Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The "rule" of three

When I learn a language, I have a rough rule that I follow to measure my progress.

It can be easy to get discouraged when learning a language and start to think "I haven't learned anything!". But I think we are often so focused on the final outcome and not the process.

As a result we become very critical of ourselves and then give up before we get anywhere. Language is like a building. We have to build a foundation, and at first it seems as though we are progressing slowly. But then when the foundation is secure, the rest of the building goes up quite quickly.

So when I try to get an idea of how well my foundation is doing, I use these 3 steps:

The first step: Recognition
This is the ability to be able to pick out a word or phrase in natural conversation, regardless of whether you understand the word or not. This is what I have been doing with my Chinese language experiment. After 50 hours I can pick out words if they are spoken clearly at a reasonable pace, for example like how a newscaster speaks. I can follow along with Chinese subtitles and if I know the characters I can learn words this way. This is a step that a lot of people underestimate the importance of and try to bypass. But without building a solid foundation in listening skills, ability to converse in the language is seriously diminished.

The second step: Familiarization
This is the feeling of "I know what that word meant the other day!" and can feel a little frustrating. But this is a good stage. It means that you not only can recognize the sound clearly, but that you also are starting to connect the sound to a meaning. The reason that you cannot recall it is simply that the connection isn't strong enough. With more exposure to the word, the connection between sound and meaning will become stronger. If this feeling of frustration increases, it means that you're progressing.

The third step: Comprehension
This is what everyone looks for straight away. But only when you can easily recognize the word, and it becomes familiar enough to you can you understand it properly and use it in an appropriate context.

Most formalized systems tend to try and get the student to step 3 without taking steps before it. Partly I feel this is because we can measure comprehension much more easily than the other steps.

If taught in an acquisition way, with lots of exposure to comprehensible input, this explains why people will listen for hours and hours, and then finally "get it".

It is important that all these steps are covered when learning a language; that a person can recognize the sound, become familiar with it in natural speech, and comprehend its meaning. But also can be a good measure for a student as to how well they are learning the language. Especially for those that try to use natural approach methods, it can make them less critical of themselves, and it can give them more confidence in the method.

Because even if they aren't "getting it", they may still be progressing anyway.