Earlier in the week I mentioned the term ‘experiential learning’. I think this raised some concerns amongst some of our readers - it seemed to suggest something vague and ‘new age’. In fact, I think it is very far from that, but grounded in learning through practical, day-to-day experience. Let me give you a little more background on what I mean by the term.
There are 2 ways you can approach the study of Mandarin: analytically, or, through direct experience, that is, by using it. (I have talked about this elsewhere, and about how the approach you choose depends upon your personality and objectives.) In recent years, the trend in language instruction has been towards a more ‘natural’ approach that rejects the old structured ways (as examplified by the grammar-translation method). Behind this development lies the belief in using the language (speaking it to communicate, for example) as the primary way to improve your skill in it.
Clearly, millions of people around the world do learn languages without formal study. We all learn out mother tongue without it. Meanwhile, in many parts of the wrold, it is not unusual to find people who learned to speak 4 or 5 languages with little or no formal instruction. By looking at how these people learn (first and second) languages we can perhaps identify some of their learning strategies.
For example, in a natrural learning environment, people naturally tend to focus more on getting their meaning across than on analyzing the grammar. For you, as a Mandarin learner, I believe the corollary here is to engage in language use (rather than just on language analysis). Ultimately, I believe the quickest, most natural way to progress in a new language is though using it for what it is designed to do: communication. This is the sense in which I refer to ‘experiential’ learning
There is a lot more I would like to say about this. But rather than writing a long diatribe, I offer a list of items from HH Stern’s ‘Issues and Options in Language teaching’. (Appears to be out of print.) Here he describes the difference between analytical approaches (on the left) with experiential ones (on the right).
Table:
| Objective | Subjective |
| Focus on code | Focus on communication |
| Non communication | Communicative |
| Medium centered | Message centered |
| Observation | Participation |
| Usage | Use |
| Focus on language | Focus on purpose |
| Formal | Informal |
| Abstract | Realistic |
| De-contextualized | Contextualized |
| Skill getting | Skill using |
| Language practice | Language use |
| Predictable response | Information gap |
| Reaction to code | Reaction to message |
| Isolated utterances | Incorporation of previous utterances |
| Restricted forms | Unrestricted |
| Accuracy | Fluency |
| Linguistic interaction | Interpersonal interaction |
| Systematically structured | Realistic, genuine |
I won’t go into the explanations here, but if you’re interested, go through the list and see if you can explain the difference. I’ll follow up with comments and offer my two pence worth.
Ken Carroll
Aww, Ken, I thought you were going to be all controversial and give us something to argue with you about, and here you go reading our minds out loud again.
What you said is simply another way of describing the reason why we’re all here, isn’t it?
Ken,
This fits in with my views very well, and the approach I am attempting to take. However I think it should be made clear that (in my opinion at least) this extends to input as well as output.
Including the input as experiancial was probably intended but the information above doesn’t make this entirely clear.
What I mean is learning by struggling to extract meaning from input without prior analysis (in some cases in the real-world with no analysis except your own).
For example: you don’t need to be able to understand the grammar of a sentance to understand the meaning intended (at least on some level). If you enjoy and practice this you can often understand spoken Chinese that is way above your technical level.
I have a suspicion that a similar approach may work with reading as well, at least for subtitles.
The ‘top down approach’ in the podcasts is probably a good example of a more experiancial input, and listening to Chinese TV etc. from an early stage a more extreme example.
“in many parts of the world, it is not unusual to find people who learned to speak 4 or 5 languages with little or no formal instruction.”
But do these people learn the language while living in own natvive country. Or do they learn it while living constantly submerged in the language. Should there be some sort of blend of communication and analysis to speed up the process of learning for those who can’t have minute by minute communication oportunities?
It is kinda common sense that the more you immerse yourself in a language and the more you automatically think in that langauge the more you progress. Ideally we should all be quarantined together and if we speak anything other than Chinese a chip inside our brain will dispense an electric shock!
But the reality is many of us podders are outside China and Asia and our day to day lives make it difficult to make time to practice Chinese nevermind think Chinese. Moreover Chinese is irrelevant to how we go about our daily routines unlike living in CHina where you interact with the person at 7-elevn, the taxi driver, the air-conditioner repair guy etc.
Sure Chinesepod is conversational and breezy (but underpinned with solid teaching and technical accuracy) and that simulates normal life but isn’t a million miles away from Ma Dawei and his gang in the Chinese Reader book as they step through day-to-day scenarios. The key difference is that you and Jenny and John negate of suspicion that what we read is not what is actually spoken in the “real world”. The ad-libbing around the text provides cultural context and ressures us that we are optimizing on the graph of Energy Expended to Learn Versus Usability. We can readily imagine ourselves using this stuff and almost looking for opportunites to do so. That’s why I would almost consider it as edutainment – it is a fun and engaging way to learn and makes the book and tape approach seem a little sad and lonely.
I finally got my hand on Steven Pinker’s “A Language Instinct” so if anyone notices my bias, it’s yah cause I’m reading the book now.
I don’t think Chinesepod has “It” quite yet, and traditional language books are wayyyy way far away. Still, over the past week I did drop almost two benjamins (two US$50) on two Chinese language learning books. (They’re about writing)
Why doesn’t the Chinesepod Way have ‘It’ yet? Because we’re looking for a method to ‘flip’ the mind into Chinese, in a way that the mind then can generate Chinese naturally. It’s that sense that allows us to say ‘hey, that sentence doesn’t feel right.”
I don’t think even listening to all the Chinesepod podcasts will do that, not the way they are formated (as a whole), there is too much of the old academic still cropping up in the exercises, and expanded features. Often times the banter is not “It” and does stuff like vocab, grammar, and chatting.
There’s not enough of the ‘it’ stuff that will offset the target-language deprived environment that most adult learners are in. Kids learning a first language have two advantages, they instinctively approach language with “It” in mind, and they have lots and lots and lots of hours of input.
There aren’t enough exercises to get people to re-gig their ‘thinking’ into Chinese. I think explicitly pointing it out helps. (I did this in my latest blog post http://www.aurbo.com/chinese). I think JohnP’s grammar tag explanations are excellent, but after all they are grammar. Where’s the instruction about ‘it’?
The previous Cpod FlashTutorials were too basic, they were just 100 different ways to use ‘ma’ as a question. Some tutorials, simple - basic - key stuff like the subject comes first, the linear thought and order of Chinese phrases, none of that is there. We should be looking for it elsewhere?
The reason that ‘communication’ just isn’t going to do it, comes from my own experiences — maybe I’ve forgotten what kind of questions to instinctively ask and do, maybe there is something to a ‘language window’. It worries me. I’ve listened to every Cpod podcast so far, I talk everyday in China, I still mess up my word order…my mind hasn’t flipped.
I want to believe it’s otherwise, and actually I do, but I don’t think we’ve identified clearly enough what it is that kids do to activate the brain’s ability to match thoughts with the target language.
All we’re really good at is matching up thoughts with target language words. And first-language words with target-language words.
As an American, I’m very much used to being a ‘monolingual’. That probably makes it tougher for me. I think the ‘It’ ideas and exercises may be found in multilinguals like Ken, who have been able to take their thoughts and match them up to multiple languages.
-When I first started to speak Chinese, my broken and almost useless high-school Spanish even crept in. How does Ken separate out his German, Bavarian, English, Chinese….?
-What kind of feedback do I need to re-gig my sentences and break out of my interlanguage into the-target language?
Finally, back to the distinction between Objective and Subjective, does either really help the mind make the ‘flip’? The flip I’m talking about is turning me into a three-year old that has natural pronunciation, the target grammar, and is a word sponge. The flip allows thought and phrase generation on the fly.
I’m then more than willing to spend the next several years picking up the language. Without ‘the flip’ it’s just studying.
It seems like what you’re describing is the “communicative” approach, which is how I teach French. What we’re focusing on, on tests, etc, is did the student communicate the idea - an example being simple directions. The grammar is located at the back of the book, but they’re not tested on it, rather they learn lexical chunks. It works pretty well…
Lantian, I think you are right about the “it”. I too studied Spanish in High School and when I moved to Mexico I found my High School Spanish to be almost totally useless because it contained absolutely no “it”. I look back on it as an almost complete waste of time. Having said that I find that only a few months of ChinesePod training far exceeds any language training I may have had in High School and I think that although ChinesePod may not be “there” yet I am very thankful that it is available to me now and as it develops it will no doubt continue pushing the envelope of language learning far into the future.
Ken
Usually I am very much a black and white kind of guy. However in this case I do feel there is something to be said for the analytical approach as well. In fact I would suggest you feel the same otherwise there would be no need for offering and I hope many wanting a copy of the printed text.
Even seeing 你好 helps me absorb it better than just hearing and using it all the time. Maybe that is just me. And of course add complexity of thought and I do find the visual (which I would suggest means analytical) is very useful..
It is for this reason that I have suggested that if there was a way in the expanded Chinesepod to offer homework assignments with personnel correction as well as say group anlaysis of common errors in forming grammatically correct sentences I would sign up for it.
At the same time I would say as time goes on Chinesepod is becoming by far the greatest source of chinese study for me.
Mike in Jubei (well this week in USA)
Hey Lantian,
Apparently, “Coke is it!” - Chinese On Ken’s tErms!
Eddie
Mike,
That is a good idea about the homework. After “indeed”, I think Ken’s most overused word is “consolidate” (sorry Ken!) and what better way to consolidate the learning than to revisit vocab or sentence patterns but in a different context thru homework e.g I cannot find toilet paper! One of the strengths of Pimsleur is the constant revisiting of stuff almost to the point of tedium but it is effective. The Chinesepod way seems to treat each new day as a new topic and and leaves it to the listener to go back over stuff. It could be something like a sliding window: homeworks assume you have listened to the previous 5 podcasts for that level and can mix n’match them to create new contexts to form challenging homeworks.
Eddie
I am convinced, you have to teach Chinese this way. Maybe it is just me (I am not a language guy) but so far I found no such thing as a Grammar in the strict sense I knew it e.g. from German or English - a terse set of rules that dictate the structure of every word and every sentence. Chinese “Grammar” appears to me to rather be a of a number rules for the construction of “types of lexical chunks”.
If I compare that to how my wife learned German: She came to Germany with a Computer Science background and some solid English groundwork in place but no German whatsoever. Within half a year she managed to “learn German” in a sense that she produced almost perfect sentences. Unfortunatelly no one could understand her back than because she did not manage the German pronounciation - not being able to end a syllable with a consonant instead of a vowel and to differentiate between “slow” and “fast” vowels.
She told me once “German was exactly like a programming language” for her (e.g. “you have subroutines and sub-subroutines”). We do not have that option to learn Chinese as Chinese is the exact opposite of a “programming language”.
ABOUT ‘GRAMMAR’ - a few thoughts to go along with my morning coffee.
Ken’isms:
Lexis, we present lexis. Comprehensible input.
Spoken speech is often nothing at all like written text.
The most effective way to learn is thru communication.
Steven Pinker:
A generative grammar/mental grammar (different than grammar like in JohnP’s grammar tags) - a code to translate between orders of words and combinations of thoughts.
Go into the Library of Congress and pick a sentence at random from any volume, and chance are you would fail to find an exact repitition no matter how long you continued to search. Generative grammar.
When people learn a language, they are learning how to put words in order, but not by recording which word follows which other word. They do it by recording which word categories…follows which other category.
Lantian’s musings:
I think the “It” that causes “The Flip” is about either objectively or subjectively figuring out what the categories are. Once you’ve got that down,then it’s easy to absorb new words and generate proper sentences by just ‘pulling’ from the categories in the right sequence.
The current objective way is thru as Ken calls it the grammar-translation approach. The Chinesepod ’subjective’ way is thru exposure to everyday lexis and communication (the banter) about that lexis. That’s two sides of the coin, but not the whole nickel.
If we could explicitly talk about and provide examples of words, words moving around, and words moving around to different categories I think we could approach getting to “The Flip” with either approach, and yes - make things easier.
An example* would be more exposure to examples such as this:
开玩笑 (sub: correct, proper usage, word order and category)
开 (sub: exposure to 开 in it’s standalone usage)
笑开玩 (obj: exposure to ‘incorrect’ order and meaning)
玩开 (obj: exposure to ‘incorrect’ verb-like pairing)
开车 (obj: correct, unpaired form, same ordering)
The first two phrases would be presented in a Chinesepod lexis sort of manner. The hope is that enough exposure will lead to “The Flip” without much mental agony.
The challenge for adult learners, however, is that we don’t get enough time or total input to “Flip” from just exposure, so we should turn to objective examples of incorrect patterns and variations. Conversly, just doing objective examples without lexis exposure or communication also is doomed to failure.
We need both. After a healthy dose of a combination of the two, we get a feel for things, this leads to more communication, meaningful communication — which eventually triggers our language instinct for the target language.
*I hereby trademark and patent this process as the (L3M) Lantian Language Learning Method copyright 2006.
Hi Henning,
You might find Pinker’s explanation of the fallacy of “the word-chain device” and instead the ‘phrase structure’ of language and ‘recursion’ to be interesting, or maybe more so for your wife. pp 90-94 The Language Instinct. I think Chinese is just another programming language, just much much better than C++. 开玩笑。
Hi Lantian,
what is title of that Piker book? I will look for it when I am back in Germany.
Regarding your comment “pick a sentence at random from any volume”: Actually when I have to write an English paper I do almost exactly that. Whenever I construct an English sentence with a structure or a word I haven”t used before I look at Google if someone else has used it exactly that way before. If it is correct I usually receive a considerable number of hits. I also look at the context and the sources (Sometimes I only get hits in Germany - then I discard it), but the number of hits is the most relevant indicator. I found that most sentences have been used almost 1:1 before - spare some minor changes (despite that effort I still produce plenty of mistakes, though).
Hi Henning,
If you get ‘hits’ back then isn’t it plagerism?! 开玩笑
The Language Instinct: How the mind creates language
by Steven Pinker
HarperCollins 1994, republished 2000
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Language-Instinct-Creates-Perennial-Classics/dp/0060958332/sr=8-1/qid=1158376582/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-7865701-1106519?ie=UTF8&s=books
Hank of Cpod talks about it here:
http://www.network-sense.com/2006/08/30/pinker-on-speech-recognition/
Ken of Cpod talks about him here*:
http://blogs.chinesepod.com/2005/10/27/45/
*btw Cpod, I found that with the new search feature, yippy-yah-yoo-hah!
Actually I do it with sentence skeletons or chunks.
Let me illustrate:
“If you got hits back” –> 0 hits
“If you got hits” –> 486 hits
The first one is obviously uncommen.
But be careful with the latter: It also includes stories about being beaten up so you better ad another key world, e.g. “Google”. Now you get 84 hits. That is enough, I will use that.
I started doing that with Chinese as well on word level, e.g. for the translation of “Information Systems”, “(Academic) Chair” etc.
But if you mention plagiarism: Actually we had a student who obviously tried that with much higher granularity: In her seminar thesis we found about 7 pages directly copied from the Internet. We have special text mining software to sort that out (besides the contents did not really fit the subject).
First off, isn’t it kind of silly to think that the “analytical” approach doesn’t involve communication? I think even the most archaic of language courses also pushed the learner to use the language to communicate.
I think that the fastest method would be a combination of both approaches. I think that “experiential learning” is a great approach but I still think it’s limited in scope. Sure by living in China you can experience basic conversation everyday, but when you want to move beyond that it gets a bit tricky. I feel that with the vast amounts of vocab and grammar it takes a long, long time to “experience” it all. This is where the analytical approach comes in. It can be used to fill in the holes.
My approach has been something like this:
a.) Study as much grammar and vocab as I can from books or whatever when I’m at home. (analytically)
b.) When I’m out on the street or with Chinese friends use some of what i’ve learned. It’s amazing how words that you’ve recently studied somehow pop up in conversation. (experiential)
c.) Review the old and learn the new vocab.
One thing (that could be good or bad) is that I usually don’t believe a textbook. If I study a word I usually won’t use that word until I actually hear it spoken or see it written in the “real world.” Sure that means that I may be studying a lot of useless words, but I find that they often have a way of revealing themselves down the road.
In short I create a block(analytically) and polish it with experience.
Aunty, it was your comments on a previous post of mone that prompted this explanation - rememebr your ‘Say it ain’t so’ comment.
Chris, I agre that I coudl make the link between our own input and the experiential approach more expolicit.
Kelso, these are people in different of the world (many aparts of Africa, for example, as well as places like Holland) who come into contact witht hewse languages regularly. In this sense, they experience (and learn) those languages.
Edie, I think your description of the process is excellent.
Lantian, I think you are right. However, it is one thing for you to take this approach, but another thing for me to tell our users to do so. I actually feel we are working towards that type of goal. However, I try to remember Bertrand Russell’s admonition to approach knowledge tentatively. For me, I think slow and steady is the way to go. (There’s also an element of different strokes for different folks, to be considered.)I think you should indeed trademark uour insights. I’ll certainly give them some more thought
Tintin, great to see teachers here with new approaches.
Mike, there is the element of definitions here. The linguists are fairly clear onw the analytical/experiential dimension - which is why I posted it the table above. Finding the balance is the key. I’m inclined strongly towards the experiential, but clearly not everyone else is,. so there is certainly a role for both. This is your service after all! The Learning Center is supposed to provide the homework, but you’re right, specific assignments would be a great idea.
Henning, I’d love to pursue this idea of German as a ‘programming language’.
Jeff, ‘isn’t it kind of silly to think that the “analytical” approach doesn’t involve communication?’. No, I don’t think so. Millions of people all around the world spend years learning languages for purposes other than communication. Take the TOEFL test. It’s based on filling in the blanks, multiple choice, grammar structures, etc. All across China millions of children fail to ever utter/write a single word of genuine communication in their study. This is the whole point of this discussion, but I can see that I many need to get back to some definitions.
Ken Carroll
Yeah thanks Ken, I’m relieved that it’s just about real experience of the language like we do already, and not that silly time wasting cosmic stuff.
Ken,
As a teacher here I definitely know what you mean about approaches that don’t focus on communicatoin. I guess I was just saying that there are “analytical” approaches that also focus on communication. In fact I think most university language classes in the US fall into this category.
There’s one thing Chinesepod could offer that would bring it closer to an “experiential” virtual classroom– and that’s close-up video of a Chinese mouth saying Chinese things! Just the other day a Chinese friend corrected my pronunciation of “qu” — so how was I to know that your mouth is NOT supposed to be in blow-out-candle position?? I could read explanations of mouth position and look at diagrams all day, but in seeing her face saying “qu” really made it clear– my mouth never goes that way when pronouncing English sounds! I never would have guessed, and had to see it to understand it. Then when I repeated “qu” the same way, she nodded happily. — But isn’t the visual element missing from these lessons– as an infant, you are always getting close-ups of giant faces (mother, father, siblings) saying things at very close range– Right now I do not have the visual input of having lessons with a native speaker, but up till now, I had thought imitating audio input was sufficient! — the correct way of saying “qu” also eliminates the English-speaking tendency to finish the “u” sound with a closing “w”– as in “chewww.”
catherine, that’s a good suggestion. We do have video plans. I’ve been thinking of them more in terms of a creative diversion from the (slightly more structured) audio, but in this case you’ve shown a good way to use it to teach structures.
Ken Carroll
Ken,
Would it be acceptable to tentatively redefine the above columns as “Awareness of the tool” and “Use of the tool”, respectively —-allowing for the fact that they are not mutually exclusive, that either concentration will lead to at least a limited achievement in its counterpart? It seems that the validity of the “objective” approach lies in its degree of reflexivity: It grants far more reflexive awareness of the methods it employs and the material it encounters than the “subjective” approach (are examples needed?). We are all deeply commited to a form of the analytic approach merely by considering the questions posited above.
Given that everyone is concerned with the economy of their personal resources (the key resource being time), one wishes to maximize the attainment of awareness while minimizing sacrifice. Undoubtably, the subjective approach proves efficient for picking up a language (I have a friend who learned 5 European languages purely through this method), but at a rather remarkable cost (my friend has failed to say anything of interest in any of them), since hardly any data accumulated by this method makes it through the distillation process that precedes knowledge (arguably key to awareness). A sacrifice of the awareness or knowledge readily obtainable through the analytic method, the apogee of which (a cosmic term for you, aunty) would comprise a return to the state of a young child for the rights to “fluency”, is to me “unthinkable”, at least for the Chinese language. This is a “You, on Mandarin’s terms” mindset.
Lantian (sorry to refer to you yet again, but you do post often), the approach you suggest is called “Error Analysis” and has been active in academia for quite a while. Here is one text: 汉语病句辨析九百例, published by Sinolingua, 1997.
So, Matthew, I think what you’re saying is that in the first column we’re thinking of how we are doing the learning, but in the second column we’re just aware that we’re learning something quickly.
And then you say that the second method doesn’t give people the ability to say meaningful things the way you can in Enlgish.
Actually, I don’t agree with either of those points.
Aunty Sue,
You are right to disagree, as do i, with those points. But I’m afraid i didn’t make them (you may want credit, on the other hand). The second one, in particular, is a marvel of misreading. Why would one isolate English as a privileged language? The key element of analytical method (and the knowledge it allows one to obtain) is it’s link to one’s native language, regardless of what that is. If one’s native language and the language of one’s formal education differ, it certainly complicates matters, but for the purpose of cognition one is dealing with two native languages. I find it likely that our level of cognition is directly correlate to our achievement of depth and understanding in our native language(s). The fact that very few authors ever successfully created a magnum opus in a second language (Conrad, Beckett, Celan) is not the merely the result of a stylistic barrier. Few are those whose second language cognition (or third, etc.) outstrips the first; when it does occur, it may be representative of a paucity in their native language capacity (due to a sustained exile from enviroments suitable for its augmentation) or extraordinary motives (one thinks of Celan, in particular). Is one to argue that the redundancy involved in the second method does not involve an extreme sacrifice? Admittedly, I have no definitive answer to this question.
I do, however, find it peculiar that in an age of increasing specialization in almost every field, we should disregard the question of specializing in one’s native language(s). Poets do this, of course—and Heidegger was right to regard them as opening the way to thought.
Am I understanding this difference in teaching style as an opposition between a strictly oral approach and a strictly written one? Sometimes in these discussions, I think access to and fluency in the written language (reading)is the ugly stepchild in education, and may I suggest that as far as standardized tests go that we should offer two separate, distinct varieties? One only for oral with nothing written, and one like the usual ones that focus almost entirely on written, and mix the skills only on very advanced level tests. That would solve a lot of problems about tests scores reflecting certain skills or not. But I’ve noticed it is common to assume a person is just not fluent in a language unless they use it orally. Also, in the translation/interpretation field, specialization is expected, and they encourage people in the field to study subjects of specialization in both native and secondary languages to become true experts on it, so gaps based on field are to be expected on every level of linguistic ability. Also, I have come up with a way to solve some of my Chinese input problem. A contact I made at a Chinese community event told me how to get a special library card at a local university that has an entire floor of materials in East Asian languages, so now I can read authentic books in any subject on the bus or at home or at work, not just on the rare occasions when I have time to kill a few hours in the library itself. Does that sort of activity fall into either of the teaching categories above?
OK then Matthew, what _are_ you saying?
Merely this, Aunty Sue. That the first method encourages a kind of meta-cognition (a conscious, reflective reordering of thoughts) in which we are able to sustain a high degree of control over the terms by which we process new information. In fact, i think any time one makes progress from one point to another through the second method one must, of necessity, have used a bridge of analysis to do so (the only question is the level of consciousness, which we may regard as the building material of that bridge—those tending toward lower levels of consciousness being constructed of ropes).
I hesitate to raise the “cosmic” again, but here goes: The second method grants one access to the physics of language (and one may submit to its laws); the first allows for a meta-physics (in the Aristotelian sense, hopefully), extracting information of greatest significance. It seems to me that the prospect of achieving true analytical capacity in a second or third language is rather poor, or simply a bridge too far. You may disagree. But until one does, the probability that analysis occurs and will continue to occur through a primary dependence on one’s native language (or “most capable”) suggests that there is (typically) no limit to one’s achievement in second and third languages…save for one’s achievement in native language acquisition. In other words, the point at which knowledge/awareness may be maximized is the analytical limit of one’s native language(s).
Sorry, Aunty sue, for not condensing this to the brevity of an acronym, but i’m sure you will.
Michele, thank you for pointing out the specialization involved in translation. It appears the orality/literacy issue is especially germane to the subject above.
Thanks Matthew. If I want to speak Chinese the way you speak English, which column is that?
You’re welcome, Aunty. A good first step would be to stop asking questions for which you care not the answer.
Subjective learning : knowledge. Objective learning : applied knowledge.
Learning a subject means little if you don’t know how to apply that new knowledge. I don’t think Ken is suggesting that subjective learning should go away. The burning issue is: what is the best way to get to the applied knowledge stage ? I believe that for chinese, it’s experiential - the approach that CPod uses.
My first year of traditional style chinese lessons, my constant companion was my big chinese dictionary. Every time I learned a new word or phrase, I’d have to go to the dictionary and look it up, and try to understand the 27 different uses of the word. Then I’d look for synonyms and antonyms. I could spend 4 hours on 2 or three sentences - really banal sentences like “I think the horse on the bridge is lovely” . Luckily I had a tutor who basically called me out, and said you can’t see the forest through the trees. The overwhelming majority of chinese language schools and study materials give a tree view, not a forest
okay reverse my first line: Objective learning: knowledge. Subjective learning: applied knowledge.
and this line should read : I don’t think Ken is suggesting that objective learning should go away.
sorry, no edit function in this blog
Hi Lantian,
I just followed your advice and ordered Pinker’s book at our University. I’ll pick it up on Tuesday …now I am curious.
Thanks again for the recommendation!
Henning
PARSER - In my edition of the Pinker’s “The Language Instinct” he discusses the idea of a “parser”. This is different than a grammar. Around page 200 in the chapter titled “Talkng Heads”.
I was reading about it this afternoon, the idea revolves how it is that humans are so good at decoding speech, decoding it in real-time. Grammar is okay for anaylis, but he shows how ‘parsing’ works.Nobody ‘thinks’ grammar in real-time. (Maybe except for John!)
Recently I have been taking the Chinese text messages that I exchange with my Chinese friends and ‘parsing’ them out. I found that almost to a fault (100%) of the time, their sentences were very orderly, the parsing came out in quite a straightforward manner. This ‘exercise’ of mine has been much more interesting than previous attempts at breaking down sentences ‘grammatically’.
The sentences my Chinese friends wrote were different than lots of my own messages which had gaps, and hiccups b/c often I guessed at words or was not thinking in that ‘logical’ Chinese way. I wasn’t able to ‘generate’ sentences that parsed out right. No wonder sometimes I would get back replies like “I don’t understand what you mean.”……
I would love to have a blog topic for us to discuss people’s ideas about the following ideas:
grammar
generative grammar
**** parser/parsing *****
lexis
words
I think what I have previously called ‘a generator’ is tantalizingly close to what parsing does, except in reverse, that is, create meaningful blocks of words that lead to long rambling but coherent sentences and natural sounding language!
I also think that this has some good implications for how to teach language, something different than the grammar way, or lexical way.
So Henning, please do drop back in and let me know what you think!
Lantian,
Good to see you back.
These are great ideas. I just wish I had time to re-read Pinker at the moment. If you wish to compose something and send it to me I’ll post them as a blog post - and credit them to you, of course.
Ken Carroll
Hi Lantian,
I read through it…
Pinker definately makes his point and he makes it convincing. Tons of interesting facts, some of which totally new to me. The book is relevant for me on different levels, both for the professional and for the private sphere (not only for learning Chinese).
Let me throw in a caveat anyway: As Pinker strives to convince us to discover the innate nature of language (and some other
invariants in human behaviour) he downplays the role of culture. From my guts feeling the culture (including written language!) is not as marginal for culture as Pinker makes us believe. I feel cultural differences every day and I see how they shape language. In one of the current threads on the blog (today is 12/10/06) regarding learning caracters I already wrote about my theory on the impact of written Chinese on spoken Mandarin (homonyms can be accepted easier if you write down morphems and not sounds).
Moreover one has to consider carefully what all this means for *adult* language learners. As Pinker writes, (most) small kids are in an active learning mode, but that window closes partially at the age of 6-7, and completely afer puberty. We cannot simply mimick the way kids learn Chinese. We have to use our inefficient “general purpose” learning modules. And that means there might still be a valid rationale for all the old-fashioned approaches to learning a language…
%greetings%