We Learn Languages Unconsciously 1

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39 thoughts on “We Learn Languages Unconsciously 1”

  1. Well, I can understand where you are coming from a bit better now, Ben. Although I think what you say can be open to misinterpretation.

    On the science thing, I think that if the same amount of people who are using some form of communicative methodology were instead all using CI methodology, and if the same amount of money that has been poured into research based on the communicative methodology was instead being poured into research based on CI methodoloogy then, whilst you would still never arrive at a final answer, there would nevertheless before long be a much more finely tuned and well rounded set of CI practices including such topics as ‘the place of output in a CI class’ and this set of practices would not necessarily look then as it looks today and you would have revisions on Krashen’s theories emerging too. Of course, I’m not suggesting that anyone should wait until after that happens before they do anything.

    On the more metaphysical aspects. It’s food for thought, and I should think about it more, I guess. From time to time, usually when I have been having a few drinks, I sometimes notice myself talking without paying any attention to what I say, not noticing what I say, but yet still people are listening to me. And if the mood, not the thought, of what I am saying turns a little negative then the people who I am talking to starting looking negative too. Then if I swing it back to the positive their faces suddenly start becoming positive again. I thought that was pretty strange, and I wondered if this speaking from emotion, rather than thought, was the basis of what Christians called speaking in tongues.

    What the implications of that for a language class are, I’m not sure. For example, I watched a recorded webinar of Carol Gabb’s a couple of days ago and she explained some ways in which she would introduce a wide variety of tenses in early levels. For example, in a past tense story she would ask questions like ‘If you had been the bus driver, what would you have done?’

    But if you focus on tenses, in the sense of consciously making sure that you include and work them, then isn’t there a danger that students will start to pick up on that focus and start to think more about form than content? I’m still not clear on what attitude I should have to grammar. Perhaps you could make suggestions?

    1. …there would nevertheless before long be a much more finely tuned and well rounded set of CI practices including such topics as β€˜the place of output in a CI class’ and this set of practices would not necessarily look then as it looks today and you would have revisions on Krashen’s theories emerging too….

      I respectfully disagree and never will go there on that crucial point. Hell, I don’t even respectfully disagree. I just disagree. We will not more finely tune the research. Game over on that. It’s not science. Applying the scientific method to how we learn languages has been a failure.

      Those who still use it are dinosaurs, just as fossilized as the grammar teachers who don’t see the sun coming up on them either. Language cannot be learned consciously and therefore its acquisition cannot be studied scientifically.

      My entire argument hinges on this part of what you said, Henry:

      …β€˜the place of output in a CI class’ ….

      It is the idea of learning a language in a classroom that distorts. Here God goes and designs the ultimate driving machine, complete with computers the likes of which humans will never even begin to understand much less duplicate, and we try to fudge that model into our classroom. We take those driving machines, put them into a classroom where it is hard for them to even maneuver, we tinker with them, and, except when we provide input only, we totally screw them up, putting the equivalent of sugar into their gas tanks.

      The sugar comes in the role of self-esteem, conscious perception of self in a group, how one feels that day, projection of one’s own experiences onto the instruction, need to be approved of by peers, hidden aggression towards adults/peers, everyone facing in one direction except one person, periods of instruction which begin and end at a certain time of day, dominance of the visual faculty, learning style differences, having to pee, wanting to text, being bored because you don’t get it, noise outside, observations of classes, standards, grade bulloxing, and so many other such factors which cannot be measured.

      If that is not enough, there is (what in my mind is) a fact shown by Krashen that the conscious mind cannot possibly learn a language (please read the links given above in my first comment on that topic for more on that), and that it particularly cannot learn it in the above setting in a classroom by a well meaning teacher who unfortunately wants to “teach” something that cannot be taught – output. Is there not enough failure to show that to be true in fact? Do we really want another 100 years of the same thing? It’s like voting for a Republican or saying that Randian ideas are right. They’re wrong and they bring suffering to human beings.

      We shouldn’t even be called teachers, but rather “providers of CI”, or something like that. All any of us should really be doing in a classroom is providing fuel for the deeper mind to do its thing, and eventually after many years to get that ultimate driving machine at least revved up for an eventual victory lap around France or Germany or Mexico or somewhere else on the real roads of the targeted culture, and we just need to fricking quit with all the books/bells and whistles/computers once and for all.

      There is in my humble opinion no way to quantify what we do. It is purely an unconscious process. It can never be kept in the realm of analysis but must ever, if it is to really work, be relegated into the unmeasurable realms of the heart and feelings, the realm of sleep and, as Krashen has shown, the realm of the unconscious mind, which doing so will one day bar the door to itself by the book companies which are now feasting on our ignorance.

      I told Krashen once that I feel that he is very much a modern day counterpart to Carl Jung in that way, and no less important and no less vilified. The scientific community had to reject Jung much more than Freud because, unlike his teacher Freud, Jung went into dream analysis and other areas of the unconscious mind in a way that Freud did not. Krashen went deeper and look what he is getting for it. Articles that question him. That’s bullshit.

      It’s like questioning divinity in a way because you can’t prove it. We have proof in so many things, but they can’t be proven. There is such beauty and magic in the world every day. In a flower. In a person who is suffering and yet goes on. In human speech, for example, when a baby tries to talk but can’t because it will need years for enough input for that to happen. Beauty everywhere.

      That’s why I have sunk my teeth into your comments so much Henry and without apology and a prayer that I won’t offend you because it is exactly this type of uncomfortable discussion that provides the fodder for all of our growth and is a main goal of this PLC group.

      Just look around. God is there. I am so glad that this is my blog space where I can editorialize in this way. There is such a fine line between proselytizing and humbly saying what one believes and I hope I am on the right side of the line on both of these points.

  2. Today I picked up the TPRS Quotations Calendar 2006-2007 which I must have bought in Minneapolis in 2007 and I came across this from Blaine Ray:

    “So if we get our kids to just focus on accuracy (by the power of meaning) we can get them to feel what is accurate speech.”

    I think that fairly well answers the attitude we should have towards grammar. Basically a grammar mistake is a phrasing that compromises meaning. In some way it makes the meaning less clear or doubtful or completely hides it. When we ask students to be more accurate, we are asking them to make their meaning clearer. Take the -s on third person plural in English. (The cross which native French speakers have to bear.) Usually we can understand even if the speaker leaves it off, but if they say “He put his sweater on” we will tend to assume that he’s talking about the past. We need more context to realize that he means “He puts his sweater on”. We can use pop-ups to point this out. And circle it relentlessly. I think that phrase “accuracy (by the power of meaning)” is going to become my guiding light when I’m deciding how to approach my students’ errors.

    And as I understand it, in natural speech all the tenses will eventually come up. So we don’t necessarily have to “make sure we include and work them,” but we can handle them as the need to use them occurs in our conversations with students.

  3. We must differentiate between the path and the goal. The goal is output, but the goal of output is not achieved through walking a path of output. We reach our goal of output by walking along a path of input. Filling the path with output (which is the goal) will only result in the compass going nuts and us getting lost, probably on some rough path through the woods that leads to a bear cave.

    1. Very well stated Chris. “We must differentiate between the path and the goal.” Of course when we teach using CI we are ultimately aimed at getting our students to communicate using the TL. We just know that forcing output is futile.

  4. Sabrina Sebban-Janczak

    Not to mention that any time we ask for forced output or focus on grammar is time taken away from CI. To me this is 1)simple math and 2) efficacy. The math part is that I have more or less 140 (probably less) hours with the kids each year and how many hours of CI does it take to get to the lowest proficiency level? Way more than that right? So I always keep that on the back of my head, it s like there is a clock ticking inside my brain . The efficacy part is what I learned from working in the corporate world before I became a teacher, i.e do more with less, utilize time and resources efficiently, quality versus quantity, think outside of the box, etc… I am glad I learned those lessons through trial and error because those skills I could transfer to anything in life, including teaching with CI.

  5. I thought this discussion of output might be a good place to post a little report on reactions to my presentation on TPRS and what I am doing in my classes at our FL department meeting today. My chair kindly gave me and our Russian teacher time to present. I won’t go into all the details but want to say THANK GOD FOR ALL YOU GUYS HAVE TAUGHT ME HERE!
    Our group of teachers was congenial and our chair kept the mood positive but it was not easy for the other teachers to hear that I no longer do output because I have learned that it does not lead to fluency. I tried to say it nicely and only criticized my former self so no one would feel I was attacking them but it was not easy for some of the teachers to hear. My 30 minute presentation turned into 2 hours because of all of the questions. Some were backhanded insults but I pretended not to notice. For example, French teacher: Don’t you feel that your students are losing out on the opportunity to learn more if you only teach them 3 or 4 words a week? Me: No because they have gained fluency in these structures. They were losing out much more when I thought I was teaching them a much longer list of terms and they ended up not remembering any of them after the summer. I was wasting their time with the old method. French teacher: Oh, that’s too bad. Me: Yes, but not for lack of trying. French t: so you are just randomly picking out words you want them to know without using the book? Me: Well this year in Chinese 1 & 2 I am using the terms in the book but not in the order the book presents them because I am still learning. I made a list of all the structures then got rid of the unnecessary ones. (Peruvian teacher starts listing all the dumb words in her Spanish text). Me: Most CI teachers work off of frequency lists which is what I am doing in the Advanced Class and then using mostly authentic materials for listening and reading.

    Another interesting exchange . . . French teacher: We had a teacher a few years ago who used to do what you are doing. She hopped on the latest trend every year and every year it was different. She almost collapsed one day in exhaustion and in the end her students learned nothing. Me: I’ve heard about her and, quite frankly, she sounds crazy to me. I’m not like that at all. I learned so much at the iFLT conference and realized that this way was how I became fluent in Chinese. Then I started researching and studying like crazy using books and demo videos (I told them about the PLC and how I get so much help and advice). I am seeing the results and absolutely convinced that this is the best way for me to teach Chinese. Russian teacher who used to teach with CI and says she will go back to it next year: And we can reach many more students with CI than with traditional methods so it is more inclusive. Me: Which is part of our school improvement plan, to teach to the different learning styles. My A students are still A students, my B students are now A students, too. French teacher: Is anyone not doing well? Me: Yes, one kid. Last year he fooled around in class and then memorized for the tests. This year he can’t do that so he had a D grade last quarter. But now he finally understands that he won’t succeed unless he participates in the whole acquisition process of listening, responding, and letting me know when he isn’t getting it. French teacher: So how can you grade that? And at this point I explained the pop quiz comprehension checks and the jGR. I also explained the jobs piece and how some jobs help the students concentrate and stay engaged ( like counting reps) and that students regularly volunteer for these because they know it helps them. My story scribe in Chinese 2 used to get in trouble all the time for talking to her neighbor but now she is concentrating too hard and feels an enormous sense of responsibility. The jobs also help to create a sense of community. Anyway, they loved the jGR, the jobs, the pop quiz comp checks and discussed these at length.

    The conclusion after our two hour meeting was:
    — from the Spanish teachers: maybe we can start incorporating a little CI into our classes and see how it goes (neither the Russian teacher nor I wanted to tell them at this point that a little bit won’t work)
    — from the French teacher: well let’s see how it goes for you but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water
    — from myself: I am happy to help anyone who is interested in learning more and feel free to come and observe my classes. And, by the way, I am so goddamn proud that I have learned enough and experienced enough and believe in my kids enough that I can now defend what I am doing (I didn’t actually say that out loud)
    Thanks for reading my post if you made it this far! Tamula

  6. Oh I made it this far and could keep on reading! I’ve been waiting many years to be able to read stuff like this. Teachers didn’t do this even a year ago. They hid. I am so very proud of you for hanging in there, Tamula, for two hours. You did so well. It makes me very happy. What you wrote above is a painting of what the change is going to look like. You are a good artist. Good on you!

    1. You know it helps a lot to be middle aged and teaching a language without much pedagogy history. Plus I get a lot of support from parents who are doing business with China. The sad part of this story is that our Russian teacher was supposed to help me present but backed off. When the meeting started, she admitted to the group that she wasn’t using TPRS anymore but loves the method. Then at a later point in the presentation, she was really put on the spot as to why if the method is so great, she isn’t using it. The poor girl couldn’t answer and after several very painful minutes, I intervened and explained what a hard time the students gave her when she first started because they were used to their previous teacher and also how much easier it is to fall back on the textbook for teaching everything. But this poor girl is only 26 years old and so scared of being criticized. And yet, she has given me so much good advice and knowledge about CI. After the presentation, she told me that she isn’t using TPRS because she is scared of the parents’ reaction. I hope now she can see that we don’t need to live in the shadows because our chair is okay with what we are doing. These kinds of things, like the stories we read here in the PLC about the crap people have to put up with from their detractors, just make me crazy with rage.

      1. …I intervened and explained what a hard time the students gave her when she first started because they were used to their previous teacher and also how much easier it is to fall back on the textbook for teaching everything….

        Dude. Good move.

  7. Thanks everyone,

    I didn’t actually mean that the practices would be finely tuned. That is down to the individual teacher, and subject on each day to all kinds of variables. I meant that the ‘set’ would be finely tuned. When I said that it would be more well- rounded I meant that the many areas that are not gone into much at this time, for example developing early literacy, dealing with ‘fossilised’ errors in adult students, and working in one on one situations would have a lot more material available on them to students of teaching because many more people would be working on those areas.

    As I mentioned earlier, output already does have a role in the CI class. I don’t see why that should in theory be any less a subject of research than anything else. Personally, I think that Krashen’s ideas, as well as their application have been substantially under-researched at this time when compared to the volume of material available on other ideas and methods, and I hope that will change one day.

    Finally, although I have read a lot, though not enough, and yes I will read the links you provided Ben, there is still a lot about TPRS that I just don’t understand. I think the only way for me to change that will be to take classes in another language myself. Terry Waltz does that online in Chinese, but at $50 a pop. A big ouch, especially as I’m a student of Japanese.

    I’ll leave this topic where it is, and thank you for all your ‘input’!

    1. Hi Henry,

      I’ve ‘met’ via Skype with Terry Waltz during a couple conferences for Chinese teachers learning TPRS. She is really excellent. If you’d like to experience the method first hand with a language you do not know, I recommend her.

      She’s also teaching in a 3-week training program for Chinese teachers at the University of Hawai’i in July. She is training teachers in TPRS methods applied to Chinese language. I think it’s still on for the summer of 2013. Some summer I hope to go.

    2. …output already does have a role in the CI class….

      True but with the super critically important difference that that output is not something that they are focused on producing consciously, but rather they are focused only on the meaning of what they are experiencing. The instructor is there not to teach them how to speak but to speak to them so that they understand. People think that what we do is so difficult but it is no more difficult than speaking to students in a way that they understand.

      An example is one kid who listens really well in my classes. He sits right in front of me and often – it’s become a bit of a game between us – I will stop in mid sentence and he will output exactly the right word. He could do that as a result of having heard the sound of the thing hundreds of time before. We did “received” about three months ago. Yesterday in class I used it, but in a kind of out of bounds way. I asked the class what it meant and he said “received”. It was sound input that did that. Sound input is the supreme catalyst in language acquisition.

          1. You guys are funny. We could use this point to go up into the ivory tower and talk about this. All I meant when I wrote that was that sound precedes reading and both are supremely important in acquisition. Reading capacity rests fully in the bed of all preceding sound input in my view. Without a lot of sound input first they can’t read. Look at how long it takes little kids to learn how to read even though they have years of constant sound input. Sound is the bed that acquisition lays in. I could be off on this. I am not a researcher.

          2. Okay okay I see what you mean and agree that auditory CI must precede reading (visual? CI, haha).

            I love me my ivory tower :). But do need rescuing from myself, too, sometimes!

          3. It’s just as a Latin teacher for 2 years I tried to get kids reading without talking to them first. It’s called the “reading method.” Of course the results were awful. While I understand that reading is what forms deep, profound literacy, it will never have a chance to do so if not preceded by tons of auditory CI. All the gains Krashen talks about that come reading, like improved vocabulary, only come after the kid has been living in the language for many years.

          4. …all the gains Krashen talks about that come reading, like improved vocabulary, only come after the kid has been living in the language for many years….

            When I asked him if doing nothing but auditory CI in level 1 he said it made sense. Level 2 in my view could be much more intense reading. Right now we spend equal amounts of time on auditory and reading CI over the first two years. Would it be better to front load year 1 with more auditory input and year 2 with more reading input, especially in the spring of that second year? Would this bring us greater gains in level 3 when output starts showing up like spring flowers? Are we reading too much in level 1?

            I’d like to collect some data on that, using the AP exam at the end of level 3 as the main indicator. Anyone want to set up that longitudinal study? It would have to be someone with at least four level 1 classes, with two of the classes doing equal amounts of listening and reading half and half over the first two years, and two doing heavy early auditory CI and heavy late (end of level 2) reading. Then they would all have the same curriculum in level three and take the AP and we could have some numbers. I can’t do it bc I don’t have that kind of class load. It may not work bc that is not a big number of kids.

          5. Ben, it sounds like a good idea to me. My main problem with running the study at this point is that I need the reading days for classroom management/mental sanity reasons… especially in level 1… if you know what I mean.

          6. For some reason I can’t comment on Ben’s post below — I’d be down for running such a study though next year I’ll only have 3 Spanish 1 classes. That might be too few students. But if we could get more than one school to try it out, that would solve that problem right? There’d be more to consider with that, but I’m interested!

    3. …I don’t see why [output] should in theory be any less a subject of research….

      I just humbly believe that it is not researchable. I would rather try to figure out the stars than figure out how a mass of cells turns into a speaking being after nine months in utero (where there is sound input – people talking, music, etc.) plus four or five years after being born for a total of 60 or 70 months 24/7. How can you research that kind of complexity and successfully apply it to classrooms where the kids hear the language 500 hours over four years if they are lucky in the odd conditions I described in the original post above? Isn’t it enough that speech happens? Isn’t that enough? Have we no reverence for anything? Why have we tried for so long to cut the mystery out of life? What must we understand everything. We doing all this research it shows we don’t trust anything. When we do all this research we cut wounds into the mystery of life with a sharp knife. Isn’t the process of speech development a little bit out of our league anyway? What are we going to measure in it? How are we going to measure it? How can we help things along in our classes by researching how it occurs? Can’t we just speak to our students in the TL and let it happen that way? Because it does. I really don’t get that, I’m not trying to be an asshole.

    4. Thank you Henry for letting me unload on you there. Honestly many people would have told me to fuck off. But it really is just what I think, certainly not personal, and our dialogue here is a blow for free speech on this blog. So thank you.

      Now what the hell am I hearing about Chinese lessons for $50 a pop? Excuse my sorry ass, but that is bullshit.

      Hey, I can sum it all up in one idea Henry. When we teach, our students don’t think about the language consciously. They are not even aware of it. They are focused on the meaning of what is going on. That is it in a nutshell.

      When your students are not consciously thinking, but unconsciously focused on the meaning, you have entered into our strange world of rebels. That’s all of it, right there, in one simple idea – our students are only focused on the meaning of what is being said. Usually it is about them, so that makes it interesting.

      My definition of TPRS/CI is thus this simple: TPRS/CI is a teaching methodology in which the students are not aware of learning the language, but rather they spend the whole time in class focused on the meaning. When they do that, they learn the language.

      We don’t know exactly how that works, but we know that the more they listen and read, the closer they get to fluency in speech and writing output. We don’t need to know why or how. We really don’t need to know.

      College professors may need to know, but not to know, really, just to keep people thinking that they are smart. Somebody said that Bill VanPatten was talking up nice things about TPRS at ACTFL last week. Who cares? Big deal. He should wish that we say nice things about him, bc his research shows that he is in touch with what we already do in the classroom.

      Those guys, those researchers, are not my heroes. The Tamulas and Chrises and Roberts and Kate Talugas and Brigittes and Davids and Johns and Scotts and Liams and Kristens and Annicks are my heroes. They actually work for a living.

      1. Hoorah! I am going to paste your definition of TPRS on the wall next to my desk. This afternoon as the kids were leaving for break, I turned the corner and heard one of my freshmen tell another kid, “No, Chinese is really easy.” When he saw me, he blushed and looked down like he had something really shameful. As I walked by, I shouted, “I am so glad to hear you say that because it means I’m doing my job!” It was one of the happiest moments of my little teaching career!

      2. No problem Ben. I have a thick skin, which is both a blessing and a curse.

        I think I will try a 10-set of Terry’s classes sometime soon. In addition to going some way towards making up for my inability to attend conferences, it will be interesting to experience the learner side in trying to follow the rules and not forcing output on myself for an extended period rather than in video bites, learn about my own need for brain breaks, find out how much I do or don’t remember – a lot of things really.

        1. Henry,

          I think that is a great idea. I attended a summer workshop and was a student in a TPRS German class for a few hours. As a Spanish teacher, it was the most eye-opening experience to feel a bit lost and also interested in what I was hearing. It was cool and I’d love to find a CI Arabic class now.

  8. So, are you saying that, seeing as I already whole-heartedly agree with the Slavic/unconscious-mind, language-acquisition theory, that I can save my $229 and skip Stephen Krashen’s presentation in my area on Dec 13?

    πŸ™‚ I really don’t have 229 to spend on anything but family anyway! But I did think about paying and going. What presentation could be better than the discussion going on here on this blog? I suspect very little could top the quality of this dialogue on language.

    1. We know in DPS that Stephen’s speeches are only updated in 35 year cycles. Spend the $229 on registration for the San Diego conference, where you likely will hear the same speech as the one he will give on December 13.

  9. INTERESTING article I found today on sk.com About Dr. Krashen’s theories.

    http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html

    What I found most interesting is the quote that monitor “over users” tend to be perfectionists, introverts, and/or have low self-esteem. VERY interesting — I definitely can see myself there (pre-CI) as the perfectionist!!! πŸ™‚

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