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Language as Habit | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 5007 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes  Speaks: Korean* | Message 17 of 26 05 June 2012 at 6:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
fully agree with Serpent.... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 5007 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes Speaks: Korean* | Message 18 of 26 06 June 2012 at 7:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
from How to raise a kid polyglot? Version 2012, 06 June 2012.
Edited by futurianus on 06 June 2012 at 7:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 5007 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes Speaks: Korean* | Message 19 of 26 01 October 2013 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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There are moments in our lives when we become suddenly aware of certain things in an extraordinarily clear and powerful way, when some old or new information jumps out at you and leaves a searing mark in your mind and heart in a way it deeply and forever changes the way you look at things, moments of 'eureka!'s. There were those euekas throughout history in various fields, whether religious, scientific, technological, economic or artistic.
I am going to share some of these eureka moments that I had, some very decisive and some supplementary. I thought about sharing this here for quite a while, but did not have enough quiet time and opportunity, and also because somewhat hesitant as I was not sure how what I write here are being received or whether it would be welcomed, whether I would be understood in the right way or in a twisted way which might make me regret for having expressed my thought here. I have been away from here for quite a long time. Since I have received some impetus to post here again recently, let me just go ahead and drop this story here also and get it out of my heart, to not let it weigh heavier on me, before inertia sets in again. I am going to say things here for which I have strong feelings and convictions and do so a bit freely to express myself more fully and honestly. It is not prescriptive, so please do not feel offended if you do feel that it is not beneficial or relevant to you. Thought experiment about memory
Intense nonstop mental activity over a prolonged time was exhausting my brain, a physical overheating of my brain perhaps, and I could feel the physical condition of my brain. Around the end of this period, I went out to the internet cafe one day and lighted on an interesting news article about recent brain research. It said that the researchers have discovered that when we learn a new language, new neurons or nerve cells are generated and form new neural networks that will oversea the function of a new language. If I read this news at other times, I might have just thought that it was an interesting news and moved on to read other news. But something flashed in my mind, an 'eureka' had exploded, and I almost stood up from my chair. This was it! Why did I not see it before! Theoretically I had thought that I had overcome the duality of energy and matter, mind and body in my worlview, but I was not aware of its full implications for language learning. Language acquisition was not just a purely intellectual activity, but was a very physiological, biological and material phenomenon--a literal growth of organic cells within my very body! Something that which was alive, creating a living creature within my brain! Another associated thought flashed. I was working so hard, wrestling with memorizing all those words depending on the strength of my will power to master them, turning up and generating as great as I can the highest voltage power of my intelligence to hover over them and get them all digested. "Yes, I can do it. I must do it. I will do it. I am going to master all these words and master this language." I was telling myself. The words, however, often escaped my grasp. I thought that I had them, but I found that I was forgetting most of them after two or three weeks, despite a number of reviews and reworkings. It was like pouring water into a pot with a broken bottom. It was not working. Yes, I was doing it all wrong! I was exerting too much strength, too much intense will power and power of mind to catch, to grab, to bind and to push down all these slippery words. When all I had to do was just relax and forget all about catching them, memorizing them and making them mine, but just give my brain stimulus, just introduce and show them to my brain in a way that is meaningful and interesting. I realized that I did not have to worry about the result, that of having memorized them and being able to recall them at will. It was my brain's job to do so and not my job, not my 'great, powerful and intelligent' mind's job. I pushed my will power and intellectual power to the utmost, to the very limit where it was overtaxing my brain. Only when I pushed my brain to the utmost limit, I came to realize experientially its true makeup and nature. I was doing things all wrong! I had all the will, enthusiasm and motivation to learn a new language, but I lacked something.... Knowledge! Knowledge about my brain, how it functions to allow me to acquire a new language! I backed down. "Mind, it is not your job to learn the new language. You do not have to agonize and wrestle with all your might and strength. You are too intense. Relax. You have a very smart animal, a living organism, a conglomerate of many cells. It is this creature, this brain of yours, which will learn the language. Not you. Not your mind. Not your intellect. What you must do is to just feed and water him everyday. And he will grow. Yes, he will litterally grow in a very real sense. A biological change, generation of new cells that will build a center just like a computer operating sytem, that will process the new language for you. You just need to feed him, everyday, continuously. You must not trust your mind. You must trust your brain." We had something remarkable with us, a marvelous vehicle, an excellent tool, the power and function of which we were just not aware of. We were not given a proper operation manual! For using car, computer, TV, washer, microwave oven, etc, for all those gadgets, we use their manuals. Manufacturers supply manuals with the product. But for our brain, there was no manual. Our brain scientists are now investigating into our brain's structure, properties and functions and slowly, but surely, step by step, releasing new informations about them. Our manual is slowly making its appearance, a bit at a time. There is theoretical science and applied science. Technological development and utilization of knowledge that our scientists supply us. When it came to learning a new language, and I believe also for many of our other activities, I needed to first get hold of a new knowledge and then apply this new knowledge for acquiring languages. Through about 40 days of travail where my mind and brain were getting overheated to the point of perhaps a fusion between them, where I could literally and physically feel and sense how my mind was coursing through the intricate channels within my brain, where I was becoming aware of the physicality of my very mind or at least its physiological manifestation in the form of certain sensations I was having in my head, I was perhaps getting opened up and ready to have my 'eureka' moment. All it needed was a catalyst in the form of the needed information. When I read the news on the recent finding of brain scientists, that information shoot out from the computer screen into my brain like a flying bullet and my brain received it like it was waiting for it eagerly for ages and ignited a conflagration of fire within it, and awoke me up with an explosion of 'eureka'. My mind was a harsh master and my brain a faithful but abused dog. My mind made my brain run around and around whole day, without giving it any rest. My mind was striking it with a whip and a stick, to keep on running and running, to bark and bark, to pick up the bone and come back, to roll to the left and to the right, do all the tricks the dogs can do, again and again, on and on without any break. The poor dog was tired, then exhausted, then almost driven to sickness. The Mind was relentless. It was determined to get things done regardless of how difficult and tough it was to do so. It drove the poor dog on and on. The dog was getting very desperate and gave all the signals it can to the master that it was getting very sick and was nearing a total collapse, whining and barking at him. The master sensed its complaints and massaged the head, but felt that it should not stop. He was waging a duel with Russian. It was either him or Russian. One of them had to fall down. It was not going to be him, but Russian. The dog sensed master's determination and got very desperate. It felt that unless it find a way out, it was going to perhaps die. When the new information was shot into him, the dog was processing it perhaps at a speed faster than a supercomputer. It probably took it 0.0000007 second to process and recognize that here was something that it can use to finally get out of its predilection, to save its life. It gathered all its energies and quickly transformed that bullet into a big and poweful missile, directed it towards its master and fired....hoping he will get the message.... Desperation sometimes works a miracle. A desperate brain will look for any and all ways to save itself.... A bright big light suddenly burst out in my head and with that light I saw things extremely clearly. It was such a simple thing after all. How could I have not known it all these times? Yes. Learning a new language is a process of giving continuous meaningful and strong enough stimulation to my brain, so that it will be stimulated enough to begin to generate new nerve cells one after another, linking them together into a network system and once this network system is formed and grows, it was going to function and process all the informations I sent it in the way a computer would process it, and if this organic network is not grown and formed, the new language was not going to be processed irregardless of how much mental effort I put into it, irregardless of how strongly I utilize my will power and intellectual prowess. This neural network was not something that I had designed and produced. This was the work of the cosmos, the universe, which has formed our brain in all its complexity and capacity. I cannot design and grow and make this neural network. It is the work of our body and brain, according to the design of our DNA and Universe, the laws and mysteries of which we still do not fully understand. All I can do is to understand this process of neural generation and supply proper stimulation. There is not any more thing that I can do. All of my frustrations and willing will not do. It is a miracle of life. Life giver has designed flowers and plants to grow if they receive sunlight, water and elements from the ground. We can do things following the law of nature and help them grow, but it is not us who make them grow, but the great Ecosystem of the universe which makes it grow. Human language is a gift from Life. We cannot force it to become ours, it has to grow according to the laws of the universe. We can only cooperate with Nature and help a new life, a living organic neural network entity to generate and grow. Once it grows, it is not our mind or intellect that processes a new language, but our brain or to speak more correctly the new neural network in cooperation with the total brain system. ----------- I GOT IT!!!! Eureka!! Another turning point in my language journey. It is getting long. Let me take a pause. Edited by futurianus on 01 October 2013 at 9:21pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Heriotza Groupie Dominican Republic Joined 4678 days ago 48 posts - 71 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 21 of 26 02 October 2013 at 3:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I see you know Ancient Greek and Latin. I'm interested in learning both of them. I wonder how did you manage to put in practice your approach to learning languages with those two classical languages? How did you manage to create a set of habits which allows you to use them without having to 'study' them? Edited by Heriotza on 02 October 2013 at 3:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 5007 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes Speaks: Korean* | Message 22 of 26 03 October 2013 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Erenko, I appreciate your comment and suggestion. It is quite encouraging for me to hear that someone here values my input as to have read all my posts, as I find it sometimes quite demotivating to write posts here.
Heriotza, I do not know whether your interest in those two classic languages is strong enough to lead you to actually study them. I will presume that you are sincerely desiring to get an useful information that will help you with learning classical languages and accordingly formulate my response to your elicitation for the information on my personal experience with them. First of all, I am not an expert on these two languages and secondly, I did not have a chance to "put in practice" fully the insights I have described above to learn them. ----- On the first point, I put those two on my "Speaks:" list while I was discussing on the topic of major three branches of European languages having Greco-Latin vocabulary base. (see Panglot and Panglotism: new type of polyg, "Clarification: Unity of European Languages in Common Greco-Latin Vocabulary Base" ) I felt that the other poster did not have much confidence in my knowledge and understanding of those languages and their relationship to European languages. Thus to shortcut his doubt and to put more weight on what I was going to write in my response to him, I put them up on my list. Sometimes conversations do not happen at all and nobody gets any benefit, when there is a deep mistrust in other's knowledge or linguistic background. I do not speak those ancient languages and I doubt that there are many who do, though I am probably one of those very few who had actually practiced speaking them somewhat persistently over a significant period of time, so I did not put them up at first. I, however, saw several others who put them up in their "speaks" list and HTLAL did not provide a way to put them in another more appropriate category of list. Faced with the situation, even though it was over an issue of minor nature, which might derail the major thrust of my post, I felt that it was necessary to reveal the fact that I had a measure of knowledge about those two classical languages and had some qualification to make a statement on the issue. I am glad that you had brought up your question as it has made me to look again at my "speaks" list. It was while discussing the topic of panglottism, that I added other languages on my "speaks" list for above reasons, to strengthen my credential in order to discuss the issue of panglottery. We at HTLAL tend to respect those who say that they have learned many languages, the more in number, the more the respect. Profitability and quality of ideas and concepts should be more important for serious and mature learners, who are perceptive enough to shift through the essence of discussion without being overly influenced by how many languages the other person allegedly knows, but the reality of how things sometimes work out is within the atmosphere of grading system and conservatism, a question of "who are you, what credentials do you have, and how dare you talk about these issues in this way" creates noises that could sidetrack our attention from the more important conceptual discussions on hand. As I was delineating the concept of panglottism, which might have initially given some people the impression that I was belittling the accomplishment and language family focus of some of the polyglots here and stepped on some members' toes, I felt it necessary to backup my 'credential' by updating the number of my "speaks" list. It is all a matter of what kind of definition and standard you use. I thought about putting up a bit more on my list, but then I remembered what has been said, Super polyglot congress?
and I restrained my itching finger from entering more than ten on my list. To tell you honestly, I do not feel confident in any languages other than my native language. In other languages I had acquired a measure of abilities, but I had enough humbling experiences of realizing quite a number of times that I was not as advanced in some languages as I had thought, and lacked the ability to properly assess myself due to not having been exposed much to the higher language culture of respective languages. There is then the great problem of forgetting the languages which you once spoke, but now cannot speak with ease for various reasons. On some standardized tests in my stronger language, I came up as having higher capacity than the majority of educated natives, but it does not mean that I am as natural and comfortable as them in language usage. I do not want to get too deeply into this matter, but I just want to say that there always exists a sense of lack, uncomfortableness and insecurity with my level. Taking this incident as an opportunity, I have stripped off all the languages from my list, so that others will not have higher expectation of my language ability. ----- On the second point, I did not have a chance to "put in practice" the insights I have described in the above post, because I learned them while I was in school and my understanding about language as habit only came much later. However, I had still applied some relevant principles even at that time unconsciously. I did as well as any others in the classes. I, however, did some other extra practices on my own, which I believe gave me an edge over other students. These were not required, but I did them on my own because I felt the way the class was being taught left me unsatisfied. Super polyglot congress?
I did this with both Greek and Latin. In intermediate or advanced course level, I have made one memory card and spend about 15-30 minutes a day memorizing and practicing the content, review and rememorize that week's cards weekly, and go through the whole month's cards again once a month. After several months, from time to time, I would review all of them again according to a system I had set up for organizing cards, in a way much similar to Anki. Another thing that I did was reading respective interlinear texts from time to time. As a student, however, I could not devote much time on them as I wanted due to time constraints, as I had many other subjects to study. With classic languages, only reading ability is taught and tested on. Professors also could not carry on even a simple conversation in them. You would not need speaking ability. They were dead languages after all. However, memorizing meaningful quotations and speaking them out loud could make those dead languages come alive, help one to have a better sense of the language and to improve one's reading ability. I remember how doing so indeed made those dead languages come alive to me. The words, sentence structure, grammar, meaning and sound all got organically joined together in one gestalt whole, something much different than the ones we studied in the class--messages of wisdom that came to me in the rhythmic waves of sound, in a form that was dynamic, shiny and beautiful, which I now recognize as optimal stimuli for the brain. Learning a new language is quite complex and multifaceted. There could be many other ways which are more proper and effective for you. ----- Lastly, on your "without having to 'study' them": How to raise a kid polyglot? Version 2012
Wishing you all the best with your language learning endeavor.... Edited by futurianus on 03 October 2013 at 4:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Heriotza Groupie Dominican Republic Joined 4678 days ago 48 posts - 71 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 23 of 26 03 October 2013 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Thank you for detailed post, futurianus. It has been very helpful.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4306 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 24 of 26 03 October 2013 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Hm okay. But is anything a "purely" intellectual activity? I get what you're saying, but you're still preserving your basic philosophical dualism, with language learning now excepted from it. I think you're absolutely right to think about learning a language as a biological process, but our reception of other areas of knowledge is just as much biological: history, literature, history of art and so on. On their own, literature, history, history of art and foreign languages are abstract concepts which have a debatable reality, but for us to know anything about them the sense-data which compose them must be absorbed by our living selves. Everything we do is a possibility within the range afforded by our biological makeup. One part of our biological makeup which is Germane to language learning is memory. We forget important dates or names in history through some sort of mental decay, but if we can create a meaningful framework in which to slot new facts - and if we regularly revise what we know - we can enrich what we are able to immediately comprehend and retain. Especially if we enjoy the process of acquisition. It might be supposed, if we were not mere animals, that to understand a complex subject you should read the most information-dense books and "store" the information, and never read the same fact twice, as this would be a redundancy. But actually, your brain holds the information best if you read simple books and build up to more complicated ones. And redundancy is not "inefficient" when it comes to brains. Without a lot of redundancy you'd never learn anything. Somehow this is how we've evolved to subconsciously arrange our memories. And it makes a sort of sense: the things we enjoy we reinforce and we retain strong memories for; but the things we force ourselves to do are not remembered except for the very specific task that must must must be done. Therefore we forget immediately the facts of some highschool subject we hate after the exam. And I imagine that this is why so many people forget their languages - they never really enjoyed the learning of them.
I see what you mean. You were clearly possessed by a egocentric idea of how to learn. That your "will" was superior to "your brain" and could exploit your possession as if it was a particularly well-tuned engine in a sportscar. In fact...
This "leaky vessel," which must be filled, was the traditional pre-enlightenment conception of education, though it still exists strongly especially, I hear, in chinese and korean education systems. Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of The Opressed refers to it critically as the "Banking Model," which ignores the creative impulses of learners.
Your dualism is getting out of hand here. Your brain cells don't grow or not grow depending on your will. Your behaviour influences the patterns your brain cells grow into. Your conclusion can only be that you expected too much of your own brain. You expected to do a specific task (learn Russian) in too short a time. And this led to stress and disappointment. You phrase the problem as if "I should have been doing this" when "I was instead doing that," but this doesn't make a lot of sense. You were studying in an ineffective and demotivating way, and now you're studying in a satisfying and productive way. But in BOTH cases you were changing the way your brain works in order to acommodate a foreign language. The tone of your post is heartwarming, but perhaps your interest in brain cells has only been a metaphor for what you could have discovered all along? Your "dog and master" metaphor is the only part of your post which makes sense. You were treating yourself (...note that this is an idiom, not a fact...) poorly, and after discovering that, yes, your brain (i.e., yourself) has very real limits, you embraced that your quality of life would be better if you saw the task more realistically, and accounted for your human limitations. Perhaps the real eureka moment should have been a bit of intellectual humility? That you weren't a god of languages, or the "owner" of a superhuman brain? I think that the brain science is unenlightening in this arena, though otherwise very noble. The main empirical fact of learning languages is that it takes a estimable range of hours of study for a person to be able to use a foreign language well. Several hundred - a couple of thousand to get a good foothold.
Can you say one way in which your "understanding of this process of neural generation" has helped your language learning? I imagine you can't, because no science of learning exists which can build a theory reductively from such atoms. We can only understand how to learn subjects of the humanities by using our experiences of being human - finding the accurate analogies; using our faculties of imagination, intuition, memories and reasoning about their validity using experience. For example, I think this forum would be a lot more useful if we could quantify, in hours, how much we are all studying, and compare our experiences with this measure. Until then we're just sharing our favorite metaphors about learning languages and waiting a long long long long time until some genius unifies human behavioral biology, linguistics and neuroscience. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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