4. The resonance of the culture.
In language learning, ―l’appetit vient en mangeant,‖ the appetite comes with eating. The more I learn a language, the more I get caught up in the culture and way of thinking of the language. I find myself responding to the culture, feeling the culture and participating in the culture. This is high value resonance.
5. The resonance of talking to the right person.
Where resonance real y comes into play is when we start to speak, when we final y have a chance to put into practice what we have learned. I always perform best when speaking with a high-resonance person. By that I mean a person whose use of language, intonation and voice suits me, turns me on, resonates with me. I pick up on the energy of such people, which releases the language within me. I find a rhythm and fluency that I cannot achieve with other people. I come away from such encounters energized, and the effect stays with me long after the conversation is over. A discussion with high-resonance speaking partners unlocks the language potential that I worked so hard to build up through my input activities.
Here are a few low-resonance learning situations for me, or learning situations that I dislike.
Podcasts, or learning material, which begin with a lengthy musical introduction, or are interrupted by pop music, songs and the like.
Songs are low resonance for me, because they are not word intense.
Learning material that is artificial, where the text and voices are not natural.
Audio content with English in it. Pimsleur and Michel Thomas are examples. On the other hand I find bilingual dictionaries much higher resonance than dictionaries which give explanations only in the target language.
Speaking to a non-native speaker is lower resonance than speaking with a native speaker, and the poorer the language skil s of the non-native speaker the lower the resonance. That is part of what makes language classes low resonance.
CHAPTER III: INPUT AND CONTENT
Leading researchers on language acquisition like Stephen Krashen and Beniko Mason, to name only two, have shown that we learn best from input, and that relatively little is to be gained by a major emphasis on deliberate instruction, correction, or forcing output.
While I do not agree with al of Krashen's views, I think he is an important pioneer in the way he has chal enged language teaching orthodoxy. Let's start with his hypotheses.
Stephen Krashen is a proponent of input-based learning. Some of his principles of language learning are as fol ows.
1) Language acquisition (an unconscious process developed through using language meaningful y) is different from language learning (consciously learning or discovering rules about a language) and language acquisition is the only way competence (the tacit knowledge that underlies the language performance of a speaker of a language) in a second language occurs. (The acquisition/learning hypothesis)
2) Conscious learning operates only as a monitor or editor that checks or repairs the output of what has been acquired. (The monitor hypothesis)
3) Grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable order and it does little good to try to learn them in another order.(The natural order hypothesis)
4) People acquire language best from messages that are just slightly beyond their current competence. (The input hypothesis)
5) The learner's emotional state can act as a filter that impedes or blocks input necessary to acquisition. (The affective filter hypothesis)
I am not sure about 3) above. Structures are so different in different languages that I wonder how the order can be predictable for al people regardless of their native language and regardless of their personality. What is clear to me is that we do not learn grammatical structures based on the teacher's agenda, nor on the agenda of any text book or teaching system. We gradual y get used to them, just as we gradual y get used to words, phrases and even sounds.
A key to understanding anything in a second language is being familiar with the context.
There are many ways to become more familiar with context. Actual y living the experience is the best but is not always possible. That is why extensive reading and listening is the best alternative to actual y living the experience.
When I lived in Hong Kong and studied Mandarin, I built up a vast library of content on different subjects of interest that I would read and listen to often. Each time I listened I would focus on different words and phrases until they became natural to me.
Even when I lived in Japan, I still had my own language world of reading and listening because it was too difficult to get it all from real life until my Japanese was good enough.
Experiments have shown that if you give language learners a glossary or vocabulary list of new words for a text they have not seen, it will not help them understand the new text. They simply wil not remember these words, which they have tried to learn out of context. If they are already familiar with the subject of a text, they will understand better, but the vocabulary list will not help.
So the lesson is that attempts to memorize isolated vocabulary lists, TOEFL vocabulary lists, technical vocabulary lists, antonyms and synonyms, or memorizing the dictionary which Chinese learners sometimes try to do, are usual y ineffective ways to learn.
Bored with Korean
I was asked how I find the time to learn languages. Let's look at my recent efforts to learn Korean. I believe that you need to go at language learning in concentrated periods of relatively intense effort. These can be two or three months long. Each one of these periods wil bring you a breakthrough to a new level.
During my first spurt of Korean learning I would make sure that I always had audio content in my car CD player, or in my MP3 player. I would get in 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there.
I would try to get in a minimum of 60 minutes every day. In the evenings I would spend 30
minutes reading and reviewing the new words. I think you need to work 90 minutes a day almost every day for a period of 3 months to achieve a breakthrough.
Unfortunately the Korean learning content was very boring. If I had had interesting and authentic real Korean content (as opposed to textbook content) I would have done better. I would have done a second and third spurt. I did not, because I kind of lost interest in the same old boring Korean content.
I feel that in learning a language it is very important to have as much contact as possible with the new language. Ideal y you should try to listen or read or review or write or speak every day. The more you enjoy what you are doing, the more likely you are to do it regularly. Rule number one is: do what you like to do.
When you start out in a language, it is beneficial to listen to the same content many times.
The first time you may be trying hard to understand the content. You wil probably save some words and phrases. The second and third time you are better able to focus on these new words and phrases. Hopeful y you have reviewed these words and phrases and said them out loud a few times. When you hear them again, in context, this helps to reinforce your memory of them.