of non-native English speaking FL teachers having to comply with…. wait for it….  basic job requirements (*gasp* — shudder)….

While the immediate argument that proponents of this guy’s position may make would be that English fluency is not “relevant” to the job if you are teaching a FL, the truth is that fluency in the national language (and particularly the L1 of the students) is always relevant.  The ability to read/send school memos, communicate with parents, communicate with parents on issues beyond the scope of class (i.e., beyond students L2 ability), communicate with fellow teachers, and the like are all pertinent to job performance.  Employers, be they a private or public institution, always get to determine their own employment criteria, and if they believe that basic language skills are important (which, to be frank, is pretty much a given in most careers that don’t involve taking out the trash), that’s just the breaks.  The teacher the OpEd writer highlights apparently had 7 years of deferments in which to pass the test, but apparently never made it.  I think 7 year is a pretty fair amount of time in which to comply with basic job requirement which were certainly stated at the beginning of employment.

Even in the context of teaching “major subjects to non-English-speaking countries,” the implied function of these teachers is to “transition” the students to English.   It reminds me of Fall, 2006 when DISD had over a hundred newly hired bilingual edteachers who couldn’t pass a basic English test…  (Note to Dallas: “bilingual” doesn’t mean “Spanish-only.”)  Additionally, bilingual ed teachers usually have massive reporting duties to let non-Spanish (or whatever language is used for instruction) speaking administrators to efficiently monitor what is happening in the classroom.

Now, it is worth pointing out that there are countries that specifically hire FL teachers with no skills in the national language to teach in public and private schools.  Japan, Taiwan, China, South Korea, etc. are notable for doing this.  The key is that they specially “carve out” space for these “teachers” (who are usually not teachers by profession), and limit their responsibilities.  Still, these positions often incur massive problems due to basic communication problems (as well as massive irresponsibility on the part of some of the less qualified “teachers” — note some bitterness on my part), and I have long argued that these countries would be better served with fewer, but more qualified teachers — particularly highly proficient English speakers who are highly proficient in the L1 of the country and familiar with the native educational establishment.  Unfortunately, most of East Asia is still under the delusion that 1) English = white people; and 2) native speakers are mandatory for gaining any sort of language proficiency.

This is a microcosm a larger argument in the second language acquisition profession: that of whether or not  native speakers  make better foreign language teachers.  There are advantages and disadvantages to using native speakers.  Many of the disadvantages are listed above, whereas the obvious advantage is language and cultural fluency.  While most everyone agrees that using non-teachers is simply messed up (though their existence in the E. Asian EFL market simply reflects the economic reality that demand for native-speaker teachers greatly exceeds supply), opinion is pretty evenly divided over the native vs. non-native argument.  My own take: non-native (but sharing L1 and educational culture with the students — and still demonstrating high proficiency in the L2) is advantageous in the beginning stages of L2 instruction — where much grammatical information would be more efficiently taught using the students’ L1, and where meeting students’ educational expectations is paramount).  At this point, having an unfamiliar teacher the students can’t fully communicate with is simply detrimental.  It’s only at the high stages of learning that a native teacher would become advantageous.  When your focus becomes fluency of expression and accent, the native speakers of course fit the bill better as they are usually the very model the students are seeking to imitate.  In practice this simple philosophy could eliminate 60-70% of the foreign-held positions in countries like my beloved Taiwan.  Essentially, native speakers would be relegated to private industries (cram schools) which market the native speaker as teacher model and high-level classes for FL majors in high schools and universities.  Now, the chances of that happening are very low indeed — too many vested interests…

In sum: Does the OpEd have merit?  No. 

Should FL teachers speak the language of the country where they work?  Yes.

I noted before that some schools are giving Ipods to students for language study (paging UofA — Hello?).  It turns out that the people at Apple have been intentionally developing this idea, and you can download L2 lesson podcasts from their site:

Quote:

Language Skills ¿Habla español? If you wish the answer were “sí,” check out iTunes’ language offerings. Language podcasts are a great way to supplement a course, or to bone up on some foreign phrases if you’re traveling abroad. To locate language lessons, click on Podcasts in the iTunes Store box and then click on the Education category. Select Language Courses in the More Education box. You’ll find many different approaches to learning Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and other tongues (including one podcast dedicated to Argentine slang).

-Taken from MacWorld.com

This is probably old news to some passionate Ipod fans, but hey, gimme a break.  I’m a Dell Jukebox user.  And for Christmas, the ultimate toy to make Mac fans fans cry!!!!

As a general rule, those “Learn a language quickly” systems tend to be crapola…  The good ones can get you started, but if you’re after real fluency (of any level), there’s no substitute for being taught by a real, live, breathing human.  If you’re merely looking for a few phrases before travel, the human option is still the superior one (as then you can hone-in directly on what you want/need to say), but language learning systems will do. 

Pimsleur is an all-audio (no book) system, and thus will appeal to some and scare off others.  They are pretty upfront on their strengths and weaknesses.  You will not learn how to write, which can be particularly limiting if the language’s writing system differs from English, and you want to use a phrasebook or dictionary.  The advantage is that you get a considerable amount of pronunciation practice.  You’re still limited by it’s being a non-interactive system — i.e., you can’t get any corrective feedback from tape recorders when you’re slaughtering the pronunciation.  Still, of all the systems I’ve reviewed (quite a few!), I like Pimsleur.  It works for me.  I admittedly have got pretty good ears for strange sounds.  I’ve picked up enough languages to be able to distinguish even most phonemes that are not in my personal repertoire (though I’ll still have as much trouble actually pronouncingthem as anyone else).  Pimsleur takes you through one conversation per unit (run time, roughly 30 min.) and then steps you through the words and phrases, with frequent trips back to practice previously learned content.  That’s what I like about it — it doesn’t just present once, assume you have it, and then plunge on.  Pimsleur focuses on mastery of material, not quantity.  The fact that every language series does the exact same series of conversations does get on one’s nerves (thought, I’ll admit, it’s probably rare that someone does more than one or two of these — I’ve done more in the realm of 10+ for a prior research project).  The curious (though, easy to guess why) exception is the fact that tea and coffee get substituted for beer and wine in the Arabic and Farsi courses.  One major limitation is the fact that you can’t easily skip ahead for needed content.  If you want to know a specific word/phrase, you’re pretty much stuck listening to some 15 hours of material, hoping it will come up.  Likewise, I found the presentational ordering of the material a bit strange at times.  The focus is for business people, so “meet and great” and ordering are stressed, while tour-centric phrases such as “how much is it?” are towards the end.  While the series tends to explain grammar as you get to it, the explanations are pretty shallow.  People who want to gain real facility with the language would be advised to complement the program with something else.

Strong points: listening/speaking focus, drills the material into your head, frequent repetition and practice.

Weak points: no accompanying text, can’t skip ahead for needed material/words

A good idea, albeit the author probably chose the film least relevant to normal people…

Quote: Of course, learning languages through “Star Wars” leaves the speaker with a lot of useless things to say. Foreign translations of lightsaber, and Death Star are unlikely to help out on a trip abroad….

Admitting that I can recite lines from Star Wars like a trained canary makes me a geek, but if those lines are in Spanish, I’ve just added a new skill … albeit remaining a geek.

DVD language functions are great ways of improving/practicing language skills, however one needs to stay vigilant, as translation accuracy may vary wildly line-by-line.  Still, I’ve oft recommended to (Asian) students (learning English) to listen carefully to the dialogue in well-known/loved movies — the type you never grow tired of…  It’s a good way of getting pronunciation and phrasing input — if we listen…  Make good use of the subtitles as well!  The key is to turn off your native language subtitles.  Instead, double the audio track with the FL subtitles.  It makes for stronger input, and will prevent you from missing some of the difficult-to-distinguish sounds.  While the authors lament that most N. American DVD releases only carry Spanish and French is all to true, you can easily purchase foreign DVDs (even of American titles) that will give  you more diverse options.  You will need a region-less DVD player to make use of this option.  Cheat codes to allow your DVD player to access all regions are available online.  I don’t condone such, nor will I give a link, but they do exist (wink, wink).  Regional DVDs will typically carry all the translations needed within their region — i.e., in Asia, you’ll typically find Chinese, Korean, Thai, etc.  Audio tracks are not always available, but it’s worth checking for.  Children’s DVDs are the most likely to be dubbed…

Just as anecdotal evidence to the effect of this, many a person from the Netherlands has commented that one of their keys to language success is the fact that Dutch TV apparently dubs nothing.  A large percentage of their broadcast television is in English (or other European languages) with Dutch subtitles, so even at early ages, kids are exposed to massive amounts of foreign language input.  I’ve made use of this myself.  I must add that FL subtitles help me a lot.  In Taiwan, nearly everything is subtitled in Chinese (even though broadcast in Chinese) because some people (like my mother-in-law) don’t speak Mandarin proficiently, and thus need the subtitles to stay abreast of what’s going on.  Personally, I found that having the subtitles in addition to the spoken content improved my understanding of broadcast TV ten-fold.  While the vast majority of Taiwan TV was admittedly awful (to me… my wife loves it!), still the subtitles helped to draw me in as a potential viewer, and had a terrific effect on my Chinese literacy skills.