What is real language?

General discussion about learning languages
Cainntear
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Re: What is real language?

Postby Cainntear » Sat May 20, 2017 4:45 pm

reineke wrote:The pros sell "real French, " real this and real that all the time.

But that's marketing, not academic discussion.

Compare the use of the word "fluency" on the back of a TY book vs the use of the same word in an academic paper by the same author.
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reineke
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Re: What is real language?

Postby reineke » Sat May 20, 2017 5:52 pm

Cainntear wrote:
reineke wrote:The pros sell "real French, " real this and real that all the time.

But that's marketing, not academic discussion.


"This is important, not only because authentic speech is the real, natural language which we ultimately want our students to understand, but also because it differs significantly from the contrived speech of pedagogical materials.. "

The Modern Language Journal, Volume 62
National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations, 1916

"... task-based language teaching helps learners to learn real language for use in the real world... "

Second Language Teaching & Learning, 1999

" ... emphasising the need to “learn real language use from real language use”

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 2014

Do we teach the real language?
An analysis of patterns in textbooks of Russian as a foreign language (2013)

https://benjamins.com/catalog/dujal.2.2.07mat

Comparing real and ideal language learner input: the use of an EFL textbook corpus... (2004)

"... will be necessary to discover more about the kind of English we teach, its differences ... to be examined if we are to use real language as the basis for our teaching”(1993: 32 ..."

Corpora and Language Learners
edited by Guy Aston, Silvia Bernardini...

Taking a lexical approach to teaching: Principles and problems
N Harwood - International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2002

"principle 1: teach real language, not 'teflese'; use computer corpora but be corpus-based, not corpus-bound."

While some authors put the word in quotation marks, they are still referring to authentic language use.
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Re: What is real language?

Postby aokoye » Sat May 20, 2017 6:20 pm

LeCon wrote:I play electric guitar (jazz, blues and country being specialties), flamenco guitar, bass, piano, keyboards, drums and saxophoneand i also produce and engineer music. All of which i can read from score and chord/marked charts whilst playing. I also hold a degree in music, which i guess is largely irrelevant given how dim you have to be to pass a course at a university.

Your pleasure is irrelevant. Playing from sheet music is nothing more than following instructions on a page. Even subtle self-styling (of which, if we're being honest, there is very little in terms of substance given the very limited scope of playing to score) is negligible in terms of interpretation. When playing in an ensemble one is usually governed also by the additional stylistic interpretation of the conductor.

People with instruments are robots when playing from score. They are not musicians. Your personal experience is anecdotal evidence far removed from reality i'm afraid.
Right so yours is the opinion of one musician. And as someone who is also a musician I couldn't disagree with you more. I'm pretty sure we're going to have to agree to disagree though.
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reineke
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Re: What is real language?

Postby reineke » Sat May 20, 2017 6:46 pm

An interesting and sometimes not very flattering portrait of young language learners:

[The term user] refers to participants whose proficiency in English is generally higher than that of their peers, but who do not believe much in formal classes within the educational system. They even sometimes disparage English classes often being overcritical of the teacher as well as the classes. They are extremely exposed to outofschool sources of learning English and believe these are the right sources to learn 'real' English ..."

Early Learning and Teaching of English: New Dynamics of Primary English
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Re: What is real language?

Postby aokoye » Sat May 20, 2017 6:58 pm

LeCon wrote:
aokoye wrote:Right so yours is the opinion of one musician. And as someone who is also a musician I couldn't disagree with you more. I'm pretty sure we're going to have to agree to disagree though.

I'll drink to that.
Perfect - meet me at the bar after performance one of three of Mahler's 2nd Symphony this evening :D
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Re: What is real language?

Postby kensor » Sat May 20, 2017 8:53 pm

aokoye wrote:I think perhaps a better question for me is what is not real language? What is "fake" language and does such a thing even exist?


Fake language is a term that borders on being an oxymoron in that language implies communication of information, and fake language implies no communication taking place because there is no information to communicate. A fake message consists of chaotic noise rather than discernible content even though the form of the message may purport content within it.

An encoded or encrypted message appears on its surface to have no information content, but with the correct decoding or decryption key or technique, the message's information content can be revealed. So, encoded messages are not fake messages.

The subject of information theory brought into focus by Claude Shannon's 1948 paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication," and the voluminous subsequent writings, say much more than is appropriate here.

Consider the Morse code used by amateur radio operators. Based on underlying natural languages, and filled with jargon unique to ham operators, it has high information content, yet consists of a series of dits and dahs (so to speak) created either by hand or by computer. Conversations via Morse code are ongoing continuously among human radio operators, many of them just receiving signals to listen, and fewer also transmitting signals to talk. Yet none of them orally says a word out loud. That's real language, too.
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Re: What is real language?

Postby aokoye » Sat May 20, 2017 8:57 pm

kensor wrote:
aokoye wrote:I think perhaps a better question for me is what is not real language? What is "fake" language and does such a thing even exist?


Fake language is a term that borders on being an oxymoron in that language implies communication of information, and fake language implies no communication taking place because there is no information to communicate.
Trust me - I'm in agreement with you.
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reineke
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Re: What is real language?

Postby reineke » Sat May 20, 2017 9:04 pm

Language is a lot more than just communication.
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Re: What is real language?

Postby Cainntear » Sun May 21, 2017 11:34 am

kensor wrote:Fake language is a term that borders on being an oxymoron in that language implies communication of information, and fake language implies no communication taking place because there is no information to communicate. A fake message consists of chaotic noise rather than discernible content even though the form of the message may purport content within it.

Is there content in this? This is a genuine dialogue from a language book (it's a Basque book, and this is the translation given):

Bernard: Good morning! I am Bernard. I am a boy.
Johanna: Hello! I am Johanna. I am a girl.
Bernard: My name is Bernard. I am Johanna's brother.
Johanna: My name is Johanna. I am Bernard's sister.
Bernard: Johanna is a nice name. Your name is nice.
Johanna: Yes, it is nice, but Bernard is a nice name too.
Bernard: I am very glad.
Johanna: See you!

The whole setup is wrong, and while there's "data" in there, it isn't presented in such a way that it suggests portrayal of information. It's like expository dialogue in TV or film, where characters tell each other things they already know so that the viewer can hear about the cyber war, the great catastrophe or whatever fictional historical event preceded the story you're watching -- it just doesn't work because people don't sit and calmly tell each other things they already know, so it doesn't feel "real".

The dialogue above feels unreal because the setup, the information and the structures just don't mesh.

In fiction, the cure for expository dialogue is the "audience surrogate", a character who knows nothing about the past, having been in a coma or having just arrived from another country/planet/time, and so needing the explanation within the story itself. You'll often see this in language materials, with the whole setup being "You have just arrived in Xland to start a new job/visit friends/take a holiday". But even then that feels very artificial if the purported learner is speaking with a native accent, and if they're not, you end up worrying about picking up a bad accent from them.

It is possible to make realistic, naturalistic teaching examples, but it's not easy.
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Re: What is real language?

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Tue May 23, 2017 7:57 am

Cainntear wrote:Is there content in this? This is a genuine dialogue from a language book (it's a Basque book, and this is the translation given):

Bernard: Good morning! I am Bernard. I am a boy.
Johanna: Hello! I am Johanna. I am a girl.
Bernard: My name is Bernard. I am Johanna's brother.
Johanna: My name is Johanna. I am Bernard's sister.
Bernard: Johanna is a nice name. Your name is nice.
Johanna: Yes, it is nice, but Bernard is a nice name too.
Bernard: I am very glad.
Johanna: See you!


There are so many things wrong with this :lol:

Brother and sister introduce themselves, including their genders, to the learner.
They then introduce themselves to each other, reminding each other that they are siblings.
Then they compliment each other's names like they've never heard them before. Bernard is relieved he has a nice name.
Bernard's relief makes Johanna run away. Johanna is hella sassy.

What a dysfunctional family.
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