It works… Seriously…

It was a Saturday morning, and I did what I had done every Saturdays since I could remember. I got up early, put on my favorite sweatpants; I had outgrown my Batman pajamas, made myself a huge bowl of captain Crunch, which I had bought at the PX of the nearby US Army base. I went into the TV room of our dormitory, and I spent the next several hours watching cartoons: ‘Die Retter Der Erde’, ‘Die Simpsons’, and ‘Die Familie Feuerstein.’ Around twelve o’clock, I ran back to my room, during a commercial, and made a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, with the crusts cut off. Accompanied by a glass of chocolate milk I ate my sandwiches while watching shows for big people, like ‘Raumschiff Enterprise’, ‘Ein Käfig voller Helden’, and ‘Unbekannte Dimensionen.’

I watched till I thought my retinas would burnout. It was a struggle, but I knew this was the price I would have to pay if I wanted to learn German…..

Reading ‘Dances With Wolves,’ instead of a “real” German novel made sense to me. I knew the story, the context, the history; it was all tangible for me. Only the language was new. And that was what I sought to learn. It made perfect sense to me.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my TV viewing and my novel reading, without a dictionary were part of a language acquisition method called “The Core Novel method.” Developed by a brilliant Hungarian polyglot, named Kato Lombo.

Lomb Kato (her personal name) was considered, by Hungarians, to be the greatest living polyglot implemented the “core Novel method. Basically she chose a novel she loved to read, found a copy in the foreign language she wanted to learn, and worked through it.

Dr. Lombo said that when she set out to chose a language and a novel, she asked these questions: “How much am I interested in it? What do I want with it? What does it mean for me? What good is it for me?”

It’s a long article, but read it through…  It makes a very important point.  So much of language learning is dependent upon two things which classes, books, and methods frequently, glaringly omit: interest and relevance to the learner.  I’ve always found that my language learning picks up pace only after I find some point of “access” into the language which peaks my interest.  Otherwise, it’s all theory.  That point of access can be a person or subject.  My wife is an obvious example of a factor which peaked my interest and motivation in Chinese learning (and likewise, I was motivation enough for her to throw herself headlong into English learning).  The author in the piece, wittingly or not, naturally stumbled upon a couple of major principles of foreign language learning.  The first was the principle of “i + 1″.  In words, this formula means that language input (i) should be of a level just higher than that which the learner already knows.  This stimulates learning.  It is not so high that the learner gives up.  There is plenty of comprehensible context to build meaning from.  It’s also not just a review of what the learner has already successfully internalized.  New content comes continually.  The second principle is that of contextualized learning.  Receptive language skills have to be exercised in familiar contextual areas in order to successfully comprehend message.  In other words, if you don’t get the context, you don’t understand.  For example, my French is pretty fluent, but I’m not going to understand a lecture on nuclear physics.  This is not indicative of lack of French, because I will probably know all the words; instead, it’s indicative of a lack of subject knowledge — i.e., I would not be likely to understand (nor enjoy) such a lecture even in English.  By using familiar American media — e.g., cartoons, movies, and novel adaptations of familiar stories — the author was able to concentrate on vocabulary and language form because he already knew the content.  This is why many Americans don’t care for foreign films (and, believe it or not, the feeling is quite mutual around the world — only the basest of American cinema is embraced universally).  Literally, the context can be so foreign that even with dubbing or subtitles, the message of the movie is lost.  I’ve had to explain the significance of the ending of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon to so many Americans that I’ve gotten sick of the conversation…

Third point on the article: reading is actually an essential means of language learning.  The variety of vocabulary used in everyday conversation pales in comparison to that used even in children’s books.  Reading is the essential vocabulary builder.

So, in review….  err…  read and watch cartoons!!!  Huzzah!

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