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Djinn in the Head | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5342 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 6 29 June 2010 at 3:37pm | IP Logged |
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I really believe that once you've established a good passive base and are starting to feel a little more comfortable in a new language, the idea of grounding what you've learned, and building up a more native-like "internal voice" in the language, is the way to go.
Professor Arguelles also encourages something along similar lines whilst listening and shadowing, I believe, and other members on the forum such as M. Medialis have reported good progress using "silent shadowing" and extensive comprehensible input recently. I first heard of something similar called the "Din in the Head Hypothesis" in an article by Stephen Krashen last year. For whatever reason, I seem to have incorrectly picked this term up and amusingly relabeled it as the "Djinn in the Head" theory, which I think more accurately describes the process (although sadly no 3 wishes here!). This is what Krashen has to say on the matter: "The Din in the Head, first noted by Barber (1980), is an involuntary mental rehearsal of a language that occurs after we have had extensive comprehensible input in that language... ...de Bot states that the 'Din in the Head' hypothesis relates to the idea of a 'critical stage that turns receptive knowledge into productive knowledge'... ...I noted that the Din experience correlates with less reluctance to speak the language, but did not make any hypothesis about a sudden 'critical stage' that leads to a 'sudden and massive restructuring' as de Bot claims (p. 173)." I've only personally experienced this phenomenon once, after talking amongst a group of Germans in a restaurant for several hours one evening, and on that occasion the inner German genie just turned out to be my own accent and ramblings the next morning (lol). Yet I imagine that many forms of extensive comprehensible input could lead to similar "dins", hopefully modeled on a native speaker's voice with enough exposure. Theoretically speaking, I wouldn't be surprised if this process proved to be many times more effective with extensive active techniques in listening, such as reading along with audiobooks, LR or shadowing. Basically putting yourself in a position where you're forced to keep track of and pay more attention to the input. So I'll try to experiment with some extensive L&R in Spanish next week to see if a similar little native-speaking Spanish genie pops out of my audiobooks to live in my head and help me out with conversation and reading for a while. I'm not sure if a week is quite long enough to magic up any real results, but it's worth a try. This stage in learning seems to be really quite fascinating on the whole, and I wonder if other members here have also formed an "inner voice" after lots of extensive exposure to their target language. And if you have...what's it like, and how much exposure or how long did this take to evolve? Edited by Teango on 29 June 2010 at 3:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5614 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 2 of 6 29 June 2010 at 11:59pm | IP Logged |
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I've experienced this on many occasions. Try watching anime actively for 18 hours straight and you'd see for
yourself. ;) I'm a big anime fan so I've done this many times at many stages of my learning process. The further along I am in my learning, the more fluently the "japanese genie" in my head speaks. Really, the way I'd describe it is just that after so much exposure, my brain is trying really really hard to switch completely to Japanese, so every bit of Japanese I've actually learned is now suddenly much more easily accessible. My brain tries to think in Japanese first, and it only switches to English when there's something it can't convey (yet) in Japanese. I find the effect mostly lasts a few hours; it lasts less if I have to interact in English. I can see this happening in myself to a lesser extent after only 3 or 4 hours of exposure, as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5233 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 3 of 6 30 June 2010 at 7:56am | IP Logged |
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I think for me, the real challenge is crossing over from a place where you use the language to express your thoughts to using it to express who you are. When I lived in France, I found my French voice, and working with a lot of Spanish speakers, I've started to find a Spanish voice. That is, I pick up certain ways of saying things and thinking about the world that seem to mirror native speakers who seem to have my outlook on life. In French, I'm more cynical. In Spanish, I'm more laid back. By contrast, when I speak Italian, I'm very much the American me saying American things in the Italian language.
I like the idea of involuntary mental rehearsal. The thing is, for Uzbek and Italian, which I don't get to practice with other people much at all, the thoughts that come into my head are boring phrasebook sentiments. In French and Spanish, I'm just thinking. I believe this is because I actually get to use these to communicate a lot, and so I'm not rehearsing language; I'm rehearsing communication. That is, I'm not just looking to express an idea; I'm seeking a particular reaction. I can see a lot of merit to the idea of extended exposure creating a mental din/djinn, because it happens to me. But what I've found is that it's exposure to people using the language, not just to language, that truly activates the inner voice for me. That goes of course with the idea that beyond the four skills of listening, reading, writing and speaking, there is a fifth skill integrated into these four - cultural adjustment. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bob Greaves Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6465 days ago 86 posts - 91 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 4 of 6 30 June 2010 at 10:07am | IP Logged |
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I have found that when my brain gets "exited" (can't think of a better term) it will start delivering random noise.
I first noticed this when I started working in an accounts department of a bank. It was fairly taxing at first and on the train home for the first few days random numbers just kept popping up in my head. I have noticed a similar phenomenon when I was on a 2 day advanced Japanese course at London University. I was the only student and I had 2 days of non-stop speaking with a Japanese tutor. On the train home and in the evening my brain kept firing off random words and phrases. (I have had this on other occasions too). I took it to be nothing other than my brain's electrodes still firing after the tasks had finished or new synapses being built. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6489 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 6 30 June 2010 at 10:28am | IP Logged |
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When I started to think in Scots it was the voice of Billy Connally that came out, mainly because he was the only Scot I had heard speak Scots for more than a few minutes (although a 'soft' variant of Glasgewian, I'm told). Since then I have had a brief trip there, and now it's my own voice that resides in my head. Edited by Iversen on 30 June 2010 at 10:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6554 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 6 of 6 30 June 2010 at 2:19pm | IP Logged |
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I'm definitely "me" when I speak Japanese, but it feels like a very different "me" than when I speak English. In fact, I
think it has let me explore and express an aspect of myself I that I normally could not have — much like learning to paint or play an instrument. Back on the "din" point, there seem to be a number of male Japanese "voices" in my head — sort of a composite of TV personalities — that I try to sound like in pronunciation and intonation when I speak. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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