That's the title of an article by David Behling, a professor at Waldorf College, cunningly designed to pull in people like me looking to shoot down a ridiculous argument. Unfortunately Professor Behling is pulling a fast one on us, because he comes down firmly on the side of learning languages. I of course agree with that sentiment, but there's a few places where I can't quite agree with what he's saying. Read more... He writes:In American schools, we wait until the brain has turned off the ability to easily learn language and then we start drilling our kids and young adults in a new grammar and vocabulary. It’s no wonder so many of them think it is such a drag. I've argued before that it's more about the method used than the age, but there seems to be some support beyond my little hypothesis as well. I'm also happy proffer myself up as an example; I learned all my languages after the age of 18, and I didn't find it particularly hard. And go ask Steve Kaufmann at what age exactly he decided to pick up Russian.
He then goes on:Opportunities to study language in school — instead of through private lessons or expensive software like Rosetta Stone — will not appear unless something else changes first. He then goes on to say that Americans need a change in the way they think about foreign languages. That probably wouldn't hurt, but I'd start with the teaching method: painfully boring classes mean low demand means few students means few classes. And I'd say he should also check out Exhibit A: Drake University.
And I would be remiss to not point out that there are tons of ways to learn languages without school, private lessons, or expensive software. Browsing this blog, the blog roll, or a few quick Google searches should get you plenty of examples.
Link: Learning foreign languages? Why bother? [Albert Lea Tribune]Labels: education, RosettaStone
 We in the language-learning blogosphere are generally not impressed by university-level language programs. Some of us have even gone so far as to envision a brave new world of institutional language learning where entire language departments get the boot and students take advantage of native speakers, study abroad, and the multitude of resources available to them to learn their language of choice.
Well, I hate to spoil our "We know so much better than crusty, old schools" party, but Drake University, "a private, fully accredited, coeducational university on a 120-acre campus in Des Moines, Iowa", seems to be way ahead of the curve on this one. They implemented just such a system. And they did it in 2001. To those of you with short memories, they launched this way back when you couldn't watch foreign-language videos on YouTube or listen to language-learning podcasts on your iPod because, well, when it launched, YouTube, podcasts, and even the iPod didn't exist.
So what exactly has Drake been doing since they jettisoned their language faculty? Read more... Here are the outlines of their approach.At the beginning of their language studies at Drake, students take a course on language-learning strategies in English that is not aimed at any particular language (sounds like the book we're working on).
Students meet three times per week in groups of no more than four with a native speaker of their target language and speak nothing but the target language during that time (sounds like LingQ's group sessions). Some classes are now completely virtual, via Adobe Acrobat Connect and Skype, making it seem even more like LingQ.
Outside of these meeting times, students "practice using the language, make audio recordings of themselves speaking, and complete a variety of other assignments as part of the required electronic portfolio", which includes a journal in the target language (like Lang-8), the aforementioned recordings (as can be done on Lang-8 or Livemocha), writing samples (as can be done on a bunch of language-learning websites), and other things.
Over the semester, students meet with a Ph.d.-holding linguist to cover grammar questions in English, go over how they're doing, etc. The linguist's main role seems to be a coordinating one.Drake's method seems to be spreading slowly, with some schools adding additional advancements. Inside Higher Ed describes the case of Abilene Christian University:Abilene Christian piloted Mandarin during the 2008-9 academic year using the Drake model of a supervising professor and a native speaker conversation partner. The professor … was in Beijing, and on-campus graduate students fluent in Mandarin led discussions. Arabic is taught by a professor in Tunisia. Now that technologies like Skype are so commonplace, native-speaker teachers who live in their native countries seems like such a no-brainer to me.
And, most importantly, the model seems to be working. According to Inside Higher Ed:There has been no comprehensive study of how Drake’s students compare to students who learn languages in a more traditional way. But the anecdotal evidence is there, many times over, said Jan Marston, director of [Drake's program] from its founding until last year.
When students trained at the Des Moines, Iowa, university study abroad, she said, “they’re placed in classes way above where the seat time would indicate they should be.” Students report back that while other students in their programs abroad speak English to each other, “Drake students are speaking Russian to the Russians.”
Marc Cadd, who directs Drake’s [program currently] said students are generally placed two semesters ahead of where they would be at Drake when they study elsewhere. For instance, students who had finished Drake’s Spanish 101 and 102 classes would likely be placed into a third-year language class when studying abroad in a Spanish-speaking country “primarily on the strength of their speaking skills." I can't say I'm surprised. The approach they're taking jives much more with what I've found in my own experience than any more traditional approach.
So, Drake University, my hat's off to you. Your program is by far closer to how I would have liked to have learned languages in college, and your results certainly do seem to show it. (And someone might want to tell Steve Kaufmann to give these guys a call, given just how similar their system is to LingQ's.)
Links:
Outsourcing Language Learning [Inside Higher Ed]
Languages without Language Faculty [Inside Higher Ed]
World Languages and Cultures [Drake University]Labels: education, Lang-8, LingQ, Livemocha, native-speaker tutor
Ah, hyperbole. Remember when Japan was going to take over the world in the 1980s? Somewhere between my G.I. Joes and Transformers, I recall my dad insisting on not buying Japanese automobiles back then. Of course, he didn't buy a single automobile during the 1980s—he rode that good ol' American 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme right into the ground—but his attitude left enough of an impression to have stuck in my memory until now. Well, it now seems to be China's turn for all that. "When China Rules the World" by Martin Jacques just got some traction in the New York Times. I haven't read the book, but it seems to be quite well researched—but, then again, so did those many books about Japan way back when. China is clearly on its way up, rising in stature and power of all sorts, but I still can't help but look skeptically at any book with a title like that. Geopolitics aside, there was of course some language-connected fun in the article. Read more... Here's what they have:Many Chinese have learned English to compete better in the world economy. But the future, Jacques writes, belongs to Mandarin. It is the national tongue of one in five people in the world, and it is rapidly edging out English as the preferred second language in Asia. That one-in-five statistic needs to be taken with a grain of salt. While Chinese, i.e., Mandarin, is undoubtedly the "national tongue" of one in five people in the world, that hardly means it's their mother tongue, and in some cases it's not even an effectively acquired second language. (People from regions where another language is the native tongue—Cantonese, Fujianese, etc.—often say that foreigners like me speak better Mandarin than they do, although I generally take that as too much praise for being able to ask where the bathroom is.)
Regarding the second concept—that Chinese is displacing English as a second language in Asia—I just don't see it yet. Although, as discussed nearly a year back, Chinese undoubtedly will grow and is growing in importance and in popularity, I still don't see it assailing English's position just yet, in Asia or elsewhere. In Japan especially, English is everywhere, and Chinese competes with Spanish, French, German, etc., as the second foreign language of choice. That said, if anyone's read the book, I'd love to hear what data he uses to support all of this.
And the article goes on:In the early days of the Web, the language of cyberspace was English. But the explosion of Internet use in China will tip the balance to Mandarin before long. If you're counting the number of pages, this may very well be true. But until Chinese has the wide acceptance of English, English will remain the way in which people of various linguistic backgrounds communicate on the web. When Europeans begin regularly writing web pages in Chinese so that they can be read by Americans, Arabs, Asian, etc., let's talk about revising this.Link: Waking Dragon [New York Times] Labels: Chinese, English
Barbara Strauch of the New York Times writes that the brain doesn't get worse at learning during middle age, but rather it learns differently: The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture. If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can. And what is language learning if not recognizing patterns? The article continues: Educators say that, for adults, one way to nudge neurons in the right direction is to challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. Language falls into this box pretty nicely; most people have worked pretty darn hard in their native language (decades of English classes, anyone?), and learning a foreign language will certainly challenge your routine linguistic assumptions. So this appears to be yet another reason to drop the lame "I'm too old to learn a language" dribble. However, it does seem to suggest that learning for middle-aged adults is going to be quite different from young adults and certainly from adolescents and children. The next step I'd like to see is someone digging into what learning methods are best for what age groups. As I'm not yet in the middle-aged group but am heading there quickly enough, I'd love a take-home message that could help me make my learning time more efficient. Link: How to Train the Aging Brain [New York Times] Labels: age
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