How Does it Work?

While Google’s translations are still far form perfect, they do tend to be surprisingly accurate (if you read English and Japanese, you can see for yourself in the screenshots below).  They accomplish this linguistic feat through creative application of probability rules and massive amounts of computing power. While other translation tools use complex grammar rules and  dictionaries, Google’s computers simply imitate humans. The company continually feeds their translation software United Nations documents already translated into multiple languages by professional human translators.

Very Nice…How Much?

Like all things Google, Chrome (and its myriad extensions) are free of charge. Though in truth, nothing is really free: every time you translate a page you are helping Google improve its service and providing more opportunities to show you ads…

Installing Google Chrome

Download Google Chrome
Download the Google Translate extension for Google Chrome
Browse for other Google Chrome Extensions

Google Translation in Action

Here are some screenshots taken of a PC World article. I simply clicked the Google Translate icon, selected “Japanese” from the “Translate to” drop-down menu, and poof, the whole page (articles, titles, menus, and all) was instantly translated into readable Japanese.

Antonio Graceffo is a martial arts and adventure author living in Asia (check out our interview with him here).

His books, including “The Monk from Brooklyn“, are available at Amazon.com

Meeting a new Thai person I simply said “Sawadis krap.” Without a second’s hesitation, he said, in English “You Speak Thai very well.” Was I supposed to feel encouraged? Should my head have swollen to monumental proportions because of this meaningful recognition of my linguistic prowess?

I simply answered with a question. “How would you know?”

In Taiwan, I walked into the staff room of my new job and said to a Chinese teacher, in Chinese, “I am teaching level Seven-A tonight. Where would I find the resources and course outline?”

She answered, in English, “Wow! Cool, you speak Chinese.” And then she walked away, without answering my question.

So much of learning a language is actually about learning the culture. In Asia, people seem to enjoy bestowing, and I assume, receiving completely empty compliments. I was actually told in a school in Korea that I should make it a point to tell my female students that they were very beautiful and their English was good. It sort of made me feel ooky because I don’t think it is appropriate for a teacher to tell a student that they are beautiful or handsome or sexy or cute. There are people who have said things like that to students in America, and now Megan’s Law prohibits them from coming within 1,000 feet of a school. Also, I would hate to have to wear one of those ankle bracelets that alerts the police every time I leave the house.

On my list of pet-peeves, a list so large that it can be seen from space, is foreigners who buy into these compliments when they are learning an Asian language.

A friend of mine in Vietnam is really doing everything right, as far as learning Vietnamese. So, I want to be supportive and encourage him. He has learned more in seven months than most people will learn in countless years, simply because he is attending classes and doing self-study. But, even this friend, call him C3-PO, bought into the false compliment game. C3-PO told me, “My pronunciation is nearly perfect.”
“How do you know?” I asked, as it takes more than 1,000 hours of listening to achieve perfect pronunciation in Vietnamese. “Because everywhere I go and speak Vietnamese, people compliment me.” C3-PO answered.

And so I asked C3-PO, “Have you ever heard a non-native speaker, speaking English?”
“Of course I have. I am an English teacher. I have heard thousands of them.” He answered. “My parents aren’t even native speakers.”

“Do you feel qualified to evaluate if someone speaks English well or not?”

“Yes, of course, I am a placement tester at my school?” answered C3-PO.

“Do you think the Vietnamese people who complimented your Vietnamese pronunciation were placement testers at schools?”

As native speakers of English we have grown up listening to foreign accents. In my case, it is extreme because I come from New York City where nearly 100% of my classmates were first or second generation immigrants whose grandparents, and often their parents were not native speakers. But even if you are from a homogenous American neighborhood in Ohio, you grew up watching American movies and TV shows which took place in foreign countries or had foreign characters speaking English.

I learned to do the Italian and Spanish accents at home, but I learned the German accent from watching “Hogan’s Heroes,” Japanese from “McHales Navy”, Swedish from “The Muppets”, and most of the others from Bugs Bunny.

Asians generally haven’t had this experience. Nowadays, they get American movies in English with subtitles or dubbed into their native language, but they almost never have foreign characters in their movies speaking their language. Think of movies like “The Last Emperor” a movie about the history of China made by an American company for an American audience. Asian countries don’t make historical epics about famous western people.

Take “Shogun”, an American movie set in feudal Japan about a European sailor. There is no analogous movie in Asia.

Americans, particularly those who have traveled or are more global, would recognize from someone’s accent if they are French or Japanese. Most Asians haven’t heard enough foreigners speaking their language to be able to differentiate.

Probably, in fairness, I would say the average American couldn’t tell from accent or appearance which Asian country someone came from. BUT we would be qualified to evaluate if their English was good or not. And most likely if we didn’t understand them at all, we wouldn’t think they spoke very well.

I went on to ask C3-PO, how many non-native speakers of Vietnamese had the average Vietnamese person ever heard speaking Vietnamese? The answer is that we are still at a point that many Vietnamese have never had any significant contact with a foreigner of any kind. And the number of foreigners who speak Vietnamese is so small, relative to the number of foreigners who live in the country, the average person has no idea at all how to evaluate you. They are just so happy that you have made the attempt that they compliment you, EVEN IF they don’t understand a word that you say.

And, this is where I get angry at my people and why I want to get in a boxing ring with 78% of foreigners learning Asian languages in Asia. I have witnessed, with my own eyes, literally hundreds of times that a foreigner wanted to show off how good his Thai, Khmer, Chinese, or Vietnamese was, so he spoke at length to a local. I saw the local’s face go from a fake smile, to worry, then fear, then back to worry, and finally a fake smile again. The local then said, cheerfully, “You speak so well.” And there was zero indication that they understood the foreigner at all. Often the foreigner was asking directions or some question which required an answer, or he was trying to buy something and the communication stalled the transaction. He didn’t get his answer, but he was so pleased with the complement that he happily went on his way without his insulin or whatever it was he had been trying to buy.

“Wow! I must be great at this language. Everyone compliments me.”

Another instance in Vietnam was a female co-worker who said, “I am gifted with languages.”

This seems to be a really common belief. I receive emails and Facebook messages daily from people who believe themselves to be gifted language learners. The number of people who told me that they are gifted with languages is off the charts. And honestly, not one of these people spoke more than one foreign language well and many of them spoke zero foreign languages well. This particular girl, let’s call her Leia, went on to say, “I have been told that I have perfect pronunciation in Vietnamese.”

Sadly, Leia was telling this to Vietnamese staff member, in English. And the Vietnamese staff member looked confused and surprised.

Leia had only been in the country a few weeks, wasn’t attending classes, and didn’t actually speak Vietnamese at all.

To me, this seems delusional. I don’t understand why these people aren’t locked up somewhere.

Leia then proceeded to read the ingredients on the ketchup bottle, in Vietnamese, very badly, translating each word, wrong.

Most people in Asia are very polite. Nearly all Asian cultures are confrontation avoiders and face is a huge issue. I have seen people go to ridiculous lengths of forcing themselves to see the Emperor’s New Clothes, rather than to admit that someone had made a mistake and thus cause that person to lose face. Most Asian people aren’t going to tell you to your face that your language skills suck. They won’t even admit that they don’t understand you.

If you are living in Asia: Definitely study the language. Definitely make an effort to talk to people, to communicate with them. People do appreciate when you speak their language. However, only speak their language if it will facilitate communication. If the person you are talking to has excellent English, why torture them with your faulty foreign language?

Less than one percent of people are gifted language learners. So, most likely, you are not one. Your native tongue doesn’t count. If you are born with five native tongues you still don’t know if you are a gifted learner or not until you actually try and learn a foreign language. If you actually speak more than three or four learned languages well, it is possible that you are gifted, but even that proves nothing. You may just be a gifted communicator.

That’s what I am, a gifted communicator. I am gifted at using the small amount of language I have to communicate at a higher level. In a very fair evaluation of my Chinese, which is my best Asian language, I was told that I was lower intermediate in vocabulary, reading, writing, and grammar, but advanced in communication ability.

Don’t be confused between good at communication and good at language. Many learners, when they reach a point that they can use their local language to function, they stop studying and learning. My old German professor used to call this syndrome “Me want cookie.” Everyone knows what you are saying, but you talk like a four year old.

If you have a local girlfriend, boyfriend, spouse, lesbian-life-partner, or friends, it still takes over 1,000 hours of listening to learn the language. But you may reach your 1,000 hours in six months instead of years.

It takes extensive listening to learn pronunciation. Asian people will compliment your speaking, no matter what you say or whether they understand you or not. If you want to evaluate your Asian language skills, go to the nearest language school and take a free placement exam. They will tell you straight away what your actual academic level of fluency is.

Most of your friends or people you meet on the street won’t evaluate your listening, but that is the key to the language. Your real level is the level at which you can understand, not talk. Can you sit in a café and pick up the thread of the conversation of two native speakers sitting at the next table. Can you actually, HONESTLY, participate in conversations with groups of native speakers?

For example, your Chinese friends are debating the merits of pegging their currency to the dollar. In the middle of this heated debate, one of them turns to you and says in baby Chinese, “Where do you come from?”

I got news for you, you are not participating in a conversation. A conversation is happening between native speakers, but they thought you looked board so they shot you a life line. Usually, you will answer and they will either return immediately to their previous conversation, or they may ask you two more banal questions, like “how old are you” and “do you have brothers and sisters?” No matter what you answer, they will simply return to their conversation. Either way, don’t kid yourself into believing you can hold your own in a conversation with native speakers.

And of course, the final point, also the primary point, the compliment:

“You speak Thai so well.” It means nothing, nothing at all. Just say “thank you” and keep studying.

_____

Like Antonio’s writing?

Check out some of his fantastic books on travel, martial arts, language learning and endangered cultures.

Antonio Graceffo is a martial arts and adventure author living in Asia (check out our interview with him here).

His books, including The Monk from Brooklyn, are available at Amazon.com

Vietnamese is one of only two major Mon-Khmer languages, the other being Khmer, the national language of Cambodia. Like Cambodia, Vietnam is a former French colony. And so, the Vietnamese language has acquired some loan words from French. I am not yet an expert on the Vietnamese language, but so far it appears that the bulk of the loan words are for concepts which the French introduced to Vietnam, such as: Nô-en (Noel), phó mát (cheese), and ca vát (neck tie).

Because of Vietnam’s close proximity to China, and a long and turbulent shared history, there is a significant Chinese influence on the Vietnamese language. Sixty percent or more of the vocabulary is Chinese. Chinese words are often easy to spot because they are one syllable words. Khmer words are normally multi-syllabic. Some Chinese words will consist of more than one Chinese character, put together, but these are compound words, and even in Vietnamese, these words would normally be written as two one-syllable words, with space between them.

Even the country name for Viet Nam is taken from Chinese, with Nam, Vietnamese for south, coming from the Chinese word for south, 南 (nán).

It is very telling to see which words in Vietnamese were borrowed from Chinese. For example, words related to education and school subjects are Chinese. History - lịch sử in Vietnamese, 歷史 (lì shǐ) in Chinese. So, the word for history is clearly a loan word, from Chinese, and the pronunciation is fairly similar. Intelligent, thông minh in Vietnamese, 聰明 (cōng míng) in Chinese. Again, it is nearly the same.

Some compound words and loan words are extremely interesting, because they combine Khmer and Chinese or Khmer and French. For example, the Vietnamese word for glove can be bao tay or găng tay. The word “tay” is the Khmer word for hand. In the first example, bao is the Chinese word for wrap, package, or cover. So, the literal meaning is a covering for your hand. In the second example, “tay” is still hand but găng is most likely the Vietnamese pronunciation for the French word for glove (gant).

Dictionary in Vietnamese is từ điển, in Chinese it is 詞典 (cí diǎn). The second syllable of both of these words is nearly identical. The first syllable is pronounced differently, but clearly comes from the same Chinese root.

Study in Vietnamese is học, and university is đại học. If the Vietnamese use Chinese characters to write the title of a university they use the same traditional characters as Taiwan or Hong Kong. Study would be written 學 And university would be written 大 學. But the interesting thing is the pronunciation. In Chinese, study is pronounced xué and university is dà xué (literally meaning “big study”). But the Vietnamese đại học, although using the same Chinese characters, would have a pronunciation much closer to Korean (대학 dae hak) than to modern Mandarin. This is most likely because the loan words in Vietnamese and Korean came centuries past, before the Mandarin dialect became standard Chinese. Another similar example is “dormitory”: ky tuc xa in Vietnamese, and 기숙사 (gi suk sa) in Korean. The Korean and Vietnamese pronunciations are quite similar. They would both use the same set of three Chinese characters, but the pronunciation would be completely different from modern spoken Mandarin, 宿舍 (sù shè).

Another example of a connection between Korean (or older Chinese) with Vietnamese would be the word for happy, hạnh phúc, as in, “I’ll be happy if someone gives me a crossbow.” The modern Chinese word for “happy” is 高興 (gāo xìng). So, it isn’t even close, but the modern Korean word 행 복 (hang bok), is almost the same.

Sometimes all three languages align. The Vietnamese word for “romantic” (lãng mạng) is almost identical to both the Chinese 浪漫 (làng màn) and the Korean 낭 만 (lang man).

Telephone, điện thoại in Vietnamese, is 電話 (diàn huà) in Chinese. In both languages the word điện means electricity. So, this character 電 (điện) appears in nearly all appliance names, in both languages. The Vietnamese word for machine is máy móc and everything from an airplane, máy bay, to a motorcycle, xe máy, includes this machine word. In Chinese, however a computer is seen as an electric appliance, 電腦 (diàn nǎo, literally “electric brain”) whereas in Vietnamese, the computer is a machine, máy tính.

While the word for motorcycle and airplane use the Vietnamese word for machine, the word for car is clearly a loan word from French, ô tô.

The Chinese word for machine is 機器 (jī qì). So, it is not similar in pronunciation to the Vietnamese word, máy. But the function is the same. Airplane, máy bay in Vietnamese is 飛機 (fēi jī) in Chinese. Both Chinese and Vietnamese create the word airplane as a compound word, composed of two syllables, written separately, one of which means “machine”. Camera is máy ảnh in Vietnamese, 照相機 (zhào xiàng jī) in Chinese. Again, the overall word for camera is different, but both Vietnamese and Chinese have created a compound word for camera which contains the respective word for machine plus the respective word for picture or photo.

Many language learners put great emphasis on words. They want to learn vocabulary, thinking that learning a language and memorizing lists of definitions is somehow the same thing. Obviously, they are nearly completely separate from each other. If you were a native speaker of French, Chinese, and Khmer learning Vietnamese, you would still need to acquire, grammar, usage, and pronunciation, as well as cultural-linguistic elements, such as forms of address and appropriateness of speech. So, even a triple native speaker would be a long way off.

Studying the mechanical parts, the elements, the words of a language is, however, an interesting academic pursuit. In the case of the Vietnamese language, it is fascinating to see how so many components of the language can be traced to some other language, and yet Vietnamese is completely unique.

____

Like Antonio’s writing?

Check out some of his fantastic books on travel, martial arts, language learning and endangered cultures.

About Orlando:

Dr. Orlando Kelm holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a Spanish and Portuguese professor at the University of Texas, and Associate Director of the Center for International Business Education and Research.

The Interview:

In our interview, Orlando shares what he believes to be the 6 most important factors in effective language learning.

Orlando: Well let me start by saying that I like your Foreign Language Mastery blog site; it’s been fun to read.

John: Thank you. I’ve ended up interviewing a number of my mentors and heroes, and I stumbled across your blog and really liked what you had to say, so I thought it would be good to share your views with my listeners and readers. So I think best would be maybe to go through those 5 fundamentals that you have on your blog. [Note: In my preparation for the interview, I accidentally missed reading No. 6.]

Orlando: Ah, sure.

John: I think that really sums up your basic stance.  I’m sure there’s a lot more you could say, and we’ll fill in as we go. I think the first one was the 500 hours of study that’s required to reach a modicum of fluency.

Orlando: Right. The issue is time on task; that people underestimate how long it takes to learn a foreign language. And sometimes, even if they’re doing everything right, there’s a sense that “Oh, I still don’t speak Spanish!” because you don’t speak it as well as you speak English. And it’s always good to go back and tell people, “Even if you’re doing everything right, it’s not going to be a 20-hour project.” You know, I always get phone calls from people saying, “Uh, we want to negotiate with people in Mexico. Can you teach us some Spanish?” And it’s like, “Sure, but it’s not going to be a during your lunch hour for 3 weeks type of project.” So that first category is that realize that it does take time on task, and to be proficient in a foreign language, is going to take you a hunk of time.

That 500 hours is a nice number, too, because what it says is that even if you’re in a normal classroom situation and you meet 5 times a week for a whole semester, you’re still going to be way short of 500 hours. So a lot of it is you just got to spend more time on task. That’s number 1.

John: Ok, and then number 2 was about context.

Orlando: Number 2 is context, which is, words stick when you’re in the situation of the moment. Word’s don’t stick if you can’t connect them to some sort of experience or some kind of context. I often give the example to my students of a time I was sitting on a bus in Brazil, and there was this kid that was driving me crazy, jumping up and down and screaming and yelling. And the mother yelled out, “Não faça isso, filho.”  (Don’t do that, son.)  And I remember thinking afterwards, “Wow, command form!” And never again did I have to think about how to conjugate a command form in Portuguese.  I saw the lady; I saw the kid; he was driving me crazy; and forever more, I could just say “Não faça isso, filho.”  So that context of the moment really helped me have that word stick. So I think it’s a big deal to put all of your language learning into some sort of real context of a real opportunity.

John: Ok, on that note, what advice do you have for somebody who, for example, lives in the United States, and doesn’t have the opportunity to go live abroad? What can they do to create a context for themselves, so that that sticks?

Orlando: Well, you know what, the nice thing of being an adult learner is you can pretend. You can create those scenarios for yourself. You can put yourself in the situations. You can visualize yourself actually buying something, saying something. I actually think that’s one of the great opportunities of an adult learner; is we can role-play stuff. Where children when they learn a foreign language, they can never really put themselves in a role-play situation. But you see the sad thing is that a lot of people don’t know that. And so they will just take a big gigantic list of words, and kind of keep reading the list of words, and never ever try to visualize, “How are you ever going to really say this?” or “What would you really say in this real situation?”

John: You mentioned about differences between children and adults. Maybe we can go off on that tangent shortly. I think there are many, but I also think that there is a lot in common that people also underestimate. What’s your view on the similarities and differences?

Orlando: You know, I’m not a gigantic fan of the whole critical period, you’re kind of doomed after you’re an adult kind of thing. I also don’t believe, that, you know, sometimes people talk about how easy it is for children to learn a foreign language. But if you look at the amount of energy and effort they really put into it, we’re talking about 5, 6, 7 years where their whole concentration is language, language, language, playing with languages, playing with sounds, trying phrases out, communicating back and forth. There is nothing easy about the way children learn foreign languages. They’re just putting tons and tons and tons of effort and time into it. And so I think that sometimes we sell ourselves short when we say, “Oh, there’s automatic language learning that goes on when you’re a child.” Well, it’s automatic in the sense that you’re doing it every day, every day, every day, every day. But it certainly isn’t without tons of effort. And if we put as much effort into our adult language learning, as what children do into their first language acquisition, we would probably do a lot better as well.

Years and years ago, Lily Wong Fillmore did a great study, it was her dissertation, on little kids that were learning foreign languages in elementary schools.  And she had a great example that kids first socialize, then they communicate, then they worry about form. And when we teach foreign languages, we do the exact opposite. We worry about form first; we worry about communication second; and we get to socialization third. And I thought it was kind of a neat observation, that that’s how kids worry about it. If they want to go play in the park, they play in the park. And that’s kind of their number 1 thing to do. And communication becomes second; form is down the road.

John: Interesting. Well, back to number 3, about schema theory and social scripts.

Orlando: Right. You know, I’m a gigantic believer in the idea of chunks, that we learn foreign languages in little chunks, little phrases, little situations. And we know how the script goes. Recently, I was…the example I often give is that when I go to a bakery in a foreign country, that in the Unites States, I know the rhythm of going to a bakery. They ask what you want; they cut it open; they slice it. There’s kind of a way that you follow the pattern of buying meat, and cheese, and bread at a bakery. When you’re in a foreign language, that pattern changes. And it’s not a language issue necessarily; it’s that I don’t know the rhythm of how to keep the flow of everybody’s activities going in the bakery. So in foreign language, if you know the flow of the dialogue you’re supposed to follow, it helps you understand things.

I was recently in Rio, and when I was in the check-out line, somebody asked in essence if I had a “blah blah blah card”. Well of course I didn’t because I was a tourist. And that was not part of my dialogue. I was not ready for the lady at the checkout to ask me about if I had that card. And I went from understanding 100% of what she was saying to a bunch of garbled noise. Because I didn’t know the dialogue. And I had to have her repeat that a couple of times until I finally [realized], “Oh now I know what she’s asking for” and I could say, “No, I don’t have that.” [For] a foreigner that comes to the US, it may be that when you buy a certain thing, sometimes they say, “What’s your zip code?” Well, you’re not ready for them to ask what your zip code is. You’re just trying to buy some bread. And so you would probably not understand that question because you’re not used to that dialogue. So that’s schema theory. Schema theory is: What are the dialogues? What are the chunks? How do we put strings of words together? How do you take turns and change back and forth, and reinforce things? There’s a pattern that we do that in, in language, and the more we understand those patterns, the more we understand the foreign language.

John: That’s also why I think movies are an excellent way, but once you get…

Orlando: Well, we’ll get to that when we get to number 5 on narrow listening.

John: Good point. Ok, so number 4: input and intake.

Orlando: Yah, you see, when the second language theories first were coming out, they talked about the importance of input. And then years later, they said, “You know what? It really… It’s nice to have a lot of input, but sometimes it never sinks in. And so what really is a big deal, is what they call “intake”, which is input that you’re actually conscious of, that you’re aware of, that you’re concentrating on. And you know, the words get changed. Sometimes they call it “consciousness raising”; I’ve even heard it called “input enhancement”. But basically it’s the idea that you have to be exposed to a lot of the foreign language, but it’s not enough to be exposed to it. You have to be actually listening to it; have it sink in. So your input becomes intake. And so I’m a big proponent of that, that you need to hear a lot of language, but you need to recognize it; you need to consciously be thinking of it. And see if it can soak in a little bit while you’re listening.

John: Ok, so number 5 was narrow listening and narrow reading.

Orlando: Yah, this comes from Krashen’s ideas that narrow listening and narrow reading basically means, I believe, that you get more success out of looking at a small chunk in detail than a very large, gigantic hunk, superficially. And so when you look at my materials, the clips will be 2 minutes long. And then I want the students to really study in detail what happens in those two minutes. I seem to get more out of that than I do watching a 2-hour movie. That kind of runs past me. I understand the movie but I can’t say I really learn a lot of foreign language watching that movie. But if I take that same effort and time and put it into a very small chunk of language, and study that in detail, I get a lot more out of it. So I believe that narrow listening and narrow reading does more for language acquisition than a broad, one time through sort of experience.

John: One thing though I have noticed when I look at a short chunk of material, I do agree that I get more out of it in terms of acquisition, but on the other hand, if I do watch a movie or I read a longer passage, I also can get lost in the story, instead of just focusing on, “Oh, I am learning the language”, which I think has its own benefits as well.

Orlando: When I was in China, it was my first time in China and I had a free afternoon, so I went to the movies. And I watched my first movie totally in Mandarin. And it was kind of fun to go through the experience of, “Ok, how much of this am I going to grab?” Because my Chinese is kind of survival level; it’s not fantastic Chinese by any means. But it was pretty fun to go through the whole movie and just see, “Ok, how much am I going to catch onto? No responsibility here; let me just soak in what I can soak in. I think it’s good to be exposed to that now and again, too.

John: Number 6, then? Which I missed I guess…

Orlando: And the final one is, it’s a fairly old model, it’s called Schumann’s acculturation model. And that’s the one where you kind of lump together all the cultural and social factors that affect language learning. You know, as we’re about things like anxiety, motivation, how extroverted you are, how much you identify with the culture yourself. Do you have a girlfriend from that country? Do you love the movies from that country? Do you love the music from that country? That’s a big, big deal. You know, how much you just are the sort of personality that can just jump out and do that kind of stuff versus how much you just hang back.

I remember I had a friend in Brazil who was one of these perfectionists: “Unless I say it correctly, I’m going to say it at all.” And in the end, he never really did learn the language well because he held himself back. He was so guarded about, “Oh, I don’t want to do it wrong. I don’t want to do it wrong.” That sort of personality that can say, “You know what? I want to enjoy this food, and if I don’t say something, I won’t be able to eat it, so let me say something. I think that girl’s pretty. Let me talk to her, because I want to get to know her. I don’t care what it comes out like.”

Well I had a student a few years ago, when I took them to Venezuela, he was a music freak. And he would go out in the street, and as soon as he heard music in somebody’s apartment, he would literally stop, knock on their door, and start talking to total strangers about, “What kind of music are you playing on your radio right now?” His grammar was kind of backwards, but his ability to get to meet people and to talk to people was just phenomenal, just phenomenal. He was amazing.

John: Do you think there’s any harm in speaking too soon?

Orlando: You know, there’s no doubt that people fossilize. You kind of get to a certain level, and then if you can survive for whatever you need your language for, you kind of stop there. And you’ll see that for people who live abroad for 2 years. And after 3 or 4 months, they kind of stop their progress, and kind of never improve after that. But they kind of are able to use the language for whatever they need the language for. Part of the answer to your question is, “What do they really need language for?” And if you’re going just to socialize, just to hang out, you know, just for informal sort of things, maybe your informal Spanish or Portuguese is just fine. It may be that in other situations you need to have more precise, or let’s say “correct”, sort of language forms. I think a lot of it is not just the language learning process; it’s what are you going to end up using the language for.

In terms of speaking too soon, you know, we have the whole silent period concept where it’s good to let it sort of soak in for a while, and then you can start talking. And I think there’s some validity to the idea that you should learn how to be a listener. Too often when we’re abroad, we forget to actually listen to people, and try and soak in.  I know that sometimes when I’m abroad, I’ll say to myself, “Ok, for the next hour, I’m just going to sit and listen to people, and make little notes about things I hear. And even in languages I’ve been speaking for 30 years, I’ll still have a notebook full at the end of that hour, just because I want to hear what people are saying. So it’s a give and take. You know, there’s a point where you can fossilize, and if you don’t really, really concentrate, and force yourself to get a little better, you’re just going to get stuck there. And I think it takes a hunk of effort, to, when you feel yourself getting to that point, to actually improve and get a little bit better.

So anyway, those are the six items:

1. I think that you have to have a good time on task;
2. You need to learn language within the context of the situation;
3. I love Schumann’s…I love the schema theory of Vygostky on their scripts and chunks you need to follow;
4. I think that input should be more than input; it should be intake, so that it starts to sink in and you concentrate on it;
5. I like the narrow listening concept that Krashen has; and
6. I think we can’t ignore the big cultural factors that go into language learning.

And that’s all six.

John: Excellent. Very, very good.

Orlando: Well, it was fun talking to you today.

John: It was fun talking to you. I really appreciate your time. Talk to you again.

Orlando: Appreciate it.

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For more about Orlando, visit his blog: http://orlandokelm.wordpress.com

And don’t miss his article General principles in learning a foreign language (the basis of the above interview).

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I believe that grammar based language instruction underpins why so many people hate language learning, and fail to reach fluency despite years of concerted effort.

But I can hear the language “prescriptionists” yelling:

“If people don’t study grammar, how then will they ever learn to speak and write properly!?”

I have a one word answer for them, and I will say it in the Spelling Bee style they tend to love:

“Input. I-N-P-U-T. Input.”

So why is natural input the key to languages and not explicit study of grammar? Again, the answer is strikingly simple:

“Language ability cannot be taught; it can only be learned.”

Most schools, educators, and parents have come to believe that they have to “teach” children both native and foreign languages.  This reveals a basic misconception about language, which has been thoroughly debunked by researchers far smarter than I, including Steven Pinker of MIT, and Stephen Krashen of University of Southern California.  In a nutshell, their research shows that human language is an innate physical skill akin to walking.  You were not “taught” how to walk; you figured it out through trial and error.  Your ability to speak your native language is the same. Native English speakers learn to string sentences together through listening input (which starts in the womb by the way!), not because parents or teachers taught them about “subjects” and “predicates”, the meaning of Latin or Greek word roots, or English case inflections.

Ok, I hear the grammar mavens shouting again:

“So if the grammar-based approach to language learning is so ineffective, why has it survived so long?”

There are many reason for this, including ignorance, arrogance, and tendency to stick to tradition.  But perhaps the biggest reason is good old fashioned greed. There is a lot of money to be made selling books, training teachers, running conferences, preparing students for tests, and selling cram school tuitions.  (You’ll notice that many of the pro-grammar blogs make affiliate income through links to grammar books, test prep courses, etc…)

Oh, now I hear language teachers shouting (a group of which I am a member):

“Then what are we to teach our students?“

The main tasks of an effective language teacher include:

1. Getting students fired up about the language
2. Providing a cultural context for the language
3. Giving suggestions about high quality input that fits your student’s interests, ability level and professional or academic needs
4. Learning your student’s native language (this shows that you are interested in their culture and that it is indeed possible to learn a foreign language well in the way I prescribe here)
5. Limited explanations about grammar and vocabulary

Wait a second, “Grammar!?”  “You hypocrite!” I hear them shout.

I include #5 not because it will help students learn the language, but because:

• Most students (and employers!) demand it
• Some people find it interesting (and interest trumps all)
• Many students (especially in East Asia) must pass grammar-based university entrance examinations. Even though it’s an unjust war, you still need to prepare them for battle…

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Why Most Fail in Language Learning and How You Can Succeed

10 Things Your Language School Doesn’t Want You to Know…

A quick look around the web reveals a healthy mix of positive and negative feedback about the product, but there is a big problem with objectivity: the positive reviews tend to be from affiliate sites hoping you click the “Buy” link.  Since I don’t sell Rosetta Stone, I figure I can provide an honest, objective review of the product.

Here are my impressions after sampling the free CD-ROM:

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The Good

• Attractive & Intuitive: As you would expect from a company as large as Rosetta Stone, they offer a well-designed product with an attractive and intuitive interface.  High quality images and sound prompts make the product easy to use.

• No translation: The grammar-translation method favored by many traditional schools and textbooks is not an effective way to learn a language and I was glad to see Rosetta Stone avoid this common pitfall. Users infer the meaning of new words through matching images and sounds in highly contextualized groupings.

• No overt memorization: Although you will “memorize” new words and phrases, Rosetta Stone focuses on sub-conscious internalization of a language, much like the way a child learns their native tongue.  Their method mirrors what linguists call “The Natural Approach.”

• Spaced Repetition: As you go through a level, the same words are used multiple times in new sentences in progressively longer intervals. This helps speed up internalization and prolong retention.

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The Bad

• Expensive: A complete set for one language (including levels 1, 2 and 3) costs an staggering $539.  For that price, you could buy a plane ticket to the country where the language is spoken and get real immersion.  Or you could buy premium online subscriptions to dozens of languages instead.  (See my recommendations below)

• Repetitive: Although Spaced Repetition is effective, it can make the learning process a little boring.  My advice is to supplement formal Spaced Repetition with “Narrow Listening”  (i.e. listening to a variety of sources discussing the same topics.) This provides adequate repetition without boring you to tears.

• Requires sitting at a computer: The number one excuse for not studying a foreign language is “I don’t have the time.” My advice to busy people is learning on the go. Using an iPod or portable media player, you can listen to the target language while commuting, waiting in line, doing chores around the house, etc.  But since you must be sitting at a computer to use Rosetta Stone, most people will probably not get in the required amount of daily input using their system.

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My Verdict

If you have the money and the time, Rosetta Stone is a good choice.  Many companies offer their employees subsidies to use Rosetta Stone, and even allow employees to study while at work.  Check with your HR or management team to see if they will do the same.

But if you are low on money and time (as most people are), I would instead recommend Praxis Language, the creator of ChinesePod, SpanishPod, FrenchPod, ItalianPod and EnglishPod.  The Praxis Pass provides access to premium features for all 5 languages at $39 a month.  There is a free 7-day trial to get your linguistic feet wet.

1. You don’t need a teacher or school to learn a foreign language

There is an important distinction to be made between learning and schooling.  Those who believe they need formal training in a language are making the false assumption that the two are one and the same.  To reach fluency in a language, you need to acquire a great deal of tacit knowledge, that special kind of internalized, experience-based information that you may not be conscious of.  The sad truth is that most teachers focus on explicit knowledge (e.g. facts about the language such as grammar rules), which has very little to do with one’s ability to speak a language.  Explicit knowledge is easier to teach and test, however, which probably explains why it makes up the bulk of school curricula.

2. You don’t need to learn grammar rules

At some point in history, the education establishment convinced society that they needed to be “taught” languages.  This was quite an amazing feat considering that all human beings are endowed by evolution (or God if you prefer) with the ability to automatically acquire any language they hear in adequate quantities.  The problem for most learners (and the reason they buy into the “I need more schooling!” mentality) is that they never get an “adequate quantity” of language input.  The irony is that this input deficiency is often caused by the very classes that are supposed to provide it.  With a focus on memorizing grammar rules, most learners end up spending the vast majority of their time learning about a language instead of the language itself.

3. Tests and grades do more harm than good

Ideally, formalized testing and grading systems motivate students by providing competition and objective feedback.  In reality, however, most grading is far from objective (teachers tend to reward students they like and penalize those they don’t), and tests do little more than demonstrate one’s ability to memorize facts.  Feedback is important, but it needn’t be in the form of traditional testing or grades.  Ask your teachers to evaluate your performance by giving specific examples of things you said right or wrong, not with multiple choice tests.

4. Classes go as fast as the slowest person

The bigger the class, the wider the range of abilities, and the slower the class will have to go.  Schools know that students are more likely to stick with something too easy but will quickly throw in the towel if something is too difficult.  And despite placement tests and numerous class levels, it can be very difficult to appropriately group students by their actual skill in the language.  With finite time slots mutually convenient for all students in a given group, some students will inevitably be placed in classes that are above or below their actual ability level.  Also, placement tests come with the same problems mentioned in # 3: they test one’s memory and knowledge (especially of the written word).

5. Reading out loud does not improve your pronunciation or speaking ability

Teachers often have students read out loud to allegedly “practice pronunciation.”  The truth is that your pronunciation improves only from massive amounts of listening input and then massive amounts of speaking when you’re ready.  Reading aloud does little more than show what words you are unfamiliar with and often reinforces mispronunciations instead of fixing them.  While some teachers genuinely believe in the read aloud method, others just use it as a zero prep activity to count down the clock.

6. Oral drills do not help you learn how to speak; they only demonstrate your ability to do so

Just as reading aloud does not improve your pronunciation or reading skills, oral drills do little for your speaking fluency.  We improve our speaking ability through increasing the quantity and quality of listening input (e.g. podcasts about your favorite topics), and then applying what we have heard in natural, contextualized conversations.

7. You will be encouraged to move up to the next level even if you aren’t ready

This is all about business.  Schools make more money when you buy new books, take level tests and re-enroll in more classes.

8. Your progress reports are meaningless

Teachers hate writing progress reports.  They are usually an exercise in creative writing, not meaningful feedback on your actual performance and progress in the language.  Not knowing what to say (and not wanting to waste time on a task they don’t get paid for!), many teachers will just cut and paste canned comments, or come up with general, vague statements and overly technical descriptions of your grammar and pronunciation problems.

9. You should be the one who chooses the material

Despite being widely used, standardized textbooks are bad tools for a number of reasons.  They build on the myth that schooling equals learning, as discussed in # 1 above.  They lull students into a false sense of accomplishment, where completion of chapters is confused with actual internalization of the content.  And with content written not to entertain but to avoid offending anyone, they are typically boring and sterile.  Interest in the material is essential for effective language learning, so make sure to choose schools or teachers that allow you to choose materials that float your boat.

10. It doesn’t take years to learn a foreign language well if you do it right

If you like the language you are learning, believe you can learn it, and get as much listening and reading input as possible, you will learn the language well enough to communicate in a matter of 6 months to a year.  Most students, however, end up paying tuition for years and years despite a lack of progress.  Students blame themselves (backed up by the bogus comments found in their progress reports), not realizing that the problem lies not in them, but with their school’s materials and methodologies.

Here is 5 top list of apps well suited for language learning:

1. Google Mobile (Free)

In addition to all the other uber-useful and always free Google tools (Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Tasks, Reader, News, etc.), the Google Mobile app takes you right to the world’s best translation software: Google Translate.

Features:

• Clean, easy to use interface
• Translate a single word, phrases or entire webpages
• Search by text or voice
• Google’s propriety translation algorithm produces surprisingly accurate translations

Download Google Mobile from the iTunes Store

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2. Wikipanion (Free & Pro Versions)

Wikipedia articles are a great source of reading input that fits your exact personal interests (in language learning, interest trumps all!)  The problem is that viewing the normal Wikipedia site is bit tedious on smaller devices.  To make things a little easier, Wikipanion repackages the content of Wikipedia into a streamlined mobile interface.

Features:

• Easy to view related articles
• Offline browsing (Plus)
• Add articles to the que for later reading

Download Wikipanion from the iTunes Store

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3. eReader (Free)

Don’t want to shell out another few hundred bucks for a Kindle?  No problem! Just download eReader and view thousands of free and for sale ebooks.

Features:

• Choose from a variety of color combinations to make reading easy on your eyes     (e.g. dark on light in bright rooms and light on dark in darker rooms)
• Annotate the text: add notes, bookmarks, highlights, etc.
• Read with one hand using the autoscroll feature

Download eReader from the iTunes Store

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4. Apple Voice Memos (part of iPod OS 3.1)

Language learners have long known about the benefits of recording conversations to later check their pronunciation and review difficult to understand sections of a conversation.  The problem is that people get nervous when they know you are recording them.  Using Apple’s high quality headphone mic and Apple Voice Memos, you can discreetly record yourself or others without anyone knowing.

Features:

• Ultra cool user interface with retro mic and voltage meter
• Easily email voice recordings
• Trim, rename and classify recordings

Read more about OS 3.1 on the Apple website

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5. Skype (Free)

The amazing VOIP (voice over IP) power of Skype is now available on iPod Touches and iPhones.  Don’t rack up your cell phone minutes; use Skype’s instead.  It’s free to call people when they’re online and very cheap to call normal phone numbers.  You can even text now.

Features:

• Free calls and instant messages to Skype users
• Cheap calls and texting to everyone else
• Syncs your Skype contacts

Download Skype from the iTunes Store

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When someone fails to learn a language in school (and most do), the standard practice is to blame one’s inadequate natural abilities, intelligence or discipline.  While these factors do play a small role in learning and skill acquisition, they do NOT account for most people’s inability to master a foreign tongue.

As Steve Kaufmann so eloquently states:

“In language learning, it is attitude, not aptitude, that determines success.”

Most language learners fail because they hold onto one of the following detrimental attitudes:

1. Everyone speaks English, so why should I bother learning a foreign language?
2. Language learning is difficult
3. The language I am learning (e.g. Chinese, Arabic, Russian, etc.) is particularly difficult
4. I have no chance to use the language in my daily life so I can never learn it effectively

Please allow me to now thoroughly rip each of these beliefs to shreds:

1) It may be true that literally billions of people are learning English as a Foreign Language, but it does not follow that all these people can actually speak the language well enough to communicate.  Most English students spend years sitting in classrooms, taking tests, and memorizing explicit information about English, not the tacit knowledge needed to actually use the language.  And even if your foreign interlocutor can speak English, think of all the advantages that come with speaking their language: improved negotiations, ease of travel, ease of mind, making friends, and on and on…

2) Language learning can be difficult, but not in the way most people think.  Traditionally speaking, the “hard” parts of learning a language include: 1) memorizing and applying grammar rules, 2) memorizing vocabulary and conjugation lists, spelling rules, new alphabets, etc., and 3) trying to understand and pronounce unfamiliar sounds.  The good news is that NONE of these tasks are necessary to learn a language and are in fact the reasons why most people fail!  Language is not an academic subject that can be learned consciously; it is a physical skill that can only be acquired through lots of input in the beginning, and lots of output when you are ready.  Think about it: ALL healthy babies learn their first language perfectly without ever reading a grammar book.  Adults can do the same.  The hard part then is for adults to become language babies.  This means putting up with lots of ambiguity and uncertainty, getting used to being misunderstood or not understood at all, and being willing to make heaps of mistakes!

3) Foreign language difficulty is usually rated by how similar a given language is to one’s native language.  On the surface, this may seem like a logical idea, but it makes the same false assumption that leads to the misconception discussed under 2): that languages are learning consciously.  If one goes about foreign language learning in a conscious, explicit fashion, then yes, the grammatical similarity between the 2 will make one’s task less difficult.  But if one simply surrounds themselves with as much interesting, comprehensible input as possible, it will matter little how close the language is to their native tongue.

4) As Steve Kaufmann mentions in our interview, living where the language is spoken is advantageous, but it is not a condition.  He also adds that you don’t learn to speak a language by speaking it.  This is  likely a very conterintuitive statement to most people, but I fully endorse it, as do most  linguists.  The key task in language learning is listening, not speaking.  And the good news is that you can listen to your target language just about anytime, anywhere using an iPod or your media player of choice.  And there is an ever growing mountain of free, high-quality content available to fill up your device.  For the first time in history, geography is no longer a barrier to learning foreign languages effectively.

]]> http://l2mastery.com/tips/attitude-is-everything/feed http://l2mastery.com/tips/alg-approach-to-self-study http://l2mastery.com/tips/alg-approach-to-self-study#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:22:42 +0000 jf http://l2mastery.com/?p=437 Guest post by Antonio Graceffo

Antonio Graceffo is a martial arts and adventure author living in Asia (check out our interview with him here).

His books, including The Monk from Brooklyn, are available at Amazon.com

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Many people have read about the ALG Automatic Language Growth method of language acquisition. The program is listening based, and is currently being used at AUA school in Bangkok, under the direction of David Long. Since the vast majority of the world’s people can’t travel to Bangkok, students have asked if it is possible to learn by distance learning or self-study. To date, there are no specific ALG distance learning or self-study programs available. Hopefully there are some products coming out toward the end of 2009.

Some people have written in and asked if they could approximate the ALG experience by watching tons and tons of hours of TV in Japanese or Chinese or another foreign language. The answer is yes, BUT only if you already have a sufficient basis to understand 55-70% of what you are hearing. If you are a complete beginner, it won’t work. The TV would just become more noise.

If you are a beginning student, one way of “artificially” increasing your comprehension level is to first watch a similar movie or show in English. This is what we often did while I was studying to be a translator. We would read a current news story in several international newspapers and compare them. Or, we would watch a movie or TV show in English, and then watch it in the target language. I do this in Taiwan, too. I watch a lot of Disney movies, like “Mulan,” “The Incredibles,” or “Kung Fu Panda” in English and then in Chinese. Over a period of months, I go back and forth between English and Chinese, watching them over and over again.

The trick is to choose few enough materials that you get constructive levels of repetition. If you choose too few, you wind up hearing the same story too frequently. You will get bored and tune out. Your brain will stop “guessing.” And when you stop guessing, you stop learning. If you choose too many materials, then it will take too long before they repeat. So, you must find a balance. You be the judge. After you embark on a disciplined program of listening on a regular schedule, then you can occasionally shake things up by throwing a new movie or TV show into the mix.

Just as an unscientific rule of thumb, depending upon how many hours you are listening per day, maybe you want to repeat a particular movie once per month.

People have asked about using the ALG method to learn reading and writing, particularly in Asian languages, which employ different alphabets. When children learn to read their native tongue, they already know nearly all of the words in their reading book. They need to simply learn the reading. ALG would say that most students of foreign language begin reading and writing to early. Reading and writing should be begun only after students have sufficient language. They shouldn’t be struggling with the meanings of words and phrases while learning to negotiate an unfamiliar writing system. In the case of Thai, which has many unique sounds which sound similar to the western ear, how can you learn to read and write these sounds if you haven’t mastered hearing and saying them?

Learning to read and write too soon is one more way of fossilizing mistakes, taking flawed language and making it permanent.

When you reach a point that you are ready to learn reading and writing, you will need to employ a traditional methodology in order to acquire the alphabet and how to actually read and write in say Japanese, Thai or Chinese. In an ALG classroom, the teachers often write Thai words on the board while they are teaching listening, so that by the time the students get to their reading and writing levels, they already have some passive knowledge of the alphabet and have made assumptions about how it works. Studying on your own, you may not have this benefit.

Once you can read, you can use the Core Novel Method, which is how I learned German. You just read and read and read stories and books that you enjoy reading, without a dictionary, or with only occasional dictionary support. Once again, choose materials you are already familiar with in English. And you can go back and forth between English and the target language. With reading, I would advise not reading the same book more than two or three times per year.

Again, you can’t use this method if you are a complete beginner.

If you are a complete beginner, you can use both ALG and the Core Novel type approaches with your traditional learning materials. In other words, you can listen to your CDs and tapes over and over and over again and read your learner texts over and over. The reason ALG would actually steer you away from this suggestion, however, is that ALG is about listening to real language, not synthetic language, designed for the class room. Stories and movies are good because lots of real life situations and language occur in them. Arguably the news or an interview show is best for ‘real” natural language. Interview shows in particular are largely unscripted, so are more authentic. The disadvantage, of course, is that there are no pictures to help you understand. So, an interview show would be only slightly better than listening to radio.

What I did for Chinese was to find several series of materials and buy two sets at the same level. In other words, I bought a complete set of beginning level 1 materials: textbook, workbook, character book, and CDs for both the “Far Eastern Chinese” series and the “Audio Visual Chinese” series. This way, I had more practice at each level. If you are working with your teacher, you can have him or her teach you from one series, while you use the other series for self study. Make an appointment with your teacher once a week or so to check the homework from the series you do on your own.

ALG shies away from books, homework and traditional teachers. So, I am not strict ALG. But I take a lot of concepts from ALG and apply them to my language teaching and learning. In ALG there is an exercise called “Cross Talk.” This is a cross-cultural or cross-lingual communication tool developed by David Long, the man who is carrying on Dr. Brown’s work. In cross talk, two people who do not share a common language sit together and communicate by drawing on a paper, while they each speak their own native tongue. The idea here is that the listener has the visual clues of the pictures, plus body language, facial expression and tone of voice to help him understand what he is hearing. For an English native speaker, there is also the assumption that nearly everyone in the world has some understanding of English. So, this will also aid the listener in understanding.

I have taken cross talk a step further and employed it as a language learning tool, which allows any man, woman or child, who is a native speaker to become your language teacher.

Living in Asia, you will hear again and again that a foreigner is hoping to learn Chinese or Japanese from his or her partner. Often the linguistic development in the couple reaches a point of frustration, rather quickly, and they just give up on learning. They generally choose communication over development, and settle on a lingua franca. More often than not, couples communicate in English. The local, Asian partner, has generally had years of school English, where the foreign partner may have had a few months, or as little as zero training in the local language. So, the couple communicates in English, and the foreign partner never learns the local language.

Obviously there are many exceptions to this rule. We all know numerous couples who communicate in the local language. But most of the exceptions occur in couples where the foreign partner already had sufficient language to allow for communication and growth. Again, this concept of “already having sufficient language” mirrors Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis and the ALG concept that if the language is too far over the listener’s head, it just becomes noise.

If we took a random sampling of mixed relationships, foreign and local, we would find that the bulk of them communicate almost exclusively in English.

The other method many foreigners try to employ is the language exchange. They meet once or twice a week with a local friend and agree to speak an hour of English and an hour of the local language. The problem again is that the foreign partner is generally at a lower level than the local partner. What the foreign partner needs is a teacher. But the local doesn’t know how to teach. And since such a large percentage of the foreigners living in Asia are teachers, the local partner benefits from a free English language lesson with a real teacher. The foreign partners often get frustrated, complaining that their girlfriend, boyfriend, or language partner doesn’t know how to teach.

You give an hour of English to your partner. When it is his or her turn to give you an hour of Japanese, you actually wind up with ten minutes of Japanese, and fifty minutes of clumsy explanations in curious English. I often see pairs of people sitting in Starbucks, with a Taiwanese friend, who has no concept of teaching or grammar, explaining the Chinese language, in broken English, to a Westerner. It is often clear from the face of the westerner that he or she doesn’t even understand the explanation, but he smiles and says “Thank you” out of politeness.

The foreigner then usually looks at returning to school to learn the language. But school has a number of draw backs, such as boredom, inconvenience, and expense. These are the exact reasons why the foreigner quit school in the first place. In the end, many Westerners never acquire the language of their host country, although upon arrival, this is one of the most commonly stated reasons why someone chooses to live in Taiwan, Japan, or China.

To circumvent this difficulty of learning from informal teachers, I came up with the concept of Language Buddies. Similar to a traditional language exchange, you meet with your partner one or ten or a hundred times per week.

If you want to use your traditional learning materials with your partner, who is a non-teacher, you can prepare all of your lessons in advance. Then have your native speaker partner simply read all of the lessons to you, including reading texts and grammar exercises. When he or she finishes, then it is your turn to read. It can be very frustrating to ask a non-teacher to explain the language to you, so just use your native partner as a reader and pronunciation checker. Also, as soon as you ask him or her to explain the language, he or she will generally answer in English, which will eat into your Japanese listening time. ALG, of course, strictly prohibits analyzing the language or asking about the language. ALG would also want you to stay away from traditional language learning materials because they are full of synthetic, rather than “real” language.

For a more ALG type of approach, you can use the Cross Talk Method to tell each other stories,while drawing on paper. When you hear words you don’t know, you just let them go. Don’t ask for a translation. You can ask questions using English, but urge your language partner to answer in the local language. This way, in your one hour of Japanese, you are actually hearing one hour of Japanese.

You and your language partner could plan your themes in advance. This way, you will each be using similar vocabulary. For example, you could both tell a news story which is currently running in the papers, or you could retell the plot of the latest popular movie. You could tell your partner in advance what it is you will be telling, and then he or she could prepare by first reading the story in his or her native tongue or in English. And you could do the same. Find out what your partner is going to tell you, and you prepare yourself in English or Japanese in advance.

What if you are both fans of “Star Trek” or “The Sopranos?” You could each agree to watch the same episode, whether in your own language or in the language you are studying, and then you would go in and tell the story in English, using picture stories, inflection, and body language. Your partner would then tell you the same story in Japanese.

Or, you could just let it be up to the speaker what he or she tells on a given day. This way you add the real element of surprise. The beauty of this exercise is that you are each in complete control of the story while speaking, and the listener is free to listen. More importantly, the learner is free to learn whatever he needs to, or whatever he can, on a given day. One of the reasons ALG doesn’t like textbooks is because the books decide what the learner learns. In ALG the learner decides what he will learn on a given day.

Departing from strict ALG concepts, I would suggest using a digital audio recorder or camera to capture the story. You could listen to it again in your spare time, as part of your daily listening exercises.

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Like Antonio’s writing?

Check out some of his fantastic books on travel, martial arts, language learning and endangered cultures.