Language Transfer (Split from discussion in Programs and resources)

[Random Review]

What I will say again is that conceptually these can be helpful supplements or quick introductions for more advanced language-learners and they can be great for beginners (look! empathy!) who have been indoctrinated to think "languages are hard and scary" to be prepared to take on more rigorous material.

There's little point in me cluttering the thread by repeating Cainntear's arguments regarding your other points, I pretty much see things the same way as him; so I'll just answer this part.

What you describe wasn't my experience. I didn't think languages were "scary" or "hard" and I had total confidence in my ability to learn anything including languages and my high school French results backed that up (note that in spite of scoring well on it in high school exams, I can't speak French!). No, my problem was simply that I didn't understand how languages work or how they are learned.

IMO the problem isn't courses, it's culture.

1) It seems to be a common myth that people do all their thinking as individuals, but of course a lot of intelligence and knowledge is actually distributed and people from countries where bi- or trilingualism (or more) are the norm are applying a lot of knowledge that is just common sense in their culture and has been lost in Anglophone cultures over the past 100 years or so (it's fascinating to read Victorian Britons like Arthur Cotton writing with the kind of insight on language learning that would be astonishing in a modern Anglophone civil servant).

2) Thanks to the US, authentic and even excellent English language cultural materials are almost unavoidable all over the world and English is a useful lingua franca in many parts too. Anglophone culture provides English speakers with neither the hyper-easy access to nor the cultural push to avail themselves of the kind of materials that are the bread and butter of people in many other countries (not that the Anglophone countries are the only ones where such disadvantages exist, it must be said! The PRC outside of Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing is another example).

If you put these two things together, you get a powerful effect. These kids from Scandinavia or the Netherlands that speak such good English are the beneficiaries of decades of progress in both these areas by generations of their respective cultures, for example. For another example of differing cultural traditions, it's interesting the difference in average English levels in Portugal and Spain, even though their languages are equally distant from English. When I was last there a few years ago, I had the distinct impression that the situation seemed to be changing in the big cities in Spain as young people started to benefit from the "cultural capital" accumulated by the hard work of the older generations. Less clearly, I also feel signs of change in the UK, but these things don't change overnight. It takes time.

This forum and HTLAL before it is a kind of subculture in that regard, providing similar benefits to its long-term members.

[Cainntear]

I think Mihalis has made mistakes (for example so much time wasted on French) and it does seem that his funding model has now definitively failed; but I'm not aware of any model anyone suggested that would have allowed LT to reach its social goals (as opposed to business goals).

If you need money to do something, then you have to take care of the business goals -- it's a core principle of social enterprise.
If the "market" of potential backers doesn't like your business model, then you will not achieve your social goals without a new business model.
I'm not clear what his "social goals" were. To stop English speakers having to go to a library to learn French?

But if we take a general goal of "making language learning free", what does that really mean? He isn't going to be able to cover every language, and I'm really kind of nonplussed about the idea of free English-based materials for FIGS, which is what his community participation model turned it into. There are plenty of good resources, and free resources, and even some good free resources for these already.

I said that if he wanted my money, he needed to say what he was going to use it for -- I suggested once or twice pricing up a making full course in a particular language, including procuring equipment and hiring native speakers (his long-term goal) and floating it as a Kickstarter project -- that way, if there's enough interest, it gets done, but people get to pay in with no risk... unlike now when I can pay, vote, and find that my Sweden/Xhosa/Basque/whatever has been outvoted in favour of yet more French.

And I'm not talking about buying a course for me -- I'm talking about funding a course that I think will make a difference, and A) I don't think French will; and B) I don't even know for sure that the money would be going to French right now.

[Cavesa]

This post was so good, I wished I could give it more than one like. You said a lot of the things I have desperately been struggling (and failing) to say. Thank you for that. However, that last bit I have put in bold still isn't quite there yet IMO.

I have read a lot of your posts over the years and dipped into your various logs from time to time and trust me, you are not a typical learner. The insights and ideas you share are excellent and additionally, as much as you can know someone online, you are one of the posters on here who I really like; but to be brutally frank, I'd rather people like you had to suffer frustration at slow pace than the alternative of less experienced learners failing. To you (and, although I'm nowhere near your level, nowadays even for me) an LT, Pimsleur or Michel Thomas course is a just convenient and pleasant short cut that you don't actually need and you will still succeed if you decide to ignore them in future; to newer learners, however, they can be the difference between success and failure.

I know you do acknowledge that in the post I quote, but I really feel it needs to be emphasised, because the language of some posts on here still show a lack of empathy with absolute beginners (especially beginners of their first L2). Extra support for people learning something for the first time compared to others who have previous experience is not "coddling", as some have said; it is simply basic pedagogy.

I like the "slow" student on the Michel Thomas tapes and I like the overkill of Pimsleur for FIGS languages even though they frustrated me too sometimes. Why? Because I was a zero beginner of my first L2 too once. I had no idea what I was doing and had laughable misconceptions about both the nature of language and my own learning process. Michel Thomas guided me over that and I am pleased to see others such as Mihali continuing this tradition. I am immensely grateful to them.

Thanks. I appreciate your posts a lot too, despite the fact we clearly disagree on some posts (or perhaps I like your posts even more thanks to it, they bring me a lot of value).

Yes, I know I am not a usual learner. But I think I am well aware of their needs, from observation and supporting other learners in their struggles (I mean also in the real life). And I think I have repeatedly made it clear I know the slow pace is a blessing for a part of the learners. And I am likely to easily get to the same category, when I start a very different langauge from those I already know.

I don't think there is anything wrong with a course being either a short cut from someone not much in need of it, or a huge help for someone who does need more assistance. That is actually the point of most learning tools. If a tool is helpful to someone, it is a good tool. It doesn't have to be awesome for everyone, that would be impossible.

Btw, I think LT is also significantly different from the others in the content. Pimsleur was not a good choice for me, as it started (and kept going for several lessons) with "practical communication" instead of progressing from more basic sentences, and as it seemed that I was the wrong public, since I was not a man trying to pick up a woman in a bar in a way I don't like much in the real life LT is much more focused on progressing from easy grammar to harder. That is one of its huge qualities, as it can complement the "communication" focused courses that are taking a larger and larger % of the space in the bookstores.

My point is that at an early stage of learning, and if you subscribe to Krashen's idea of a natural order of acquisition, any native text will contain a significant number of "advanced" parts of the grammar. If that's "i+1", then "1" can only really represent the number of new languages you're trying to learn.

How many native texts don't use modals? And how many have no complex sentences? And how many of those stick entirely to the present tense (or present and simple past/preterite, at a push)?

Every native text is several levels of complexity higher than a beginner, not "1". But of course, us teachers are trained to lie to ourselves here by "grading" our native texts -- i.e. stripping out lots of the native features and replacing them with things at the learners' level, while kidding ourselves on that it remains "authentic language".

You're unlikely to see or hear truly "authentic" language in a textbook before advanced level, because it's just so complex. Everything is "graded".

This is so true! That's why I don't get the contemporary popularity of criticising courses to such an extent and not recommending them even to beginners. It is so sad to see first time learners starting from zero being recommended "just watch movies and do and Duolingo". Any good beginner coursebook with make the learner so much more ready for starting with native input. Because as Cainntear says, everything includes all the basic grammar.

To start with native input, you don't need to know it all and to know it into much detail and be proficient using it. No. But having a "mind map" of what features are there, what do they look like, how does basic stuff like questions, past tenses, modal verbs and similar stuff work, that opens a huge gate towards much more content.

The graded resources together with explanations in any good course are not a bad thing. Yes, we like to see stuff that is as authentic as possible at the given moment, but the simplification serves a purpose and that is the point.

You can start from zero and watch Pokemon (no offense meant to the fans. But half unit of a German coursebook was enough to follow a few episodes and it almost melted my brain how dumb I was finding it), or you can get through a basic resource showing you what does the grammar look like, and you can continue with a much wider range of stuff.

That's why I think the LT can be so valuable. If he manages to introduce you to most grammar you are likely to encounter, it is a lot of value. Based on my experience, the attitude of learning small amounts of stuff "perfectly" before progressing to other stuff does have some disadvantages and lack of the bigger picture is one of them.

LT gives the bigger picture, I'd say. The problem is, that there is no instruction on how to review or redo stuff, as some people said here. It would indeed help with acquiring more solid knowledge of the content, especially as the course is focused mostly on the less experienced learners.

I think Mihalis has made mistakes (for example so much time wasted on French) and it does seem that his funding model has now definitively failed; but I'm not aware of any model anyone suggested that would have allowed LT to reach its social goals (as opposed to business goals).
Just purely on the basis of his sincerity of purpose and him having given so much and taken so little, I sympathise- regardless of any mistakes he may have made along the way.

If you need money to do something, then you have to take care of the business goals -- it's a core principle of social enterprise.
If the "market" of potential backers doesn't like your business model, then you will not achieve your social goals without a new business model.
I'm not clear what his "social goals" were. To stop English speakers having to go to a library to learn French?

But if we take a general goal of "making language learning free", what does that really mean? He isn't going to be able to cover every language, and I'm really kind of nonplussed about the idea of free English-based materials for FIGS, which is what his community participation model turned it into. There are plenty of good resources, and free resources, and even some good free resources for these already.

I said that if he wanted my money, he needed to say what he was going to use it for -- I suggested once or twice pricing up a making full course in a particular language, including procuring equipment and hiring native speakers (his long-term goal) and floating it as a Kickstarter project -- that way, if there's enough interest, it gets done, but people get to pay in with no risk... unlike now when I can pay, vote, and find that my Sweden/Xhosa/Basque/whatever has been outvoted in favour of yet more French.

And I'm not talking about buying a course for me -- I'm talking about funding a course that I think will make a difference, and A) I don't think French will; and B) I don't even know for sure that the money would be going to French right now.

The problem is that Mihalis himself damaged his social goal by allowing the popular voting and I think that might have also damaged the business model.

His original social goal was making people learn each other's langauges on Cyprus. He had sticked to that and transformed it into a larger goal of making people understand each other thanks to learning each other's languages in other regions too. The courses being free were not the goal, just a way to make as many people as possible learn the langauges and understand others. I think that was the goal of making more courses for the less represented langauges like Arabic and Turkish (basically anything except for the FIGS would fit the bill). He could have turned it even to a business model.

Let's not forget he did get one comission, the Swahili course, so it was not some nonsense idea. I believe he could get more comissions from people and companies wanting to do something good and also to promote a less represented langauge in such a way. It would be wonderful and healthy expression of patriotism (don't tell me there would be nobody patriotic enough in Israel or Japan), or perhaps part of some company's budget for the employee's education (instead of paying a tutor for just a few employees). Perhaps if he allowed a tiny bit of sponsorship (one sentence like "this course was sponsored by Example Company from Germany at the beginning of the course. Or perhaps even having it at the beginning of each audio would be palatable to most learners and not something to be ashamed of in my opinion.) But who would pay for this, when he spends tons of time on the FIGS, the langauges that don't need many more resources and representation.

As far as crowd founding by individual learners go, perhaps stuff like kickstarter could have worked better. You know, like "I want to make a course for x langauge. If I gather this amount of money, it will allow me to work on it for this amount of months and I should be finished by then". But this "pay me monthly, and I may get to making the courses you want eventually and perhaps finish them long after you are interested" way is weird.

I believe people would pay even for languages they don't want to learn, as a good deed. And that there would be enough learners wanting the less popular languages. I believe he could gather enough, if he started a few kickstarters saying clearly they are for Complete Arabic, Complete Turkish, or perhaps even something small like Complete Basque. But of course that just letting the crowd vote leads to the FIGS and everyone else being just as disappointed as usual by lack of attention.

Don't get me wrong. The courses for FIGS are probably good and helpful to people and it is good they exist. But they are simply the opposite of the original and fascinating mission.

[Random Review]

I think Mihalis has made mistakes (for example so much time wasted on French) and it does seem that his funding model has now definitively failed; but I'm not aware of any model anyone suggested that would have allowed LT to reach its social goals (as opposed to business goals).

If you need money to do something, then you have to take care of the business goals -- it's a core principle of social enterprise.
If the "market" of potential backers doesn't like your business model, then you will not achieve your social goals without a new business model.
I'm not clear what his "social goals" were. To stop English speakers having to go to a library to learn French?

But if we take a general goal of "making language learning free", what does that really mean? He isn't going to be able to cover every language, and I'm really kind of nonplussed about the idea of free English-based materials for FIGS, which is what his community participation model turned it into. There are plenty of good resources, and free resources, and even some good free resources for these already.

I said that if he wanted my money, he needed to say what he was going to use it for -- I suggested once or twice pricing up a making full course in a particular language, including procuring equipment and hiring native speakers (his long-term goal) and floating it as a Kickstarter project -- that way, if there's enough interest, it gets done, but people get to pay in with no risk... unlike now when I can pay, vote, and find that my Sweden/Xhosa/Basque/whatever has been outvoted in favour of yet more French.

And I'm not talking about buying a course for me -- I'm talking about funding a course that I think will make a difference, and A) I don't think French will; and B) I don't even know for sure that the money would be going to French right now.

Spanish was one of the first languages to be done when he was still developing the method and apart from his native languages of English and Cypriot Greek, I think it was maybe the only language he spoke very well at that time. I can totally get why he did that course. However I must admit that the voting model led to so much time being spent on French and German. If that time had been spent developing the Turkish and Egyptian Arabic courses to the same level as the Greek and Swahili courses, it would constitute something very special indeed.

Still, it's easy for me to sit here and criticise. He's tried to do something amazing and partially succeeded (and perhaps it's not over yet!). I've never achieved anything much in helping people.

[olim21]

Now, one of the big problems of hard-line CI is that it actually denies students access to genuine target language for a very long time, because most human language uses a hell of a lot of the grammar. I mean, try going a day without saying "My name is ..." -- dead easy. But try going a day without saying "can", "could", "would" and "should" -- it's a lot harder. Essentially, there is no truly authentic material that isn't grammatically complex, so there can be no "i+1" in grammar from authentic materials.

Except that's not true at all. What you say above is complete nonsense and this is certainly not what i+1 means.

Let me quote page 28 of the pdf linked at the beginning of this thread:

The input hypothesis makes the following claim: a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to move from stage i to stage i + 1 is that the acquirer understand input that contains i + 1, where "understand" means that the acquirer is focused on the meaning and not the form of the message.

See? The important point here is "understand", i+1 is just normal learning stuff. Basically, you learn (or acquire to use Krashen's terminology) what you are ready to learn. Which is not necessarily what you wanted to learn, because you are not the one doing the learning, your brain is, and you have no real control over it.

Here is the last paragraph of the page to make things even clearer:

A third part of the input hypothesis says that input must contain i + 1 to be useful for language acquisition, but it need not contain only i + 1. It says that if the acquirer understands the input, and there is enough of it, i + 1 will automatically be provided. In other words, if communication is successful, i + 1 is provided.

CI doesn't limit you at all. Any input will do as long it is understandable. If it's not, you have to find a way to make it understandable. You can prepare transcripts for audio inputs, looking up everything before reading a text, re-read/listen to something you mostly understand, etc.

No limits other than your imagination.

I do not agree with Krashen about everything but I certainly think he's on the right track. I use CI myself and I can report that this is the most efficient method I've ever used. Nothing comes even close.

The only key to language learning is: Massive amount of comprehensible (interesting?) input.

--
OM

[Cainntear]

CI doesn't limit you at all. Any input will do as long it is understandable.

And native materials are not understandable, because they’re too complex. As I already said, one of the most common things teachers do to make stuff comprehensible is to rewrite it into non-native language. But regardless, relying on a teacher doing anything to make input comprehensible means you’re limited to the teacher’s choice of material.

But knowing grammar makes all material more comprehensible, and yes, you can teach grammar.

[Random Review]

I think there's a bit of a straw man being attacked here sometimes. I don't think anyone here is disputing or even would dispute that large amounts of CI are necessary at some point if you want to acquire a language. What's being debated is (1) whether it is at all possible for absolute beginners, (2) whether it is possible for absolute beginners to find CI without either a great deal of help or a lot of previous experience, and (3) whether explicit instruction in grammar along the lines of Language Transfer is helpful and more time efficient in taking beginners to a stage where CI becomes easily possible.

My personal experience regarding these 3 questions and the other personal accounts I have read would answer "yes", "no" and "yes" respectively.

[Cavesa]

The input hypothesis makes the following claim: a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to move from stage i to stage i + 1 is that the acquirer understand input that contains i + 1, where "understand" means that the acquirer is focused on the meaning and not the form of the message.

See? The important point here is "understand", i+1 is just normal learning stuff. Basically, you learn (or acquire to use Krashen's terminology) what you are ready to learn. Which is not necessarily what you wanted to learn, because you are not the one doing the learning, your brain is, and you have no real control over it.

How can you understand meaning of any native input, when you have no clue about the grammar. The grammar is not some metalanguage, it is the normal stuff. If you cannot recognize interrogatives, a few basic tenses, modal verbs, I see no way you could understand much of a meaning of anything.

No, your brain is not some alien thing subconsciously controlling you without you having any control. By getting explanations and practicing stuff (like with LT), you can cosciously learn a lot and then let the brain follow up "on its own".

Truth be told, avoiding normal instruction and expecting to just learn from "comprehensive" input can often lead to learning mistakes. That's when you don't try to control what you learn at all.

Here is the last paragraph of the page to make things even clearer:

A third part of the input hypothesis says that input must contain i + 1 to be useful for language acquisition, but it need not contain only i + 1. It says that if the acquirer understands the input, and there is enough of it, i + 1 will automatically be provided. In other words, if communication is successful, i + 1 is provided.

CI doesn't limit you at all. Any input will do as long it is understandable. If it's not, you have to find a way to make it understandable. You can prepare transcripts for audio inputs, looking up everything before reading a text, re-read/listen to something you mostly understand, etc.

No limits other than your imagination.

I do not agree with Krashen about everything but I certainly think he's on the right track. I use CI myself and I can report that this is the most efficient method I've ever used. Nothing comes even close.

The only key to language learning is: Massive amount of comprehensible (interesting?) input.

I think you are now advocating the opposite of what you wanted. Any input will do as long as it is understandable, yes. But how can it be understandable for someone not understanding anything at all? That is why people use the courses.

And how can you find and use massive amount of comprehensible (and preferably interesting) input, when you don't know anything about the language at all? Really, this is like cutting your hands off and then trying to learn to knit.

Yes, it is possible, when you are learning your third romance langauge, true, I can start with awesome native input right away, if I ever choose to learn my fourth and fifth romance language. But most people are not in this situation. And I can confirm that trying to find that huge amount of comprehensive input without having learnt the basics of the not closely related language is really hard or rather impossible. I tried in German. I can't imagine trying in an even more distant language.

But there is a very simple way to make it understandable! Use a good quality language course to acquire the basics first! If you do that, the amount of time spent bored to death using a dictionary, searching for transcripts, and looking up every word and grammar thing will suddenly drop to a much more palatable level!

There is no need to reinvent the wheel.

Let's assume we do what you suggest. Actually, it sometimes looks like half the languagelearning reddit community is advising people to do just that You find a transcript of something worthwhile and audio. You find out you cannot understand anything at all. You start googling and using a chaos of resources to identify everything. What will you learn:
Let me guess: You will learn the present tense, one or two past tenses and some ways to express future, the interogatives, the modal verbs, the conditionals, the basic word order. Congratulations, you have just spent many hours putting together the contents of any basic course you could have just opened and learnt from more efficiently.

I think there's a bit of a straw man being attacked here sometimes. I don't think anyone here is disputing or even would dispute that large amounts of CI are necessary at some point if you want to acquire a language. What's being debated is (1) whether it is at all possible for absolute beginners, (2) whether it is possible for absolute beginners to find CI without either a great deal of help or a lot of previous experience, and (3) whether explicit instruction in grammar along the lines of Language Transfer is helpful and more time efficient in taking beginners to a stage where CI becomes easily possible.

My personal experience regarding these 3 questions and the other personal accounts I have read would answer "yes", "no" and "yes" respectively.

Exactly. My answers are the same:
1. under some conditions, yes, but it can more difficult than rewarding or efficient
2. no. I have yet to see a single person trying from absolute zero as a first time learner and actually getting good results. People just using a good basic course are simply making a wiser choice and can get to the CI a bit later but with much better results.
3. Yes, the explicit instruction in grammar is very useful and I think LT is doing a really good job explaining it to beginner learners. And as some people with the experience have stated in this thread, LT did help them get to the level of being able to use native input much more easily and with much more freedom in selection of it. They are a proof. It works.

[Iversen]

Homer Simpson would call it the suckiest pile of suck that ever sucked.

Apart maybe from Homer Simpson himself. We are not all fans of that character...

[Tutescrew]

D'oh!!!