"Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

General discussion about learning languages
User avatar
ryanheise
Green Belt
Posts: 459
Joined: Tue Jun 04, 2019 3:13 pm
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N), Japanese (beginner)
x 1681
Contact:

"Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby ryanheise » Fri Mar 10, 2023 4:08 am

To recap, Vladimir has certain strong views about language learning which include the following:

  • Language is a tool for acquiring knowledge, as opposed to giving knowledge or for communication.
  • Speaking ability is a byproduct of acquiring knowledge, not a goal.
  • Speaking practice is useless; if a person can read fluently, speaking fluency automatically follows, whereas the reverse is not true.
  • A native speaker can't tell you how to learn their language, only a foreign speaker who has actually gone through the process of learning that language can tell you how to learn that language. (E.g. Vladimir can tell you how to do it because he's done it himself.)

In this video he puts his views to the test against Paul Nation.



In light of his first view above, it's a little ironic that in this discussion, Vladimir uses language primarily as a means for giving knowledge and for communication, as opposed to a tool for acquiring knowledge ;-) This at least suggests that the ratio between acquiring knowledge and giving knowledge is different in reality from what Vladimir imagines. And of course language is not just about something so academic as "knowledge", we also use language to form social connections and bonds.

I think that although Vladimir is a bit of an extremist in wanting to impose his definitions and taxonomies onto others, reality is not bound by our own taxonomies, and Paul is right that there are still many things in reality that we all actually agree with, even if we're modelling that reality under different taxonomies. So yes, I think that acquiring domain knowledge "in the target language" is a fine way to acquire domain-specific language. If he therefore wants to say that "language IS intended for acquiring knowledge", I can imagine that having a positive effect on his language learning ability, but not because his taxonomy is accurate, but rather because believing that may influence activities that are beneficial to language learning. The fact that he wants to impose his taxonomy on everyone else is irritating, but stripping that away I think I can say I see value in recognising that using language to acquire knowledge is beneficial to language learning (as opposed to making the more extreme claim that "language IS for acquiring knowledge".
4 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3468
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8660
Contact:

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Cainntear » Fri Mar 10, 2023 8:02 am

I often find myself commenting on links to the effect of "why should I watch it? You haven't given me a reason" but here I think it would be better to say "why should I watch it? You've given lots of reasons why his arguments are wrong and it's a half-hour long video!" :D

His points (as you list them) are pretty easily challenged.

For one thing, if your goal is acquiring knowledge, English is undoubtedly your best bet. In beats out all minority languages in it's own area, and it beats out many outside its area. I have never learnt a minority language for "acquiring knowledge", always for communication and to make interpersonal connection. His value judgement diminishes the people that I personally consider the most important.

Speaking practice being "useless"... well that completely goes against Merrill Swain's point that we can only check whether our working theories of how the language works can only be tested by trying to speak and see whether we've been understood or not. He's basically following the Krashen line here despite the fact that Krashen was quite simply wrong, and the people who buy into Krashen keep finding ways to blame the learners themselves rather than accepting that the input hypothesis has been disproven.

When he says native speakers can't teach you a language, that's wrong, but it's understandable as a result of experience because (ironically) the input hypothesis has been used as a post-hoc justification for using the majority of native speakers who know nothing about their own language over the minority who have gone through years of university to better understand how it works to be more effective at teaching.
5 x

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Iversen » Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:30 am

I skipped the introduction and jumped right into a discussion about the utility of learning grammar, where Nation supported that you should learn grammar from teachers rather than grammar books. I would not exclude the grammar books as cursorily, but at least beginners may need the assistance of a teacher to use them. As for the views of mr.Vladimir on this topic they do remind me of Krashen - 'nuff being said.

And after around 10 minuttes I decided that I wouldn't acquire any useful knowledge from listening to the rest of that video. Paul Nation is a great scholar when it comes to learning vocabulary (and other things), whereas mr. Vladimir ... well, - 'nuff said. And Mr.Vladimir (aka 'Virtually Native') interrupts Mr. Nation all the time..

[*] Language is a tool for acquiring knowledge, as opposed to giving knowledge or for communication.
[*] Speaking ability is a byproduct of acquiring knowledge, not a goal.
[*] Speaking practice is useless; if a person can read fluently, speaking fluency automatically follows, whereas the reverse is not true.
[*] A native speaker can't tell you how to learn their language, only a foreign speaker who has actually gone through the process of learning that language can tell you how to learn that language. (E.g. Vladimir can tell you how to do it because he's done it himself.)[/list]

One simple observation: you have to learn the language before you can read or listen, and you have to be able to read or listen to acquire knowledge from sources in a target language - it's as simple as that. But once you have learned enough to express yourself AND tell people what you have learned then language suddenly also has become a tool for giving knowledge and for communication (passive AND active use). And from my own experience I can see that a person can learn to read fluently without developing the corresponding speaking ability. Speaking and writing skills have to be nurtured and practiced.

As for the native speakers as teachers - well, I had one native British teacher for a year in school and both native and non-native teachers at the university, and both kinds may function equally well. The problem is that being native doesn't in itself qualify a person as a teacher, and therefore the idea that you can just can start traveling around in the world and earn your money by teaching your maternal language is wrong. But if you know how to teach then being native is definitely not a disadvantage.

As a corollary to this: I have a fair number of Slavic dictionaries aimed for Slavic people learning English or German or French (or in one case Italian), and they do have one common problem: they don't really try to keep imperfective/perfective verbal pairs together, and that's a problem for a non-Slavic learner like me. And sometimes they forget to tell about things that local speakers know, but not a foreigner - like which verbs in Romanian use infixes and which don't (my otherwise excellent Teora doesn't even mention the problem). I could imagine native teachers having the same defect, but once they are told what learners actually need they do possess the necessary knowledge to impart. In other words a native teacher can learn the things that would make him/her a great teacher, and those that can't learn that shouldn't be in the business.
8 x

User avatar
ryanheise
Green Belt
Posts: 459
Joined: Tue Jun 04, 2019 3:13 pm
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N), Japanese (beginner)
x 1681
Contact:

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby ryanheise » Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:57 am

Cainntear wrote:I often find myself commenting on links to the effect of "why should I watch it? You haven't given me a reason" but here I think it would be better to say "why should I watch it? You've given lots of reasons why his arguments are wrong and it's a half-hour long video!" :D


Oh, I agree you personally wouldn't have much of a reason to watch it because you may already have similar objections to what Paul Nation raises in this video, and you therefore don't need any convincing. Although I've become aware that Vladimir does have followers on this forum, and I think the friendly manner of Paul's objections in this video might be helpful to persuade those people.

Also, one of the things about Vladimir's style is that he unfortunately tends to make the other person feel uncomfortable or embarrassed (because they seemingly can't understand the very simple truth that Vladimir is teaching), and quite often after the call ends he will laugh at how stupid people can be. And although some people really like to see that, e.g. to see him "call people out" or "win" against whoever it is, this video could hopefully set the tone for a more friendly discussion.
4 x

tractor
Green Belt
Posts: 379
Joined: Sat Oct 29, 2016 10:58 am
Location: Norway
Languages: Norwegian (N), English, Spanish, Catalan, French, German, Italian, Latin
x 773

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby tractor » Fri Mar 10, 2023 1:24 pm

Iversen wrote:Paul Nation is a great scholar when it comes to learning vocbulary (and other things), whereas mr. Vladimir ... well, - 'nuff said. And Mr.Vladimir (aka 'Virtually Native') interrupts Mr. Nation all the time..

Nuff said, but I'll spell it out anyway:
This video is a conversation between an extremely patient and polite scholar and an overly self-confident idiot.
Last edited by tractor on Fri Mar 10, 2023 1:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
9 x

User avatar
Kullman
Orange Belt
Posts: 130
Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2022 4:54 pm
Languages: Spanish (N) Galician (N) English (B2)
x 201

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Kullman » Fri Mar 10, 2023 1:33 pm

The "Virtually Native" title, and the noticeable slavic accent, are enough reason to close the video...
5 x

User avatar
Sae
Green Belt
Posts: 318
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2022 1:27 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (Native)
Vietnamese (Intermediate)
Mongolian (Beginner)
Tuvan (Beginner)
Toki Pona (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18201
x 836

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Sae » Fri Mar 10, 2023 2:01 pm

I've probably made clear my views on this guy whenever he's appeared and feel less incentivised to watch him.

He has a few problems. I find he can be too absolutist over something that's affected by individual differences between learners. He can be on the pretentious side and over confident. He is inflexible and also comes off as arrogant. And we've seen all the click bait "you have doing this wrong" or "this is something every language learner should know". And when people do this, it's an immediate red flag that they're a BSer.

And looking at how he speaks and composes himself and the comments he gets, I'm starting to wonder if he's trying to be a cult leader.

But I'm gonna do a Cainntear and then maybe consider watching this later to correct myself if my opinion changes:

Language is a tool for acquiring knowledge, as opposed to giving knowledge or for communication.
Speaking ability is a byproduct of acquiring knowledge, not a goal.
Speaking practice is useless; if a person can read fluently, speaking fluency automatically follows, whereas the reverse is not true.
A native speaker can't tell you how to learn their language, only a foreign speaker who has actually gone through the process of learning that language can tell you how to learn that language. (E.g. Vladimir can tell you how to do it because he's done it himself.)


1) Language is a tool for all of those things. How do I know Mystic Meg died? Somebody used language to communicate the knowledge to me (apologies to Mystic Meg fans that are finding out via my comment here), I didn't use language to reason out that information in an a priori kind of way. Nor did I show up to her dead body to confirm it. We're using information right now for communication and for giving and receiving knowledge.

2) If you're wanting to converse with people in that language, speaking ability is a goal. And given I'm somebody who is interested in oral cultures, where things like storytelling and music are central, spoken language is at the very core of it all. Knowledge is passed through stories told and songs sung. You learn about and understand a culture by experiencing it, not reading it, and speaking the language is a part of that. Reading still has a lot of value and you can learn a lot, but there's a difference between what you can learn by reading and what you can learn through doing.

3) I can test this claim, for anybody here who doesn't have any experience speaking or listening to Mongolian, tell me how you think the following are spoken:
- Sain baina uu
- Bayarlalaa
- Bi mongol ruu yavna
Transliterate the way you would speak it from only reading it or give some representation to give an idea of how you think it sounds.

I even confused a Tuvan woman by saying, "Ekii. Eki tur siler be?" because my stresses were off and it took a couple of moments before she clicked (and I would be curious how people think that sentence is pronounced too just from reading it). And this is from both reading and practicing speaking. Arguably, a native speaker was a good test on whether I was saying things right. Though in fairness, it is her American husband that's since been teaching me to pronounce Tuvan correctly. And Tuvan pronunciation (like Mongolian pronounciation) is unnatural to an English speaker. And there are things in English pronunciation people aren't just going to read into existence, like "th", which most languages don't have an equivalent for. And heck, in English we butcher the word "khan" because we don't have a that "kh" sound in English and reading something like "khalkha" would have use pronounce it, "kalka", which is wrong.

Another anecdote was ordering mead in Germany, I only ever read the word and my pronunciation was off. The waitress corrected me and made the joke, "the way you say it describes a type of dish that has a small piece of meat, you will not chat up any ladies with a small piece of meat".

4) I'm learning Vietnamese from a native speaker. The guy is also a language teacher. Whilst I would agree a native speaker doesn't necessarily mean a good teacher, though a native speaker still has value especially as far as sounding natural is concerned and what is typical speech. A native speaker who is also a good language teacher is a boon. And how does he suppose the first non-native speaker learn the language? And I can tell you from being able to read Vietnamese, even knowing how tones work, I definitely need to speak it to get it right, because of tones and because it is very fussy when it comes to pronunciation where small mistakes can affect meaning.
4 x
Vietnamese Practicing conversation
Mongolian: Learning vocab
Tuvan: Building Decks & full study plan
Tuvan Song Progress (0/3): Learning Daglarym - Lyrics & Melody Learned
Language Fitness 1.5 hr exercise p/w

Kraut
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2599
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:37 pm
Languages: German (N)
French (C)
English (C)
Spanish (A2)
Lithuanian
x 3204

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Kraut » Fri Mar 10, 2023 3:34 pm

evolution is a blind watchmaker
language is natural selection and co-evolution
written language is culture
Last edited by Kraut on Fri Mar 10, 2023 7:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
0 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3510
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9384

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Le Baron » Fri Mar 10, 2023 3:41 pm

I've watched the guy's videos before (I usually switched them off halfway because they were annoying). I'm still no wiser as to his central claim. I can't fathom the division between 'a tool for acquiring knowledge' and 'communication'. When you 'acquire' knowledge it's done by communication. At the fundamental level you have child who says 'I want!' and no knowledge is being acquired, it's communicating a desire. Parent says 'no' or 'okay' or it's impossible' or whatever and this is some form of 'knowledge' for the child. but for the parent it's not acquiring knowledge. All of it is pure communication.

I dont really know what he's talking about. Probably because he's not interested in communication.
5 x

User avatar
Sae
Green Belt
Posts: 318
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2022 1:27 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (Native)
Vietnamese (Intermediate)
Mongolian (Beginner)
Tuvan (Beginner)
Toki Pona (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18201
x 836

Re: "Virtually Native" tests his views against Paul Nation

Postby Sae » Fri Mar 10, 2023 8:07 pm

I ended up watching the video. The summaries at the top of the thread are fair summaries. And my view if anything is stronger, Paul Notion held a pretty good argument i think and offered a pretty balanced view and tried to look past Virtually Native's quirks to find where they have common ground where Virtually Native is being ineloquant, pedantic and contrarian. So my respect to Paul there.

And I wouldn't have had the same patience, I found Virtually Native to be frustrating and in cases, rude, especiially with all the interuptting and not listening and I think there were a couple of places where I think he was insincere, for example there is a part where Virtually Native is arguing that speech doesn't give you knowledge, Paul said that you can use speech to ask for knowledge like they are now and Native suggested that he's giving knowledge by speaking, but speech isn't making him receive knowledge, Paul got him set up in the position to ask "then why am I giving you knowledge right now?" where the glaryingly obvious answer is "because I asked" he backs off and feigns confusion at what he's getting at as the answer would prove his point wrong. Because you ask and you get, that's how you acquire knowledge with speech...but this guy has to be dense and try to make something of it that's convoluted and contrarian.

And then his arguing over the idea that you get knowledge from books, why would you not get knowledge from books?

This guy can't be that dense and self unaware, surely?

Oh on earth did humanity survive when only a tiny percentage of the world was literate.

What's his home life like?

"Hello honey, how was your day at work?"
"One moment, let me write it down."
"It's okay, you have a mouth and I have ears"
"Knowledge doesn't work like that dear. You know only know about my day if you read it"
"I didn't know that, I am glad that you told me..."

Native really wanted to push the argument that all you need is knowledge and knowledge comes from books, so that tranfers well into speech and this is the most important thing.
Whereas Paul is like: it's one of four impotant things. Don't neglect the other 3 (speech, writing and listening).
And Native is really surprised that Paul doesn't agree that you can speak well by reading well and dismissed the example Paul gave to illustrate why he disagrees as just anecdontal evidence, which arguably is more evidence than Native gave...and it's a good anecdote that shows speech and reading comprehension are separate skills. Paul acknowledged reading can help speech to a certain degree because he kind of sees each of the skills have a complementary relationship.

Once again I've watched a video from this guy and I'm coming away thinking he's talking out of his rear. He probably has valuable points to make, because he is only part of the way there, but would rather by pedantic when his pedantry is wrong (which is normally hilarious when pedants do that, but this was just painful), he was contrarian when it was not necessary, dense whilst also refusing to listen and not realising things aren't absolute and makes non-sensical standpoints to back himself up instead of having any kind of self reflection that maybe there are fair points being made.
7 x
Vietnamese Practicing conversation
Mongolian: Learning vocab
Tuvan: Building Decks & full study plan
Tuvan Song Progress (0/3): Learning Daglarym - Lyrics & Melody Learned
Language Fitness 1.5 hr exercise p/w


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests