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Learning a language in the target language | ||
Tags: Natural method | Immersion | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Neil_UK Tetraglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5264 days ago 50 posts - 64 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto, Welsh Studies: Polish, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Scottish Gaelic, French | Message 1 of 53 31 October 2011 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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(Sorry about the title, it cut off the last letter 'e')
I've been thinking. Most languages courses teach you the language by using your native language as a reference point. Isn't this backward thinking? Much as I love Michel Thomas Method, Linkwords, etc...the thing about all these courses is they use your native tongue as reference point. When we learned our native tongue as children, we didn't have to refer to another language as a reference point to learn it. So, has anyone thought it doesn't make sense to learn a foreign language by referring to another language? Shouldn't we learn a foreign language by periods of total immersion in that language, instead of using English (or whatever your native tongue is) as the reference point and then translating into the foreign language? Shouldn't the lessons all be in the target language, with no reference to your native language? I've been doing a lot of research on how the brain works and how it acquires language, and the brain actually has a natural mechanism for picking up language. By immersing oneself in the sounds of the language, the brain naturally adjusts to the sounds of the language. For example, there is a company called 'Sleep Learning' who offer language courses that teach languages subliminally, check this out http://www.sleeplearning.com/html/language.htm On that website it says:- How is language naturally acquired? Languages are naturally acquired by people listening to language. The human brain is built to analyze it. You know, there are a lot of places in the world not in America, but in supposedly "backwards" places like West Africa, New Guinea, where it is commonplace to find people who speak half a dozen languages. How do they do that? There are no language schools. So, they do it because it's part of their lives. They go down to the market, they find people talking in 4 or 5 languages. Due to their exposure to the constant repetition of each language's words and sounds, their brain begins to absorb these 'foreign' words and phases - making sense of them - naturally. Before long the language has become internalised - and they begin to understand and then to speak. How does this approach mirror this? The way language is naturally acquired in real-life second language learning situations is by listening to the language itself. And analyzing it yourself. The people who learn second languages most successfully, are not those who go to language schools. If you go to a language school, you tend to go somewhere where they have a special theory about how language should be learned, and they impose that theory upon you. But actually, the human mind is constructed to learn language. That's one of the basic things. Just as a spider spins its web, so too do people acquire language. It's just as natural as that. If you try to constrain that process by imposing some regime that you've thought, theoretically, that ought to work, it really doesn't help. Success lies in the ability to mimic natural language acquisition insofar as any teaching method can. (please read the rest via this link http://www.sleeplearning.com/html/language_learning.htm) It's kind of got me thinking that the way we learn languages, by using our native tongue to refer to, is backwards and there could be better and more efficient ways of doing things. For example, instead of thinking that 'Je suis' means 'I am', really we should just think that 'Je suis' means 'Je suis' and not 'I am'. It seems silly to refer to another language for the meaning of words/phrases in another language. It also seems inefficient to have to think in English and then translate into the target language in your head. You want to reach the point where you can effortlessly think in the target language without translating back and forth. Can you recommend any language products that teach languages in the target language, without reference to the learner's native tongue? Has anyone here learned another language totally in the target language? Edited by Neil_UK on 31 October 2011 at 7:49pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 2 of 53 31 October 2011 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | ||
What you've described is actually mainstream classroom practice in much of the world. The only recent self-study product that's genuinely tried to do this is Rosetta Stone, and I think we all know what people think of that.... Basically, any so-called "direct" method relies on heavy interaction to contextualise language, and a lot of adaptation to the students to clarify. You can't just lay it out on paper and expect someone to understand it. Now, I don't care how we learned languages as babies, because I am not a baby. There is a natural mechanism for learning languages, yes, but actually there may be a second mechanism. The bulk of the current evidence suggests that there are two different areas of the brain that deal with syntax (=grammar, structure) -- one for infant-learned (=native) languages and one for adult-learned languages. It seems unlikely to me that the brain would use the same process for learning in two different parts of the brain, so I currently work under the assumption that humanity evolved language twice, and that there are fundamental differences between first- and second-language learning because of this. Secondly, while we may have two parts of the brain dealing with syntax, we only have one area dealing with semantics (=meaning), which is shared with all language. Any late-learned language will attempt to build itself on top of our current model of semantics. Teaching with translation allows us to activate the semantic structures in the easiest way possible, because the known language is tied directly to the semantic structures, whereas gesture, iconography or demonstrations are connected to internal semantic structures by several layers of abstraction. (eg Is this a picture of "a car" or "red estate/station-wagon" or even "a 2003 Citroën C5 with 3L V6 engine resprayed in Ferrari blood red"?) As language is a connection of meaning with form, having a clear concept of meaning is very useful to the learner. The idea of multilingual Africans is often brought up, but there's very little critical evaluation of what this means. Many of these Africans are multilingual from childhood, which is a very different thing from becoming multilingual as adults. Also, it's hard for us foreigners to really appreciate just how proficient they are in their languages. However, there are a few stereotypes bouncing about regarding market traders in certain countries, particularly the Arabic countries in North-Africa. The traders speak enough English to trade, but you certainly wouldn't call them all proficient English speakers. They may well be like this with the other languages they speak... Also, while the EFL profession in particular likes to kid themselves on that learning by induction works, other languages have a different view. The Finnish teaching profession seems to have taken notice that the only features of Finnish that can be learned by exposure are those that are similar to features in the student's first language (or other languages that he has already learnt). The features of Finnish not present in students' own languages never appear to be learnt without being explicitly taught. It's an observation that can be made for any language, if you keep your eyes open.... 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| a3 Triglot Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5258 days ago 273 posts - 370 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, English, Russian Studies: Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish | Message 3 of 53 31 October 2011 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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You are right, though lessons should have some text and instructions written in your native language, otherwise they'd be unreadable for a complete beginner
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6584 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 53 31 October 2011 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | ||
Sure, try Rosetta Stone. It's got a pretty bad rap around here, and anywhere where people are interested in learning languages, mainly because it's crap. But hey! You're learning through complete immersion. It sounds good, so it sells (also they spend gazillions on marketing). Thing is, translating is an asset, not a hindrance. It's a tool that you can use, and robbing yourself of that tool isn't going to make you learn any quicker. Now, there are courses that use little to no L1 explanations (French in Action has a good reputation), but the tool isn't bad, and not using it will most likely just hamper you. Almost all approaches to language learning that doesn't include L1 explanations that I have seen are slow and inefficient. Most of the good ones will start with a lot of L1 explanation to make sure you understand the basics, and then gradually use less and less L1 until the advanced levels are entirely in the L2. And I'd be ware of a company promoting "sleep learning" (whether it's a metaphor or actual sleep learning; didn't check the website) and that references anecdotal evidence rather than science. Of course people in multilingual environments learn lots of language. Their amount of exposure is massive. This does in no way indicate that this is a better method than good instruction. And I sincerely question that a course from a web site can replicate that environment in the first place. Man, I come off all rejecting your entire post. That's not my meaning. As I said, there are courses that prusue the line of thinking you're suggesting, and some of them (French in Action) are pretty good. Most are, however, in my experience, pretty bad. 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5671 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 53 31 October 2011 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
Rosetta Stone. Or so they claim. I have never understood the argument that we should learn the way babies do. Babies don't have a choice (since they have no base language to start from) plus it is near impossible to simulate their learning environment : having a devoted mother around all the time, who smiles at all your mistakes, offers round-the-clock encouragement and support, and is delighted you can say "mama" after a whole year of effort. Plus, the "Je suis" doesn't mean "I am" argument is one I often hear. Again, I don't understand it. Words in my native language are triggers for emotions and mental concepts, just as "Je suis" is for a french person. When I say "Je suis" means "I am" it is as a bridge to a mental concept, not a translation of syntax to syntax. To be honest, I would be amazed if you can avoid doing this, even if only in your head. Certainly, in a new country when I hear a new phrase, say in Cambodia, I am always wondering "does that mean 'hello' or 'good morning'?". Immersion doesn't stop that process. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6374 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 53 31 October 2011 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Learning a language in the target language is an exercise in masochism. Using your native
language as a booster enables someone to become quite fluent in a language in 3 years whereas it takes children a lot longer. While I advocate emulating many aspects of child language acquisition in learning a second language, we are not children and we have advantages that we can use so learning exactly like children would be unnecessarily drawing out the process. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Someone2 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4791 days ago 10 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Finnish | Message 7 of 53 31 October 2011 at 9:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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'Je suis' meaning 'je suis'... it sounds like learning a way of expressing a concept, in this case 'being'.
I don't know if this is true, but I've heard that to progress in a language, you should stop translating in your head once you hear or read something in your target language. Instead of hearing, say, 'j'ai joué le foot' and thinking 'I played football', you should understand that it expresses the concept of you having played football? I don't really know... the concept of understanding rather than consciously translating has been a goal for me ever since I heard about it. I guess it could be related to thinking in the language, and being comfortable enough in the language to express things without translating from your native language. I recently took a look at Deutsche Sprachlehre für Ausländer, which is a book entirely in German for beginners. It's logical and takes things step-by-step. If there were such a method for intermediate or advanced students, however, that could be beneficial, instead of submerging yourself in native material when you don't feel ready to do so. Of course, even with the natural method, grammar and advanced aspects of the language will still have to be learnt. I'd assume that most native speakers learn about complex grammar etc. in school, since I'm not sure about how easy it would be to pick up things like that. I feel like I've learnt more English grammar through the internet and German lessons (e.g. past continuous, gerunds, more/most vs. -er/est, that vs. which, etc) but maybe I was just lazy in primary school. That's probably the case. :P I think listening-reading and translations are essential for beginners who are learning a language, but the natural method from the start has some merit too. Has anyone tried this, or is anyone willing to try it and post about how they're getting on? I would guess that a natural method based on images/videos would be better for visual learners, and that a natural method based on speaking, writing and in general using the skills that you've learnt instead of them being dictated to you would be better for kinesthetic learners.
I don't know what language you want to learn, but I'd suggest taking a look around Amazon and the internet in general. I'm sure there are products and methods out there that are based upon the natural method or are entirely in the target language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6127 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 8 of 53 31 October 2011 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | ||
This is interesting. Do you have a reference? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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