Tenuous language connection, I admit, but very funny, and utterly amazing.  A good language workout for students of Japanese, and those who don’t speak/study Japanese will still get the premise and the point.  Basically, just a demo of how to streamline your morning “get ready for work” routine.  My wife and I spent ten minutes working on the tie bit which I’m definitely fitting into my life (those 3-5 times a year that I actually find myself socially obligated to wear a tie, that is).  The wife is demanding that I formally acknowledge that it was she, in fact, who figured it out…  To be honest, I got a bit of a “mercy pass” on Cub Scout knot-tying activities.  Anyway, I got it from Allahpundit, so give him so traffic.  He’s got some great observations on the nature of why Japanese television concepts like this just wouldn’t work in US culture, as half the appeal is what he terms the fun of watching WTF culture…  I’m not completely convinced, as Japanese are completely in on the joke (i.e., you don’t have to be watching from outside the culture to find this funny).  I think it’s merely a matter of Japanese self-depreciation taking forms that Westerners would never dream of, and voila, instantly comic and unreplicable…

I found this post “How I learned Chinese in only 2 years” through Kelly’s site, so please give her a visit too…  The writer, a Mr. Jason Sharp, in his retelling of his own story of Chinese language acquisition, wittingly or otherwise lays bare some of the principle axioms of language learning.

I made a pact with myself to avoid speaking English and eating western food at all costs. I never joined the other students at McDonalds, and when we had conversations I always initiated with Chinese. I spent my meal times in the school cafeteria with locals or wandering about the city. This was too much for most people, so they branded me instead of learning from me.

They should have learned from me, because my language level jumped quickly. At the end of the summer I was already able to hold basic conversations with only a little trouble, while the rest were still stuck at basic introductions and body language for communication.

This was due to more than just meal time conversations: I was quick to root myself in the city and culture. The best way to learn a language is to constantly be around people who speak the language, and the best way to do that is to find a girlfriend. I found a girlfriend within the first two months abroad and spent nearly everyday with her for hours on end. This kept up my motivation, besides being in a situation that I was forced to learn, as I was much happier with a girlfriend than those who were still having trouble adjusting to the culture.

The key factor that he exemplifies as being integral to language learning success is motivation.  Motivation can be internal or external.  Internal motivation usually comes from a sense of closeness or connectedness to the language/culture being studied, whereas external motivation is caused by the perceived rewards of language acquisition and/or external pressure to perform in the language by specific people.  In this case, he apparently had both.  He describes an unusually high affinity for Chinese language study even while still in the U.S. (which, from my own observations, and the comments of my Chinese teaching peers, is pretty rare…  usually by about the end of the 3rd week, students excitement for the new language starts to fade as they realize just how difficult and different Chinese is).  This leads him to the rather draconian decision of limiting his contact with English-speaking classmates and friends once he goes to Beijing, and, in effect, building a Chinese “bubble”to operate out of.  This is indeed a crucial step towards accelerated language learning.  As I’ve noted many times, the language we learn is merely the sum of our experiences in using it.  The more time one spends using one’s native language in lieu of the target language one is trying to acquire, the more one, in a sense, delays the eventual acquisition of the target language.  By taking full advantage of every waking moment, Mr. Sharp is able to advance in terms of fluency at a rate far beyond the average which is slowed by frequent “respites” from L2 use.  It’s worth noting that this approach is not always feasible.  First, the psychological strain of essentially divorcing oneself from one’s mother tongue can only be withstood if one’s motivation to learn the target language is unusually high.  Second, economic and social realities can often prevent one from fully taking advantage of one’s time in a foreign country.  Many people working in English-teaching jobs in other countries initially plan to tackle the language of the area only to discover that their progress is slowed considerably by the fact that their job essentially causes them to spend 30-40 hours (or more) per week in an all-English environment.  In addition, until one hits a certain threshold level of foreign language competency, it can be extremely difficult to foster any real relationships with natives that would give one the ability to practice anything beyond daily routines of ordering food and the like.

The girlfriend…  Well, this has become rather axiomatic across the world.  Amongst foreign students in other countries, the most frequent advice given is to find a boy/girlfriend.  What can I say?  It works…  I’ll freely admit that a great deal of the reason I learned Chinese so much more easily than some of my other languages is because I met my wife just as I started studying.  This offers to key benefits: 1) it increases motivation as the language becomes personalized; and 2) one simply has more opportunities to speak and across broader domains of use when you are in a committed relationship with someone.  When I was a young(er — I’m still only in my early 30’s, dangit!) newbie to Taiwan I was struck by how much faster I was progressing in Chinese compared to my classmate.  When I started investigating possible reasons for this discrepancy in rate of progress, one of my classmates hit the nail on the head when she said that, everyday after work, I would go home, meet up with my girlfriend (now wife), and spend the next 4-6 hours speaking largely in Chinese about any/every topic under the sun.  Most of my classmates would go out to eat, and then either go back to an empty apartment or meet up with their fellow ex-pats.  Either way, they weren’t getting much in the way of language reinforcement.  Of course, relationships don’t have to be romantic, but there are few other human scenarios that entail voluntarily spending so much time together.

Classes…  Next time I won’t waste my time with class at all. Even compulsory socialization isn’t a good reason to go. Past the basics, getting yourself into real life situations is the best way.  I can’t really agree here.  While “real life situations” are often the best teacher, it is normally quite beneficial to have the support of a focused language class.  While Mr. Sharp makes the oft-true observation that much of what we learn in classes is quite arcane, I’ve found that we’re often exposed to more arcane language than we’re really aware, and without previous background in these subjects, we often can be completely oblivious about things that come up.  Also, certain grammatical and conversational forms can be rather complex in terms of function and/or use, to where, barring explicit instruction, the foreign student may misuse or misunderstand the form for years (all with no correction from natives, who will usually still understand the intent) before discovering the error.  Essentially, at the more advanced levels classes are less about language acquisition than refinement.

This blog has been functioning for about 27 months, and is ranks well on search engines, as I apparently had much more to say than I ever really anticipated when I started this little endeavor.  During that time, my daily readership has slowly-but-surely expanded (certainly not to the level of blogs like the Huffington Post, but then again, whose has?), and recently I’ve gotten some comments and questions that, while certainly not offensive or even misinformed, seemed to indicate a lack of familiarity with me and with the point of this blog.  Maybe I’ve gotten a bit too caught up in “Benny Lava” videos or something…  Regardless, for the benefit of my newer readers, and purely for the fun of reviewing what’s changed in the last two years, I’m re-posting my welcome message when this site was born (note: the blog had existed for about 5 months previously on a blogspot.com page, but this was from when I opened the foreignlanguageblog.com URL).  I’ll be replying to my own comments in red with anything that’s changed……..

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Welcome to the greatest site in the universe!!!  Ooopss…  That title was already taken…

Welcome to the foreign language blog: your one stop source for information on foreign language learning.  People linking in from my How to Learn a Foreign Language blog on blogsite will already know a bit about me, but for those new to this, first, I want to introduce myself:

For the purposes of this blog, I go by the title “The Foreign Language Doctor.”  I’m a teacher and student of foreign languages.  I’ve formally studied 9 languages — six of which I speak at a high level

hmmm… This is one of those areas of constant redefinition in terms of fluency… Usually, I claim 5 of my languages (English, French, Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin) to be “high level,” whereas my Taiwanese (Hokkien) is so-so. The other three languages in this count were German, Dutch, and Thai, which I’ve all studied formally, but for short amounts of time (and thus, don’t know much more than enough to enhance tourism). Of course, during the course of this blog, I’ve started studying both Arabic and Cantonese, neither of which I’d call “high level,” but both certainly better than German, Dutch and Thai…

Beyond that practical learning experience, however, I also bring to the table some linguistics expertise.  I am currently a PhD student

candidate (wink) in a Second Language Acquisition program at a major American university.  My study focus is on language learning neural processes and the pedagogical implications 

(still true, but it’s been further refined to the cross-scriptal psycholinguistic reading processes).  

Now, while I could go into lots of detail about the minute details of what I do, I’ll spare you.  It’s mindnumbingly boring to most people outside of linguistics.  Let’s sum it up as saying that I hope to make a career of investigating the marvelous process by which human beings learn to communicate in other languages.What is the purpose of this site?

While being in the language profession, I’ve come across many resources for language teachers, but painfully few for language learners

such sites have literally exploded across the web since the advent of this blog — see the “technology for L2 learners” link to the left side of this blog or the “links” section .  Sure, you can find vocabulary lists and the like on sites spread out across the web, but there are few places to go to ask questions if you’re stuck, or to inquire about the language learning process itself.  That is where I hope to step in and help people.  Note: this blog is not designed with a single language in mind.  There is no site function to directly help you to learn Russian, for example.  Instead, the topic matter of this blog is going to be about language learning in general.  Of course, I’m likely to use specific language examples from my own experience in this.  This site is meant to be a resource and a community for language learners the world over.

My goals with this site…I like learning and teaching languages, and I have noticed that most people have definite interest in this topic area.  I am in one of the few professions where people I meet at cocktail parties don’t have to fake interest at what I do.  Everyone, barring traumatic injury or developmental anomaly, speaks a language; so we’re all vested in the topic of language learning.  I hope that this site can become a resource for people at all stages of language learning.

I like writing — it’s almost a prerequisite of academia.  I like talking with people about this topic, and I’m pretty knowledgeable about it — both from the standpoint of academic research in the subject, and from my large amount of experience as a language learner.  I would gladly do this for free, but…. This is a commerical site…  Yes, I am hoping to make some money by tapping into my expertise. 

I’m still working on that elusive sponsorship from Rosetta Stone… but seriously, if any company/person/etc. is interested in placing ads on this site, please email me at the address listed below… As a graduate student, I am stereotypically poverty-stricken, so if and when we manage to attract advertisers, I ask you to please click on the links.  While I’d gladly do this anyway, I would certainly love to at least be able to take the wife out to dinner a couple more times a month…

Most importantly: What I ask of my readers:

Please send any questions you have about language learning (any language) to my email  (fldoctor@foreignlanguageblog.com), or post as a response to my blogs.  Like I said, I’m hoping for this to be a community — and a community only works with active communication.  I can write plenty of entries on things that I like, but only you know what you need.  At the risk of turning into the “Dear Abby” of foreign language learning, I would like this to largely consist of an open Q&A forum on language learning, so send me your questions — any questions related to learning a language– and I’ll do my best to give you an answer…

Seriously!

So let’s have fun!!!!!

The spam filter missed about 30 offers for “male enhancement” today…  That means pills that make you smarter, right?

I’m currently still out-of-state, running my dissertation research.  It’s going slowly, but t least it’s going…  I’ll be back home on Saturday…

Does the military want so badly to recruit me???  If they go iPhone, it just may be a done deal.  Please don’t let them know about my bad back…

…One soldier recently home from Iraq once tried to order an Iraqi man to lie down. To get his point across, the soldier had to demonstrate by stretching out in the dirt. Translation software could help, but what’s the best way to make it available in the field?

The U.S. military in the past would give a soldier an electronic handheld device, made at great expense specially for the battlefield, with the latest software. But translation is only one of many software applications soldiers now need. The future of “networked warfare” requires each soldier to be linked electronically to other troops as well as to weapons systems and intelligence sources. Making sense of the reams of data from satellites, drones and ground sensors cries out for a handheld device that is both versatile and easy to use. With their intuitive interfaces, Apple devices—the iPod Touch and, to a lesser extent, the iPhone—are becoming the handhelds of choice….

Translation is another important area. A new program, Vcommunicator, is now being issued to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It produces spoken and written translations of Arabic, Kurdish and two Afghan languages. It also shows animated graphics of accompanying gestures and body language, and displays pictures of garments, weapons and other objects. Procurement officials are making a “tremendous push” to develop and field militarily useful Apple devices, says Ernie Bright, operations manager of Vcom3D, the Florida firm that developed the software. The iPod has already transformed the way we listen to music. Now it’s taking on war.

I’ll be heading out-of-state tomorrow morning for a couple weeks to conduct dissertation research, so posts will be made irregularly — if at all — during that period, as the status of my internet connectivity is unknown.  Hopefully, however, this trip will net enough usable information to bring the data-collection stage of my dissertation research to a happy conclusion.  On the happy (i.e., non-work) side, this trip will allow me to visit my parents, whose home I haven’t been to in 3 years (stop the lectures on family togetherness — they’ve come to visit me several times during that period).  On the not-so-happy side, the time demands of the trip forced the decision to leave my wife and son dog at home, so it’s gonna be a loooong two weeks…

Today’s snicker moment…

Ummm…  While this isn’t an important flub as the world goes, who has the cojones to even suggest that if GWB made a similar verbal snafu, this wouldn’t be replayed on endless repeat on all the news stations, and tossed about in the papers for weeks…  Now, what are your bets for whether or not you’ll see this anywhere besides rightie blogs and Fox News?  Hope and Change indeed…

It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There’s a lot of — I don’t know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing — and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics.

For the record, Mr. President, they speak German in Austria…  While the local patois is quite distinct from Germany’s, and is usually referred to as Austrian German (Österreichisches Deutsch), it is still German…