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Esperanto a waste of time? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5814 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German | Message 225 of 351 20 January 2010 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
"This particular assumption means that learning Spanish, Italian or Romanian yields little or no benefit in accelerating the learning process for French. " I did not say that at all. I said that 4 years of French would yield more French knowledge than 3 years of French plus 1 year of another Romance language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7150 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 226 of 351 20 January 2010 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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H-m-m-m, I think we may be missing a major point here: If learning Esperanto really helps accelerate progress in learning other, and particularly Indo-European, languages, maybe we could use it as an introduction to teaching English to foreigners, make English a lot easier to learn, and then really sweep the globe!
Although something tells me that, no matter how popular an improved, rapid-fire method of teaching English might be among language-learners all around the world, a lot of Esperantists might not welcome this... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7162 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 227 of 351 20 January 2010 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Again, why should Esperanto been given a special place here? It has been shown that there are other languages which are closer to French (e.g. Walloon, Occitan, Catalan) and by virtue of their similarities already give a bigger "discount" when learning/understanding/using French. Esperanto is rather similar to a Romance or Germanic language (with a certain similarity to most of the Uralic or Altaic languages if one wants to make a big deal of Esperanto's somewhat agglutinative typology). However Esperanto is not particularly close to French, any more than it is to Spanish, Italian or any other Romance language. With this in mind, spending 1 year in Esperanto and then 3 years of French should give about the same level of French competency as 1 year of Spanish/Italian/Romanian and then 3 years of French. Reworking the relationship above but retaining ChiaBrain's style of interpretation: (3 yrs. of French + 1 yr. of Esperanto/Spanish/Italian/Romanian/etc. "pre-study") > (4 yrs. of French) (i.e. interpreted as my knowledge of French after the four years is higher on the left side than it is on the right side, thanks to the benefits of "pre-studying") For people who do a year of pre-study with something closely-related to French (Walloon or Franco-Provençal in particular, but Catalan or Occitan should also be beneficial) before moving on to French, they should have an even bigger discount when taking on French (they can even spend fewer than 3 years on French to reach some defined level in French). In other words the case is that the acquisition of French is accelerated further if the "pre-studying" involves a closely-related language to French instead of Esperanto or some language that's a little less related such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, etc. Let's start again: The observed outcome is that one can reach some competency level of French in 4 years ("intermediate", "basic fluency", "mastery" etc. - whatever you think is feasible in 4 years of study). The study concludes that 1 year of "pre-study" with Esperanto reduces the time needed to reach this particular level of French by 1 year - going from 4 years' study to 3 years. But then the third assumption about the outcome is:
ChiaBrain's posit is that I can get more knowledge of French in 3 years of study of French with 1 year of pre-study of Esperanto, than I could with 3 years of study of French with 1 year of pre-study of a cognate Romance language. It seems too good be true. I've already argued earlier that this relationship is questionable given that pre-studying with Spanish, Italian or Romanian gives about the same benefit in acquiring French as it does when "pre-studying" with Esperanto, when considering similarities within Romance languages, and general development of or accustomation to language learning techniques which can apply to learning ANY language. Another thing that just came to mind about that study in Doviende's post is the quality of the students or instruction involved. To play Devil's Advocate, if someone wanted to set up the study to torpedo Esperanto, one could skew it so that the students observed to do 1 year of Esperanto study and then 3 years of French were less diligent or motivated than those chosen to do 4 years of French study. I believe then that the results would have been less favorable to Esperanto, since we on this forum agree that motivation and diligence are important for any learning process to be successful. Conversely one way for that study to ensure that the results are favorable for promoting Esperanto as a teaching language is if the students who were observed to study French for 4 years had been less motivated or diligent than the students were observed to study French for 3 years after 1 year of Esperanto. Edited by Chung on 20 January 2010 at 10:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5814 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German | Message 229 of 351 21 January 2010 at 3:32am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That's the question. The study cited seemed to indicate it actually accelerated learning in another language enough to compensate for the study time lost in that other language.
I was just illustrating what the study seemed to suggest.
It does, and I suggested that maybe its exception-less grammar lets students develop better mental models about how grammar works since they are unencumbered with memorizing exceptions. Its pure speculation on my part and I honestly I hope it to be true because I'd love to be able to study Esperanto with no cost to my other target languages. Doviende, can you post any links to these studies? Sorry if I missed any earlier in the thread. Thanks in advance. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Hoogamagoo Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6557 days ago 14 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto | Message 230 of 351 21 January 2010 at 4:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I got this one...
Examples of pedagogic experiments It is interesting to note how many teaching experiments have been conducted over the years and in how many places. The ones which follow are the most significant. Girls' Middle School in Bishop Auckland (GB) Years: 1918-1921 Aims: Research on the question if prior study of Esperanto facilitates later study of French and German. Conclusions: The simple and rational grammar of Esperanto constitutes, especially for less gifted children, a bridge which makes a more manageable passage to the complicated French or German grammars possible; it makes the meaning of the grammatical terms visible; it clearly indicates the meaning of the grammatical prefixes and suffixes; accustoms children to the idea of relationship between words, the construction of words, and derivations; Esperanto introduces students to the international lexicon. Reports: Dr. Alexandra Fischer, Languages by way of Esperanto. "Eksperimento farita en Bishop Auckland (GB) en la jaroj 1918-1921" in Internacia Pedagogia Revuo, 1931. Columbia University, New York (USA) Years: 1925-1931 Aims: research on the question, if and to what degree a planned language can be more easily learned than an ethnic language. Note: the experiment was organised on order by the IALA (International Auxiliary Language Association) by Dr. Edward Thorndike, director of the psychology section of the institute for pedagogic research at Columbia University. Conclusions: it is possible for the average student to understand written and spoken Esperanto in 20 hours better than he can understand French, German, Italian, or Spanish after 100 hours 5 hours of study to learn German give practically no results; 5 hours of Esperanto study are enough to give a general idea of the grammar of the entire language; in general, in a time limit from 10 to 100 hours of study, the results acquired in the study of a synthetic language are practically from 5 to 15 times better than those obtain after the study of an ethnic language, according to the difficulty of the latter (Eaton, p. 6-7); for native English speaking students, the results of studying Latin, German, or French are better if such study is preceded by that of a planned language, as preparatory introduction (Eaton, p. 27-30). Report: Edward Thorndike, Language Learning. Bureau of Publications of Teachers College, 1933. Helen S. Eaton, "The Educational Value of an Artificial Language." The Modern Language Journal, #12, pp. 87-94 (1927). Public High School in New York Years: 1934-35 Aims: research the influence of the study of Esperanto for a semester on later study of French and, in parallel, the native language, English. Report: Helen S. Eaton, An Experiment in Language Learning Provincial Grammar School in Sheffield (GB) Years: 1947-51 Aims: See if Esperanto is truly a useful introduction to the study of French. Conclusions: In summary, it was concluded that, among the less intelligent students, those who devoted a year to Esperanto succeeded better in French after four years, without additional study time for that language in the three years spent studying it. In any case, among the more intelligent students, the best success in French was among those who began it immediately. Those who began with Esperanto achieved a better "passive knowledge" and those who began with French acquired better "active use." Reports: J. H. Halloran (lecturer in Pedagogy at the University of Sheffield), "A four year experiment in Esperanto as an introduction to French". V. C. Nixon, "Lastatempaj eksperimentoj pri Esperanto en lernejoj". Egerton Park School, Denton (Manchester, United Kingdom) Years: 1948 and following Aims: study of less intellectually gifted students to ascertain if prior Esperanto study facilitates French study. Conclusions: "A child can learn as much Esperanto in about 6 months as he would French in 3-4 years... if all children studied Esperanto during the first 6-12 months of a 4-5 year French course, they would gain much and lose nothing." Report: Norman Williams (scholastic director) "Report on the teaching of Esperanto from 1948 to 1965". Middle School in Somero (Finland) Years: 1958-63 Aims: research the study of Esperanto and the question of whether such study is advantageous or disadvantageous for the study of German. Note: the experiment took place under the direction of the Minister of Public Instruction. Conclusions: the language knowledge acquired with Esperanto was evidently such as could not be reached (under similar conditions) with any other foreign language; the unchallenged superiority in the ability to use German achieved by the students who had studied Esperanto was observed; the rapid results achieved in Esperanto instruction raised the students' courage and their faith in themselves; the capacity to accept new ways in which to express themselves already constitutes a help, at the subconscious level, in assimilating a new foreign language. Reports: J. VILKKI, V. SETÄLÄ, La eksperimenta instruado de Esperanto en la geknaba mezgrada lernejo de Somero (Suomio); V. SETÄLÄ, Vizito al la eksperimenta lernejo en Somero, Finnlando. Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest (H) Years: 1962-63 Aims: Compare, in three middle school classes, the results obtained studying Esperanto with those obtained by studying Russian, English, and German. Conclusions: For the Hungarian children, the coefficients of the result, in terms of preset educational goals, turn out to be the following: 30% for Russian, 40% for German, 60% for English, and 130% for Esperanto. "Such indications perfectly confirm the initial observations made by Prof. Barczi: in scholastic language instruction circumstances, Esperanto is the only foreign language for which educational goals can be met." (Szerdahelyi, 1970, quoted in Lobin, p. 39). Reports: István SZERDAHELYI (University lecturer), La didaktika loko de la internacia lingvo en la sistemo de lernejaj studobjektoj; Günter LOBIN, Die Internacia Lingvo als Bildungskybernetisches Sprachmodell, p. 59. International Pedagogic Experiment Years: 1971-74 Organiser:: International League of Esperanto Speaking Teachers (ILEI) Aims: show that, under normal scholastic instruction conditions, Esperanto can be more easily learned than any other language; examine if the study of Esperanto constitutes an enrichment of general linguistic knowledge, useful for a better knowledge of one's own native language; examine if Esperanto, as a neutral and international language, has easily utilisable pedagogic qualities and consequently facilitates the study of other languages; demonstrate that, even during instruction, Esperanto is already applicable in various way to a greater extent than other foreign languages. Reports: Marta KOVÁCS, Internacia Didaktika Eksperimento Kvinlanda; Johano INGUSZ, Instruspertoj en esperantfakaj klasoj (en Hungario). Günter LOBIN, Internacia Lingvo als Bildungskybernetisches Sprachmodell, p. 59. International Pedagogic Experiment Years: 1975-77 Organiser: International League of Esperanto Speaking Teachers (ILEI)Participating: 302 students of both sexes: 16 students in Belgium, 45 in France, 90 in Greece, 77 in West Germany, and 74 in the Netherlands. A final week united in St. Gérard (Belgium) in 1977: mathematics, geography ("Europe and Us"), drawing, sport, and music instruction in Esperanto, as well as Esperanto itself. Aims: demonstrate the greater teaching effectiveness and economy of Esperanto instruction when compared to other foreign languages; study the influence of Esperanto on the improved study of the native language; conduct research on the possibility of improving reading and spelling capabilities in children, especially those who present problems in this field; form a capacity for language comprehension of such a degree that the children are capable of more easily learning other foreign languages; contribute to a European childhood education and a humanistic internationalism. Conclusions: In the opinion of the non-Esperantist Belgian Inspector General: "Esperanto is the right language as a basis for those who plan on studying other foreign languages." positive progress was made in the evolution towards a complete internationalisation. Further, Esperanto revealed itself to be an appropriate instrument for common reciprocal comprehension and an excellent vehicle for other teaching subjects. Report: Helmut SONNABEND, Esperanto, lerneja eksperimento. Instruction of Linguistic Orientation, Paderborn (D) Years: late '70s - early '80s Description: This kind of instruction was the object of in-depth study by a group from the Institute of Pedagogic Cybernetics in Paderborn, under the direction of Dr H. Frank, well known in cybernetic circles. It is characterised by the introduction to the study of foreign languages, uses children from 8-10 years old and is based on comparison between languages, using Esperanto as a reference. Since it is perfectly adapted to children, it turns out to be extremely effective from the pedagogic point of view. Scientifically measured, the results confirm that such instruction of linguistic orientation: considerably increases children's interest in the diversity of European cultures and languages; require a small time investment which can be saved during later study of other foreign languages; is of help in teaching the native language, geography, and mathematics; very quickly creates the possibility of interethnic communication perfect for children, without limiting it to the territory of a specific privileged language. In such a way it opens the way to better comprehension between people, without language discrimination. Source: Protocols of the annual November meetings in Paderborn "Laborkonferencoj: Interlingvistiko en Scienco kaj Klerigo" (Working conference: Interlinguistics in Science and Education), which can be obtained from the Institute of Pedagogic Cybernetics in Paderborn. Also in the works by Frank, Lobin, Geisler, and Meder. An Experiment in an Italian Elementary School In Italy, where Esperanto received positive treatment in a 1952 memo from the Minister of Public Instruction, Segni, there have been various experiments in the use of Esperanto, above all in the cities of Cesena (Gianfranca Braschi Taddei), Cagliari (Nino Pala) e Genoa. The experiment cited here took place at the "Rocca" Elementary School in San Salvatore di Cogorno (province of Genoa). Years: 1983-88 Classes: 9-11 years (study Esperanto), 11-14 years (study French) Aims: rapidly start providing a useful instrument of linguistic communication for immediate use in transnational reports (correspondence, possible encounters); dispose of a simple and regular comparative model for more effective instruction of the native language; prepare a practical basis for later study of foreign languages; serve to enrich the scholastic programme through a wider use of other subjects. Conclusions: According to the final analysis, the word capacity achieved by the children was remarkably good: they spontaneously conversed about various topics, their pronunciation was correct, they occasionally ran into grammatical and lexical errors, but without affecting reciprocal comprehension; comparing the results of the same students in Esperanto and French gave indications of the learning rates for the two languages; after having compared the French exercises of those children who had previously studied Esperanto with those who had not received such preliminary preparation, indications as to the introductory value of the International Language were reached. Report: Elisabetta FORMAGGIO (Chiavari, Italy), Lerneja eksperimento pri lernfacileco kaj transfero en la fremdlingvoinstruado. Source: Study International Language (known as Esperanto) Commission, Interministerial Decree April 29/October 5 1993, Italian ministry of public instruction. EKPAROLI project (Melbourne, Australia, 1994-2000) From the project's summary: "In 1994 the Government of the State of Victoria proposed that every primary school (6-12yrs) should begin to teach at least one LOTE (Language other than English) for at least 2.5 hours per week... It was clear from Esperanto experiments in Europe that Esperanto helped learners make a good, quick start in learning their second European language. However no research had been done on whether the early learning of Esperanto helped with the later learning of East- Asian Languages. The situation unfolding in Victoria seemed to offer an ideal opportunity to do some research on that idea." Years: 1994-2000 Classes: 9-11 years (study Esperanto), 11-14 years (study French)Aims: To see whether previous study of Esperanto would assist children in the subsequent learning of East-Asian languages (particularly Japanese). Conclusions: The Esperanto-pupils rated LOTE-learning and also rated Esperanto one of their favourite subjects. The attainment level of the Esperanto-pupils, which was rated by the teachers (from 1 to 5), was impressive as 96% were rated 3,4 or 5. Concerning the pupils motivation for LOTE-learning, again rated by the teachers from 1 to 5, 86% of the Esperanto learners were rated 4 or 5 compared with 55% of the non-Esperanto learners. Regarding the speaking ability of LOTE, no Esperanto pupil was rated less than 3 in this skill. Source: Study Monash University EKPAROLI project home page 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7162 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 231 of 351 21 January 2010 at 6:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
What I find striking about those studies is that: 1) They tend to focus on the question of L2 (be it Esperanto as L2 or a natural language as L2). Given some defined period of time, determine how much Esperanto one can learn as L2 and then compare that with how much of a natural language one can learn as L2. 2) They focus on the influence of Esperanto acting as a bridge language to learn a second natural language (or a third language overall). 3) They consider The effects of learning Esperanto has on performance in other subjects (in schoolchildren). None of the conclusions of these studies on their own surprise me since many of the subjects tested spoke a Romance or Germanic language natively (the studies of Finnish and Hungarian students are the exceptions), no doubt that these subjects got a boost from being able to recognize, guess, acquire, understand or retain a lot of Esperanto vocabulary or some grammatical concepts such as articles or gender. The morphological principles of Esperanto have been set out to be as consistent with each other as possible (a bit like Turkish if I may add) and for a language-learning "rookie" who's accustomed only to the vagaries of his/her own native natural language, the apparent regularity is usually helpful as one learns more Esperanto. However none of the studies above have determined if using Esperanto instead of a natural language to facilitate acquisition or learning a third language (i.e. second natural language) is demonstrably "better" for acquiring that third language. That last study states that (presumably) monolingual English-speaking schoolchildren who learn Esperanto before learning an Asian language end up loving language-learning and get better results in language classes than children who do not learn Esperanto as a "bridge language". No duh. However the study leads me to think that it's comparing children who move to L2 with no "bridge language" at all with children who move to L2 (arguably L3) with a goodly amount of Esperanto under their belts. I wonder what it would be like if we compare these kids with 1 year's background in Esperanto with kids with 1 year's background in a non-Asian natural language, and all of these kids are sitting in the same class for beginner's Mandarin (or any Asian language for that matter). (For the sake of comparison, assume that each group of kids on average are of equal motivation, diligence and socio-economic background). Will the "Esperanto as L2" kids get better results in Mandarin class than the kids with "non-Asian natural language as L2" in the same Mandarin class? It's probable that the study done after WWII in Sheffield is the one that doviende is referring to for it talks about how less-intelligent children with 1 year's background of Esperanto "succeeded better in French" after 4 years without their requiring extra time to acquire French in the three years devoted to French. What I find interesting here (and somewhat negating to an unreserved approval for Esperanto as a "bridge language" to learn French) is the second part of the conclusion which states that those who did best in French (tied to being able to use French actively) were the more intelligent students who started their French studies from the very beginning (presumably without spending any time on Esperanto). Those who spent a year on Esperanto weren't quite as strong with French and so had better passive ability in French. This agrees with the observation that if you really want to learn L2 well, you'll often be better off starting with L2 and thus focus more on it. Esperanto is not that magic of a bullet as it seems at least for the more intelligent students in the study. The only things that I can conclude from these studies when it comes to Esperanto and learning additional languages are: 1) if one wants to learn a second natural language well, but perceives a genuine lack of ability to do so directly, or doesn't know which second natural language to learn, then one can do worse than learning Esperanto. At the least, that person will be learning something, and will get exposure to a language that is not identical to the native language. The more languages in one's "repertoire", the easier it tends to become to acquire subsequent languages. 2) if however one is not deemed to be less intelligent (or does not perceive him/herself as such), and knows which L2 to learn, then it's probably better to move directly to learning L2 without a "primer" done with Esperanto. If someone keen or more intelligent (however one defines this) insists on using a "bridge language" which turns the process into one with a L3 then there's the idea picking L2 based on its similarity or degree of kinship to at least one of L1 or L3. An example could be a monolingual native speaker of English (L1) who firsts learns some Dutch (L2) in order to attain the "prize" of an accelerated learning process for German as L3. Again the success of using a "bridge language" in this way depends heavily on its relationship or similarity to L1 and/or L3. A related example could involve teaching Finnish to monolingual Swedish schoolchildren. Would the time needed to acquire a defined command of Finnish be truly reduced if the children were first exposed to Esperanto instead of a related and visibly similar language (to Finnish, that is) such as Estonian? Here L2 (Estonian) and L3 (Finnish) are related, but L1 (Swedish) is quite different (for simplicity let's ignore the presence of Germanic loanwords (including Old Swedish ones) in Estonian and Finnish, which would only help in recognizing or retaining some of the vocabulary of those latter two languages). Incidentally this second example is a bit of a reversal of the Finnish study quoted above which found that Finnish children had very good results with acquiring German after having had "priming" with Esperanto. Well, no duh. Finnish grammar and a good part of the basic vocabulary doesn't bear much similarity to what's in German. Using Esperanto with its noticeably Romance-Germanic word-stock and vaguely Indo-European grammar (albeit with its Finnish-like agglutination typology) will certainly give a huge advantage to any monolingual Finn who is learning German. However, what's to say that a monolingual Finn with "priming" with Swedish instead of Esperanto wouldn't be able to achieve at least similar if not greater results when learning German? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5992 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 232 of 351 21 January 2010 at 6:38am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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It seems that part of the puzzle is that you don't get much out of 1 year of classroom learning of Swedish or German, whereas as 1 year of classroom learning in each of these studies (or at least the ones I looked at) led to a high level of fluency in Esperanto.
I think there's something extra that you learn as you advance through all stages of learning a language and end with the satisfaction of having accomplished spoken fluency. For a long time, I was personally hindered by never having done this in any of the languages I had studied, so I didn't quite know how to proceed from a certain point. But I was great at quickly acquiring the basics of many of them ;) I don't think it's coincidence that most people I know left years of high-school language classes thinking "I'm just not good at languages" because they still couldn't read a book or watch tv or speak to someone they met on the street. This sort of experience permanently turned them off of language learning. This is why, in most cases, I would be wary of "priming" with Dutch in order to learn German. You'd just end up with a bunch of Dutch beginner/intermediate students who may not want to continue to German. Also, I think it's rather unusual that these studies would show that 1yr Esperanto + 3yrs Other > 4yrs Other. For the reasons above, I think it likely that 1yr Swedish + 3yrs German will not be better than 4yrs German for these hypothetical Finns. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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