Language learning from the outside in

Not to be confused with Dr Marvin Browns book on Automatic Language Growth, these are my theories of the two ways we can learn a language. I'm no linguist. This is just based on my limited experience of language in teaching and learning contexts.

I've broken up language into 4 main categories and their functions.

Firstly, on the outside we have Situation and Context which is often missing from a classroom environment. Instead we have to imagine a situation we might use what we are learning. For example when studying body parts we might need to imagine a conversation we would have with a doctor about a problem. The context in which a conversation takes place provides a point of reference for the rest of the conversation.

Secondly, we have Phonetic Patterns, comprising the phonemes (individual sounds of the language), suprasegmental intonation (over phrases or sentences) and timing. All these elements have a purpose of providing an Emotional Context (and informational, for phonemes). What this means is that we can gauge the emotion of the speaker through these patterns most effectively. What I haven't included here is body language, which I believe is an integral part of language, but I will write about it in a later post.

Moving in we have Grammatical Structure. The format of our speech tells us if the information conveyed is intended to persuade, inform, inspire, command, etc. It tells us if the conversation is formal or informal, relaxed or rigid. It tells us if we are talking about the past or present. Or what will happen in the future, or what we think will happen in the future. For these aspects and more I state that grammar has the ability to convey what the Language Function is.

In the center we have Vocabulary, which is simply tells us the facts and figures of the conversation. In other words, Information.

These 4 aspects of language, information, function, emotion and situation are present in all native speech (even formal academic English has an emotional element). Yet when we learn a second language, we often only concentrate on the two inner functions, vocabulary and grammar.

This picture illustrates a standard approach to language learning as an adult.



A typical language class goes like this: From the first class vocabulary lists are studied. The words will be given along with a picture, a translation or maybe a real object/model (realia). Then this is drilled in structured grammar forms many times. Then perhaps at the end listening skills and pronunciation (of phonemes) are drilled. A progressive class may have an activity like a game or role playing to help the student with language production.

I see two problems with this.

First problem: Communicating emotion in the target language is almost never taught. It is usually never taught in class how to communicate with people on an emotional level. Thus the learners never become 'native-like' as they can only communicate in information. They end up speaking like a robot.

Phonetics cannot be separated from language without changing meaning. Think about the word seriously in these forms:

• But seriously, he's not that smart (insisting)
• He's seriously stupid (strengthening)
• Seriously? (questioning)
• Seriously (affirming)

All of these four have different meanings and a different tone for each one. If you're a native English speaker reading this, you're probably thinking about the tones of each one right now.

All languages do this. So without taking phonetics seriously, we are missing out on a large part of language learning.

Second problem: Teaching of language out of context. If I give you a list of 20 action words like 'kick' 'catch' and 'throw' in a foreign language, asked you to remember them by heart and quizzed you 3 months later, would you remember?

It's difficult. But if I took you to a field with some equipment, threw a ball at you and screamed "catch!", how many times do you think you would take to remember it? You could probably see me in 3 months, throw something at me, and scream "catch!" yourself.

Catch is not just a word on a page. "Catch!" with an urgent tone conveys specific information of some kind of immediacy. We connect the feeling of an immediate need to grab the ball. We connect to the physical feeling of it, the sight of it. We engage our senses.

We then link the word 'catch' to this immediacy and it helps us to infer similar terms like catch a criminal, or catch a cold. We need to have the context provided when learning the word to have this link.

A natural learning approach, such as the one created by Dr Marvin Brown, ALG, seeks to replicate the method used by a child in learning.

This picture illustrates the difference.



The order is in reverse from what we call language learning.

The child doesn't learn vocabulary lists or grammar rules. They just listen. They listen to the tones and watch the body language of whoever is around them. They start to understand which tones mean people are happy, or angry, or sad. They start to hear when someone is stressed or busy or relaxed.

They will think about the situation, and use what they have understood to help them with the next part of a conversation. The emotions carried in phonetics tell them if the context has changed.

With all this background information, grammar gets pieced together. In English, we learn that a "should" sentence directed at us with a question tone is asking our opinion (should we get some ice-cream?), or should with a low tone is suggesting us to do something (you should be quiet for mommy now).

With all that background information, specific vocabulary becomes much easier to infer.

By learning through this method, we can develop a whole background of linked references that help us learn new language as it occurs. This is how a native speaker learns their language.

There is much more on the process of acquisition. But this post serves as an introduction into my thoughts of the two fundamental approaches to language learning. I will be referring to it frequently in other posts.

For further information on ALG, check out David Longs blog ALG World.

How important is concentration in our lives?

Because of my previous post about concentration meditation, I feel I should give you some of my experiences of how stronger concentration has improved my life.

Often I hear people saying they wish they could concentrate better. I think if they fully realized the benefits, they would make more effort to improve.

Better concentration has allowed me to:

• Keep focused at work and school
• Read faster
• Multi-task better
• Ignore distracting sounds and other distractions
• Focus on solving problems rather than being caught up in them
• Commit things to memory that I want to
• Understand nuances in social situations
• Read non verbal language better
• Listen to others more fully
• Know what I really want in life vs. what I think I want
• Connect past events to current moods
• Learn which people are good and bad influences in my life
• Stop bad moods early, before they get out of control
• Remove my destructive habits, one by one
• Increase my willpower
• Put my plans and dreams into action

Of course I'm not perfect at these things. But they have all become easier the more I have improved my ability to concentrate.

If you don't really care about any of these things, then maybe concentration exercises aren't for you.

But if any of these sound like good ideas to you, I highly recommend you take up some form of regular exercise to improve your concentration, whether it is the exercise above, or something else.

The particular form is less important than doing something. Just like the body, if you want to have a healthy mind, you need to exercise it.

Man made vs natural problems

The suffering of the Japanese people during the Earthquake, Tsunami and following disasters have got me thinking about the two types of suffering we encounter in life; those that occur naturally, or without intervention, and those that we create ourselves.

The Buddha spoke at length about suffering. It is the most central tenet to the practice.

Most people don't really understand what he meant by suffering. In fact the word is a bad translation. It might be better translated as dissatisfaction, unpleasantness, or even imperfection, it depends on circumstance.

The Buddhas most famous description of suffering is the parable of the two arrows.

In brief, he uses the idea of physical pain to convey suffering. If we are shot with a single arrow we feel pain, but beyond the physical, we add mental/emotional pain to it: It's as if we shoot ourselves with a second arrow.

The most important point is that we cannot always prevent the first arrow from being shot. But we are in control of the second arrow. We can learn not to shoot it.

I have observed that most times what works at the level of the individual also works at the level of the collective.

Take the events in Japan at the moment. With the thousands dead and many more who have lost all their material possessions, their suffering is great.

We try to prevent disaster happening. We try to control the dangerous elements of our life. Unfortunately, this was an uncontrollable one. The first arrow has been shot. The best we can do is to bring comfort to those who are suffering, emotionally and materially. Then it is their job to heal. They have to learn to stop shooting themselves with the second arrow. Nobody can do that for them.

In moments like these, we have the opportunity to realize that horrible things sometimes do happen in this world. There is enough suffering that occurs naturally. There are enough first arrows being shot. We don't need to add to it.

But how are we shooting second arrows? Is it the person we shouted at because we were in a bad mood with something else? Or the "white lie" we told in order to get something we want? Or maybe our indifference to the suffering of others?

How are we shooting second arrows? That is the question we should humbly and honestly ask ourselves. None of us are perfect. But by understanding how we create suffering for others, we can learn how to reduce it. Human beings have a remarkable ability to repair and recover, but we don't need to make it harder for them to do their job.

Are primary schools becoming prep schools for college?

Formal education has evolved into a worldwide structured organization, where the process of education and material is standardizing no matter where you go. In Thailand, the business management course I study has the same components as a business management course elsewhere in the world. We even use the same US based textbooks.

The purpose of formal education is to standardize. Sometimes this is not a bad thing. Most education exists in three groups, primary, secondary and tertiary.

Primary schooling's main purpose is to teach fundamental life skills. Subjects like basic mathematics and literacy are taught because they are necessary for all future learning, be it formal or informal.

Secondary schooling however, aims to expose students to a variety of options in life, and give them a wide variety of skills.

Tertiary education provides an ending to the formal education system by educating students on skills for a specific role or purpose in society.

I think standardization in primary education isn't harmful to children, especially if it causes an improvement on quality. Primary education is considered so important, the United Nations place universal primary education at 2nd place in it's Millennium Development Goals, above achieving gender equality and reducing child mortality rates, and just behind eradicating extreme poverty and hunger.

Secondary education is a fairly recent invention. Created about 100 years ago to give children the skills needed to work in more complex jobs, thanks to the industrial revolution. Because the number and types of jobs expanded during this time, secondary schooling was also designed to train children on a variety of tasks they might need in life.

The biggest problem I feel in secondary schooling is that it is becoming a kind of preparatory school for tertiary schooling. This is creating a push to standardize testing and teaching of curriculum, leading to a favor of testable subjects (like the sciences) over hard-to-measure subjects (like the arts).

If we standardize secondary schooling too much, we risk training all members of society under the same mindset. While this might sound like a good thing, it would create a society suffering from one giant form of groupthink. When a lack of critical thinking arises, or disagreements disallowed, it creates the perfect environment to breed the ugly side of humanity.

Increasingly people are viewing tertiary education as a necessity and this is changing secondary schooling from an opportunity to explore identity and roles in the world into learning how to work the system of academia. A system that is quite unique and abstract from most other functions in the rest of the world.

Worse, some primary schools - especially in Asia - are viewing primary school the same way.

So before children have even decided what pop stars they like (or not at all), parents are guessing what their future will be 15 years in the future.

It's impossible to know what someone will want in 15 years. It's easy to even surprise ourselves. Most people look back 15 years ago and realize they would never imagine themselves as they are now.

So why would we do that to our children? Our country? Our world?

Maybe we should let children play before they get serious. Even kids get tired of playing sometime.

How to meditate: Labeling

In my last post about concentration meditation, I talked about a basic breathing meditation, sometimes called the "rising, falling" exercise.

We call it this because usually when one starts meditation, we use the verbal reminder of "rising" when we feel the abdomen rising, and "falling" when we feel it falling.

This process is called labeling. It has a very distinct purpose and shouldn't be confused with chanting or some other ritual. When the mind is not well concentrated, labels act as an orientation for the mind. It is like we are caught in the middle of a storm and do not know which way to go, but we have a compass that points the way.

The words we use are not important, as long as they point us to the right object. We could use labels 'in' or 'out', or 'biff' and 'whiff', or whatever, as long as it points us to the main two phases of our breathing, inspiration and expiration.

The point of labeling is to help us focus our mind on the object at hand. In this case it's the breath. Our intention is to focus on the breath as it happens. If we start focusing on the label, we are not doing breath meditation. We are doing something else.

If we stay with the breath long enough, and as we start to train our minds to be used in this particular way, we start observing more than simple rising and falling.

We will start to notice in more detail the particularities of each breath. We will notice that some breaths may be shorter, some longer. Some are smooth, some start and stop. Some may be deep, some may be shallow. Some may start strongly and finish unexpectedly short, or vice versa. Eventually we realize that each breath is as unique from each other as snowflakes are. Then we are truly being mindful.

If we were to try and label all these things, our mind would be too busy to observe them. We would be missing the purpose of the exercise.

Our mind in an untrained state has a tendency to want to label or conceptualize everything that is experienced. It is that very tendency that takes us out of the experience itself.

Concentration meditation is the act of learning to use our mind in a completely different way. Labels are a tool to assist with this, a support. If at any point they become a hindrance, they should be dropped.

Diminishing marginal returns: the science of moderation

In economics, there is a concept that the more we have of something, the lower the value of one more of that thing. It's called the law of diminishing marginal returns. And when we use a subjective value, we call it utility.

Check this graph:



I call this the "how-much-I-care" graph. We've used money here, but we can substitute it with effort (for school grades), interest (for a date), energy spent playing with the kids (for peace at home), or whatever we like.

If this is me, well I care a lot about that first $500. I like to be able to eat and survive. But if I'm already earning $5000 a month, I really don't care about another $500. This depends on what I use the money for (a later post), of course, as not all expenses are equal. But in general the more I have, the less I care.

The point is, economics tells us that it's not practical to want more of the same thing beyond a point. There is a time when it's just not worth it. This is where moderation becomes important.

Let's look at our lives. We perhaps have 16 waking hours in which to be productive per day. Then we need to rest, recover and do it all again.

What do we do with this precious resource?

Do we work 8 hours to make a living? Probably good. It gives us the money to survive and buy nice things every now and then.

Or do we decide to work 12 hours, 14 hours? Is that extra time worth it? We know that each extra hour becomes less worthwhile. So where is our cut-off point?

Utility in economics is given by a subjective number (for example 0 to 100) based on how much the person cares. If you're the graphing type you can try it out yourselves and see if you get something that looks like the one above.

This measure is subjective. Only we can decide this for ourselves. But if we really want to 'maximize our utility' in econspeak, we should have a range of options, so we can get that initial $500 hit of happiness in each one.

Language: Brain or train?

For as long as formal language education systems have existed, people have been studying why some of us learn faster than others.

The general assumption was that some of us possessed inherent traits that 'made' us good at language. Another assupmtion was that children were better at learning language than adults. The Language acquisition device theory and the critical period hypothesis were created to explain these beliefs.

The theories state our ability to acquire language to a native level is limited beyond a certain age. And that this limitation is physiological and unchangeable.

However there are people who can learn languages to a native level, even when learned late in life. Some people are fluent in over 50. But according to these theories they should be impossible. Continuing the assumption that language ability is a phsyiological trait, these people were studied for differences from 'normal' people.

The studies showed some commonalities, such as an enlarged Broca's region, and below average visuospatial abilities. And so linguists said that this is what enables them to do what they do. Most language education designers listened to them.

While I don't discount the physical differences, to me measuring the brain of an accomplished learner and saying thats why they are an accomplished learner is like saying the biggest guy in the gym can lift heavy weights because he has big muscles.

It confuses causation with correlation.

Obviously, we know that the guy got big by lifting weights, and his muscles are a result of his lifting heavy, not the other way around.

So why can't the brain be the same?

Previously, we assumed that the brain couldn't regenerate or change once we became adults. We now know that the brain has this ability. It's called neuroplasticity. But we still don't know how much it can really change.

Part of the problem is that most psychology is only studied on people who are mentally unfit, or at best average. There is little study on mental athletes. As a result we know little about what a brain at its peak is capable of (I will talk about positive psychology in a later post).

This science often gets used to show what we are not capable of. But for the reason above it currently is really bad and saying what we can be good at.

There are certain physical and mental limitations, of course. But does that mean I shouldn't exercise unless I can become an Olympic athlete?

Language education systems are based on this assumption that is at least in part being proven false.

So, rather than saying to yourself "I'm not good at languages", ask yourself: "Is the problem my brain, or the methods I use?"

How to meditate: Concentration

For my first post on meditation, and for the experientialist in me, I'd rather not talk to you about what meditation is, but give you the opportunity to find out for yourself.

There are some detailed excercises listed on the Vipassana Dhura website. We are concerned here with the "rising, falling" exercise:

If you choose a sitting position, place your hands in your lap, palms facing upward, the right hand on top of the left. If doing the exercise lying down, put your hands on the abdomen, one on top of the other, or at your sides. Close your eyes.

Next, direct your attention to the abdomen, an inch or two above the navel. Find the point that seems clearest to you. Don't actually look at the spot; just place your mind there.

As you breathe in, the abdomen expands; as you breathe out, it contracts. In meditation these movements are called, respectively, "rising" and "falling." They never cease to alternate as long as you live.

As the abdomen rises, observe the motion from beginning to end with your mind. When the abdomen falls, do the same. That's it. Just keep watching the rising-falling movements. You don't have to do anything to them. Just know the movements without judging or describing them.

Restrict your attention to what is occurring in the immediate present moment. Don't think about the past or future— don't think about anything at all. Let go of worries, concerns, and memories. Empty your mind of everything except the movements occurring right now. But don't think about the motions; just know them.

Concentration forms the base for anything we do with our mind, and meditation is no exception. Take a few minutes out, close your eyes and try it now if you are unfamiliar with it.

Most likely, if you don't train your concentration in some way, you'll find yourself surprised at how difficult it is to just stay with the breath. The untrained mind disobeys and gets quickly distracted. In ancient Indian texts they referred to it as the "monkey mind":

Keeping your mind on the rising-falling movements may not be as easy as you think. Be patient and don't judge yourself, even if the mind wanders out often. Remember that you're learning a new skill. When learning to play the piano, for example, you wouldn't expect perfection right away. Likewise, you shouldn't expect it in meditation. Don't get discouraged if your progress seems slow. As long as you stick with the practice, results are sure to come.

This is an exercise that even senior meditators continue to practice. By forcing our mind to adhere to our will over time, we strengthen our willpower.

If you practice this even for 1 minute every day, I guarantee you will learn things about yourself you never knew.

If you practice it for a long time, I guarantee it will change you in ways you never expected.

Sabai Sabai culture and the lack of organization

I was at a restaurant in Chiang Mai the other day and when it came time to pay my bill of 100 baht (US$3) with a 1000 baht note (US$30), they didn't have change.

This is not a large bill for a bricks and mortar store, yet moments like these are extremely common. Most small businesses do no planning whatsoever, even when it's something as simple as having enough change.

It's at the heart of sabai sabai, or relaxed, culture.

People come to Thailand for the relaxed attitude to life, where people don't take anything seriously, and always think about having fun, or sanuk.

Except that if you live here long enough, your rosy glasses lose their tint.

While I still love the relaxed attitude in general, it's ugly side means that nothing gets done theway it's supposed to, no one takes responsibility, and you can't get mad about it.

The land of smiles is not the land of service, and I've baffled several otherwise smart business owners with the questions "What is your target market? Who are your customers?". They look at me like I've spoken to them in algebraic code.

Living here has given me a great opportunity to develop patience, but sometimes not being sabai sabai would make life a whole lot easier.