There’s a discussion (posted by user happy-hk) on the forums today about Steve Kaufman. Mr. Kaufman has managed to learn 9 languages. From what I know of him, he seems like a very insightful and talented language learner. happy-hk has a list of insights that he says come from Kaufman. Here they are:
- listen a lot to material that interests you (we all have MP3)
- have a script of what you listen to (it’s a bit more tricky to find those)
- listen to it until you get it (Steve mentions he sometimes listen to audio 30 times)
- audio should be in the target language only
- use language books as reference, don’t look at them if you don’t have to
- forget about grammar (that knowledge comes automatically with phrase knowledge)
- He said to build up language skills you need input, input, and more input. Speaking is not so important since it will not widen your vocabulary.
I agree with those statements except the ones in italics. Let’s look at the one about ‘audio in target language only’. If this is his position, then I think Steve Kaufman is wrong, at least in some cases, and for practical reasons.
I also agree that it is better to have a transcript of the audio, absolutely. However, I guess Kaufman means that you shouldn’t use translations to figure out the meaning of the text. Here I disagree.
For intermediate learners and above it makes sense to have the audio mostly (sometimes exclusively) in the target language, but this is definitely not the case for our newbie and elementary listeners, for example. Kaufman may be saying this out of deference to Stephen Krashen (I’m also a big fan) so I can see where this comes from. However, I tend to believe my experience over theory, and my real life experience tells me that this isn’t always a good idea. I guess I have to say that it depends on the level, the purpose, the context, and the individual.
Let me give you one example. The alternative to using the learner’s native language (in audio or written format) is, apparently, to use the dictionary and go though the it until he gets it. There can, of course, be of some benefit to slog through texts in this way, as schoolboys have done for thousands of years, but in practical terms it is often far more expedient to get an explanation and move on. I personally find that the dictionary can be an incredibly laborious and inaccurate tool. Dictionaries are artifice, pure and simple. They can give the wrong impression about what it means to ‘know’ a word. As a learner I’d much prefer the expedience of the (right kind of) translation, whether or not that seems theoretically pristine.
Personally I won’t be forgetting about grammar.
Ken, Steve, or anyone who is bi or multi lingual, you have an advantage. You have seen the learning terrain and know the pitfalls and the tricks for navagating. People like myself who only know one language and are trying to learn another are looking to people such as yourselves for guidance.
Steve, this post comes at a very oportune time since someone posted several links to interviews with you on my blog. I was intrigued with what I saw and will continue to learn more.
I was curious about your comment about listening to only content in the target language with transcripts. Do you have any recommendations? I am also curious how the inclusion of the listeners native language would interfere with the process.
My hat off to both of you for your accomplishments and desire to help others.
“Audio should be in the target language only.”
If the audio were 100% in Mandarin for Newbies / Elementary learners, I think there would be a problem with the input being too challenging that the learner would have difficulty understanding the content, even with the aid of a written transcript. Even at the Intermediate level, it is helpful to have a small percentage of the podcast in English (thanks John P., it really adds value). Of course, for Advanced level learners the “target language only” rule makes sense.
“Speaking is not so important since it will not widen your vocabulary.”
Don’t agree. There’s a lot more to language acquisition than widening one’s vocab. In fact, I would argue that accurate pronunciation is the primary benefit of speaking practice, not vocab enhancement. And speaking early and often in the beginning, gives one instantaneous feedback on how closely one can mimic native speakers.
It is even more of an advantage if you can talk to a Chinese speaker and get corrective feedback. Admittedly, I did find this to be a bit stressful when I first started learning Chinese. But after a while, I realized that it doesn’t matter if you sometimes screw up on the pronunciation. Most people are more than willing to correct you, without giving you negative feedback.
The question is, “Is he right?” Of course he is, since he managed to accomplish what he had. It may not be applicable to everyone but certainly it’s effective to him, and probably to others too.
Listening to (and watching) him speak different languages is so inspiring.
It’s amazing that Mr. Kaufmann started learning languages when he was just 17!
I liked the information he gave on writing. He basically says that you should start off with short and sweet sentences such as “I went to the store” Then later as you become better with the language you can start adding all the fancy stuff like “Oh yeah the other day I shot over to the store and etc…”
I think there is lots of value not to rush speaking. Combined with repeated input (20, 30 or more times) it carves / imprints patterns into your brain, and they’ll just spurt out without you even knowing about it when the time is right. Provided you have a musical ear that is, and that’s also why I don’t think tones need to be emphasised the way they are, in the sense of is it 1st or 2nd tone etc. It is not to say that tones arent important, quite the contrary as we know for Chinese, but the musical pattern will just make this obvious, you’ll hear the reference pattern and will be able to play it at will right before actually using it. Main value of actual speech is the mechanical aspects of producing certain sound combinations that need practicing from a neuromucscular point of view, exercising the voice organ.
On repetition, I also feel the same, every time I listen to a podcast I hear something new, and I do listen a lot when I make those full text transcripts. And in other contexts the mind cannot be 100 percent focused so there are things one just doesnt notice before listening 5, 10, 15 times.
And while you need a support language for the initial run it should quickly go, I just dont see the value of listening 20 times to a bilingual dialogue, distracting at best.
Yv
Ken I agree with you about the Newbie and Elementary approach in Chinese, the language is so different for me I needed that approach. Also you have to factor in the problem that I personally have which is a limited amount of time for “book work” (even if on the computer), however a generous amount of time for listening.
I started some German study to support one of my Children (a language that is much closer to my own) and was frustrated by far too much English in the material I have found so far. In the end I started with a joke and a transcript that was entirely in German and felt I was learning more by getting stuck in that way.
On the whole Steve’s views seem to agree so much with what I discovered for myself over the past year that I cannot help but think he has some very strong arguments. Maybe a little adaptation is required when tackling a language and or writing system that is completly alien to you though.
As my Skype friend will attest I fly into a mock rage when the grammar word is mentioned, I have no time for it at all (sorry), I don’t mind a little reading about stuff I have already basically got the hang of but that is about it. I can’t see how reading grammar rules about stuff that is above what you have acquired naturally will help for anything but answering grammar questions in artificial exam questions.
My own personal system would have a heavier emphasis on the listening in the initial stages but that is probably due to time constraints and the nature of written Chinese.
Ken I agree with you on the woeful problems with dictionary definitions but in my own personal experience once you have got to an elementary level you should be able to start filling the gaps in yourself. And Chinesepod to be fair seems to be doing a reasonable job of supplying enough English at about the right point. Maybe with the type of material that Steve describes it would be a different story but I use some good resources like the Learning Mandarin podcasts that April does (you can buy a transcript for less than the price of a coffee) and these would have been too much for me earlier on (a European language however and I think I could start from this sort of point).
It is worth noting that many people have found a need to strip the English out of various Cpod podcasts (including me) for repeated listening purposes. I would suggest though that a serious student should either get the hang of software like Audacity to enable them to do this type of thing or an online language learning system could provide them with some simple tools. Dang it I even speed ed up podcasts to save time (keeping the pitch constant so Ken and Jenny didn’t sound like Chipmunks).
And yes jb I agree write simple sentences and build up, someone compared my Chinese writing to Elementary school level, far from being upset I was actually pleased. If you are writing Chinese that is above the level you actually are (in real world language ability) you are probably spending too long on it and referring to too many textbooks. You can spend all the time you want practicing the elements of your Golf swing but when it comes down to the real thing you just have to do it in real time and accept what you can do. If you don’t then you will be a great armchair golfer (you can substitute almost anything for golfer here) but useless where it really matters. I would suggest the same same goes for reading, keep it real, reading simple stuff in real time is much more fun than picking through a piece of heavy literature.
I forgot to mention that some of Steve’s Chinese podcasts from his blog, ironically made good listening material for me. I could understand much of them straight off or with a few listens (heavy contextual clues). Some include native Chinese speakers, but even without these my Skype partner listened to a couple for me and said that even though Steve sounded a foreign his Chinese was good enough that she was happy for me to be using the podcasts as part of my study.
I think I recall Steve mentioning somewhere (an interview posted on Youtube perhaps?) that spoken language was like “ammunition” in a way. When you first start out, your “ammunition” is words and simple phrases - clearly not enough to hold your own in a conversation. So in this way, I think that speaking gradually grows from useless to very important. At first, one wouldn’t learn anything from speaking (because most of it is over your head), but as your “ammunition” grows from words to phrases and sentences, speaking becomes more important. You have more to take from a conversation. Eventually, when your ammo is paragraphs, or streamed thought, almost all of your learning will come in conversation.
I think a perfect analogy is learning how to play an instrument (the parallels between when I learned to play the guitar and learning Chinese are amazing to me, but that’s a topic for another day). If you tried to jump in and play with Led Zeppelin the day you bought your first guitar, you wouldn’t have much to contribute or to take away. You’d have no understanding of what you should even be listening for. But, if you increase your “ammo” from three-note phrases to entire solo’s or chord progressions, then all of a sudden “speaking” becomes learning.
So, if graphed on a chart where the Y-axis was importance and the X-axis ability, I believe the line would be an increasing exponential curve.
After several decades of successfully learning several new languages, and being told by language teachers and linguistics “experts” that I was doing it all wrong, it was a relief to me to find someone like Mr. Kaufman whose ideas, as I understand them, are similar to mine. (Though my language achievements are not even close to his)
It is possible to get a lot of meaning across by using pictures and videos rather than native language translation. Stick figure animation would be enough for a lot of things. While I’ve never used such methods, I think they, along with video game type training are the wave of the future. Equating a word or phrase in the target language to a native language word or phrase tends to lead to errors. (Though some of this is unavoidable)
In learning to read French and Spanish, I started with comic books, worked my way up to childrens books, books for teens, translations of English best sellers, and finally real books written in the target language. Kind of like the way I learned to read in English. No dictionaries necessary.
However, I think that listening to audio books etc. is preferable to reading if your goal is oral/aural proficiency. The net makes this much easier than it used to be. When I do this, I may repeat certain words and sentences out loud to reinforce them.
It’s a waste of time to obsess over the “precise” meaning, usage, and translation of a word or phrase you don’t understand. Just plow on, learn some new, maybe easier material. In the fullness of time, understanding will come.
I always start by learning how to pronounce a representative sample of words and sentences as well as I possibly can, and checking the results with a native speaker. I learn everything I possibly can about the sound system. To me, this is like a prequel to the start of language study. It takes a lot of very obsessive and concentrated tweaking, but it doesn’t take as long as people seem to think. But I think someone who wasn’t willing to do this would be better off just listening for six months or so rather than substituting English sounds for target language ones, and so developing a bunch of bad pronunciation habits that will be extremely difficult to eradicate. Perhaps after six months or so, they would hear some of the differences that they didn’t hear in the beginning.
It only makes sense that you will do best if you engage in activities you like.
Where I agree most with Mr. Kaufman is in his emphasis on input over output. So many language learners I have known will learn a few words in a language and immediately
try to engage a native speaker in a conversation that is painful for both. My own approach is to wait until I can understand and imitate pretty well everything I hear before trying unstructured conversation. (I think this is Mr. Kaufman’s approach too)
This doesn’t mean I don’t interact with native speakers before that. I lay my sentences on them and ask them for accent criticism. This is a no-lose proposition. I will either get some valuable and necessary feedback, or I will get some nice praise. I might even make a friend.
To me, the primacy of input over output doesn’t just mean passive listening. I practice saying words and sentences as often as I can, with great care with the pronunciation, immediately after hearing a native speaker say them. This way, proper pronunciation habits become automated, and when I finally begin unstructured conversation, I will not have to focus on what my mouth is doing.
Some people seem to feel that if they wait too long before constructing and outputting new sentences, they won’t be able to do it. But I have found that if you prepare the groundwork properly, fluency comes amazingly quickly. I did about a thousand hours on strictly audio Spanish before attempting my first conversation with a native speaker. She refused to believe she was the first person I had spoken Spanish with. When I went to Mexico a few months later, I was fully and painlessly functional in all the every day situations I encountered. (I wasn’t too good at discussing literature and politics though )
People are always going to disagree on the best way to learn a foreign language. Personalities and goals differ. But in trying to find their own way, I think people should pay close attention to polyglots. Look for someone who has: 1. Learned one or more languages starting as a monolingual adult. 2. Speaks these languages with good pronunciation. 3. Is fluent and at ease over a wide range of topics. 4. Makes few if any grammatical errors. 5. Is not a memory freak of nature.6. Who has done this without relocating in another country and marrying a native speaker.
Mr. Kaufman seems to fulfill the above requirements pretty well. Others like him may disagree on some of the details. But their advice is worth far more than that of the linguistic “experts” and teachers who have not proven their theories in practice by learning to speak another language well.
Listening is a very important part of learning languages. But an appropriate combination of input and output, in other words listening and speaking, is more important.
Speaking is good for memoraizing words and phrases and stimulates some parts of your brain. Needless to say, you are also “listening” to your voice while you are speaking.
There are lots of excellent English-Japanese dictionaries published in Japan. They explain clearly subtle differences in meanings of similar words with many example sentences.
I am sorry that Chinese-Japanese dictionaries which can match English-Japanese ones are still not available, although they have been remarkably improving in this decade.
I’ll wade into this one now (puts on jack boots for stomping). Nah only joking. In a way I actually agree a little bit with everyone. someone recently mentioned Agile Development for software programming which I have been a long time fan of. (read books by addison wesley publishing they are the best books on this subject and some of the most interesting textbooks I’ve ever studied.) I’m really changing my thinking at the moment as for some reason I’ve never drawn any parallels between this and my Chinese learning. My recently written blog posts really don’t ring as true as if I’d written them a few weeks ago. They will probably be replaced but I digress. One of the great things about agile is the belief is that there is no such thing as a perfect tool or a perfect process. If a tool works for you than use it. It’s a methodology without any statements like “This type of tool should be used for… ” or “This type of tool is not appropriate for the task… “. This is becoming the basis for my new theories on language learning.
Question: Listening to things that are only in the target language god or bad?
Answer: Do it if it suits you.
I don’t mind sitting and watching an entire film in Chinese, I pick up a word here and there that I know and sometimes a whole sentence and I do learn new words and phrases. If i watched the movie 30 times like Steve suggests I’d probably do a lot better. I think this would harder if it was language only (radio) though. For some people this isn’t going to work for whatever reason. For example it can be a bit demoralizing understanding so little.
As for the lessing of the importance of speaking, this is a phrase that is way open to interpretation. I’d like to see it in the context with which it was used. Is it speaking as in conversation? Heaps of people here on chinesePod are learning with little or no chance to converse in Chinese. Does this mean they won’t be able to learn Chinese? Hell No! Of course they can (and will). I think the context Steve was using was speaking drills such reading from a textbook out loud. In the youtube vids he seems to have for the most part studied his languages in situations where he had a lot of contact with speakers of his target language. So you be damn sure that he was conversing with people. I find that while listening to input I parrot what is being said in my head, I do this even more when there is no English.
Is Steve Kauphman right? Yes… Is he right for you? Maybe, maybe not.
What I’d like to see is a thread where people just list what they do that works for them and what didn’t work for them, also why. People commenting on other peoples lerning methods should be banned in the thread. I’m going to be trying a few new methods and such soon and i’ll be documenting what I think about them on my blog.
Cool post! I had a chance to talk with Steve last July about his views on language learning. Though I disagree with some things, there’s a lot right. Both Steve K. and Ken C. have done a great job of getting the hay (interesting comprehensible input) where the cows are.
No grammar is a little strong. Even Stephen Krashen (who has heavily influenced Kaufman) proposes teaching grammar for at least 3 reasons:
1. TO MAKE INPUT COMPREHENSIBLE
(ex: the 被 passive construction was incomprehensible to me before I learned how it worked. I was sure I had never heard it before. But suddenly, I heard it everywhere. Before, it was incomprehensible and ignored. After a short grammatical explanation, it was comprehensible and hearing it and recognizing it in subsequent input helped me finally acquire it. Without this grammatical explanation, who knows how long it could have taken to learn this in a purely natural way.)
2. TO DEVELOP METALINGUISTIC (GRAMMATICAL) KNOWLEDGE. Learning how to analyze a language can be a useful academic skill. This applies more to K-12 or college classrooms than people learning a language just to talk to people.
3. THERE ARE LIMITS TO WHAT CAN BE LEARNED NATURALLY. This is important to note. The whole of Krashen’s philosophy of naturally acquiring grammar through input is founded on Noam Chomsky’s hypothesis that humans have a language acquisition device. More specifically, all (or most) grammar rules for ALL human languages are already located in the brain. This is called Universal Grammar. Exposure to a language triggers the LAD to set the parameters of the UG to eventually arrive at the rules for the given language, whether it be Japanese or English. Why is this significant for grammar learning? Simply because not every grammar rule in our grammar books is innate (at least I think so). For example, the semi-colon. No amount of reading is going to cause you to suddenly have subconscious knowledge of how to use a semi-colon. This is because it is a rule we created from our general cognitive capacities, not part of an innate UG (again, my view). I believe it is also possible that there are oral elements of language that are also like this.
These are the bare minimum that Krashen admits to and supports.
The main reaction against grammar teaching is this dumb idea that studying grammar rules will cause you to use those rules when speaking. Research has proved this false over and over again. As if reading a book on how to swim could turn you into Michael Phelps. To learn to swim you need to get in the water.
What ever happened to Steve’s original comment made on this blog post? It was actually valuable reading!
If Steve has mastered 9 languages, he surely must know how to study a language quickly and efficiently. What intrigued me to use Steve’s method was that he proved his methodology time over time.
I have seen people study languages for 20+ years and still can’t manage to hold any meaningful conversation. Perhaps stop trying to criticize him and actually think, hey this guy might be on to something, then one might master at least *one* foreign language.
I would for one hate to listen to my mother-tongue on Chinese MP3s. I have heard books that have all the topic headers and page numbers in English. Who needs this rubbish? I like to hear only Chinese and get someone/a dictionary to provide definitions or meaning for unknown words.
Why are you deleting Steve’s posts?
Maybe give the guy a chance to defend himself. It seems that you’ve already concluded Steve is wrong, why make a post asking if Steve is right if you don’t care to listen to his explanations.
Steve/Milan,
I have no idea what happened to Steve’s post!!!!!!! He wrote two made some great points. I read them last night and I wanted to follow up on them today, but when I got here today the first one was missing.
I honestly don’t know what happend to them and I understand that this is the read/write web, not the read/write/delete web!
Steve is more than welcome to post comments here at any time. (I’ll write directly to him.) I have most definitely not concluded that Steve is wrong - this is a discussion , an I’m just one participant.
The whole point about this is that we all get the chance to learn from each other. Of course I welcome Steve’s insights- my blog can only benefit from that kind of expertise.
I will get my tech guys on the case. We may be able to find a cached version of the comments.
We’ve had server problems for the last couple of days. I don’t know if this is related. Apologies to all.
Ken Carroll
Remember whatever said in the post is only happy-hk’s own interpretation of Steve’s method.
For sure, Steve never says forget about grammar. He only stresses the point that we should not focus on grammar. Then he never says speaking is not as important as listening and reading. He only suggests not to rush to speak when you are not ready.
I swear I saw Steve’s comment this morning! I better save my comment first before submitting!
I think what we do with grammar study is going to be pretty much the last frontier of language learning when we’ve got that licked it’ll be the home straight! I think part of the problem about grammar is that as adults we are too self conscious about it. As a child learning our first language we don’t care that we say “I want food!” but as an adult learning a language, we say that being pretty sure that we’ve said it incorrectly and get all agitated about it. I love the way that grammar corrections are given in the Lesson comments, its always they way I think grammar should be commented on like it’s a after thought, something that you should keep in mind but not to worry as we understood what you meant anyway. On the I want food statement we tend to play grammar games with kids and neither of us really knows it…. I hear conversations like this between parents and kids all the time.
Kid: I want food
Adult: why do you want food?
Kid: I want to eat!
Adult: why do you want to eat?
Kid: Because I’m Hungry.
The kid has gone from a grammatically incorrect statement to one that is far more correct, all in what seems like a fun game between the parent and the child to do with their need for food.
As to the disappearing comments Ken I bet it’s your spam filter
Talk to Eileen about my case of disappearing comments in the lessons sections. I can’t post there at all now without being retroactively spanked 
I’m sure that we haven’t entered some draconian new land of ChinesePod. Beware the thought police!
OK! It was my spam filter. We had a vicious attack of the ringtones spam this week so we turned up the spam filter. I found Steve’s comments - and a few others from different posts in the cache. Phew!
Charles was right about this - amazingly, Eileen left today to go back to the Phillippines for Chinese New year.
Ken Carroll
Is that sarcasm? Steve’s first post makes some of mine defunct. And I think your still missing one of his.
Charles,
Sarcasm? I’m not sure I understand…
Ken
Mr. Kaufman makes a good point about listening to the dialogues about 30 times. That I agree with totally. You should be able to understand it even without the aid of a transcript. Listening is so important. But like many of you, I think he underestimates the importance of using (speaking) what you have learned, not only as a way to just plain communicate and be functional in a language, but more as a way to have the vocabulary and grammatical phrases fully in your arsenal. After listening to a dialogue on Chinese pod and going to work or out with friends, I find I am surprised to see the improvements I have made while using the language outside the classroom. Never underestimate your ability because you don’t need to be a master to communicate functionally, but more precise vocabulary helps clarify your meaning. It is true that you can get to a functional level through the classroom and then take the rest on yourself. Get through the basics, then progressively add to your brain later. Speaking at a high level is the hardest for me, so why not focus more attention on it? Another good thing he mentions is not to focus on grammar. Pretty much right on because in order to get better, just let the floodgates open and get out there and speak.
I digressed onto grammar. Now I’ll just post a few thoughts on what we’re actually supposed to be talking about:
1. audio - the most important thing is that the input be comprehensible. If you listen to something 30 times and each time don’t understand anything, that’s not helping you acquire a language. I think both Steve and Ken would agree with that. But how do you make input comprehensible? On video, it’s easier. I watch Muzzy Chinese with my daughter. It’s all in Chinese, but there are pictures and video shorts to make it comprehensible. In an audio only format it’s harder. Steve has chosen to use materials outside the audio itself, such as transcripts and flashcards to make it comprehensble. On the other hand, C-pod has chosen in addition to these to imbed comprehension support within the audio itself. The advantage of this is that a new learner can download a podcast and hop in the car without the burden of going through the transcript. The down side is that, as others have noted, those features become unnecessary over time and simply take away time from Chinese input. For example, on Steve’s site, he has students record the amount of time they spend listening, with an ultimate goal of 500 hours. But if I’ve listened to 500 hours of podcasts this year, and 40% of it was in English. Well, you know, do the math. It would be awesome if at C-pod, we could have the option to download just the dialogue. That will help those of us who listen to something 30 times.
2. speaking - I think the important thing is that you don’t have to speak early on if you don’t want to. People who begin speaking early have no long term advantage over those who begin later (at least according to some things I’ve read). I spoke early just because I got tired of clucking like a chicken every time I wanted to buy eggs. The real controversial part of Krashen’s input hypothesis is that he believes output skills (speaking and writing) are acquired SOLELY through exposure to input (listening & reading). There are 2 big anomalies for this though:
a. people who pass the TOEFL, but still can’t speak. Students like this obviously have high listening comprehension skills to pass the TOEFL, but still can not speak well.
b. children whose parents speak to them in a language can often understand the language but not speak it. For example, one of my childhood friends is Taiwanese. His parents spoke to him almost exclusively in Mandarin. However, he would respond to them in English. Today, though his listening is better than mine. My spoken Chinese is better than his.
Waiting to speak is fine, and may even be better than speaking early, who knows? Nevertheless, if you’ve been learning for a while and can comprehend intermediate-level input, but still can’t use the language to communicate when given the opportunity, you may have a problem. You should probably start reading out-loud and look for regular opportunities to interact in the target language.
We embed the tanslation (in a top-down way, of course) into the audio in order to free the listener from the desk, the pc, the dictionary, etc. He becomes mobile. Crucially, however, the top-down approach ensures that we don’t rob him of the chance to think about the input and figure out what he can for himself before we explain it. This element of cognition opens the door to acquisition and is, I think, the single most important element in the learning process.
The audio commentary also adds cultural background, resolves certain explicit questions, and relates the input to the real world. I beleive these are essential to the neophyte with no formal knowledge of the language or the country. For newbies, the commentary also provides what I’ve called the ‘redundancy factor’, without which the listener would soon suffer from overload . (With the embeded redundancy the listenr can actually listen to far more language because he could easily take in several podcasts and understand them all.)
So, there are two aspects to this. One cencerns the cognitive/perceptual process of how a learner (in the abstract) receives input. The second concerns organization. As a teacher for many years I know that the way your organize/present the learning material is as important as the input itself. We’re guided in organizational decisions by questions other than the psychological ones - I mentioned some fo them above.
In fact, much of this will soon be moot. We’re working on ways to allow th user to separate the dialog from the text at will!
Either way, it’s a great discussion. I don’t think we’ve exhausted it yet.
Ken Carroll
I read some of Steve’s blog on this topic and it seems that he encourages the learner to use the approach that works for them, although he personally prefers a podcast entirely in the target language:
“Many learners like to hear their own language, and also like to study grammar. If that makes them enjoy their studies and study more, good. Go for it! I do not like hearing English when I am studying another language and listening to audio content. I disliked it when a language teacher would use English in a classroom environment.”
I can relate to this. I like to hear some English explanations in the podcast because I feel it accelerates my learning. I hate grammar and will only refer to textbooks to get some background knowledge of the rules.
But I also really hate when the teacher uses English in the classroom. My “Intermediate” Chinese classes this year are exactly like that. For example, in last night’s class the teacher showed a movie about Chinese New Year Celebrations…narrated by a native Chinese person, but all in ENGLISH !…At the start of the film, the teacher even said “Don’t worry, the film is all in English, so you will have no problem understanding it”. Duh.
From the posts, I can tell people do not have a good understanding of what Kaufman’s approach. I suggest reading through his book, which can be purchased online.
I have learned 5 languages the same way Steve did, he is dead on the money, I agree 100% on every topic he is mentioning on his blogs, thanks for posting your blogs here Steve, I will be visiting your site very often.
Brent
“2. TO DEVELOP METALINGUISTIC (GRAMMATICAL) KNOWLEDGE. Learning how to analyze a language can be a useful academic skill. This applies more to K-12 or college classrooms than people learning a language just to talk to people.”
No. No. No. One thousand ten thousand nos. Most people want to study languages as a skill. Ironically most schools teach languages as a theory. If one wants to learn language theory pick up a linguistics or formal languages text.
“children whose parents speak to them in a language can often understand the language but not speak it. For example, one of my childhood friends is Taiwanese. His parents spoke to him almost exclusively in Mandarin. However, he would respond to them in English. Today, though his listening is better than mine. My spoken Chinese is better than his.”
We must measure and contrast work invested from both sides to draw any conclusions from this.
It’s really frustrating getting posts about a dude who “learned to become fluent in 9 languages” and then get only vague generalities about how this is accomplished. Personally, I don’t believe he really is fluent in all 9 languages (nobody has the ability to to that without total immersion in a culture). Da shan did this with Mandarin, but nobody can tell us which techniques he used to achieve success. We are all just mengzaiguli here.
Oh, by the way, his last name is “Kaufmann”, with two n’s.
Clever Dick, there are videos of him giving speaches and doing interviews in Japanese and Mandarin on youtube. Furthermore he worked in the Canadian foreign service for several years. To work for the Canadian foreign service you MUST be bilingual in French and English. This puts him up to 4 verifiable languages.
You can watch the afore mentioned videos on youtube, or purchase his book from his website. He makes his techniques very clear.
Be careful about what you assert peopl can and cannot do. There are some incredibly brilliant people.
Ken,
Thanks for the deeper explanation of the format of your podcasts. Also, I look forward to the upcoming dialogue only download option.
Lorean,
Thanks for your comments. I know the “to develop metalinguistic knowledge” reason isn’t going to be important for every learner. However, I think Krashen lists this for K-12 ESL students. Grammatical knowledge is part of the curriculum for native speakers, too. It’s helpful to have for advanced writing. Even native speakers use grammar knowledge to help them revise and proofread their academic papers. However, I readily admit that this will not apply to everyone.
Also, I appreciate your comment to go to the primary source. So, I pulled my copy of The Way of the Linguist off my shelf. The only part about grammar I found was on page 95 called “Input not Grammar.” In which he claims, “until you are fairly comfortable in the language, correct grammar should be a secondary consideration.” This is indeed different than saying no grammar.
However, in looking through the book I found a part that may be of relevance to the speaking discussion. This part is about pronunciation on page 104. I’ll quote a bit:
“Pronunciation should be major area of emphasis from the BEGINNING (emphasis mine), and throughout the first period of studying a new language. You should commit to spend a certain number of hours per week working on your pronunciation, especially during the early stages of your studies.” Then he lists four steps to developing accurate pronunciation:
1. “LISTEN repeatedly to individual sounds and to material within your basic range of comprehension, concentrating on pronunciation.” (p104)
2. “REPEAT word and phrases.” He also recommends repeating these phrases throughout the day.
3. READ out loud. He recommends reading slowly and then get faster, but always with a loud, exaggerated voice.
4. RECORD - record your voice and compare it to a native speaker. This will help your ears notice the difference between you and the native speaker.
“Test all things” and “Hold fast to that which is good.”
First of all it seems very strange that Steve Kaufmann’s comments have totally disappeared from this blog. I won’t comment further on that but I will wonder about it. Secondly, after reading what Mr. Kaufmann has written, listen to him speak in several languages, and listen to his comments about language acquisition in particular, I truly believe he is for real. Furthermore I really like what he says about input. You have to put something in before you can get something out (my words, not his). In 1965 I had the honor and the privilege of taking a 32 week course in Mandarin at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. I have many excuses about why I didn’t pursue the language further back then but that is ancient history. Mr. Kaufamnn reminds me of my teacher Dr. Robert Tharpe who spoke impeccable Chinese as well as several other languages. His advice to us at the time was identical to that of Mr. Kaufmann and since they both had grey hair by the time they were multilingual I believe that they both speak from experience. I don’t know if I will ever reach real fluency in Mandarin Chinese. I am getting a little “long in the tooth” as it were. However, if I do, like Issac Newton said, “I will have been standing on the shoulders of giants” like Dr. Tharpe and Steve Kaufman and Ken Carrol, and John Pasden, and Jenny Zhu.
“Come my friends,
Tis not to late to seek a newer world.
Strike out and sitting well in order,
Smite the sounding furrows,
For my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset,
And the baths of all the western stars,
Until I die!”
Bob,
There’s nothing surreptitious going on - the spam blocker is on high alert and it can go through existing comemnts sendign them to the spam bin. I have to keep going back in there to fish them out. This may be becsue Steve inserted soem html instead of the trackbacks - html in the comments seems to alert the blocker. Also, everyone is on on holidays here, so this can be a bit slow. I’m surprised that you’d think otherwise.
I’ll go in and do it again now.
Kebn Carroll
Ken, I hope you remove Steve from the spammer list. His posts have all disappeared again! It seriously looks very biased. But I saw your post on Steve’s blog so I imagine it to be a computer fault. Thanks.
Ken,
I apologize if you think I was accusing anyone at C-pod (especially you) of nefarious activity. I am sure that it was probably just a weird coincidence. I would cut out my tongue before I would willingly offend you. Please Teacher, keep peace in your heart.
Bob,
No problem at all!!!
Ken Carroll
Ken & Bob:
I’m glad two of my favorite C-podders didn’t devolve into misunderstanding.
Notes from the field:
Alack-a-day. I find myself at yet another language workshop (in the godforsaken Dallas, Texas Airport complex). This time it’s International Baccalaureate Mandarin. Their idea of language instruction is to hammer students with grammar and vocabulary and then test their socks off all in the name of “rigor” (oh, and the millions of dollars schools fork out to belong to such programs). Only the most ardent lovers of linguistics and/or masochist water boarders survive in this environment but, there you go. I thought about bringing up Krashen and the natural method but I figured I’d be stoned to death (or thrown in the lake as a witch).
Hasta luego.
Pablo
Clever Dick,
Fluency is a relative term. I think Steve is probably fluent in the sense of being able to speak and communicate freely in those languages. However, I think it’s pretty much impossible that he could speak Chinese with the same level of fluency as, say, Da Shan, who has been immersed in the culture and the study of the language for over 20 years.
I personally believe the cultural aspect of the language is immensely important and all the more so with Chinese. This is why we try to impart some knowledge of the culture in the lessons.
Ken Carroll
hehe Seems like Steve has been Retroactively spanked a few times in this discussion. I’m not entirely sure but it seems like your still running the old version of Spam Karma rather than the newer SK2. Thats just from what I’ve been able to find out from my proplems. I think you should really revisit your spam controls SK2, Akismit, Bad Behavior and having things such as dummy forms would really help. Though anything like that is going to have to be an after 春节 chūnjié *Spring Festival* . oh and 新年快乐 xīnniánkuàilè *happy new year*。The 焰火 yànhuǒ *fireworks* from my girlfriends balcony here in Kunming were INSANE… The whole horizon lit up at midnight made it look almost like it was day time. Layer upon layer of fireworks. Far better than any western 除夕 chúxī New Year’s Eve fireworks!
***End of topic****
Dai too late Krashen has already been denounced as a traitor to the cause (I exaggerate). I think we’re about as close to a unified theory of language learning as we are to unifying Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, and Linguists doesn’t quite have the budget of Nasa so maybe we’re even further away!
I think one thing is that readers of Krashen, Kaufmann and Ken (shame he’s not a Carrol with a K) seem to be more black and white in their interpretations of what these guys say than is actually the case. I think something Ken said on Kaufmanns blog that Kaufmann comes from a learners background and Ken comes form a teachers was really interesting. It must have a lot of influence on the way you think. I think one thing I have to say is that most learners seem to have a smaller set of learning practices than those that come from a teaching background. I’ve found Dai’s posts to be most informative. It seems lately I’ve been learning more about learning language than I have about Chinese. Thats causing me to radically rethink the way I do things, so keep it coming all of you.
Pablo Dai,
You’re a very insightful teacher. However, I’m getting the sad impression that there aren’t many like you, not just in the realm of Mandarin, but in the way that all languages are tqaught in the shcools. Is this true? Are there people ‘like us’ in the system, or are you grossly outnumbered?
(Now get back to your grammar workshop!)
Ken Carroll
Ken,
Considering Mr. Dai’s statements and your questions, I felt my insight might be helpful.
I am 16 years old and an AP Spanish student in an American high school. I have studied Spanish in school for four years. Until this year, my Spanish classes were taught almost entirely in English. We learned to write and read Spanish (and not basic reading materials, but text book-style essays) before we learned to speak it. We were never taught pronunciation and, on the rare occasions we were required to speak in Spanish, our accents were seldom corrected. Our tests were completely based on grammar and written vocabulary; sometimes there were one or two listening sections, but never a speaking section. We memorized endless mneumonics for grammar rules.
This year, in the AP class (which is the highest level of Spanish offered at the high school and can count as college credit provided the student passes the AP exam in May), I feel they’re finally getting something right. Our classes are taught entirely in Spanish, and we are required to do some form of public speaking in Spanish every class. But it’s too little too late. While I feel that my speaking skills have improved greatly because of this class, I still cannot hold a conversation with a Spanish speaker — and I’m the top student in my class!
The AP test was reworked this year and I think that the test designers have a more modern view of how students should learn languages, perhaps, because a great deal of speaking and listening comprehension has replaced the technical grammar sections. This is a hopeful sign, but so far our classes have failed to adapt as well.
I love the format of Chinesepod. Thank you so much for doing what my teachers should have from the first day I set foot in the classroom. I’ve been listening almost daily since Christmas, and I feel that my Chinese is better than my Spanish was after I had studied it for an entire year. And it’s not that I’m the type of person who balks at having to learn from text books — in fact, I always found Spanish grammar fascinating; writing in the language became a type of puzzle. But Chinesepod has showed me that language acquisition should not be so mathematic.
Paige Dunn-Rankin
I read the post yesterday Steve, and chatted with Ken about your coment at lunch yesterday. I’m not sure what happened to it, but I can’t imagine the deletion would have been intentional.
Happy Chinese News Years everyone!
Hi Steve,
In combining your ideas, with Krashen and Ken’s I’d say that what most learners should look for is input that holds their interest, is narrow and comprehensible and available to them.
You mentioned listening and reading, and being able to participate comfortably in a panel discussion in Mandarin. (Cantonese too??) How many hours do you figure it took of input, how many books, over how much time? Since you’ve done 9 languages I figure you could ballpark it for some of us.
Lastly, I’m lately making the distinction between random, varied and a lot of input to narrow as being more effective. Did you do specific things while listening and reading? How did you look up Mandarin vocab? Where did you get enough input? Were you in China?
And lastly for sure, I’m sure Cpod is not editing out your comments, just thank ever vigilant technology and slowness-to-do-much of anything in China right now with the start of the Spring Festival, there’s just too much pilipala pilipala outside!
Steve Kaufmann talks in Mandarin
Well, here he is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmXVN2t2seE
Between Ken who speaks like 8 languages and Kaufman who speaks 9, I’m pretty sure the one whose name with “K” speaks better.
I personally wouldn’t question Steve Kaufmann’s degree of fluency or the number of languages he can have panel discussions in. I’d rather wonder how much we can draw from his experience, other than motivation, self-confidence and work. There’s no doubt that some techniques work best than others, but some people are more gifted than others too, different gifts in different areas anyway, all based on different ‘formative years’ and experience.
At the end of the day, time spent just doing it rather than thinking or philosophising about it is probably going to achieve more concrete results me thinks, unless you’re in the language business like Ken or Steve.
Happy learning and lots of success/Yv
Yv,
I was close to press the submit-button with a highly similar message when I saw your post. 非常同意.
Another factor: Family and job are severely narrowing down learning time. There are so many learning activities I’d love to pursue but I have to justify every minute of that for me. At the end of the day I am happy when I can keep up working through the new CPod lessons and listen to some old ones on the way to work.
P.S.: Could you do me a favour and for once post something that I strongly disagree with?
EFFORT - I’ve been going thru Kaufman’s site and listening to his interview on YouTube where he explains in both English and Chinese. If there’s one thing I agree with both Yv and Henning about is that our time is precious.
Although we ourselves may not have the inclination to learn 9 languages, and find one more plenty, there are valuable tips that I’m reading/hearing from Kaufman to maximize that precious resource, he’s no savant.It’s part of my never-ending pursuit to become a Chinese-language-devouring machine who has a good time doing it.
Kaufman’s Recommendations (*as I understand them)
———- ————–
1. Don’t first read a vocab list and then read/listen to some materials containing those words, you won’t catch the words or retain them.
Instead listen/read to some similar materials and pick out words that you hear repeated, want to really figure out, then look them up, write them down and listen again or to more materials likely to have those words. (narrow comprehensive input)
I might also suggest it’s not the best method to pre-study for a Cpod podcast.
2. Don’t sweat not speaking a lot, nor is there a need to read out words, etc. Note this is totally contrary to Pimseleur. Acquire the vocabulary and patterns, then let them emerge into your spoken repertoire. 10-15% of your total time studying is enough.
3. Be confident, deep down you must believe you can become the other language. I think this is a fundamental that in traditional Chinese teaching doesn’t exist, otherwise we wouldn’t hear traditional-method Chinese language instructors saying it’s hard, foreigners always pronounce things wrong, there are thousands of hanzi you’ll never get it. One must BELIEVE.
4. You don’t need to go to classes. Classes are for socializing, motivation, explanations, but you don’t LEARN the language in the class. Learning comes from input, do you have enough interesting input to meet your goals?
5. Use writing to identify your mistakes. It’s not really a method to improve your language. The improvement will come from more input. (This is partly Krashen talking, I’m mixing him in a bit).
About the ‘italics’ that Ken bounced around in the opening post. I think the common ground is that both Ken and Kaufmann do think lookup of words in the native language is fine. I think the point that Kaufman misses about banter, discussion and explanation as Cpod does it is that it maintains interest. While Kaufmann has the personal motivations and personality to listen to pure materials, I think most people can benefit from the motivation and interest that is generated in the Cpod podcasts, it’s a winning formula.
The second point of divergence is how much speaking. Myself I’m a bit open to further discussion on this. I like that Kaufmann at least throws out a workable metric, 10-15% of total study. Personal experience I find that lots of just talking didn’t seem to do that much, but I do know that some amount is DEFINITELY a must. Ken seems a good guinea pig for the all verbal approach as he didn’t learn hanzi, but was it ALL verbal Ken?
I’ve just watched two videos from YouTube, in which Mr.Kaufman spoke in Japanese and Chinese. As a native speaker, I hereby guarantee that he speaks excellent Japanese.
Not only fluent, but also natural and friendly. Of course, his pronunciation is very good. My impression is that his Japanese is better than Chinese, though not so sure.
Lantian said: “The second point of divergence is how much speaking. Myself I’m a bit open to further discussion on this. I like that Kaufmann at least throws out a workable metric, 10-15% of total study. Personal experience I find that lots of just talking didn’t seem to do that much, but I do know that some amount is DEFINITELY a must.”
My mind functions like a recroding device. After listening to a podcast dialog a sufficient number of times I can run through the dialog near perfectly in my head. However, speaking it outloud takes several attemps. I will often knowingly botch tones and hesitate the first few times. Furthermore, my fluency is inversly proportional with the stress experienced from my environment. I hypothesise that practice is necessary in order to develop the muscle coordination needed to produce sounds. A fluent speaker must develop this coordination to the point where sounds can be produced regardless of stress from the environment. (Or be good at stress management)
Another problem with ‘just speaking’ is that (unless you are speaking French to a French man, or my mother) you will rarely have your speach corrected. So you will unknowingly practice saying wrong phrases. Thus, diminishing marginal returns.
Chip said: “However, I think Krashen lists this for K-12 ESL students. Grammatical knowledge is part of the curriculum for native speakers, too. It’s helpful to have for advanced writing. Even native speakers use grammar knowledge to help them revise and proofread their academic papers. However, I readily admit that this will not apply to everyone.”
My Canadian schooling never taught me grammar. Infact, I did not know what a subject or predicate ment until I began studying Japanese. I agree that it is helpful for advanced writing.
Okay, I’m just gonna go an and on….
From one of the clips, Kaufmann mentions he learned his Mandarin in about 8 months IN HONG KONG, plus he’s mentioned some regular week or two visits to Beijing over some years.
It’s not that his Mandarin sounds perfect, to my ear he can easily be distinguished as a non-native accent. However, his rhythm, speed and cadance is definitely quite fluent, with an occassional strong er hua.
This is slightly off-thread, but as I’m concurrently watching some new year music shows on t.v., I’m noticing the Taiwan singers say 太 with a definite ‘ts’ sound versus my ‘ta’ which I think is more Beijing putonghua. Am I right or is my pronunciation off? I also have heard the ts in Ken and before I just thought he was off, but it seems he picked it up from Taiwan. Is this all so JohnP?
BTW, I’m also watching/hearing Kaufmann using Japanese, again same indicators. His Chinese seems better, but he definitely can do the Japanese. Even Da Shan can’t do that. Although JohnP can!
Ok if somebody’s not got it now. I can confirm he speaks excellent Swedish too.
My first contact with Kaufmann’s approach was some month ago. In May I think?
I had been studying with Cpod for 4 months and was looking for more material or input, “An all oral approach“ The way I from the beginning thought that Cpod was.
But then, Kaufmann does only English.
The next steep I had contact in July, when we where looking for a course for my wife to speed up her poor English. We singed up for a trial. The material was to advance for her.
After talking to the staff, they told me that Chinese students normal have great difficulty with this approach (hope I got it right). Anyway we did not continue.
What I know now, will put it in a different perspective. The approach is the best for me, and probably for most learner of a new language. But what about the translation. For us who do not have the time to open a book, or sit and do the translation, at the beginning.
I agree now after been exposed to Mandarin for 2 month without translation. It start to function. But the transformation is very heavy. I would have benefit from some form of audio translate. Switch on and of.
A man can’t live on love alone. He needs to eat to. (Love for language, that is)
I am prepared to pay heavy for that service. Every hour I can do other things than study. I can put in to my work. If I save 1000 hour on this approach. OK you can count yourself.
A risk is that it will be a crutch. You use the translation to much.
I think a good pood cast can find ways to safeguard the students. For example to have a lot of elementary lessons with translate and talk. Then switch on to intermediate, without translation and without any significant change in level.
And yes I listen to things 25 to 30 times. It is the only way. I never yet open a book but I watch TV and Video with Chinese subtitle. I agree with Kaufmann it is no good input. But at the moment, I am picking up one or two words a day.
This is real fun. It is a topic for an other day. I will come back to this later.
Leif
BTW. I am going to learn to read and write. In due time.
What I’m missing in this discussion is the importance of talent. Don’t you believe that some people just have the knack for learning languages, that it comes naturally to them?
When I was at university, in my 3rd year learning Spanish we went to Madrid on a study journey. The students in our school that learned Russian had the opportunity to join us to Madrid, because travelling to Russia, at that time was difficult and the school did not organise such a trip. There was one guy who came with us as in order to prepare for the trip he read, front to back a Spanish grammar book that was entirely in Spanish. He also read some text + vocab from our first year classes. All of this was done in the week before the trip. While in Spain he was able to conduct simple conversations in Spanish. At least as much as most of the first year sudents.
I am convinced that whatever the method, some people will struggel more than others. Even if the method is ok it will normally take years and years and loads of input, including reading hundreds of books, thousands of other texts, watching movies, televion, interacting with native speakers, etc. before one attains some level of fluency. People who achieve this level for 6, 7 or more languages will always be an exception to the rule, or will have to dedicate their life to achieving and maintaining this degree of fluency.
Marc.
I am a dyslectic.
I lerned to read with some help in my native tounge, first when 10 years of age. I also am 52 years old.
I do understand a good bit Chinese already after a year. and do speak a little.
I am thrilled….
祝大家恭贺新禧！
Zhù dàjiā gōnghèxīnxǐ!
Wishing everyone a happy new year!
Ken,
I might have been a little whiny because this work shop comes on the heels of a TPRS workshop I attended in Saint Paul, Minnesota just last month. At workshops like that, one gets to see all kinds of teachers, traditionalists who have seen the light, and staunch believers who have drunk the Krashen Kool-Aide®. You can also see those who are in the midst of a paradigm shift, and their new-found enthusiasm is akin to a child’s first successful bike ride.
There are a lot of teachers out there who are trapped in various ways in systems that prevent them from making the radical changes necessary to become effective facilitators of language acquisition. I see them on a continuum, from those like me, who have total freedom to do what they want, but don’t entirely toss the textbook (because of the forces of tradition, inertia, and the piles of materials produced to go with this or that curriculum) to those who rigidly stick to their grammar translation guns while their cutter goes down. If you want to meet a number of wonderful teachers, I’d suggest you make a visit to the annual TPRS conference in Denver, Colorado this coming summer: http://www.tprstories.com/ntpr.....x-2007.htm
Marc
Actually, to paraphrase Krashen, talent (aptitude) IS important for learning a language, but for acquiring a language, one needs “attitude”. Everyone can acquire a language.
Hi Loren,
Most of the evidence and studies I’ve read indicates that correcting a learner’s spontaneous speech does very little to change it.
I’m not saying talking isn’t good, I think a lot of talking needs to happen, but other’s good-intentioned efforts to ‘correct it, doesn’t add much. IMO
Right on, Lan .
I think that Ken has exactly pointed out the two most contentious points of Mr. Kaufmann’s post.
Mr. Kaufmann has achieved a quite impressive personal feat, but as some others have pointed out, it is difficult to tell how much others can draw from his experience. Specifically, I am wondering what the evidence (other than anecdotal) is that NOT using English at all is better than using SOME English, and where is the evidence that speaking is “not so important”?
My personal experience seems to tell me that having some English is very helpful, and that speaking is in fact very important!
It’s not that I can’t imagine how not having any English (if English is your primary language) is possible with video or other creative means; but I fail to see how having *some* English is a problem at all, especially for newbie lessons, and especially in the context of mobility that Ken describes. Many people just have more time available on the road, in the train, or at the gym where they can listen to podcasts and where looking at the dictionary is not convenient at all.
Before listening to ChinesePod, I used the Pimsleur method for Spanish, Mandarin and Italian. Pimsleur is based on a very efficient listen/repeat/combine system, and I have found it extremely good (it just is too expensive if you have to buy it, and it doesn’t go to levels as advanced as ChinesePod - it is also less fun than ChinesePod). New words and translations are introduced in English. Making you repeat what you just heard helps remembering, and making you say new sentences that combine words or expressions you have just learned helps creating connections. It’s the difference between learning passively and actively. You brain is a vast neural network, and the more connections you create, from different angles, the better you are likely to remember. ChinesePod also does very well in this respect, by constantly showing how a word or expression you just heard can be used in other contexts, etc. Again, connections.
Somebody said that discussing the method is not that important. I beg to differ. I studied German for 10 years in school, the old-fashioned way, and I probably can’t have even a basic conversation today (even though my brain was at a some point full to the top of German vocabulary and grammar). This experience is shared by many of my friends. Multilingual countries like Switzerland invest a lot in teaching a second language, and if you do it the wrong way, then you are wasting everybody’s time and money. And on a personal level, your time is of course valuable and finding the most efficient way to learn is important as well.
The good news is that almost everybody seems to agree that listening a lot is necessary, and that old-fashioned grammar lessons are not the way to rapidly speak a language.
A final note regarding tones: I think that it is *very* important to explain the different tones very early. Whether you call them 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. (as is typical), or whether you call them “high level”, “rising”, etc. (as Pimsleur does) doesn’t matter much. I don’t think my brain would have picked the concept of tones as fast if they had not been explained to me in the first place and if new vocabulary was not constantly introduced along with tones. Even with somebody with a pronunciation as perfect as Jenny’s, it’s not always obvious.
I’m with Bazza on this one. I won’t be throwing out my grammar books.
On the otherhand, when I studied French I was learning the subjunctive tense before I could even order food off a menu. In my experience, learning a language through grammar is a very poor and dismal way to learn a language if it is the ONLY way.
But I don’t think ‘forgetting about grammar’ is good advice. Grammar books are highly effective, if they are done well. If you just listen and listen, you’ll probably get it eventually, but I would think a grammar book could save you a lot of time.
But then what do I know… I don’t speak 9 languages.
At the very least you should read through this site.
http://trc.ucdavis.edu/msjacob/sentence.htm
Lantian:
I think you summarized Steve Kaufmanns points pretty well.
I’m not yet convinced that using writing to correct your mistakes is the most efficient way to go. I wrote hundreds of pages of essays in French and had them corrected. I made every effort I could to eliminate errors before handing them in. It certainly did me some good, but I suspect that my time would have been more efficiently spent learning from and imitating audio sources. I didn’t do any writing in Spanish.
If I type a word that I have never typed before, I still type it more slowly than more familiar words. In the same way, if I encounter a new word in a language, I want to pronounce it correctly out loud a few times so that it will fall easily off my tongue in conversation. This is no big deal. Once you have the basics of pronunciation down, it only takes a couple of seconds. Mr. Kaufmann did speak another language as a young child, and after all the languages he has learned, I suspect his tongue has been trained pretty well. A really good typist might type an unfamiliar word just as fast as a familiar one.
I spent my childhood miss-pronouncing words I had learned from reading.
Having speech corrected, even by native speakers, doesn’t work very well. It disrupts the flow of communication. Its hard to remember all the corrections. Its hard to define exactly what an “error” is. Often non native speakers say things that seem subtly wrong, but the native speaker has trouble saying exactly why. Error correction failed as a way of developing good translation programs. Its like playing wack-a mole.
Lorean is exactly right in saying “practice is necessary in order to develop the muscle coordination needed to produce sounds” He is also right about stress being the enemy of fluency. But I am mystified by his seeming assumption that the only way to develop these motor reflexes is in conversation. Why not find a place where no one can hear you and practice making those sounds out loud? Then check the results with memorized words and sentences with a native speaker. To me, this seems no more stressful or embarrassing than asking a pro to look at my golf swing. (If I ever take up golfing)
I agree that pretty well anyone can learn a foreign language. I would even go further and say that, with the right motivation and study methods, most people can learn to speak another language quite well. Yet I have seen many adults who were motivated, hard working, intelligent, perhaps even with good musical ears, and yet they failed utterly in their attempts to learn a foreign language. Typically, they approached it as an intellectual puzzle rather than a skill to be learned. You don’t learn to play the violin by reading about it and studying theories of violin playing.
No one disagrees that speaking and interacting with native speaker is essential to master a language. The question is how much and when. I would say wait longer than most learners do.
Here once more is what Steve Kaufmann said on this topic. I notice that he uses the words “imitating and repeating phrases”
“I still do not speak Russian with anyone and have no real desire to do so. I guess I would summarize my philosophy as follows; until I can read and listen to a novel, news programs and recorded conversations in Russian and enjoy doing so, I have no desire to speak with anyone. I might be extreme but I feel there is so much I can on my own to improve in the language, I am not sure that stumbling around in a conversation at this stage in my learning would really help me…………. You should still spend most of your time on reading, listening, word and phrase review, and imitating and repeating phrases; in other words activities that you can control. You need to do two things; become more in tune with the language, and learn words and phrases. This comes from input activities. When you can enjoy listening to and reading novels and news report, the speaking will come naturally.”
There’s no need to bash anyone. Get as much input as you can from anybody and everybody and take what fits you best. There’s no ONE right way for everyone.
Here’s my talk with Steve if you wanna see him (and by default, me) switch fluidly in 5 of his 9 languages (http://tetsu-2006.blogspot.com/2006/11/interview-with-linguist.htmlhttp://tetsu-2006.blogspot.com/2006/11/interview-with-linguist.html). Too bad I was the limiting factor for him, if not he would’ve had a chance to take out all 9 of his cannons!
You also have links to my learning methods in that post. I am no expert and am a midget compared to Steve. But my MAIN MESSAGE here is not related to learning languages for yourself, since everyone here already got enough inputs and opinions on this forum. What I wish you guys can understand from my post is the ENVIRONMENT in which I was brought up. And if you have kids, I hope you think about how to provide that kind’a environment for them. It will be the BEST thing you can do for them.
Take care, and best wishes in language learning.
THE DETAILS - some clarification on some of my thoughts, yikes people are actually reading what I blab on and on about - danger danger Will Robinson!!!
Hi Eric B,
My thinking is NOT that speaking is not vital or important or doesn’t need to happen early. In my early days I spoke up a storm, I made errors, I didn’t care! It made me much more fluent.
This however is different than a situation where a person finds themself, or puts themself into where the recipient is focused on ‘correcting’ your speech. This is all to easy with some Chinese teachers and well-intentioned conversational partners.
And getting oneself into daily 5-hour conversations of this type or those that you don’t really understand or where you don’t get much chance to express yourself also aren’t very efficient. 10-15% of your total time studying I think is a very fair, good ratio.
An occassional brief, focused correction is wonderful for identifying problematic areas, but the change will not come from this correction, or immediately afterwards. Much like in writing, see next blurb.
——
Hi Red Violin,
I think writing is important for “identifying” mistakes and gaps in knowledge. The fine distinction is that I don’t think correction of writing improves the writing.
The improvement comes from a feedback loop that occurs this way: write, get corrections, see where one typically makes errors, go out and get more input, are slightly more aware and begin to ‘hear’ better problem areas, write again, errors disappear.
Improvement does not come from this loop: write, get corrections, re-write same essay, re-write new essay, get detailed markup and rewrite, focus extensively on grammar errors and practice patterns. (note this was exactly the approach you had in the French writing)
On a personal note, the most improvement I had in my writing came from an experience in college. This was in my native English, but I think it applies equally to learning another language.
The professor made us write every day a brief summary for our readings. He made us read a lot. I mean a lot like impossible a lot. Then he would severely criticize our summary’s and grade it low. HE was my hell. I argued with him a lot and made him identify WHERE in my summary I was lacking. He did this in a brief comment at the end of the summary. No detailed markups. I was acing the summaries by the end of the course.
Looking back here’s what I now know that made that feedback loop work. I was motivated, by both his high-standards, grades and my general dislike of his attitude. He identified problem areas. I did not re-write summaries. I did not get detailed markups on my writing.
I had to read A LOT. This geared up my input tremendously. He identified problem areas. With each new bulk-load of mass reading, I wrote and focused on summarizing properly what I had read. I improved tremendously. (I have after all this discussion noticed that my own input is not enough for my goals. Am gonna change that pronto.)
I think we’re in total agreement. Right?
Oups, I messed up the link to my pentalingual discussion with Steve Kaufmann (above).
Here it is again.
http://tetsu-2006.blogspot.com.....guist.html
Lantian:
The way you put it sounds is very good and sounds exactly right to me.
I didn’t say that the writing in French didn’t do me any good, just that it was inefficient. I wanted to become fluent in speaking as quickly as possible and I think I would have done so quicker if I had spent that time working with recorded materials and reading. But I put a lot of effort into the writing and liked doing it.
I once knew a fellow who taught college writing courses. He complained about how difficult it was to teach them to write. I asked if any of them read. He said no. We both agreed that that was their real problem.
My attitudes on input and output have been shaped by a certain linguistics professor. She was very dogmatic and opinionated on how languages should be taught and learned while being a total failure in her own efforts. Her basic idea was that beginner learners should be encouraged to output a mass of language and that the teacher would then “mold and shape” this output. Thinking about it now, I suspect that her overbearing personality influenced her choice of methods.
Phew. I just read the whole post. I also reviewed Kaufmanns blog and a bunch of others along the way. And I also read a short book that reviews all of the major theories of language learning: “Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching” by Jack C Richards and Theodore S Rodgers, Cambridge University Press 1986. … and also the article by Rod Ellis that was mentioned earlier. I should be an expert by now
My first comment is that Mr. Kaufmann, and a handful of others, are exceptional language learners. They are obviously gifted in enviable ways. I, on the other hand, am very ordinary, and most language learners suffer from the same predicament. Therefore, I not sure about how useful his experiences are for others. Forget about grammar?, forget about speaking? Maybe it works for a few people, but I doubt it will work for the rest of us.
I do however agree with his sentiments on finding a good reader: “I was frustrated at the poor quality of reading material available for learning most languages. A reader should be just that, a reader. Text and word lists are all that is needed.” (He also goes on to say that a companion audio format would be helpful.) This has been my dream for a long time: to find a reader in chinese script that starts with a simple vocabulary and then builds on it chapter after chapter. One that reinforces previously learned words in subsequent chapters and holds my interest by drawing me forward with the content of the story.
I have the impression that all the participants in this discussion are interested in the same basic question: what is the best way to learn/teach a language? But we are all different and it is difficult to imagine that there is one strategy that will work for all. However, the book mentioned above describes some programs that have had measurable success in accelerating language comprehension. I am much more interested in theories that have been demonstrated on normal people with some empirical evidence, than I am in anecdotal remarks from a sample size of one.
A key question to ponder is: what are those differences, how do they relate to language learning, and how might we take advantage of them by tailoring a program to one type of learner or another. For example, I think that ones natural musical talents are an excellent predictor of success at learning a new language. Bi-lingual ability developed as a child should be similarly predictive. I expect there are several other factors including motivation, general IQ, etc.
From the perspective of designing a language program, I believe that language learners need start out with the basics. They need to be able to comprehend and reproduce the sounds of native speakers. They need to be able to say useful things like “Hi”, “Thank-you”, “How much does it cost?”, “What is that?”, etc. Knowing when something is past tense, a question, noun or verb is an absolute requirement. This is grammar. Maybe you can talk about it without using the word “grammar” but you are still talking about grammar. I also think that learners benefit by having a coach/teacher/guide who can chart a path through to language. In other words, I think it is very inefficient to bounce around in language material or learning strategies.
Eric,
You’re certainly doing your homework! Impressive.
The Richards and Rodgers book was a seminal one for me, though I thought they understated the significance of the Natural Approach (Krashen again) at the time. It’s a good overview of the subject, but it was written before the big developments in lexis/the corpora, as well all the psychological research that has been pubslished since the 90s.
Ken Carroll
1) Ditto. I may have to agree with Eric that Mr Kaufmann is exceptional (可能非常厉害), and his approach may not be applicable to most.
2) I don’t think Mr Kaufmann means forget about grammar altogether. He probably wants to emphasize first to enjoy the learning of the language first, and not be hindered by grammatical gobbledegook.
3) Ken has the right to say that Mr Kaufmann is no Dashan, just as Mr Kaufmann has the right to counter it. But to challenge it vehemently and invoking Skype and YouTube is for me an exercise bordering in a tinge of arrogance. I don’t think Ken would be piqued if I say his Mandarin falls shorter than John P or Mr Kaufmann or Dashan. And this is someone giving comment from outside looking in. It’s hard to gauge oneself, another person from outside has to do it objectively. Also, I never knew Dashan till this thread. I just saw one video with him telling stories in a classroom with kids. I saw the interview of Mr Kaufmann in a Taiwanese broadcast. So far, I like his Chinese better than Dashan — but it’s very premature to compare since I haven’t seen enough.
4) Mr Kaufmann admits he’s not into IT stuffs like pingback system in weblogs so I think he shouldn’t insinuate and imply that his comments are purposely filtered. I’ve seen weblog comments with vitriolic flavors directed at Ken’s tone and they are still there. Recently one commenter was so annoyingly lashing out at chinesepod personnel because his comments were inadvertently filtered and him branded as spammer, he ended up apologizing.
(It’s always nice to be agreeable when we agree to disagree)
5) This thread gave me another boost to continue learning this language, very inspired now as I watch and listen Mr Kaufmann speak Chinese effortlessly.
My advice is to trust yourself that you will learn the new language regardless of the exact approach.
Eric Grimm:
Try:
http://faculty.virginia.edu/cll/chinese_reading/
and especially:
http://clavisinica.com/CVP/voices.html
also:
http://www.clavisinica.com/links.html
I have to agree with what Chip and Jeff say about the usefulness of learning some grammar. if there’s some construction or usage that you don’t understand, but you hear now and again, you can either spurn any explanation and keep coming across it and keep n