JP hates flashcards

It’s not a secret to anyone who knows me or who has followed my teaching career:  I hate flashcards, I discourage anyone and everyone from wasting their time with them when it comes to language study.

I know some people like them.  I know some people swear by them, and swear that flashcards have been integral to their language acquisition; I call bs.  On the SpanishPod website I was once chastised for allowing my limited personal bias to cloud my judgement and give terrible advice regarding a tried-and-true study tool that millions of people have meow meow meow meow meow meow.  Regardless, I maintain that flash cards are a horrible waste of people’s lives; they do zero for language acquisition, and that advocating for flashcards actually victimizes people who could be using their time and energy on activities that are actually beneficial.

In my professional opinion, it is unethical to advocate for the use of flashcards.  In my personal opinion, it is at best a waste of time, at worst a form of sabotage.

Ok, let’s all calm down.

I used to have a long, reasoned lecture about why flashcards were a stupid waste of time, but nowadays I’ve boiled it down to a couple of simple sentences….

Flashcards train memory recall; language acquisition is not memory recall.  

Memory recall is great.  It impresses people, it will help you pass quizzes and exams that reward discreet item recall.  I wish I had better memory recall.

Language acquisition, however, might as well be a different organ.  Multilingual people can feel the difference between recall and language acquisition… whether or not they advocate for flashcards.

Memory recall is trained; it is practiced.  People use association and other techniques; to some people these are intuitive; others attend high energy seminars to learn how to build memory mansions and rhyme “one” with “bun” and “two” with “shoe” and to fixate on someone’s big nose to remember that their name is Nathan.

Language acquisition, however, is instinctive.  When people talk about language acquisition, they say things like “pick up;” he picked up a British accent after two weeks; where did that kid pick up all those swear words?    They’ve been in Japan for seven years and haven’t picked up a lick of Japanese.

Language professionals and experienced multilinguals will tell you… with words… that language acquisition is a function of meaningful communication; entire languages are “picked up” because humans are driven to be part of a conversation.  That’s why your language teacher keeps trying to have real conversations in the target language about the vocabulary; that’s why students who are too cool to engage in real conversations suck at remembering the vocab.  Suuuuuuuck.

Look at me, do you think I study vocabulary?  Hells no.  I use it; that’s the reason for all my language learning successes.  If I don’t know vocabulary in a given language, it’s because I haven’t used it yet.

Anyway, some monolingual people are not ready to hear this yet.

Check out this video:  5 Canadian polyglots are trying to explain to a reporter that language acquisition is different from memory.  The reporter remains incredulous.

Seriously, five polyglots…  how many polyglots does it take before she will believe that memory is different from language acquisition?

This is the source of a lot of frustration in my professional life.  People ask me who to become a more successful language learner, and then when I tell them, they disbelieve.

Later they tell her that language keeps growing even when you stop using it, and she doesn’t believe that either.  I’ll have to write another post about that later… but for now, you should know that that’s totally my experience as well… my French sounded like garbage while I was in France, but sounded great a year later.

That may not square with monolingual logic.  Well, kids, if you want to stop being monolingual, you will have to start letting go of monolingual logic.

PS.  I hate flashcards.

It Doesn’t Hurt to Learn Something

“It doesn’t hurt to learn something.”

I heard myself saying this phrase to my students recently.  I had just told them they were going to learn something new, and as usual they all acted like they were going to die.

It doesn’t hurt to learn.  It hurts to not learn; or it hurts to half-learn.  It hurts to learn “the hard way.”  I have made it my business to package content into modules that are easy to learn, but my students are not usually into it.

Anyway, I heard myself saying, “It doesn’t hurt to learn something,” and I thought, dang, that should be a fortune cookie or a t-shirt or something.  And then I thought that I should learn something. Here’s what I’m learning…

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Zhuyin fuhao 注音符號 (a.k.a. ㄅㄆㄇㄈ “bopomofo”).

This is the “traditional” system of describing Mandarin phonemes.  In the 1950s the PRC adapted Pinyin Romanization, and stopped using注音符號.  It’s still used in textbooks in Taiwan, where mainland reforms are never popular, as a rule.  I doubt that I’ll have to use注音符號 ever, but since it doesn’t hurt to learn something (and it didn’t) why not, right?

I downloaded a few quizzey-quiz apps onto my phone, and then switched my Pleco dictionary to show me pronunciation in注音符號 rather than Pinyin.  I’m not an expert at it yet, but I can now either read it outright, or guess right the vast majority of the time.  When I’m not sure, I hit the audio button.

Fantizi 繁體字 (a.k.a. “traditional characters” )

Up till now, I’ve been studying the “Simplified Characters” set, the writing reforms undertaken in the 50s by the PRC; they took about 200 characters and eliminated some strokes that seemed superfluous.  The traditional characters, they say, are a) harder to read, b) tedious to write, c) only used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and Chinatowns.

Well, I’ve spent plenty of time in Chinatowns, and now I’m going to Taiwan, so I told myself “it doesn’t hurt to learn something,” and switched my Pleco dictionary to the traditional characters setting (it still shows me both), and my Skritter to both traditional and simplified.  At first, the traditional characters seemed so crazy and ridiculous that they made me laugh out loud.  I quickly started making connections between traditional and simplified versions, and I’m starting to see why Chinese speakers from the mainland and diaspora alike say things like “traditional characters are more beautiful” and “they make more sense; you can see the meanings.”  I’m still wading through them, slowly, but I’m already recognizing the characters in readings and music videos, and I’m kind of annoyed I didn’t start sooner.

Morse Code 莫爾斯電碼

Ok this has nothing to do with Chinese.  I know it’s going obsolete, but I’ve always had a minor fascination with the minimal aspects of this system.  I never cared much for alternate alphabets (i.e., Klingon, Elvish, etc.) but I always thought it was cool that you could send messages with a single tone or a flash of light.  I’m pretty sure my sister and I learned Morse code when we were little, reading it off of her walkie-talkies.  Some of that knowledge remained into our adult lives; one time someone attempted to beep out “SOS” on a door buzzer, and my sister and I looked at each other and said “that was SMS, actually.”

Then I saw this video about Gmail Tap:

I actually do have as a goal to be able to text one-handed, the way we did in the old days with the alpha-numeric keypad.  I knew this was meant as a joke, but a trip to the app store yielded the exact IME, available for free.

They say that Morse code was something that people learned in a day, so I found a cool poster, downloaded a quizzy app, and when I felt strong enough, I switched my cell phone interface to the Morse code IME.  I’m still not super fast at it, and I haven’t learned numbers, punctuation, or the letters X, Y, and Z yet, but I’m getting better.  Every time the Morse code buttons pop up, I think, “guh, I should change that back to swipe,” but then I give the Morse code a try, and I’m surprised every time by how much I already know.

What’s with all the quizzy apps?

JP, you say, knowingly, what’s with all they quizzy apps?  Don’t they all smack of flashcarditarianism?  Don’t you find that horribly hypocritical?

I’m glad you asked.  No, I am not hypocritical.  I am still firmly and unequivocally against using flashcards for vocabulary acquisition.

I will say what I’ve always said: flashcard and flashcard-like quizzy quizzes train memory recall; linguistic knowledge is not memory recall.  If your goal is to speak a language, you’re better off practicing your conversation than drilling yourself with flashcards.  If your goal is to read a language, your time is better spent reading.

However, if your goal is to recall items, e.g., for a quiz, then by all means practice quizzing, and you’ll become really good at recalling those items for the purposes of quizzing.

What I was quizzing myself on was not vocabulary words which number in the thousands, but scripts and codes, which are finite.  Once I can recall those items, I put them into use immediately; i.e., switching my Pleco to bopomofo; switching my phone to Morse code IME.

As for my Skritter habit, I use a writing tablet.  Yes, it’s still SRS and flashcardy, but I’m using it with visual, audio, and most of all kinetic input.  So since I want to learn writing, and I’m actually physically practicing writing, I give myself a pass on that.  Also, I’m quick to switch to paper once I think I own a character.  When it comes to literacy in this language, there is really no substitute for ink and paper.

But just to reiterate, I still think flashcards, regardless of SRS or the bells and whistles of Rosetta Stone, are a gigantic waste of time when it comes to vocabulary and language acquisition.  No question about that.

Secret! How To Ace a Language Class

So the 8th graders who were accepted to the school that I teach at for next year were at school on Saturday morning to take their placement tests.  They asked me to come in and talk to the kids and parents about their world language choices… specifically to drum up some interest in the Mandarin program, which could use a handful more students.

I addressed the students for about three minutes, and then they were off to their math placement exam.  Then their parents came into the room, and I gave them a similar pitch.

“Who do you want to be?”  I asked them.  ”Which culture do you want to discover, and where do you want to make friends?  Where do you want your adventures to be in a few years?  In Europe?  In Latin America or Spain?  In Asia?”

Of course, for me, personally, the answer to my questions were “all of the above,” but I was there to plug Chinese.  So I talked a little about how cool the program is, and how glad I am that I studied Chinese, etc.

The students didn’t have any questions for me and didn’t want to talk to me later.  The parents, however, kind of crowded me after the session, telling me that they wanted to sign up for my class.  Of course they had questions:

• “Isn’t Chinese hard, because it’s so different?”
• “Spanish is easier, so shouldn’t my daughter take Spanish so she can get an A?”
• “What if Chinese is too hard, can she switch into Spanish mid-semester?”

Here’s my question… who are the idiots that keep repeating that Chinese is hard and Spanish is easy, and why do people listen to them?  Seriously, think of all the people that have ever said “Chinese is hard” and “Spanish is easy….”  What exactly qualifies those people to make a judgement like that?  Did they study a bunch of languages and make an informed comparison?  Was there some academic research THAT THEY READ with conclusive proof that one language, any language, is empirically harder or easier than another?

The answer, of course, is no.  The “x-language is hard/easy” meme is just a bunch of jackasserie.  There are studies that attempt to quantify how different or similar some languages are to English, which then leap to the presumption that languages that are more different from someone’s native language may take longer to learn, but the “easy” and “hard” claims are, in my professional opinion, a giant pile of crap.

The truth is, all languages are easy.  And all languages are hard.  For us, Chinese has an unfamiliar writing system and a tonal phonology that we have to train ourselves to hear.  On the other hand, Spanish has the gender, the subjunctive mood, relative pronouns.   Whenever I say “Spanish is easy!” in my classroom, my students want to strangle me.

My friends who have learned English as a second language spent their formative years trying to memorize (and failing quizzes on) English’s seemingly arbitrary verb morphology (jump, jumped, jumped; eat, ate, eaten; do, did, done; sing, sang, sung...)

If you want to watch an ESL speaker squirm ask about English “tag questions” –isn’t it?  didn’t he?  aren’t you?  wouldn’t they?   Most of the time, our ESL friends will just avoid tag questions all together.

Anyway, the point is, the average 5 year-old in an English-speaking country can do relative clauses, irregular verbs, and tag questions without much trouble.  The average 5 year-old in Spanish-speaking countries has full control of the subjunctive, the imperative, relative pronouns, you name it.  And yes, the average 5 year-old in China knows the tones, the grammatical formulas, all the things that are supposedly “hard” about their phonology, morphology, and syntax.

So why do they say Chinese is “hard”  when a 5 year-olds all over China have it mastered?  Of course, then the people will make some kind of claim about second languages being different, which–you have to understand this–they just made it up.  

So I tell those parents, whose kids are deciding which language to take in high school, don’t listen to that crap about supposedly easy or hard languages, it’s all a giant load of crap.  Spanish is easy; it’s also complicated.  Chinese is complicated as well, but it’s also easy in ways that Spanish is not.  I’ve studied them both; I am qualified to make that call.

Anyway, one dad wanted to know if his daughter could take Chinese, and switch to Spanish if it’s too hard and she struggles.  I, of course, said, NO, because both languages are hard (and easy), and when your daughter switches mid-year she will be behind in Spanish.  That is a bad decision.  Just tell your daughter to not struggle.

You know that, right?  You know that you can choose not to struggle.  You can just ace the class, and then the whole “switching to Spanish because it’s easier” will be moot.

How do you ace a language class?  I can tell you my secret.

Apparently it’s a secret, because, trust me, so few people choose to ace the class.  And when I tell them what they have to do to ace the class, they don’t believe me.  Eyerolls is what I see.

Here are the language classes I’ve aced using my secret, in chronological order:  French. Spanish.  Italian.  American Sign Language. German. Latin. Portuguese. Tagalog.  Mandarin.  Mind you, I didn’t continue with all of those languages, but I assure you that I aced those classes.

Here’s my secret, here’s how to ace any language class:  you try to become a speaker of that language.  If you aim to become a speaker of a language, the class becomes a piece of cake.  The A’s will rain down from the sky and land next to your name.

To some of us, that seems perfectly obvious, but here are the do’s and dont’s:

• Do be too cool to speak English.  Don’t beg your teacher for English translations, don’t switch to English when it’s too hard or it’s too important.  Don’t stay in a class where the instruction talks to you in English all the time, that is a waste of YOUR LIFE.
• Do approach every homework as a valuable learning opportunity; if you don’t know the material well, homework it’s your chance to figure it out.  If you do know the material well, the homework is your chance to practice it and get it down cold.  Don’t try to intimidate everyone with words like “busy work” and “skill and drill” because, frankly, that’s “B minus” talk.  Don’t make it your goal to finish it as fast as possible, to do it in the most efficient way, or to expend the minimum effort; that’s “C minus” behavior.
• Do master the grammatical and vocabulary objectives of the class, INCLUDING what they are called.  I can’t tell you how many times a student of mine learns some conjugation and then can’t tell me what it’s called or what it’s used for.  Do master these objectives to the point that you can use them easily in sentences.
• Do work in groups with like minded folks, in class and outside of class.  Language is a social skill; it’s laughable to me that people try to learn language alone.  Do  practice speaking the language in your group.  Don’t dismiss the group work, even if your group members are at different levels than you, or if they are slackers… Don’t be too cool practice the target language in your group; if the only speaking practice your schedule allows is during group work, you would be an IDIOT to squander that time not practicing.
• Do keep your head up and look at people when they’re speaking the target language with you.  Do negotiate the meaning with the person in the target language, asking them to repeat, explain, demonstrate, whatever; do involve that person in your understanding process.  Don’t freeze up or get embarrassed like you’re going to die, don’t look away like you’re invisible, don’t manipulate someone else into translating for you, because if someone treated you like that, you’d want to punch them.  Don’t say “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand” and expect the problem to go away.
• Do make mistakes; the maxim is “learn from your mistakes;”  not “fear mistakes at all cost.”  It’s called “trial end error;” not “don’t try.”  It’s called “practice makes perfect,” not “be perfect or shut up.”  Do repeat new words, do write them down as if they were money, and do use those words in an original way as soon as you can.  Do ask questions when you don’t understand something.  Do everything within your power to NEGOTIATE that knowledge out of the instructor and into your brain.

Back in 2007, I wrote a post called Why You Fail At Language Learning.  It was a moment of frustration for me, and the post got increasingly snarkier as it progressed.  That stuff all still rings true for me; that people fail at language learning because they’re doing it wrong.   They poison their learning with a bunch of fear and hang ups and terrible awful habits.

People accuse me of having a “talent” for languages, and because I’m a brown person, they assume it’s some kind of magic (when it’s white people, people say that they are “smart.”)  Folks, it’s not a special intelligence or a talent or magic; we learn languages because we do it right, we have the right attitude, we have the right habits.  Of course to us it seems like the most basic, the most intuitive common sense, but to many, it’s like this mystical secret knowledge.  The most baffling thing to me is when I tell people what they have to do, and then they won’t do it.

Learning language is so easy.  Children achieve fluency by the age of 5, certainly you can do it too, if you quit doing it wrong.

Now, just think; if you’re actually learning the language, think of how easy it will be to ace that language class…

Me vs. Benny the Irish Polyglot

I haven’t blogged in a while due to end-of-semester grade stress.  I have a feeling that this post might be a long one so I’ll start off right with the main points, so you the reader can make an informed choice about continuing to read.  Here goes:

• I’m going to start posting more about language learning, thanks in large part to Benny the Irish Polyglot.
• Benny the Irish Polyglot is not my enemy, although for teaching purposes I did, in fact, claim that he was my personal enemy, for instructional purposes… him, and Michael Bublé.

So here’s the thing… I’ve been reading Skritter Jake over at iLearnMandarin.  He’s a good kid; insightful, and I like that he’s a teacher.  He reminds me a lot John Pasden in the good ways (not in the evil ways).  Anyway, all those learn-Mandarin bloggers, including Jake, were all wetting their pants that some Benny the Irish Polyglot is trying to become fluent in Mandarin in three months.  Preposterous, right?

Benny the Irish Polyglot, who is in Taiwan now, claiming that he’s going to be fluent in Mandarin in three months.  I immediately thought, “guh, why are they even bothering with  this Benny, who is obviously some flavor-of-the-month rosetta-stone-marketing-style snake oil salesman who just wants to profit off of people’s desire to learn languages.”  What’s he selling?

But then Skritter Jake reposted Benny’s first video of himself speaking Mandarin after two weeks, and I watched it, because I’m a sucker.

There are a couple of things I noticed:

• Benny is pushing his proficiency level; he’s got lists of vocabulary going on, present-tense descriptions, formulaic expressions, and is able to partially memorize a script. I remember when I was at that stage as well.
• Benny’s speech is halting and painful to listen to sometimes; I think he’s freaked out about the tones… or somebody has got him freaked out about the tones.  This to me screams isolated study, rather than communication, but we have to give him a break on that.

All things considered, it’s a good start, although I’m sure in a couple of weeks he’ll look back on that and say “why on earth did I let them freak me out so much about tones?”

So anyway, as hard as it was to watch Benny’s first video, he’s doing pretty good, and so I got curious and started internet stalking him.  I went to his website, http://www.fluentin3months.com/, and tried to check out his philosophy.  I also checked out a talk he gave in Vancouver, and I ended up watching the whole thing.  Here are the conclusions I drew:

• Benny’s method of language learning is the same as mine, with only minor exceptions.  He stops speaking English, he seeks out target language conversation, he conquers his fears about being misunderstood, and he achieves a level of fluency in about three months.  At first that “fluentin3months” really stuck in my craw, but as I looked back at my own experience, three months is really about right.  In fact, it’s normal.  ANYONE can be fluent in three months, if they’re doing it right.
• Benny’s full time job is traveling to different places and learning a new language.  That should be my job!  What is wrong with me?  We have the (almost) exact same philosophy about language learning, and similar results… So what’s different?  Oh, he is really good at promoting himself, and giving people who desperately want to learn another language some hope, and some concrete skills.  In fact, they’re forking over 41€ to buy his language hacking book… stuff I have known for a long time.  So why is he a minor international internet sensation, while I am a former minor international internet personality, teaching high school Spanish, wearing a hoodie with a ripped pocket?
• Benny’s bread and butter is claiming that he’s got these “unconventional” language hacks.  I’ve had a look at them, and there is nothing “unconventional” about them.  In fact, I spend months trying to convince my students of the exact same strategies, but for whatever reasons, my students *refuse to believe me.*  When I say it, that is. When Benny says it, they’re all, “here, Benny, take my 41€!”

Here’s what I concluded:  unless I want to spend the rest of my life as a dumpy high school Spanish teacher in a ripped hoodie, I need to get my ass in gear and start promoting myself, my brand, and eventually my language learning media products.  So be it resolved:  more language learning posts on this blog, more self promotion everywhere else.  I have to make it happen.

As for my students, I wanted to show them one of Benny’s videos, but I knew that it would go over like a lead balloon.  So to set it up, I told my students that spent the weekend hating my two new enemies, Michael Bublé and Benny the Irish Polyglot.

Michael Bublé, I said, is a dopey Canadian who wears suits and sings only melody.  I can do that, but instead… instead I’m here… with you… wearing a hoodie with a ripped pocket.  You can bet melody-singing Michael Bublé has exactly zero hoodies with ripped pockets.  The students accused me of being jealous, which I admitted to.  It was necessary to establish the well-liked Michael Bublé as my #2 most hated enemy in order to set up a familiar pattern for Benny the Irish Polyglot.

The students called me jealous and shallow (this whole conversation was in Spanish), and then they begged me to tell them about my #1 enemy.  I told them Benny the Irish Polyglot was this dude who wears a tuxedo t-shirt and travels around the world, becoming fluent in different languages, and then selling people books filled with a bunch of non-secret tips on how to learn language, tips that I totally know.  So then the students suggested that I write my own 41€ book, and that I quit being so jealous all the time.

What did this buy me?  It let me have the conversation with my students that you can be fluent in a target language in three months, and that it’s TOTALLY NORMAL… provided that you do it correctly.  And the first thing you can do is to STOP SPEAKING ENGLISH; when it’s time to learn Spanish.

The message finally got through to them, they totally used Spanish for the rest of the period, even to chat with each other.

Oh, sure… when I tell them in September that English will poison their Spanish learning, they look at me like I’m an idiot, but when Benny the tuxedo-t-shirt-wearing, Esperanto-speaking Irish polyglot tells them you have to communicate in the target language, they’re all ready to throw their 41€ at him.  See what I’m up against?

UPDATE:  Just so it’s perfectly clear, Benny the Irish Polyglot is absolutely not my enemy. I told him about my “enemy” strategy on twitter, and he wished me luck.  Michael Bublé, however, is another story…

As for the minor differences in Benny’s approach compared to my own:  Benny studies more; i.e., memorizes lists and expressions, does Anki, etc.  Me, I don’t study like that; I concentrate my energy on conversation and consuming media for pleasure.  It’s a philosophical difference, but in the end, a minor one.  We have the exact same approach when it comes to grammar:  it only makes sense to study grammar academically once you’ve generated that grammar linguistically.  In other words, you don’t need to study it until you already know it.  Think about that one…

Pflaumenkuchen: How to Own Vocab Without Studying

One time last fall, J the French teacher brought a plum cake to the office.  We all had a piece; it was delicious of course.  The taste of plum cake made from local plums is an amazing taste of fall.   Everyone had to run off to teach, so I was left alone in the office with the plum cake.

After a few minutes, K the German teacher, came into the office, looked at the plum cake on the table and exclaimed “Pflaumenkuchen!”

“Ja,” I said, “Pflaumenkuchen.”  I pronounced it slowly, and K helped me get it exactly right.  Then I said something in my broken German, something like “mmm den Pflaumenkuchen ist sehr gut!  Lecker… ja!”  We each might have said Pflaumenkuchen at least five more times before K left the room to make copies.

I stayed in the office and finished the worksheet I was working on, and then went downstairs to the make copies of my own.  While my copies were running in the machine, I found L, the other German teacher, in her office, and I asked her, “Frau, habst du Pflaumenkuchen gegessen? ”  We had a whole conversation in my broken German about how I had eaten Pflaumenkuchen, how delicious it was, how there was more upstairs, how J gemacht it for us.  I said the word “Plaumenkuchen” at least 7 more times.

Then the bell rang and I went to teach my class.  We were reading a short story or working on some worksheet or something, and my students were asking me for words absolutely joylessly.  I’d make them repeat the word, and they’d repeat it resentfully, refuse to do the gesture, and just in general be completely mentally flaccid.  And then two seconds later someone would ask for the same. damn. word.  because they weren’t listening.

I stopped the class.  I told them to put their pens down.  Do you know that I don’t study vocabulary, I asked them?  I don’t study vocabulary.  I don’t make flash cards, I don’t quiz myself with lists, I don’t do any of that crap.  I just learn the damn word.

And I proceeded to tell them the Pflaumenkuchen story.  This, I said, is the difference between me and you.  When I come across a new word, I repeat it gratuitously.  I check to make sure I’m pronouncing it correctly.  I use it in different sentences, immediately, imaginatively.  I find someone else to talk to, and then tell them about it.  I google it.  I look at pictures of it.  I write it down.

I delight in learning a new word.  I say it and use it and recycle it, and pretty soon, I own it.  And then I never have to study it.

By the end of this lecture, all my students knew the word for plum cake in German.

Then we continued with the lesson, and I encouraged them to delight in the new words, to have fun with them, and to use them in a simple sentence properly.  Before they knew it, they were owning all kinds of words.

Ten minutes later, I asked them for the word for plum cake in German.  Some of them fumbled with the word, but a few of them remembered:  Pflaumenkuchen.  Had they study it?  No; they just owned it.

Why on earth would you study vocab, when you can just own it?  What exactly is the point of not owning a word?

For a day or two after the Pflaumenkuchen story, the students can sustain owning the new words, but then tend to forget the whole lesson, and go back to mindlessly and flaccidly asking for words they won’t own because they were too tired that day, or because something was bumming them out.

I guess I’ve had days like that too.  The secret, though, is to keep the bad days to a minimum.

GoogleTranslate for homework? Fail.

I tried to tell my students that Google Translate gives them bad translations; they don’t believe me.  One kid argued with me.  I think they think I’m trying to trick them.

I’m not going to tolerate machine translations in homework this year, like I did last year.  I’m done with the benefit of the doubt.

I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with these people.  It’s so much easier to cooperate and just learn language, but so few people (at all levels) choose to do it.  It’s much harder, and much more stressful to operate under standard procedure, which is to zone out in class, don’t take notes, never practice, complete homework to finish (rather than learn), block out the target language by speaking English, and then cramming for quizzes and tests.

You’d think they’d want to become Spanish speakers… I mean, this is their chance…

Another video after this; then three syllabuses, five class websites.  Guh.

One more thing; turning in gTranslated homework is as dumb as naming your restaurant Translation Server Error.

No, My First Name Ain’t “Baby…”

You know what I’m sick of?  I’m sick of my students calling me tú all the time, that’s what I’m sick of.  Students should address their teachers as usted.

It’s wild; in any language I’ve ever studied that has a register distinction between formal and familiar, this distinction is always taught first, if not in the first chapter, then in the pre-lesson chapter before the chapters start.  Native speakers find this so important that they make it among the first things that is taught.

Native speakers of a language with a register distinction, of course, make the distinction seamlessly and effortlessly.  On the rare occasions that they misspeak; they apologize, correct themselves, and move on in a very easy manner; blink and you’ll miss it.

Americans tend to not have a feel for this distinction, as the grammatical register distinction (i.e., the familiar thou versus the formal you)  is now archaic… everybody is addressed as you now, and thou , thee, thy, and thine sound like the past.  If you addressed someone alive today with thou, they would not feel any sense of familiarity.

For many years it was easy to go along with the American way of letting the students address me as the familiar tú, but the more I become a Spanish speaker, the more it grosses me out.  My students are not my friends, we’re not on a first-name basis, I would deny their Facebook friend requests–that is, if anyone dared to friend me–, and to say that our relationship is familiar, rather than professional would be a lie.

So when they address me as tú, it’s gross; overly familiar.  I don’t let them address me as “baby” either.  ’

What’s more, it’s culturally inappropriate; Spanish speakers don’t address their teachers that way as a rule.  It’s slightly horrifying.

I’m pretty sure grammatical register is taught incorrectly across the board to Americans.  I gave my class a worksheet once; there was a list of people, and the students had to decide whether to address the people with familiar tú or formal usted.  They did fine with “teacher, elderly neighbor lady, priest, POTUS,” (all formal) and “friend, pet, parent, little kid, new kid in school” (all familiar), but then they failed miserably when it came to situations not mentioned in the pre-chapter.

For “your friend’s mom” they wanted to say familiar tú, which is not a great idea.  Even if she’s trying to be the cool mom, and insists that you call her tú, I would never never do it.

For “your family priest that you’ve known all your life” they wanted to use the familiar tú, which is just trashy; the man dedicated his life to serve the Lord.  Even if you don’t agree with his beliefs, give him a break.

For “the heinous war criminal you recognize on the bus” or  ”the registered sex offender who lives in your neighborhood and hangs out at  the playground,” they also wanted to use the familiar tú, which is just alarming.  They didn’t want to use the formal usted because they didn’t want to show respect…. what they didn’t realize was that the alternative is to show familiarity, which they later conceded was not the message they wanted to send.

It’s not just the students, either.  The old Washington Mutual cash machines used to have this “we’re just talking” motif, and they addressed the user as tú.  Gross.  Pero ni modo.

Here’s where my thousands chilango readers write in and say “we don’t use usted anymore!”  That’s great for them, and all the other linguistic minorities where register situation is different.  But the socio-grammatical register distinction remains a reality in the vast majority of the Spanish-speaking world, and it can’t be avoided, not even the DF. So I’m still going to teach it.

In the past, I’ve just tolerated students calling me tú, accepting that American kids are just too unaccustomed to grammatical register.  Last year, I would remind them occasionally, and some students were present enough to get it or correct themselves, but never in a normal way; they always made it awkward and overly obvious.

This year, I’m putting my foot down.  Last night I went to Goodwill and bought a second-hand ping pong paddle that will always be within reach in my new classroom.

For those of you poor souls who don’t have teachers in their lives, here’s the deal:  I’m currently in the academic season we call “dread.”  School’s about to start again in a couple of weeks.  It’s too early to go in and write a syllabus, but it’s not too early to start losing sleep over anticipated frustration.

Teachers deal with “dread” in different ways.  I, personally, deal with it by purchasing second hand items and making them into classroom gimmicks.

So this is my “register paddle.”  If a student addresses me in an overly familiar manner, instead of gritting my teeth and thinking that student was born in a barn, I will hold up my paddle.  If they manage to correct themselves, I’ll put the paddle down.  If they manage to correct themselves in a non-awkward way, e.g., without stuttering or raising their voice or using gringo-style emphasis, I’ll turn the paddle to “magnífico” and offer a fist bump.  The fist bump is socio-kinetic reward for the students.  Trust me.

It’s brilliant of course…. the students will try to make me feel dorky about using a gimmick, but what the hell do they know; they tend to have volumes of  habits designed to prevent language-learning.  I can be allowed a gimmick or two.

Let me talk about the “magnífico” side of the panel for a second.

Back in 2005, students from Louisiana were scattered all over the country, fleeing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.  Apparently we welcomed one such student; I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but the faculty lounge was all a-buzz about this kid; this new kid from the South.  It seems he addressed his teachers as “Sir” or “Ma’am.”  And it wasn’t a military thing or a mark of subservience; it was a form of charm.  If you asked him a yes-no question, he looked you in the eye and answered with an easy  ”yes, sir,” or “no, sir,” with a smile on his face.

A little old-fashioned?  Maybe.  But my colleagues ate it up.  So don’t tell me that Americans are totally tone deaf to social register.

Think about it; who do you want to be… the kid who is overly familiar, or the kid who commands instant respect by following a (relatively easy) tradition of respect?

As Americans we tend to perceive register as a special, unnecessary formality reserved for people with fancy titles.  But remember, in Spanish (and in many other languages) everyone has a fancy title.  When I was in Mexico, Leo used to call the waiters “licenciado,” a title that translates awkwardly to “college graduate.”  I wondered if it was patronizing, but in the end, no; it was a very easy way to earn charm points.

You want to be charming, don’t you?

Phonology: Tools for Language Wizards

Remember in Harry Potter, when the Hogwart’s gang had to take all these obscure classes that they were not great at, but it was good for a few laughs as they learned… but then at the end of the movie they were glad they took it, because the knowledge ended up being the key to a puzzle, saving someone’s life, or at least making their lives a whole lot easier?

They all wanted to do Defense Against the Dark Arts, for example, but they were really glad that Neville found his niche in Herbology….

So imagine all us cute junior linguists in Phonology class, memorizing the IPA, practicing our points and manners of articulation; fulfilling our Phonology requirement dutifully, but knowing we’d never need our Phonology skills later in the movie.  After all, there’s no Tri-Linguist Tournament to win, no Verbamort to vanquish.

It turns out, I’m glad I took the class.

This middle section is might get a little technical, so if you’re only reading this post for the Harry Potter content, you might want to skip down to the third section, which is about magic words.

_____

I remember doing my study abroad in Avignon, France, and thinking, “I’ll always have this stupid American accent.” The problem, for the most part, was my vowels.  I was bringing my American vowels to the French language, and although I could make myself understood just fine, I couldn’t land that liquid, pouty… French sound.

Bringing American vowels to French pronunciation is like going to the Metropolitan Grill and ordering something off the Burger King drive-thru menu that you picture in your head.  I’m sure they can bring you a fair semblance of a double Whopper with cheese, curly fries and a Coke, but eventually you’re going to realize that having it “your way, right away” is not always the best choice for you to make at every occasion.

So anyway, I got back to the States and I learned me some Phonology and found that the vowel chart was the master list of every vowel sound I’d ever need to know.  Not all the vowels in the chart are used in my brand of American English, but wouldn’t you know it, some of those vowels were the crazy French vowels I could never figure out.

Bam.  With a few months of practice my French vowels had fallen into place.  Haha, now the Frenchies had to find some other way to tag me as an American, because my pronunciation became awesome.  Now, they had to resort to my lack of vocabulary and my failure to find any of their humor funny.

Also, I discovered that my early exposure to my parents’ Pangasinan language has made me native in a couple of things that speakers of American English can’t usually do.  For example, I can start any syllable, word, or sentence with /ŋ/, no problem.  I’m also a native speaker of the vowels /ɯ/ and /ɤ̞/, so I can say “pinakbet” properly, without reducing it to the pathetic Tagalog pronunciation “pak-bit.”

Phonology class served again when I was studying Mandarin; they have a  bunch of phonemes that sounded exactly the same to my ear.  So you know that stereotype of  Chinese people reversing /l/ and /r/ when they speak English?  (“You and me leery need to talk, girl!“)  Well, when Americans speak Chinese, it is a hot mess of confusion between pinyin x, s, and sh; between pinyin j, q, and ch; between r and zh…  I still have trouble hearing the difference sometimes, as these eight distinct Chinese phonemes are all allophones of just a few of phonemes in English.

And if you think you don’t hear it, think of the poor Latinos, who hear them all as allophonic variants of Spanish /s/ and /ch/.  So they are really, really screwed.

But luckily, having taken Phonology, I could always fall back on place of articulation, and at least start reorganizing my concept of sound based on what my mouth was doing.  And the fact that I was in southern China gave my sibilants and affricates some wiggle room.

FYI, there are plenty of people, Americans, Latinos, or whatever, who have learned the Mandarin phonemes and can handle them just fine without ever having studied phonology; they just figured it out.  I felt, though, that my phonology training was a HUGE advantage.

You can read Alto’s explanation of Mandarin pronunciation and his own particular journey of phonological discovery if you just can’t get enough of this topic.

So yes, studying Phonology is totally useful in my language learning odyssey.  I’m a little annoyed now that I dropped out of Phonology II:  Autosegmental, because who knows what kind of Turkish I could learn if I had only stuck with it.

______

Magic words  

Ok, enough technical stuff, here are the personal stories…

The other night, I was talking to a woman who is moving to Shanghai later this month.  She’s was fretting about learning Chinese, and she asked specifically, what is that pinyin /r/ sound?  I asked her, you’re a speech therapist, right?  Sure, she answered.

No problem, that pinyin /r/ sound is a voiced alveolar fricative, retroflex.

Really?  she asked.  That’s all?

That’s all, I assured her.  Being able to talk to other speech professionals about place and manner of articulation makes life a lot easier.

Unrounded.  

My friend S is a syntactitian and super Slavic-specialist.  Our common language (besides English) is French, which she gets to practice a lot with her francophone husband who we call Belgie.

S was telling me some stories about Belgie’s family, her in-laws, and we started talking about Belgie’s brother, Quintin.  In the middle of the story, she got a distracted by her pronunciation of his name.  She said after 10 years she still didn’t know if it was pronounced [kãtã] or [kõtõ], or whatever combination it was.

Belgie said, listen, it’s “Quintin,” pronouncing it perfectly naturally in French, wondering why she still hadn’t got it after all this time.  She is, after all, a professor of linguistics.

Right, she said, I don’t hear it!  Is it [kãtã] or [kõtõ] or what?

At that point, I chimed in.  ”[kɛ̃tɛ̃],” I said, “unrounded.”

“Unrounded,” she repeated thoughtfully, and then with a very focused look in her eye, said, [kɛ̃tɛ̃] Quintin perfectly, five times in a row.

Yah!  said Belgie, you really got it!

“Unrounded!”  she said, socking him in the arm,  ”why didn’t you tell me that 10 years ago?  It’s so simple!”

“Of course, unrounded!” said Belgie, not sure of what just happened.  You can’t really blame Belgie, he’s climate scientist and a mathematician; he never had the benefit of Phonology class.

Cigars.  

So back in grad school, I had a Cuban American friend who had never smoked a cigar, so I told him I’d show him how (as if I was an expert).  So we bought some, and I showed him how to hold it, how to light it… but then I had to show him how to puff it.

Are you inhaling? he asked, am I doing it?

He wasn’t, and to be honest, I was really struggling with teaching him how to puff.  I could do it myself, and show him, but he wasn’t seeing how it was done.  And his cigar was burning away.

Finally, after struggling with a few minutes, I remembered, wait a second, this guy is a diachronic Spanish specialist; he’s had phonology.

Ok, think of in this way, I told him.  It’s a voiceless bilabial implosive.

A bilabial implosive? he asked.  He thought about it for about two seconds, and then did a perfect puff, and then did a bunch of perfect puffs in a series.

And then we laughed that the magic words that made all the difference had come from phonology class.

Happy Chinese Learning Obsession Time

I’m currently obsessed with the Happy Chinese Learning series.  Here’s a sample, if you have time to watch:

Here’s a playlist of the whole series.

There is a website with seemingly related material.  Or maybe they’re unrelated, I can’t tell.

Anyway, the cool thing about this Happy Chinese Learning is that the video is actually very high quality language-learning material.  There is highly polished videos… some would say that the transitions and animated vignettes… and certainly the audio design… are all overproduced.  But the live-action itself is excellent.  Here’s why I like it:

• The actors are all native speakers (including Susan, the white girl).
• They are all over-acting, which is a dream for language-learners.
• The speech is not dumbed-down to insulting level, they use real expressions that wouldn’t be taught in a curriculum (remember, listening comprehension follows a radically different syllabus than first year textbooks).
• They’re talking normal speed for actors.
• The characters are sit-com goofy, written to be lovable.
• The animated vignettes that review the vocabulary are kind of awesome.

Happy Chinese Learning does have some shortcomings, which makes it all the more endearing:

• Listening comprehension target is just above where I am now, which is great for me, but since they start with “你好” I have to conclude their aim was quite a bit lower.  Someone with listening proficiency lower than my own could enjoy this show aesthetically, but they’d need hella support to even start to focus on form.  It shows that they have zero concept of the novice language learner’s experience.  In the classroom, that’s maddening… but as a YouTube artifact it’s kinda funny.
• The grammatical commentary is presented in a special segment… but it’s so textbooky and technical that, although it’s academically solid, it’s all kinds of ineffective.  Paired with over-wrought sound design and animation overload, I cannot help but see comedy in it.
• There’s the requisite clueless foreigner whose personal life is a disaster, and who speaks perfectly but due to some cultural differences, ends up stumbling into hilarious situations that everyone learns from.  The character is supposed to be American, but her mannerisms are 100% Asian (trust me, I know) and the rare occasions when she does say English words (e.g., “dad,” “early”) she manages to not say them with the accent of an native speaker of American English.  There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but as a character I find her hard to believe in.

So the show is kind of ideal as a language-learning media artifact; it’s authentic, it’s entertaining, it’s academically solid, and it’s culturally appropriate (even in ways it doesn’t intent to be).  If you’re focused on form (which you should be!  don’t just read the subtitles!) it’s easy enough to rewind and re-watch, down to the sentence or the word you missed.

What’s not to like?

One last thing:  besides the writing being authentic target language delivered at normal speed, I really appreciate that there’s plot which involves conflict.  Not violent conflict, but conflict nonetheless.  The first few that I’ve watched involve some innocent mistakes or misunderstandings, which lead to people taking actions based on assumptions, which serve to escalate the confusion until the end, when everything gets happily resolved.  Yes, it’s a formula, but it’s a theatrical formula; there was someone there that has studied theater and screen writing and it’s not just some academic trying pathetically to string a bunch of target vocabulary into a poorly-written scene. There’s obviously a director working with the actors, who is making sure the actors know their motivation and timing.  My point is that they made not just a language-learning sit-com, but an actual sit-com as well.

Compare that to the relatively clunky French in Action or worse, the mind-numbing Destinos.

Thank goodness this post is done, I’m going to watch another episode of Happy Chinese Learning.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE! In lesson six part one: Americans eat nothing but hamburgers; breakfast, lunch, and dinner! In lesson six part two: Americans’ expectation that Chinese people are always practicing kungfu is CONFIRMED!

The Truth About All Those Language Learning Podcasts

I’ve recorded hundreds and hundreds of language-learning podcasts; different languages, different companies, different countries…

I’m not sure if that makes me a pundit, but I have some strong opinions about the medium, and about the podcasts themselves.

First, I will say that I myself have used language-learning podcasts to learn; namely, the old Amber and Clay episodes of Qing Wen from cPod;  Kalyespeak, which I’ve written about.  I also took a professional interest in Coffee Break Spanish, which I listened to a little bit of, even though I already spoke Spanish at the time.  I also really came to like the FrenchPod lessons, before I was tapped to host them.

Of course, I’m happy to recommend SpanishPod, which I consider to have some of  the best work of my career to this point.

Now there are plenty more podcasts out there; big ones, obscure ones, all kinds.  Some of them make outrageous claims. In fact, one particular podcast had the slogan, “The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Spanish!”  I refused to say this slogan in a podcast, because I didn’t believe it myself.  I’ll be specific:

• I did not believe it was a “fast” way to learn Spanish.
• I did not believe it was an “easy” way to learn Spanish.
• I did not believe it was a “fun” way to learn Spanish.
• I did not believe it was a way to learn Spanish.

I know a faster, easier, more fun way to learn Spanish, actually:  move to a Spanish speaking country and make friends, meet people, take classes from a professional teacher.  You can become a Spanish speaker in a matter of months.

But I digress.  Do I believe in podcasts?  I do; but not as a catch-all that the corporate suits are trying to feed you.  You cannot learn any language entirely by listening to podcasts.

Language-learning podcast can address one aspect of learning very well:  listening comprehension.  I was always very moved when listeners would write in to me saying that after six months of listening to SpanishPod.com, their listening comprehension improved tremendously.  It makes sense; the podcast is a listening experience people listened regularly, they improved. In fact, the listening comprehension aspect is the one thing that podcasts can do better than the classroom; that is, provide accessible listening material in the target language that listeners can consume and comprehend on a daily basis.  What’s more, listeners have the means to re-listen to the material at their leisure.

Podcasts can offer excellent listening-comprehension practice, and as we all know, you will get good at what you practice.

I am leery of any podcast that claims it can do more than listening comprehension.  It’s an auditory medium; its benefits will be auditory.

Now, I have a whole list of standards and benchmarks of what constitutes a good podcast.  For now, I’ll keep this recipe secret.  But I do want to share with you some signs of a good podcast, just in case you may be on the market for one:

• A good language-learning podcast uses AUTHENTIC language.  Look for native speakers, talking at normal speed, speaking in natural situations, acting out dialogs that were written by and for native speakers.
• A good language-learning podcast has language-learning professionals behind it, or at the very least an obvious commitment that the material presented be ACADEMICALLY CORRECT.  This is hard, because non-professionals tend to have a lot of folklore-based beliefs that aren’t necessarily right.  Or, in the worst-case scenario, some services may be produced by people who are plain sloppy, but don’t care because they’ve already got your subscription money.
• A good language-learning podcast is ENTERTAINING.  Not “relatively entertaining” or “somewhat entertaining.”  As target language media, it must be for-real entertaining, so that people are listening for pleasure, not just for study.  People must actively enjoy listening, or it doesn’t count.  As a corollary, the hosts must be likable; contempt for the host(s) has precluded me from some pretty big products.

So there are some hallmarks of a good language-learning podcast.  I hope this helps you narrow your search.

One thing, though:  podcasting has seen it’s apex.  Think about it, it’s named after an iPod, which is a piece of equipment we barely care about anymore.  Sure, we’ll still need pure audio distributed on the web, but the future has audio and video on devices we care about; right now that means smart phones and tablets.  Who knows what it will mean in the future, except that new language-learning media will grow past the easy-to-make podcast.  When it does, look for the same three signs of a good podcast that I listed above; they will be applicable in the same way.