Ideas on Secondary Language Acquisition and Beyond

Outline

A. Difficult Question to Answer

B. Elements of Successful Language Acquisition and Use

C. Thesis: It Is Not Necessarily a Biological Barrier Which Prevents Adults from Learning a Language to Child-like Fluency

D. How a Child Learns Language

E. Contrast with the Adult Situation

F. Conclusions about Language Learning for Adults

G. My Prospects for Mandarin Chinese

A. Difficult Question to Answer

One of the most difficult questions that I come across from other people is “How many languages do you know?” No, I’m not getting into this topic to stroke my own ego and years of hard work at improving my knowledge of various languages, but rather I think that from my experience one might draw a framework from which to look at the general capacity of people to learn second, third, and more languages into adulthood.

1. Mandarin

First up: by anyone’s standards, my Mandarin is not good. At the moment, I can stammer out a few phrases in the street, maybe I can say numbers and end up negotiating a price for some good or service, but I usually hesitate to say anything because chances are that I will not be able to understand the response. So, at the moment my conversations turn out to be quite one-sided. Similarly with reading, my knowledge of characters is severely limited, although I’m beefing up on the radicals and hopefully with time, exposure, study, and practice I’ll be able to have some sort of functioning knowledge. Probably not popular-newspaper-readability in these seven coming weeks, but hopefully something.

2. Spanish

Next up to bat is Spanish. When I was done with high school, my reading was rather good and my pronunciation was very good, according to locals (even in Barcelona). As a small point of pride, I have specific anecdotes for each of French, Spanish, Mandarin, and German where I’ve been told by someone either native (for the first three) or very knowledgeable but not native (for the German) that my pronunciation is very good. Apparently my Mandarin is even close to how the Shanghainese speak it, versus the Beijing accent that I thought I was trying to model back in Beijing. In any case, I think that on certain topics my Spanish syntax and vocabulary are pretty good, and that I have an ability to “talk my way around” topics pretty well, i.e. get a point across without necessarily holding all the vocabulary that a native person would command when speaking about that same topic. In terms of listening and understanding, however, I think this part of my knowledge of Spanish is somewhat rusty and underdeveloped. Sort of similar to Mandarin, I can say quite a bit but I will not necessarily understand the response. Usually, though, when I’m in an environment filled with natively-spoken Spanish for about two days (as in a trip to Barcelona with my sister during the spring of 2005), I’ve noticed that my comprehension improves significantly and I can have conversations.

3. Ukrainian

Then we move to Ukrainian. Having grown up in a bilingual environment – Ukrainian at home and English at school – generally I would say that I’m fluent in spoken Ukrainian. However, this does depend on the topic of conversation and with whom I’m speaking. If with my parents, of course we understand each other to a degree of about 99% because they taught me Ukrainian. Why not 100%? Well, there’s a two-way answer to this. One is that my parents both grew up differently from the suburban environment where my sister and I grew up, so they for example have much better developed vocabulary for this like tending to a farm or other things that they did as children but which my sister and I never did. So sometimes they will use a word that I’ve never heard before, and so I have to ask what it means. In the other direction, since the Ukrainian that I learned growing up is a hybrid of one that had been exported from an area where daily life and business was conducted in living Ukrainian in the early part of the 20th century, there is a lag between the Ukrainian that I was taught by my parents and that of modern-day Ukraine which may tend to borrow more from Russian, at least to my ears, whereas the Ukrainian that I learned borrows, in relative terms, much more from Polish (both in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation, and syntax). I have, however, studied Ukrainian in L’viv in western Ukraine for six weeks, plus I lived in Kyiv for almost three months in 2005 working for the State Department, and thus I was exposed to a modern-day Ukrainian which contrasts with what I learned as an American child. Thus, I will have vocabulary or pronunciation that is different from how my parents speak, and sometimes they will have to ask me what I meant. Other times, I notice that an object or idea that previously would have taken me several words in a phrase to explain actually has a single word associated with it, and many times my parents are aware of that word but we just never used it at home. As a final note, I would remark that I am familiar with a great deal of Ukrainian words in that I know generally what they are about and what sort of connotation they have, but if pressed to translate them into a word into English I would be unable to do so even though a dictionary would be unequivocal in providing a translation. Mainly I’ve noticed that this is the case with religious-related terms, probably because rather than being an active part of my everyday life they are instead things or concepts that I actively do not need to refer to or read about and thus I have only a superficial knowledge of them. As for written Ukrainian, my fluency is basic although I can make my way around. I remember the days when my sister and I both had real trouble with reading written Ukrainian, just because we never needed to know how to read and write because all written materials around us were in English. But after the summer course in L’viv (through the University of Alberta, with Dr. Oleh Ilnytskyj) and concerted efforts on my own to read BBC Ukrainian articles and hunt down the meanings of new words, I have a pretty decent working knowledge of written Ukrainian, of course depending on the topic. But very importantly, I also have at my disposal more than enough of a framework in Ukrainian to independently expand and learn my knowledge of the language when in an environment that uses it exclusively, either an article written in Ukrainian or when out in the streets of Kyiv. I think that this is a critical point to make when discussing adult foreign language acquisition (I do not pretend to tackle the issues of innate ability to learn language nor Universal Grammar, though please feel free to comment on the topics after this post). Going back to Spanish, I also think that I have enough of a framework to independently advance my knowledge of that language through direct interaction with the Spanish-speaking world.

4. French

And now we arrive at French. I started taking French my junior year of high school, concurrently with mid-to-higher-intermediate Spanish, and then I continued taking it throughout undergrad including a spring spent studying abroad in Paris. Although there were certainly spoken and listening components to the standardized exam I took in high school, and also taking intermediate through advanced French as an undergrad, I would still say that my knowledge of French is rooted in the written word. Indeed, I would almost say that in terms of the speaking skills and the reading skills, my abilities in Ukrainian and in French are inverted: in Ukrainian, I will understand, or at least be able to pick apart words, that are spoken to me, but if asked to read a text out loud I would probably not sound like someone reading an oratory. As for French, I could probably deliver a great speech but when conversing informally with a native French speaker I might have difficulty picking apart some of the “fluidic” elements of the language that sit between the major words used that I would recognize immediately. In any event, practice in both languages and in both fronts makes perfect, and through time, exposure, and need I think that all of these elements together do improve.

5. English

And how about English? It’s strange to think that my first language is not my dominant language, and that my de facto second language English has taken over the top linguistic spot in my brain. But I think that, as with any of the other languages that I’ve studied, fluency in English can also always use some improvement. Perhaps most obviously this would occur in the area of broadening vocabulary, but I think that questions of connotation, style, and creative usage are all very important fronts that can be advanced when improving fluency in any language.

6. Remarks

So where does this detailed description leave us? I think that it serves to delineate in an important way both my abilities and my potential limitations in any given language at the current time. And having such a detailed awareness of not just ability in a language generally but rather being able to pick apart what skills and in which languages are stronger or weaker leaves one more empowered to improve upon his or her linguistic situation.

B. Elements of Successful Language Acquisition and Use

Also from the above discussion, I would tease out the following elements which form a critical part of Part II of this discussion, that of my thoughts and ideas on adult secondary language acquisition.

The first element is the mention of what I will call “fluidic” pieces of any language, those bits and pieces of sounds and phrases that do not necessarily carry a great deal of meaning in context but which make up perhaps around half of what is actually said in spoken language. The fluidic elements are those which lubricate the main elements; they connect them, surround them, give them context and connotation. Perhaps due to their frequency, the fluidic elements are also some of the most difficult to pick out and learn because they are so common that they often become abbreviated or shortened when used by native speakers, and thus no matter how good one’s listening is they can be objectively incomprehensible to the language learner without the aid of a native speaker who recognizes the difficulty.

The second element is that of a basic structure or framework that allows a speaker or learner of a language to independently progress within a given language. I might even suggest that having at one’s disposal this basic framework is a sign of basic fluency in a given language. And I might also argue that to a large extent, this basic framework is composed of the totality of the fluidic elements of a language and that the two together allow a secondary language learner to upgrade his or her fluency simply by being immersed within an environment that uses that language exclusively (rather than the initial situation of requiring external stimuli and explanations in one of that learner’s other languages, as a teacher in a beginner language course might do).

C. Thesis: It Is Not Necessarily a Biological Barrier Which Prevents Adults from Learning a Language to Child-like Fluency

I will start with my thesis. I believe that the best and most robust way to learn a language is how a child learns it. I also happen to think that anyone in the right situation and with the right resources can learn a language to near-fluency by learning it as a child learns it. I argue that any adult can learn a language to the fluency that a child would learn it, if they learn it as a child. I attempt to explain what are the significant elements that describe how a child uses language, in order to suggest how adults might approximate the conditions and indeed to present my own efforts to learn, and what I need to do to increase my chances for success in learning, both Mandarin and Arabic during this deferment year. I think that it is a myth to say that adults are neurologically incapable of learning a language to child-like fluency: I simply think that this impression is a reflection of the fact that few if any adults, for important reasons, are capable to achieving child-like fluency because they are unable to study the language under the same conditions as a child would learn that language. However, I will not attempt a detailed discussion of whether or not the challenges I discuss below can be overcome; while I believe it theoretically possible for an adult to gain child-like fluency, I am not sure whether socioeconomic conditions and responsibilities of many or any today can allow that type of learning. However, to be sure, I do not subscribe to the idea that it is a biological barrier which prevents the full acquisition of a secondary language.

D. How a Child Learns Language

i. Motivation to improve, including constant error correction. Essentially it is a young child’s parents, and when they enter school also their teachers and peers, who are the child’s language teachers. Significantly, the child does not need to pay his parents for the instruction; indeed, the parents have familial and personal incentives to teach their child how to properly use a language and thus even when the child resists overt efforts at instruction, it is the potential criticism of peers and ability or inability to fully communicate with one’s environment and cause it to work exactly as expected that are significant motivators for any child to learn a primary language.

ii. Full-time tutors. A child also does not have recourse to any other language that is already fully developed when she cannot express an idea in her primary language. (I happen to be of the opinion that ideas and concepts in the brain can exist extra-linguistically, and that it is the function of language to instantiating these abstract, extra-linguistic ideas into verbal communications.) Every communication that the child makes must be some sort of combination of the language that she has already learned up to that time, and also the physical movements or indications that can assist with the communication of the idea that is seeking expression. And from the moment that a child strings her first words together, she is assisted by her full-time language tutors, i.e. parents, in finding the word that fits a particular situation and usage, and in this way builds little by little on what she already knew how to use before the new instruction.

iii. Recursion. Indeed, among the first things that a child learns in her primary language is how to learn more about that language, in that language. Not only does the child not have recourse to any pre-existing language if she cannot express an idea in the target language, but she must also use what she already knows in order to know more. This state of affairs is a type of recursive learning: it reaches back across everything that has already been learned within a particular language in order to learn more, and the more that is learned is then fed back into the realm of possibility within that language and is fed back into the brain’s language-learning algorithm when even more must be learned. In its most basic form, the child is able to ask questions about what she already knows in a language, and she is able to ask the same questions and make the same observations about what she has not yet learned, but is about to learn.

iv. Context. And indeed, everything that a child does in her childhood involves the primary language. Even when studying mathematics from a textbook, the instructions and the types of questions and responses that are possible when discussing that topic all serve to reinforce the learning of language. Over and over again and over the course of many years, the child hears the same or similar phrases, intonations, etc. that are used within her native language, particularly the fluidic elements that are very basic but that serve to smoothly move forward and interlock the words specific to a particular topic being discussed and also the disposition of the speaker which informs the context of a given situation. Since this is all that she knows, she mimics this when she speaks herself, and she recognizes that others are using the same fluidic elements even when they are not enunciated clearly, which such phrases rarely are due to their frequency. They are often cut up or abbreviated, or spoken informally; however, the child is able to recognize what the phrase is and also what it means in some part because of sound, and in large part due purely to the context of the situation in which it is used.

E. Contrast with the Adult Situation

i. Full-time tutors. The adult who wishes to have a full time tutor must face the prospect of paying a full-time language tutor to sit with him throughout days and evenings and to help look for the correct word for all of the situations that one might encounter in any given day. While the price tag for children is minimal, except perhaps to perform chores and do homework to keep parents happy, the price tag for adults is exhorbitant. Parents as full-time tutors of their children have their child’s future happiness and success as a primary motivator in making sure that their child correctly learns a new language. Tutors for adults, however, may indeed have as a motivation the desire to teach others a new language but they could not survive spending so many hours a week with just one or two people without being compensated, for otherwise they could not afford food, housing, or transportation. Keeping foreign-language-speaking friends nearby as near-approximations for full-time tutor-parents is one potential solution, but friends also cannot for free divert the necessary resources to tackle the task full-time.

ii. Error correction and context. Children are inquisitive because they have much to learn about the world. Adults know that children are limited in their knowledge, and I view it as one of the rites of passage from childhood into adulthood when a person can finally take a firm and informed stand on issues important to them. In terms of knowledge, children are not learned from by adults: it is the adults who teach the children. And so, when a child makes an error in her native language, it is her parents, friends, and teachers who can point out the error directly and offer a correction. Adults who are learning a new language, however, are seen not as subjugated persons but as independent individuals. It is difficult for them to have access to the same type of constant correction and incremental improvement that children enjoy when learning a language. When an American adult incorrectly stutters some sentence in the streets of Shanghai, he is not immediately corrected or offered additional advice regarding the utterance as would be a child: instead, his audience will react to the utterance as they can best interpret it, perhaps finding it a little funny, but they do not go out of their way to offer a correction or alternative way of communicating the idea. Thus the adult is deprived of an opportunity to learn outright the correct way to get a waiter’s attention at a restaurant, or to ask whether large bills can be changed into smaller ones, because once the point is communicated it no longer really matters which words exactly were used. Thus the adult will have to use the same, incorrect utterance again in the future, because he was not offered an alternative the first time he used the utterance. Worse is that he risks not recognizing the proper utterance issued by native speakers because he does not possess all of the fluidic elements of a target language to understand fully both the context of someone else engaging in a similar transaction, nor will he fully be able to make out what was said by the native speaker without already knowing what will be said, and to compound this the native speakers will in all likelihood not enunciate clearly whatever fluidic statements they are employing, thus making it next to impossible for a non-native speaker to figure out what exactly was said in that parallel situation among native speakers.

iii. Recursion. An adult language-learner will very often not be in a position to draw recursively upon existing knowledge in order to further his study of a secondary language. Instead, he will be strongly tempted to have recourse to his native language in which he is already familiar with the structures required to advance knowledge of a language. Said another way, the adult language learner would have a very difficult time to process all linguistic information about a secondary language in the secondary language, both because he lacks the fluidic elements described above but also because it is much easier and more efficient to switch back to a native language in order to ask questions about new vocabulary or to probe grammatical syntax about a secondary language. It is possible that this ability relates to the common-usage phrase “learning to think in another language,” because we tend to associate thought with being conducted within the confines of a particular language, usually a native language of a speaker.

iv. Motivation. In terms of the motivations of a secondary language learner, it cannot be said that there are no strong motivations for the acquisition of a new language: social situations in a foreign country may require knowledge of a secondary language, as might a career and the prospect of a pay grade with increased linguistic abilities. Personal satisfaction is a huge motivator as well. However, I do not think that any of these can easily overcome the type of motivation that is involved in learning a primary language: that of the ability to use, understand, and manipulate as much of one’s environment as possible through command of a language. The secondary language learner can always rely on his primary language for that type of understanding and manipulation, but the primary language learner cannot.

F. Conclusions about Language Learning for Adults

From the above analysis, I would draw on the following principles which may be helpful for language learners to be familiar with in order to maximize their abilities in a target secondary language.

i. Full-time tutors. It is necessary to not only encourage others to offer improvement suggestions about your utterances but also for you to be actively listening and asking questions about what others are saying. It may help to develop an excellent rapport with a native speaker, either a teacher or a friend, who can over the long term recognize what you did or did not understand, and to analyze their own speech for fluidic and other elements and present them clearly to you when they are used.

ii. Motivations for improvement and error correction. Perhaps this is the most difficult element to grab hold of when learning a secondary language. Motivation is highly mental and thus depends on something different from person to person, so a language learner may have to actively renew their motivations in order to stick to a regime of avoiding recourse to a native language and of constantly being active in listening to and watching the interactions between native speakers. Constant correction of usage of a secondary language is a very difficult thing to achieve as well, both due to the number of errors committed by secondary language learners and also because society, both in an effort to be polite and to achieve efficiency, tends to move forward without offering corrections to the errors in a given utterance once the intent and meaning of the utterance are understood.

iii. Recursion. One should strive to achieve recursion also in a target secondary language. One way to begin to do this is to always use the target language be it in class or on the street, even in situations where the full vocabulary and usage is not necessarily known, because it forces thought in the target language and opens an opportunity for improvement and immediate correction, and also allows the chance of receiving and trying to understand a response (which may or may not succeed). Questions in the classroom should always be in the target language, because their form is probably often quite the same and the response will likely be in the target language as well, which will build upon and reinforce existing knowledge.

G. My Prospects for Mandarin Chinese

My goal was to try to approximate some of these elements as well as I could, and here are some of my predictions as to the quality of my approximation over the course of this deferment year.

i. Full-time tutors and error correction. With classes running almost four hours for five days per week, this is an excellent opportunity to engage with a native-speaker teacher whose sole task is to impart knowledge and promote practice. Of course, this is nowhere near the amount of tutoring available from a source such as parents. Out on the street, I find that it is difficult to recruit strangers to fulfill a tutor-like role in discreet instances because it seems that native speakers are not as focused on delivering clear, concise, and simple messages which may require them to modify what they would normally say in a given situation, as well as how they would deliver the utterance. However, I do see that those whom I see on a daily or near-daily basis do end up modifying how they speak, to my benefit: the receptionists at the language school use Mandarin whenever possible and slow down or repeat what they say so that I can understand them in Mandarin; and also our cleaning lady now seems to say less when speaking to me, and she slows her speech a little, so that I have a better chance at grasping what she is trying to say. However, as I sit in the apartment or move about the city, I am not sure how I might constantly be able to engage with attuned native speakers.

ii. Recursion and context. In class there is certainly the opportunity to be recursive in speech and thought; I expect this aspect of the language learning experience to further improve once I am able to take one-on-one lessons with a language teacher with whom I can discover and learn what utterances native Mandarin speakers use as fluidic elements and how they use them on a daily basis so that my own basic framework of the language improves, bringing me one step closer to a linguistic state where I can independently move about the language and push the boundaries of my knowledge of it.