How to Learn a Language without Studying

[Cainntear]

The ability to label concepts this way is clearly a necessary precursor to language, so we presumably have some kind of structure dealing with conceptual hierarchies that is shared with a heck of a lot of pack animals who can signal concrete noun concept with a single symbol (eg a particular food source) and even abstract ones ("Danger! danger!"). Our shared ancestor with dogs was probably 80 million years ago, but even meerkats have a system of symbolic representation of noun concepts.

Human-style language requires more than word→concept mappings.

Yes indeed, but my point is that word→concept mapping are not unique to humans... or perhaps symbol→concept is more appropriate.
I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that language would use the circuitry that allows symbolic representation of concepts. There will be structures in the brain that are about "language" that use such circuitry -- evolution might reinvent the wheel from time to time, but rarely in a clade that already has a wheel.
I believe there's good evidence that animal brains have a concept of hierarchical relations between concepts -- even to the point of generalising. Dogs can do a good job of identifying things they are supposed to play with from things they're not supposed to touch; they can categorise people on first sight into "probably trustworthy" vs "probably not trustworthy" (in a way that kind of shows where human prejudice comes from). Have you ever absent-mindedly opened a different thing in the category "kitchen appliance" from the thing you meant to? All of this probably sits quite far from the core "language centre" of the brain.

Let's take one of our closer relatives: Koko the gorilla, who famously uses "sign language".
...
Above all, Koko never uttered sentences.

Which is really my point. The existence of nouns seems to be something that existed before language.

The studies with great apes were very heavily influenced by Chomsky's concept of some kind of single "language acquisition device" -- the fact that the first "signing ape" (IIRC) was name Nim Chimpsky says a lot about the researchers' bias!

The big question was always whether language is a single genetic thing or a combination of multiple things, and I think that the ape signing researchers were so fixated on finding when the "language acquisition device" gene came into existence that whenever they saw signs of "vocabulary" they interpreted them as signs of "language", so they totally ignored the absence of anything resembling grammar.

So, sure, maybe some species have the ability to learn a few words, or "word-like" communication mechanisms. (And who knows what whales are doing.) But what is very clearly unique to humans is grammar.

This is what I'm saying, though. My suggestion is that word-like stuff is a trait that exists in an awful lot of mammals, and I believe that language uses that and is built on top of it. Mammals have tens of millions of years of vocabulary, but grammar is probably only a couple of millions of year old.

So there is very clearly something in the human brain that is determined to learn a language, and that expects a language to share certain universal features: words, some sort of hierarchical grammar, probably nouns and verbs, etc. But I don't think there's any kind of strong evidence for Chomsky's "Universal Grammar", not in the sense he means it. From my perspective, Chomsky doesn't even have the right theoretical tools to tackle this question meaningfully.

Agreed. But I think that the noun is probably the oldest thing, and effectively predates language.

I find the idea of a "critical period" for language acquisition hilarious, because my wife and I don't share any native languages, and yet somehow we've managed to talk to each other for over 20 years. Mostly we speak French, which I started after the age of 30. But my wife's climb from ~B2 to near-native English happened well after any critical period, too.

Well the critical period really is influenced by the idea of children without any language input whatsoever, which is a pretty extreme case: no L1 by 5 or 6 does seem to mean never mastering any language. I think there was a rather naive idea that this meant that adults would be worse at learning languages than kids.

I've always been of the opinion that apparent critical period things can be accounted for by just using different learning techniques.

Some courses do try to approximate natural language acquisition to some degree. Assimil does this, but they still explain grammar, and they carefully feed you the language bit-by-bit. Destinos and French in Action have are designed around comprehensible video input, but they still ship with course materials!

This is a really superficial thing, though, and they're kind of kidding themselves on. There is nothing in nature where you pick a sequence to teach the rules then use the rules in a particular way to lead to acquisition of the features in that order.

Even so-called "natural" methods are *extremely* artificial, and if the method works, that's not evidence that the method is truly doing "like a child" stuff, but rather evidence that "like a child" doesn't work.

I actually do a lot of weird experiments in my log that try to recreate different aspects of "natural" language learning. But they're just that—experiments. And many of them rely heavily on very unnatural technology. And I'm still spending my morning setting up conjugation flashcards, because hey, sometimes that's the easiest way to keep all the forms of ser straight.

Which is great, because "aspects" is what we need to understand -- far too often people try to revolutionise teaching by throwing the baby out with the bathwater...

I think there's always going to be a Duolingo-like company in the market. Before Duolingo, Rosetta Stone seemed to hold that niche. After Duolingo, I'm pretty sure someone else will take it over. Sadly, I just don't think the market for good language courses is anywhere near as large as the market for "aspirational" language courses. But the question is whether someone can carve out the kind of niche Assimil had—enough to support a real business for many years, selling courses that actually work.

The big problem, though, is one of deflationary pressure.
When Rosetta Stone was the top of the tree, they were selling their snake oil for hundreds of dollars. It was far more expensive than any book, and they sold it by comparison to night classes and degrees, as these were more expensive. But for all of that time, there were other offerings that competed with RS on price by pegging themselves in comparison to books. There were independent courses by the likes of TeachMe, TellMeMore and EuroTalk, and then companies like Berlitz were using some 3rd party tech branded with their own name and materials. There was a course that was basically a RS clone (Livemocha) that competed on being free... so RS just bought them to make the problem go away.

But when Duolingo came out, it spurred on a new generation of language websites... that all burned through the VC money so fast that they disappeared, and even though they were better than Duolingo, only von Ahn and Hacker could get the VCs to throw in millions upon millions.

[cpnlsn88]

My own perspective is that language learning needs to move from pedagogy to anthropology. By this i mean that our main emphasis is on how a first world monolingual can acquire a second language. Our historical frame of reference was Latin (especially) and Ancient Greek. This then transferred to modern languages.

In large parts of the world multilingualism is the norm. Admittedly in most cases this is acquisition of multiple languages by children and young people but there are may instances across history of people acquiring other languages and insufficient enquiry as to how they are doing it. There are fascinating episodes in history where people learned a language and lived in the country - we are raely told how they did it, what methods they used and how they got on. Wirters of their biographies rarely dwell on such matters though I think it would be highly valuable information.

The fact that children are either bilongual or multilingual can be usd to dismiss the discussion. But equally it foregrounds that the human brain is easily capable of acquiring a number of secondary foroeign languages to a good level.

This particular YouTube video I found offputting in the extreme. But it answers to something important. Language acquisition is within the grasp of a lot more people than previously thought if not everyone. Yes, it's a slow process. It doesn't, in the main, engage the conscious study of the rules of grammar or vocabulary. It can be fun and a lot of it can happen unconsciously.

In large part we owe this realisation to Krashen but there are other approahes that lead us to the same point. if you are in the market place you are really appealing to people who hated languages at school. If you loved langauages at school you got to B2 or went to University either way you're already in the fast lane for langauge learning.

Why did you hate it at school? Too much grammar, boring and you were made to speak - for most people.

If you're going to buy a product then you are drawn by the allure of language learning but hated it at school. This type of video can be attractive - hey learn a language without studying.....

A note on grammar. Grammar has value in knowledge but not in ingorance. If you're uzzled about a form you are seeing and then come across a grammar book section that explains it, that is a very helpful moment in your learning and of value. If your language does x but your L2 does y, that contrast in concise form can be helpful in reducing noise and confusion in your encounter with the language. So I'm relatiely positive about grammar for the initiated. All the more as a rudimentary knowledge of grammar is taught to many in the learning of their own language. To a large extent grammar is overdone in L1 for similar reasons it is overdone in L2 (an additional reason is discourse around the youth of today don't spea grammatical English and the explicit teaching of grammar wil correct that - of dubious value). Notwithstanding the downsides if you alreay have an analytical framework to understand language then that can be made to work for L2.

How to start? A class room and a text book can get you started and can be useful. If classrooms are going to happen the teacher needs to have some awareness just of how deeply hated they can make their subject for those who undergo it and the drop out rate is immense as a reult.

Some do this but it is quite rare which is the learning of Interlingua or Esperanto as a first language learning experience and a means to prepare the brain for more new languages. People need an easier language learning template to apply to the later languages they encounter to think about the languages they will encounter. I think it's the people with no previous (successful) language learning of any kind who are most vulnerable to strange promises and offerings via the Internet.

[jeffers]

Total immersion—the sort where nobody speaks any language you know, and where you can't just spend all day on a smart phone—certainly tends to be extremely effective.

But it's also a miserable experience, even for children. I've read several accounts where someone was sent to an immersion school at age 7, or where an immigrant kid got dropped in a school where they had zero knowledge of the language. And the stories sound really unpleasant: "I was surrounded by adults who loudly insisted that I needed to do something, but I had no idea what they wanted," or "I couldn't express even basic needs."

You've described childhood immersion as "miserable" twice, so I decided to offer two anecdotal experiences to counter this. Short version: it totally depends on the child's personality, how outgoing they are, how determined, etc, and how readily the community they are immersed into is willing to accept them.

Student 1 was a French-speaking boy from Africa, in a 98% white school in a deprived area of England. He was gregarious and outgoing, so all the kids wanted to be his friend. This was right at the beginning of my own French journey, so I tried to talk to him in French a few times, but he generally offered a minor pronunciation correction or two, and politely declined to talk further. Basically, he didn't want to emphasize his "outsider" status. Linguistically he made incredible progress, and never appeared miserable to me. One possible advantage was that this was a school where academic success was exremely rare, so struggling to understand classwork was completely normal. His social use of English was quickly on par with his peers, while his academic ability with English was probably weaker than his peers but not outstandingly so.

The second student was a Ukranian refugee who was friendly and determined. He arrived with no English and initially was not put into any regular classrooms. At his own insistence he was moved to more and more regular classes within a couple of weeks, so when I had him in my IT lessons he still spoke very little but worked hard. He would use Google translate to look up individual words from the task instructions. Within a couple of months this boy became the top student in my bottom set IT class, and he was even helping other students with their work. In his case, it was a determination to learn which made him successful, and I have never once seen him looking miserable around school.

[jimmy]

I think it is possible to learn without studying. And yes, the quotations in first post are right to me.
but using this method will bring its specific limitations or dangers.
Because one needs to live the language itself by that method.
Simply, go to in X country where that language is being spoken and engage with people.

[Cainntear]

The fact that children are either bilongual or multilingual can be usd to dismiss the discussion. But equally it foregrounds that the human brain is easily capable of acquiring a number of secondary foroeign languages to a good level.

There is a historical problem of monolingualism being imposed as a norm, and this ignores that the majority of the world is not monolingual. This is recognised within language acquisition circles.

But it answers to something important. Language acquisition is within the grasp of a lot more people than previously thought if not everyone.

Do you really think that people previously thought that not every single human on the planet who can speak a language could learn a language? If so, then that video has taught you something that is new to you, but is old news to the rest of us.

In large part we owe this realisation to Krashen

How so? I can see no justification for giving him credit for this.

[cpnlsn88]

In response to Cainntear I do think the work of Stephen Krashen is significant in this conversation. Had he not done his work maybe a similar revolution would have occured to effect the same changes in approach. Certainly other people have had similar approaches. I found the approach of Lingua Per Se Illustrata (Orberg) interesting in that it presented the learner with..... comprehensible input. And that predates Krashen. But I still do credit Krashn with making many of these things explicit.

As to monolingualism I think this is very entrenched and getting worse. In the UK the only response, as old as the hills, is to bemoan the drop off of modern foreign languages and then see the drop off accelerate. I don't see any effective policy response to this - anguage learners and linguists may be aware of it but they have been rather reticent in producing any ideas with a chance of working.

In regards to the latter one inclines to pessimism. New thinking is needed. Or perhaps old thinking. Maybe the critique formulated by Krashen about language learning is still true and it is simply putting people off. It's too hard and too off putting.

[Iversen]

I'm impressed by Jeffers' examplary language learning students, but the backside of the medal is the closed societies of expats who only communicate with each other in their own language (plus maybe English or some other language which the local dealers understand... if they can't avoid it ). These people may contribute to the society through their professional skills, but they can live like that for ages without becoming part of the local society, and by being obnoxiously foreigners they may force local people to communicate with them in THEIR language, not the local language.

I'm happy to speak to tourists in their own language (if I know it) - or even German or English - after all they can't be expected to learn a learn a language for just one short stay, but I prefer not to deal with people who just settle here for a long time and don't even TRY to learn our language and habits. This also applies to refugees and foreign workers. If I for some reason had to move to a foreign place I would start learning the local language and reading something about the history and society in case from day two (day one would be reserved for the paperwork).

[Cainntear]

In response to Cainntear I do think the work of Stephen Krashen is significant in this conversation. Had he not done his work maybe a similar revolution would have occured to effect the same changes in approach. Certainly other people have had similar approaches. I found the approach of Lingua Per Se Illustrata (Orberg) interesting in that it presented the learner with..... comprehensible input. And that predates Krashen. But I still do credit Krashn with making many of these things explicit.

OK, but you haven't made anything explicit here. I asked for you to explain why you give credit to Krashen for a vague "realisation".

Now, looking back at your previous post, I see how and why I have misinterpreted you.

But it answers to something important. Language acquisition is within the grasp of a lot more people than previously thought if not everyone. Yes, it's a slow process. It doesn't, in the main, engage the conscious study of the rules of grammar or vocabulary. It can be fun and a lot of it can happen unconsciously.

In large part we owe this realisation to Krashen but there are other approahes that lead us to the same point.

My brain was assuming that you were talking about a widely agreed view, when in fact you were talking about the total lack of value in grammar study. I can tell you right now that the majority of teachers in schools and universities and the majority of researchers in the field of language acquisition reject Krashen's learning-acquisition distincition.

Krashen appears more influential than he really is because a bunch of lingobros pick up the name and then fail to read what he actually wrote, but continue to claim that they're following him.

Now you yourself mention Hans Orberg, but you don't mention Otto Jespersen. I was introduced to Jespersen in a lecture I read online: On the mortality of language learning methods by Wilfried Decoo, given in 2001 at Brigham Young University. A core point of his talk was that language teaching was one of the few academic fields where the history of the subject is rarely taught, and while things have improved since, I still think there's far too little focus on history now. Otto Jespersen was a prominent author within the "natural methods" movement, which Decoo sees as essentially repeated in Krashen's CI and the post-Krash "communicative approach" turn.

The lecture had a basic philosophy that those who don't study the past will simply repeat past mistakes. At the turn of the century, Krashen's ideas were abandoned because they had been shown not to really work any better than anything else, and the post-Krashen communicative approach would have been dying if it wasn't for the TEFL boom, and the communicative approach meant you could provide simple training and sell the whole TEFL thing as a "gap year" working holiday. We found ourselves in a world where a lot of people did the TEFL gap year experience, and they're repeating the things their trainers told them and said "and you can trust me, cos I'm a teacher". Now a few years down the line, Krashen's name has been spread about by so many people who spent a year teaching English in Thailand after a degree in engineering that people who haven't even had the frankly pitiful 4-week training of the average TEFL course are confidently telling people how important he was. The people who were teaching when Krashen's theories were all the rage (the 80s) are retiring, so institutionally we're forgetting that it was tried, and people are saying that Krashen had these wonderful ideas that were never tried. They were. And they did not work.

As to monolingualism I think this is very entrenched and getting worse. In the UK the only response, as old as the hills, is to bemoan the drop off of modern foreign languages and then see the drop off accelerate. I don't see any effective policy response to this - anguage learners and linguists may be aware of it but they have been rather reticent in producing any ideas with a chance of working.

That's not what I mean by monolingualism being the norm, though.

I'm talking about childhood monolingualism. The constant claims of declining standards in schools have historically been used to justify monolingualism. "Why teach them Gaelic/Welsh/Irish? Some of them can't even spell English right and English is more important."