Skip to main content
Loading Explore guides…
Language Acquisition Myths · Acedra
Home
Explore
Other
Language Acquisition Myths
Sign in to save
Chat
If YouTube asks you to sign in, open the video on YouTube.
Watch on YouTube
Reload player
Transcript
230 segments
Copy
Hide video
0:12
- My name is Diane Call. I have the privilege of serving Queensborough Community College currently as President. And I welcome you to the Spring 2014 Presidential Lecture. The Presidential Lecture series was begun by my predecessor Edwardo Martí, back in 2000.
0:32
And we have one in the fall and we have one in the spring. In the fall we showcase a distinguished professor or national figure who's work relates to CUNY and its mission. In the spring we have the privilege of selecting, it's a very hard choice, one of our very own faculty members, to speak on his or her research, on topics that are of interest, obviously, to our community, our faculty, and our students. And in fact, that is our audience today.
1:00
And we welcome our community members and our students. Hello. I see you all here. And of course our faculty.
1:09
The selection of the Presidential Lecture is really done by the Presidential Lecture Committee. The members are here today. I'd like to thank them for their contributions to today's event. Doctor Amy Traver. Amy, social sciences. There you are, hi, don't be shy. She's wonderful. Doctor Sasan Karimi. From chemistry, Sasan himself was a Presidential Lecturer. Doctor Mark Van Ells from history, Mark. Doctor Karen Steele, academic affairs, and now,
1:41
assessment, institutional effectiveness and accreditation. Thank the committee very much because they have wonderful work and they do it well.
1:53
Today Doctor Jilani Warsi is our guest lecturer. And he's an associate professor in our department of academic literacy.
2:03
For many years, Doctor Warsi has done research on language acquisition. And in the most diverse borough in the United States, Queens, and at a college where we serve students from 139 countries, and those students speak 87 languages and dialects, this topic is particularly intriguing. So I know that you will enjoy today's presentation. I'm looking forward to it. As you know, you'll have a chance to ask some questions.
2:40
And so we will welcome, please join me in welcoming Doctor Jilani Warsi. (audience applauding)
2:56
- Thank you, Doctor Call. Can you hear me? - [Audience] Yes. - How about the folks in the back? (audience murmuring) Great. I do have some prefatory remarks to make before I start my lecture. I wanna thank Doctor Call and members of the Presidential Lecture Committee. Doctor Traver, Doctor Karimi, Doctor Van Ells, and Doctor Steele, for bestowing the faith and honor on me. I'll strive to the best of my ability to make it worthwhile. Today's topic
3:30
is language and the title of the lecture is: Comprehension Without Instruction. When Doctor Call first approached me and said, "What will you talk about?" And I said, "Language." She said, "I know, but can you be more specific?" And then I said, "Well, I'll talk about some myths, and complexities about language acquisition in general. So there is that intriguing title: Comprehension Without Instruction: The complexities and myths of language acquisition. So to give you a sort of visual map,
3:59
so you can see, too, yourselves in the lecture as I move on from one topic to another. First I'll talk about some myths about language acquisition. Then I will also refer to what linguists call: Poverty of the Stimulus. Also the logic problem with language acquisition. I will introduce the notion of universal grammar, a term coined by Chomsky, godfather of modern linguistics, or father of modern linguistics, at least. Some facts about language acquisition.
4:27
And then I will also discuss some implications for teaching a second language. In our department we have a sizable population of non-native speakers of English. Some implications for teaching a foreign or a second language. And then I'll draw some conclusions.
4:42
First, let me talk to you about some myths. When I go to a social gathering, and people ask me, "What do you do for a living?" I say, "I'm a linguist." Sometimes I get a blank stare 'cause people have no clue. Or I get this typical question, "Oh, interesting. "How many languages do you speak?"
5:04
Clearly, all linguists are not multi linguals. And all multi linguals are not linguists. We do something else, we study language, language acquisition from a scientific perspective.
5:19
Okay.
5:21
I'm not gonna get into this, but I need you to keep these questions in the back of your mind. At the conference, linguistic conference in Managua in Nicaragua in 1986, Chomsky asked these four fundamental questions. And the first one is: What is that we must know to speak and understand a language? What does a person mean when he or she says, I know Portuguese? Or I know French? I do not know Spanish. That's the first question. The second question is: How is this knowledge acquired?
5:54
So if you believe that you know Spanish or you know French, what is that system that you have acquired? The third question is: How is this knowledge put to use? How do you do it? Say you meet somebody at a bus stop. How do you strike up a conversation? Start with the small talk and nice day, nice weather, and then you launch a full blown conversation from there. And the fourth, last but not least, what are the physical mechanisms, what are the biological
6:24
endowments that are necessary for language acquisition? And these biological entitlements serve as a material basis for the system of knowledge. So I want you to keep these questions in mind, okay? I'd like you to take a good look at this cartoon. The child says, "I putted the plates on the table." And mommy says, "Honey, you mean, I put the plates "on the table, right?" And the child says, "No, I putted them on by myself!" Two things are happening, right?
7:00
Mother is providing what linguists call corrective feedback. The term that was used frequently in the past was error correction, but Michael Long argues that if students or learners, children knew that they were making errors, they wouldn't be making those errors. Our students, for example, when they're right, they're not aware of their errors. So he said that we should forego this term error correction, and use corrective feedback. So, the mother is providing corrective feedback.
7:31
What is the effect on the child?
7:34
Zero.
7:36
The child says, "No, I putted them on all by myself, mom. "I know what I'm talking about." There is another myth. The two myths, first, is that children learn languages mainly through imitation. And it's just mind boggling. I've talked to educators, experienced people, parents, and if you ask them a question: How do children learn language? They say, well, they simply listen to adults around them, then they imitate them. So, my goal today is to debunk this very pervasive myth.
8:08
That that is not how languages are learned. Children do not learn languages by simply imitating people around them. And this is just one example. Okay, can you go, yes. Click. So let's look at this analogy, right? The fatal error, even most educated people make is, well, children learn by listening to people and drawing some sort of analogy, and then draw generalizations. Children, let's say a child hears: I painted a red barn. So the child figures out, okay, painting is something
8:45
you do to certain things. And you can paint a red barn. Next.
8:53
Then the child hears: I painted a barn red. So, maybe the barn was yellow or green. So, the child says, "Ah ha! "I could do either a red barn or barn red." Let's try this analogy and see if it works.
9:07
Then the child hears: I saw a red barn.
9:12
The child says, "Okay, daddy said I saw a red barn." So, now child can draw a generalization right there. Except now I can say I saw a barn red. Alert! Something has gone wrong.
9:26
No child has ever been found to produce this sentence, by the way, in the first language. I saw a barn red, it doesn't work. So, the analogy is once again wildly broken. Right, clearly indicating that there's something internal. As you saw in the cartoon, mother did not say, put-ed. So, a good question to ask ourself is: Where is put-ed coming from? Not from the environment. It's not in the input. Obviously it's an internal process. It's coming from the child's mind.
9:56
Children are very biased learners; they're biased. They don't like irregularities in the language. They have learned the past suffix -ed: Call becomes called; talk becomes talked; put becomes put-ed, do not correct me, mommy, please.
10:16
The three logical problems. Chomsky calls it Plato's problem. In the Meno Dialogue, when Socrates is having a dialogue with his disciples, he refers to a slave who demonstrated knowledge of Pythagorean Theorem. Uneducated, illiterate slave. Without ever receiving formal instructions. That is why the term is called Plato's Problem. Plato then thought about children and how seamlessly and effortlessly they acquire a first language. Okay? The first logical problem with language acquisition
10:53
is Underdetermination. What do I mean by this? The child hears: John grows.
11:02
Well, John grows what?
11:05
John grows nothing, John is going through internal growth; John is growing. Then the child hears: John grows tomatoes.
11:13
Completely different meaning. Tomatoes are something that are being grown by human intervention, John is a farmer. How does a child figure out this? The meaning of Underdetermination means, that the input that the child is receiving does not have enough parallel information about how languages work. So when people talk, when parents talk to their children, they don't say, "Honey, John grows tomatoes. "John is the subject, the doer, the agent. "And tomatoes are something that are being grown."
11:44
That does not happen in natural language acquisition. But the child still has a predisposition to syntactic structures that are genetically determined. And that is the claim I'm making today. Let's try something else: John asked Bill to wash himself.
12:01
That's a reflexive pronoun. Wash himself. Ah, that himself cannot refer to John.
12:08
It means Bill, right? But then the child also hears: John asked Bill to wash him. Completely different meaning. That object pronoun him doesn't refer to Bill. It refers to the anafore has a reference going back to the subject, John asked Bill to wash him. And to complicate things even further, John was asked by Bill to wash himself.
12:35
Now what is happening? This himself is again, John. This time it cannot be Bill.
12:41
I'm a linguist, and I'm having a hard time articulating this to you. Imagine the child? And how it processes primary linguistic data? And says, mommy means this when she says, John asked Bill to wash himself, it cannot be John. We don't give this explicit instruction or detailed description of language to the child. The child simply hears it, bombarded by primary linguistic data. And figures out the language. John is eager to please. I need you to pay attention to this sentence.
13:16
And John is easy to please.
13:19
Not the same thing. But if you look at the syntax of it, it's exactly the same sentence, isn't it? With the exception of eager and easy. John is eager to please, John is the subject. He's the doer, he likes to please people. But, John is easy to please.
13:37
He's not doing anything.
13:42
You can reconstruct this subject as seven, it is easy to please John. That's what we mean. For the first part, the first logical problem of language acquisition is: Grammatical input underdetermines our linguistic competence. A child knows, and the claim is that the ability to learn a language is innate.
14:08
You have a biological disposition to language acquisition. Right, language is hard wired. Nobody has made the claim that English is innate. Or French is innate, or Mandarin is innate. Of course, it's the E-language, external language, and then children are born with I-language, which is the internal language. Chomsky refers to it as the L.A.D., language acquisition device, also called the Black Box. It's a concept from the discipline of engineering. You know what goes into the black box,
14:41
you know what comes out of the black box, you don't know what happens inside the box. The processes, okay? So, that is the first one. And I believe I have a video now. Would you clip, can you? Hold on just a second, though. I was visiting a friend back in Boston in another life, and she had a baby who was barely walking. The baby was playing with her stuffed animals. She picked up an animal and she said, "Heavy!"
15:08
Nobody thought much of it other than I, because I'm a linguist. They're like, okay, yeah, the baby said heavy. But I said to myself, isn't that amazing? She pronounced the word correctly. She used the word in the right context. She picked up the animal and she said, "Heavy." Now, the argument is, that even concepts are innate.
15:30
You come into this world already hard wired. The sense of depth.
15:36
With, if something is heavy, something is light. So let's hear from, yeah, let's watch a video clip. In which Chomsky talks about that. - How does a child know that a marble that's in a box can't be near the box? - Suppose I had a box.
15:54
And I put one marble outside the box. And I put another marble inside the box.
16:03
And I asked you, which marble is near the box? Which one would you say? Charlie? - Outside one. - [Teacher] The one outside? What would you say? - The one outside. - [Teacher] Why? - Because the one outside is really out. The one inside is just like inside the box. It isn't even near it; it's touching the box. - Notice that the box is a geometrical object. Let's say a sphere in the geometrical sense, or a cube, then the marble can be near the box if the marble is near the box's surface.
16:43
So this would be, the geometrical object is the surface. So something inside it can be near it just as something outside it can be near it. But we don't develop concepts like that naturally. We invent them in some other faculty of the mind. - The one outside, because the one inside isn't near. - [Teacher] Mm hmm. - It isn't actually that both of them are near. One is near, and one is not. - [Teacher] Okay, now, which one is it? - Yeah. (laughing)
17:13
- The concept of the box that we actually developed is a very obscure one. It includes the interior. But it doesn't matter what's inside. So if the box is filled up with marbles, or it's just full of air, it's the same box. Our concept of box includes the interior but it doesn't care what's inside the interior. That's an extremely abstract concept. Far beyond what any evidence could ever drive. There's no evidence that the child has available
17:40
that tells the child that the box isn't just its surface. And in fact, if we were to invent a science, we would make it just the surface as we do in geometry and physics. What that means is that the concept, with all of its incredible intricacy must be fixed by the mind. And just keyed by some trivial fact about the environment.
18:04
- So, Chomsky calls the roll of the environment in determining a child's particular language, or first language trivial.
18:12
So what you were born in Berlin and you speak German.
18:16
And another child was born in Beijing and he or she speaks Mandarin.
18:21
Trivial, I need you to think about this. It's really trivial. So, Chomsky's more interested in I-language, not in E-language. When the child come into the world already knowing concepts, and grammar. So the first logical problem was underdetermination. The second logical problem is: Degeneracy.
18:43
That the primary linguistic data that the child is exposed to is degenerate.
18:49
Amana go.
18:51
I am going to go.
18:55
Amana Amana go.
18:58
Imagine how hard it must be for the mind, for the child's mind to figure out the word boundaries. I am going to go. I'm gonna go. You wanna eat something, you wanna go? Dunno. What you think? The second one is even harder. Dijuitchet?
19:19
Think about it. And the child says, "Excuse me, beg your pardon?" Did you eat yet? What language are you speaking? I'm sorry.
19:28
But this is degenerate, you have standard and non standard language, He don't know nothing. I should of went to the party. It's mind boggling how native speakers say, I should of went. Instead of saying gone, it's very common. It's pervasive and it's happening. Instead of saying, I should have gone. That's the degenerative part. If the child were to draw some generalizations based on the input, the child would be lost. Daddy said he doesn't go, now Peter says, he don't go. Which one is correct?
20:02
How do I draw a conclusion about the language I'm speaking?
20:08
Another clip here, tell me what I have to do. - General view is that learning language is just like learning, solving any other problem. That we have certain general ways of solving problems, call them mechanisms within our intelligence. We apply them to this task, to that task, to the other task, it's the same mechanisms. One of the problems is acquiring language. There's another approach which suggests that, that in fact the brain is like every other system
20:38
in the biological world, that is, it's highly differentiated into subsystems of special design and structure. And that one of these happens to have a special design for acquiring language. - Okay. Let me translate that for you, please.
20:57
What Chomsky is saying, is basically, using the word learn, in relation to first language acquisition, he said it's a grave error.
21:08
Children don't learn, they acquire. There's a big difference between the two.
21:13
Krashen has also made a clear distinction between acquisition and learning. You'll learn a second language.
21:21
And that is why you remember how you learned your second language. Nobody remembers how they learned their first language. You can surprise me, maybe you can say, it was a cloudy day, my daddy was wearing a red flannel shirt and he used taken, and I have never forgotten that. Huh? (audience laughing) That was the regular verb I learned on August 17th, 1994.
21:41
That's not how it happens. That's what Chomsky's saying: That if you wanna refer to child language acquisition, don't use the word learn. Children do not learn. Language is just like another type or form of biological growth. Let me ask you these questions, and they are rhetorical questions, that you don't have to answer them.
22:02
Do birds teach their young how to fly?
22:07
Does mama duck teach their young how to swim? Do mothers teach their children how to speak? I'm not sure whether birds teach their young how to fly, but I'm sure that mothers do not teach their children how to speak. You saw one example. Another example I wanted to, I was looking for a cartoon, I couldn't find it, but mother is busy cooking in the kitchen; in the adjacent room the child is horsing around, and the child says, "Mom, I sawed the chair."
22:36
And the mother says, "Honey, that's not how say it. "You say, I have seen the chair. "Or I saw the chair." And the child says, "Come and take a look. "I know what I'm talking about." (audience laughing) "I sawed the chair with a saw. "Stop correcting me, mom."
22:51
The third logical problem of language acquisition is: That there's not enough negative evidence
22:59
for the child to formulate a hypothesis about language learning. Right? Mothers do say, "Yeah, you mean, daddy went?" "Yes, daddy go-ed." "Yes, honey, you mean, daddy went to work, right?" "Yes, mom, daddy go-ed, stop correcting me." But the child does not have enough negative evidence. Negative evidence is what is not possible in language. In a language classroom, this is what happens. Student says, "Why can't I say this?" And you have to be a linguist, like,
23:30
Doctor Santoro to explain, we don't say that in Italian. And here is the reason, there is a rule.
23:37
So there's no negative of that. That first sentence, you see, has engendered a great deal of research around the world. First produced by Noam Chomsky, colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
23:52
Now, it's a pretty legitimate sentence, grammatically speaking, syntactically. But semantically anomalous. Colorless cannot be green. And I don't know if ideas sleep, and if they do, if they sleep furiously. Try the first sentence on a child. And the child will probably giggle, say, that's very funny. Try the second one, sleep colorless ideas furiously green.
24:15
The child is gonna say, mm mm. No, don't like this one; something wrong with that sentence. It's just not a grammatical sentence, right? A grammatically correct sentence. That's the poverty of the stimulus. I believe, I'm about to show you.
24:31
- [Narrator] June Levidious at Smith College can show that children know more than we think they do. - Here's a story about a boy who loved to climb trees in the forest. One afternoon he slipped and fell to the ground. That night, when he had a bath, he found a big bruise on his arm. He said to his dad, "I must have hurt myself "when I fell this afternoon."
24:57
When did the boy say he hurt himself?
25:02
- [Dr. Warsi] Audience? - Climbed up a tree. - [Teacher] Right, he did. - When he was taking a bath. - [Teacher] Oh, when he taking a bath. (playful piano music) - In the bathtub.
25:20
- When he fell down from the tree. - [Teacher] When did the boy say he hurt himself? - When he fell. When he fell this afternoon (laughs). - [Teacher] Any other possibilities? - While he was in the bathtub. - In the bathtub. There are two possibilities. He said it in the bathtub, and he hurt himself in the afternoon. That night when he had a bath he found a big bruise on his arm, and he said to his dad, "I must have hurt myself "when I fell this afternoon."
25:51
When did the boy say how he hurt himself?
25:57
- In the bathtub. - [Teacher] Mm hmm. - When he was bath. - When he was in the bathroom, right. (playful piano music) So where's the other answer? When did the boy say how he hurt himself? Why isn't it when he fell out of the tree that afternoon? - It was the tree when he said he-- - When did the boy say he hurt himself? When did the boy say how he hurt himself? Presence of that middle question, how, seems to block one of the interpretations.
26:31
This is not the kind of sentence anybody has ever taught them about. The haven't had lessons sitting down with their parents saying, no, no, no, you misinterpreted what I meant. I meant this. - I would think that the child would have to already have some kind of knowledge of grammar and syntactical structure. - This is the claim. When did the boy say how he hurt himself? - When he was taking a bath. - [Teacher] Mm hmm. - [Man] It's the imitation theory, versus the innateness theory. (dull pop)
27:03
- [Ernie] Now listen, I'm going to teach you to say something very important. It might be the most important word you ever learn. Okay? And that word is, Ernie.
27:14
Okay, go ahead, say it. Say Ernie. (baby gibbering) - [Dr. Warsi] You can see in bold letters, this tree diagram was drawn by our department's designated grammarian, Dr. Shahar. I wanna acknowledge it. So thanks again, Dr. Shahar. What happened there? When did the boy say he hurt himself? So that's the sentence.
27:38
Without boring you with these abstract concepts, and transformation of generative grammar, and movements, and all that, we can see that's the embedded clause right there. He hurt himself. And then you have the question, when did the boy say he hurt himself. The reason you have two interpretations, right? That when could refer to when the boy was in the bathtub taking a bath or when he fell from the tree. How is that possible? Syntactic movement cannot skip potential landing spots.
28:07
It's either the speck of the clausal phrase, there's a trace there. So that when can go to when he hurt himself. It can also go to when did the boy say. Therefore you have two possible answers. Okay, with me? Alright, now let's see what happens here when you insert how. That changes everything. When did the boy say how he hurt himself?
28:31
What happens here? Can you figure out this tree diagram?
28:37
Why isn't the other interpretation possible now? Why can't you say, that he hurt himself while climbing the tree? That's not possible.
28:46
Look at this syntactic movement. Remember, I said that you cannot skip potential landing spots. So it tries to go there first from the trace. But that place is occupied by how. So then it has no choice but to go to the left edge of the clausal phrase there: When did the boy say? So therefore you have only one answer. We can fool ourselves by saying, well, we give instructions; we teach children grammar. But I don't think any child gets this explicit tree diagrams from their mom or dad.
29:16
And say, no, no, no, you misunderstood me, when I said, when did the boy say how did he hurt himself? There was only one landing spot available. Children do this, miraculously. Without a mistake. This research was conducted at Smith College by linguist Jill Devilliare. Those were graduate students taking a course on syntax. Not a single child said, while he was climbing the tree.
29:45
So they figured it out. When you insert how, it changes the whole landscape.
29:53
Okay, so how do they do it? How do you do it?
30:00
Chomsky, father of modern linguistics, coined this term U.G..
30:07
It doesn't mean University of Georgetown, or Guyana, it's Universal Grammar with which all human beings are born.
30:15
Only humans have language. Animals have a communication system. No other species has it.
30:22
Pinker, Chomsky's disciple, claims that we all have a grammar gene. It's coded in your DNA, as it is coded in your DNA to have arms not wings.
30:35
So, language is just another form of biological growth. Developmental stages, of course, you grow. Your biological endowments: your hearing, your senses, your speaking, your brain, and mind as an organ of the brain grows and develops and language happens, language flourish. As a matter of fact, I'll claim that you cannot keep a child from learning language. Beg your pardon, acquiring language, first language. In 1977, Curtis reported on a girl, her name was Jenny,
31:08
in California, who had very abusive parents. They strapped her to a child's potty in an attic for the first seven years of her life. And there was absolutely no communication, none whatsoever. When they finally found the child, Jenny, she was labeled as unsociable, primitive, all kinds of negative adjectives. She could not speak the language. But that is brutal, I mean, I'm not here suggesting an experimental design or a study where you torture the child and say,
31:40
let me see if the child can learn language or not. Another classic example is Ann Senghass, who teaches at Columbia University. This is a very famous study, S-E-N-G-H-A-S-S, students, Ann.
31:53
In Nicaragua, Managua, there were 36 deaf and mute children who were isolated, ostracized, isolated from society.
32:02
No language, no input, no interaction, no environmental input, right? Can anybody guess what they did?
32:10
They created their own sign language. So, some critics of Universal Grammar say that maybe it's not, after all, the mental computation that the need to express yourself, to articulate your thoughts, emotions, and ideas and feeling
32:28
are visceral, not even mental. But those are critics of Chomsky. Chomsky believes, and I agree, that it's the mental computation here. These 30-some deaf and mute children developed their own sign language which is different from ASL, American Sign Language. They had to communicate, so they created language.
32:50
Universal Grammar, if the concept is too difficult, I'll take questions from you. I'll go over it, but in the interest of time, let me show you:
32:59
- What's in here? - [Teacher] Ask him what he thinks? - What do you think what's in here? (playful piano music) - That sounded to me like monster yes? - No! - [Teacher] Silly! I know. - [Man] What do you think what's in here? - Right! - [Teacher] Oh great. - An adult would say, what do you think is in here? And Sam said: - What do you think what's in here? - It's not just a random error. It's not putting the words together any old way. Rather, it's a mistake that's actually a rule
33:34
of a number of other languages. For example, in certain dialects of German, exactly the way you would ask this question is by repeating the what. It just doesn't happen to be a syntactic rule of English. - What do you think what's in here? - He's not born knowing the grammar of English. But what he knows is that languages will fall into these classes and he won't step outside those classes and create some novel language that couldn't be a human language.
34:00
- Okay. What do you think what's in there? Again, there is very compelling evidence that adults do not say it, right? Adults do not say, what do you think what's in here? Adults would say, what do you think is in here. Well, what is fascinating is, and this is a mind-boggling claim when you think of Universal Grammar: The child has never been exposed to German. But in certain dialects of German, that's exactly what you say, you repeat the what. What do you think what's in there?
34:30
The same child, Sammy, who was about two years old, I think, also said, what do you think Cookie Monster eats? Now, to you, yeah, that's perfect, legitimate grammatical question. But think about what goes on at the deep structure. You think Cookie Monster eats something? That something becomes what, and then there's movement. It comes to the front, then you insert do. What do you think Cookie Monster eats? Cookie Monster eats something. Rather complex syntactic structures.
35:03
The child is able to do it rather easily.
35:10
These are some of the myths. And I hope I have convinced you by showing you some examples that children do not learn a first language through imitation.
35:21
There may be some imitation in the acquisition of phonology and that is why people sound different depending on the region they are from. So you have different accents of English. But in general, children do not learn through imitation.
35:36
Klein, 1994, a renowned German linguist, said that parents usually do not teach their children how to speak, language just evolves, it just flourishes. It grows in the mind of the child.
35:49
So the first two probably have to do with language acquisition. And the last one, the one in fact has to do with language teaching.
35:59
Or classroom teaching, teaching either a foreign language or a second language. Excessive corrective feedback can actually impede acquisition. It may even induce fossilization. Now, some of us are guilty, especially the new and inexperienced teachers,
36:15
of believing that all language learners' errors must be corrected as soon as they are made.
36:22
I will tell you an anecdote later on. That's not the case. Second language acquisition in children, this is empirical evidence based on research.
36:34
A very famous researcher, Cummins, 1985. The first two, this is about child language acquisition. So these are children who are learning a second language. English in this case, for example. To reach basic interpersonal communication skills in a second language it takes about two years; BICS. Just, how are you and I'm hungry, and can I get some milk?
36:59
Abraham Lincoln was once asked, how long should a man's legs be? And Lincoln's quick and amusing response was, "Long enough to reach the ground." If Lincoln were asked the same question about language acquisition, how long does it take for a person to become proficient in a language? He was not a linguist, so he would probably not able to, but maybe he would say, long enough to reach communicative competence. How long does it take to reach communicative competence in a language?
37:28
It takes a child five to seven years. To what Cummins calls: Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency in a second language. So, that's our reality. Okay, this is the reality, not hearsay, not a pie in the sky theory. Not just anecdotal evidence, this is based on research. So think about it, children usually seem to be better language learners. For the simple reason they can keep the two languages apart. But when you are learning post puberty, you're an adult,
37:58
you already have a fully developed linguistic system, and now you're in the process of learning a second language, a very different ballgame all together. So it takes adults, it takes about eight to 10 years to gain CALP. Cummins also warns us of the fatal error of labeling these students, adult second language learners as oh, special needs, LD, and ADD. Where in reality, they just need more time.
38:25
There's nothing wrong; they don't have a disability. They're just adults and they're going through this cumbersome process of learning a second language. I just need more time, that's all, that's Cummins. So, look at this, this is a very common practice, especially in Western countries. It's called: Mother-ese. Then the term Mother-ese was changed to Caretaker, because it's not politically correct. Mothers are at work all day. And the child spends time with the babysitter.
38:52
If the child could speak, he or she will tell you, has she not considered the effects of such limited, ungrammatical input? Baby go bye-bye! There are societies, there are cultures, in fact in Samoan culture, in Samoa and other Polynesian islands, adults do not speak to the child. Because they think it's preposterous. The child is not going to be able to participate in a conversation, but they go about their daily lives having a full blown conversation and the baby is exposed to the input.
39:23
In Samoan cultures, Samoan babies, children, they grow up and they exhibit no language deficit. Because again, and if you think about I-language, it's innate.
39:37
What are the implications for teaching a second, foreign language? For those of us who are in the classroom teaching a language as a second or foreign language, what is important is that you replicate natural language acquisition. No difference.
39:54
What happens in natural language acquisition? Children don't read. They don't write. They listen and speak first, until they become proficient. Then you introduce the alphabet and grammar rules. This is VanPatten, Will VanPatten, a renowned authority in second language acquisition.
40:13
The more input, the better. The more meaning-based the class, the better. The more interaction, the better. And all learner production should be meaning-based or communicative.
40:25
And I have seen, in my own experience as a teacher, as a language teacher I've seen an entire class totally dedicated to the infinitive or conditionals. And people just regurgitating and listening and responding: Repeat after me!
40:42
I remember once I took a foreign language, audited the course, there were 30-some students there, and we all had to spell our names 15 times. I don't remember the last time I saw in a natural communicative context, people sitting there and spelling their names 50 times. It doesn't happen. Usually, but what happens in language classrooms is actually divorced from reality and certainly not based on empirical research. Focus on form, grammar instruction should be meaning-based
41:13
and tied to input or communication. So a student says, "How are you?" Roger, let's call this student Roger. Roger says, "I've been working hardly." Teacher says, "Oh, Roger, you mean "you've been working hard?" "Yes, I've been working hardly." Impervious to corrective feedback, the teacher takes it upon himself. "You mean you've been working hard, right?" And the student says, "Yes, I've been working hardly. "Why do you keep repeating me?"
41:45
Grammar, focus on form. If you really are going to focus on grammar, it must be meaning-based. And last but not least, we should watch out what we expect of learners. Learners are on a continuum. They're at a certain developmental stage. They simply cannot produce what we expect them to produce. That's a fact.
42:07
I wish I had a magic pill, seriously, call 1-800, right?
42:13
Learners are at a certain stage. They can only produce a certain amount of data. Or output, if you will. We must be eclectic and prudent in providing corrective feedback to the learner. Professor Rothman, my esteemed colleague and co-author, where are you?
42:31
Once he was teaching a class, and he was explaining a grammar rule. And the student said, "Professor Rothman, "can you explain that to me a little bit? "It's kinda vague-you." So, Professor Rothman jumped on the opportunity. He says, "Do you see, you made a pronunciation error? "You don't pronounce the U and E, just say vague, okay?" Now, he put him on the spot, the student's face turned red. He says, "Okay, okay, it was just a slip of my tongue-you." (audience laughing)
42:59
Professor Rothman says, I must correct this learner. He keeps making the same mistake. I said, what's wrong with you, Roger? Didn't I say? You have to pronounce tongue, not tongue-you. That was the last straw that broke the camel's back. The student says, "Okay, okay, "let's not arg about it, okay?" (audience laughing) Of course, Professor Rothman knew in advance that that kind of excessive corrective feedback does not facilitate acquisition.
43:26
Often times there's a mismatch between the two agendas. Teachers are obsessed with grammar. And the student wants to just negotiate meaning. You asked, what did you do last weekend?
43:38
I go to my uncle's house. Oh, you mean you went? Yes, I go. You mean, you went. The agendas are different, and that's probably why. Okay, I just realized, my time is up, this is it. 40 minutes I had.
43:53
The iPhone can come in handy sometimes, see?
43:57
I believe there are a couple of conclusions. I would like them to watch. Yes, just one more clip. Then I'll be happy to take questions from you. You may have noticed I've shown you Chomsky. He was considered the father of modern linguistics. - There are a number of quite striking conclusions, general conclusions that we arrive at as a result of this study, even with our present partial knowledge. One is:
44:24
A kind of awe at the intricacy and the complexity of the mind and its resources. The structures of language that the child automatically constructs on the basis of extremely sparse evidence. A second conclusion is: That these intricate, subtle resources must be shared across the species. Since the systems of thought and expression that the child's mind develops are only barely hinted at by the experience available, they must be deriving that from the child's mind.
45:00
But the child's mind is the same whether the child is going to be exposed to the one culture or another.
45:06
And correspondingly, it must be that at their core, the cultural products, including language, are very similar, and in fact rooted ultimately in human biology.
45:21
- Okay, so these are some of the conclusions. Again, input may not be sufficient. Merrill Swain, whom I did not quote earlier, but I'll quote her now, Krashen made a career out of his input, comprehensible input hypothesis, I plus one. That, the input must be comprehensible. If learners do not understand what they're hearing, there will be no learning. But Merrill Swain, she actually put the learners in the driving seat, and she said, output must be comprehensible.
45:50
So if you are a second language learner, then you have to take it upon yourself that you are understood by the interlocutors. So there's a different hypothesis called the comprehensible output hypothesis. I've said that already that excessive corrective feedback can have a negative effect. So we should be really wary of providing excessive corrective feedback when we teach a second language or a foreign language. And the focus should be on meaning, not on form.
46:15
If you must focus on form, then it must be couched in some sort of meaning-based activities. Language is a mess. First language acquisition is a mystery. And second language acquisition is a conundrum.
46:33
I believe that the real question we ought to be asking ourselves is: How much of the language is already built in? And how much of it must be acquired through exposure to the environment of speaking people? Thank you. (audience applauding)
47:01
Yes.
47:03
- [Man] I had two experiences in my life with my father and I'm wondering if these type of instances improve somebody's cognitive skills. One day I saw a praying mantis in the street, I ran home and I said to my dad, "Hey, dad, dad, I saw a praying mantis "coming home from school." And he said to me, "Was it carrying any books?" (laughing) And then there was another time where I was riding my bike and I put my foot in the spokes of the bike and the bike spun around.
47:34
And the front wheel broke and I called my dad and I say, "Dad, dad, I foot my foot in the bike "and it broke." So he thought I broke my foot, and he came running home. So I'm just wondering, would these instances as a child enhance cognitive skills in learning the language?
47:55
- They are developmental. Cognitively speaking, of course, that was why, I was talking to one of my friends earlier before the lecture. The mono-syllabic mama and baba, those are mono-syllabic utterances, if you will, are universal, regardless of what culture that your child is born, he or she says mama, mama, mama. And they are based on two principals. The first one is the economy of effort. It's easy to say, mama, mama. Try the Arabic, hah, hah, hah. See how hard that is?
48:27
But babies don't say, hah, hah, hah. They say ma, ma, ma, ma, ma. And the other principal is the ease of articulation, what is easier to pronounce. These instances, sure, of course, cognitively, if the load is heavier it will just take the child much longer. And if you look at the length of utterances. There is a progression. There is this famous Brown's 14 Morphemes, and Brown's Taxonomy, and there is a certain order that children follow. And as a matter of fact, it's very important
48:58
to notice that first language acquisition and second language acquisition, they are different on the surface. If you give it a cursory look, they look two different processes, but they are similar at the core. So, even second language learners also go through the same continuum as children do. But remember, they have to go through those developmental stages. Babies as old as six weeks have been shown to discriminate between voiceless and voiced consonants. They can do it, they have this ability.
49:27
As they grow then they produce those phonemes in the language.
49:31
Thank you, that was a good question. Yes? - [Man] I think maybe it's semantics, but you say learning, I don't know how you define, my voice is loud enough. - I'll repeat the question. I'm supposed to be (laughs).
49:46
- [Man] I think maybe it's a question of semantics but when I teach learning, learning is a change in behavior as a result of experience. So when you say that children don't learn language from exposure to it, that's contradicting; it is the experience. What that would suggest, if it wasn't from experience, then a child that didn't hear any language would learn. And I may not be completely correct, but I think the Wild Boy of Avignon-- - Right, right.
50:17
- [Man] Was found, I don't think he had any language. If you don't have language. So, it is imitation.
50:23
And what you seem to be arguing is this basic question that's part of psychology, nature versus nurture. - Right. - [Man] And there's some people who believe everything's nature and everything's nurture. And you seem to be arguing that it's entirely nature. - No. - [Man] The last thing, and I know I'm gonna run out, and I'm not gonna be able to say, I have millions of things I wanna say to you. - Sure. - [Man] Emmanuel Kant, about 150 years before Chomsky suggested-- - I'm aware of it, yes.
50:46
- [Man] Categories of thought, the idea that our brain is hard wired for certain concepts. But that doesn't preclude the input. So without, I mean, if I held this up to a kid, there's no way he's gonna know it's a pen unless he heard someone say, this is a pen. So we do learn from imitation. - Ah! - [Man] Also, there's the argument of operative conditioning, reinforcers and punishers-- - Verbal Operations by Lennie Berg, that famous book, Skinner's. - [Man] I think you're kind of trying to say
51:18
this is all one thing. - No, no, no, no, no. No, no, if I give you that impression, I apologize. No, I'm not saying, and one should not feel the need to defend one or the other. If you remember my final comment, or the question, if you will, it was: That how much of language is already built in, hardwired? The child is hardwired, comes into the world. And how much of it is learned or acquired, if you will, through exposure to the environment of speaking people?
51:46
So let me just ask you this question in answer to your question: Does the child have to be in the environment of walking people in order to walk?
51:59
I rest my case. (audience murmuring) - [Man] People speak different languages. Everybody walks the same; there's only one way to walk. And actually, if you grow up in a particular neighborhood you may walk with a particular strut. - Yeah. - [Man] Communication, the desire to communicate, that's what Patois and all these languages in the Caribbean where they put together language. So we will create language, but the language that's created is a result of imitation. And one last thing, too,
52:27
which you might-- - Sure. - [Man] Find interesting, 'cause I'm a neuropsychologist. When people have aphasia, sometimes somebody who has aphasia-- - Yeah. - [Man] Will lose one language and have another. So there's different neural substrates for different languages. - There's a whole new field, neurolinguistics, which is marrying the two disciplines off. Remember that there is an assumption of the idealization. You're talking about patients with aphasia.
52:53
Universal Grammar does not take into account those cases. For lack of a better term or what, the assumption of the idealization is that humans are born with the language acquisition device, or the black box. Also, another assumption of the idealization is that we are born with biological, if you will, you wanna call 'em physical properties or mechanisms, biological endowments that are pivotal. Without them, language would not happen. But to refute the theory, that again,
53:25
you learn and you imitate, I've shown you a couple of examples, that is not how children learn language. Think about it.
53:34
Linguistics has turned into a growth industry. There is natural language processing, speech recognition, when you call your credit card company and you speak into the phone there is not another human being on the other side, it's a computer decoding whatever you're saying. So it has turned into a growth industry, but unfortunately, opportunists, publishers who produce language programs and make these horrendous, criminal claims: In Boston there was a language, I won't name it,
53:59
but there was a language institute saying, guaranteed Swahili in 30 days.
54:06
I think I have a more effective way to do that. I'll just show The Lion King for two hours, and learners will say Hanuka Mutata, no problem. Right, do not worry. 30 days guaranteed Swahili, really? Another multi-billion dollar empire I won't name,
54:23
what do you learn? The shirt is red. That's a banana, this is an apple. When was the last time you spoke to your child that way? Look, I'm holding a banana in my hand. Call it banana, the child says, nana, good boy, very good. You missed it by one syllable. These language programs, I have tried some of them. And here is a little comic relief for you. I know I have kept you here, my captive audience, for almost an hour.
54:50
This company has a program out there, and what do you learn? The child is under the plane. Really?
54:58
When will I have this moment of glory and practice my newly acquired knowledge? Huh, some frantic mother. (speaking in foreign language) That glorious moment. (speaking in foreign language) I am so proud of my Spanish now, great! The child is under the plane, really?
55:22
As I said before, don't even buy into it. I'm not here to make a sales pitch, but I do author lots of language programs. After the lecture I will be happy to share. This genius of a man who died prematurely, he has a program out there that's based on gradual interval recall. And it works like a charm.
55:40
- [Man] Vocabulary and grammar. Both for language. - Yes. - [Man] Vocabulary clearly is imitation. Grammar is clearly innate. - Absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely, we have a linguist in the audience, Doctor Santoro. - [Dr. Santoro] Vocabulary, yes, you learn the vocabulary by imitating, but as our illustrious speaker say, it's talking about the syntactic structures. - Right. - [Dr. Santoro] That's what you-- - [Man] The grammar is what's innate.
56:13
- So why, does it bother you, 'cause it bothers me, why is it that in language classrooms, the entire instruction is devoted to grammar?
56:22
And that's all you do for two hours. And then I run into our students, you're taking this? Yeah, I took this, I took Chinese. How's your Chinese? (groans) Two semesters, nothing. Why is that? Clearly it speaks to the methodology that we use in the language classroom. Yeah, so let's say we agree to disagree with each other. (laughing) - [Man] It's semantics, I think. - It is. Right right.
56:48
Syntactic structures are innate. - [Man] And I can see languages-- - Right. - [Man] Being equally vocabulary. - Right. Right. (laughing) - [Man] Coming from outside of you. It's not coming from inside of you. You don't decide that a particular sound is what you want to use to describe this. - That's arbitrary. That's completely arbitrary.
57:13
Those of you who are familiar with the work of Charles Hocket, a famous linguist, says language is arbitrary. Meaning, it's based on opinion of a speech community. Not on reason. There is no logical reason that we call this thing a chair and that thing a table. If there were, now here's some food for thought, if there were to be a logical corelation between lexical items, vocabulary, if you will, and the meaning they represent, the whole world would be speaking the same language.
57:46
Because the mind is universal. It doesn't matter what culture the child is born in. The child's mind is the same. (mumbling) Except (mumbles) yes. Yes absolutely. Any others?
58:00
Professor Rothman?
58:03
- [Prof. Rothman] I had to get one in. Yeah, so you're saying, second language acquisition, you described it as a conundrum.
58:10
The adult second language learner, according to, I think it's Cummins, eight to 10 years is the average to achieve CALP.
58:20
What can we do? We're faced with the everyday pressures, teaching English as a second language. Our students are coming in, they're 18, 19. We want to mainstream them into the college, into English 101.
58:36
What's the solution? - [Dr. Warsi] That's my answer.
58:45
Okay? I can repeat myself again, but (laughs). - [Woman] I would like to say one thing. Now I know why I never learnt. I was in Lafayette High School 100 years ago taking French. And we had what was called dictation. This was a lifetime ago. And I was called up to school because in the dictation there was a word, virgule, which is comma. I didn't know that, and I wrote out virgule, and the professor wanted to know why. There was no connection, there was no meaning,
59:19
there was no understanding, it was all rote. And so, thank you, 100 years later, I realize why I was not a good student in French. And virgule is just a comma, but I wrote it out, but I spelled it correctly. (laughing) - Any others? Yes? - [Man] Hi, I don't know, I'm just a little curious, 'cause the thing about the pen made me wonder a little bit.
59:46
How long do you think it would take the average blind person to learn a language if they can't imitate? - How long would, I'm sorry, repeat it? - [Man] Take the average blind person, somebody that can't see-- - The average blind person? - [Man] That can't imitate. 'Cause if they can't imitate, how many years would it take them to learn a language? - I would say, pretty much, Helen Keller is gonna be a classic example. She was mute, deaf, and blind. And she learned the Braille system.
1:00:08
You touch and feel the words and that's how you speak. She wrote books and she gave lectures. You know, right. (man mumbling) She cannot see, she couldn't see. Other sensory organs that are involved. My answer to your question would be yes. At least eight to 10 years. If an adult, if a person is blind and they start learning a language. But then, there is a problem there, too, if you wait too long. There is a critical period for language learning. And there are different schools of thought.
1:00:39
Some people believe that zero to four is the optimum time for learning a language. And it's no wonder that children are very good bilinguals. Balanced bilinguals, they can keep the two languages apart. Mommy time German, daddy time Chinese, okay, no problem. Two linguistic systems evolve and progress independently of each other, but then post puberty is a very different picture all together. 'Cause there's inter-language, there's language transfer.
1:01:09
While we're talking about errors, learning and imitating, keep in mind that there are two types of errors. One is developmental errors.
1:01:17
And one is transfer errors. And there are two types of transfer errors. If the two languages are typologically closer, then you transfer to somewhere. If the two languages are typologically distant, such as Chinese and Arabic, then you transfer to nowhere.
1:01:36
Those are two types of language transfer. Developmental errors and transfer errors, they all share a common genesis. They both deal with the properties of the second language that the child, is in the process of acquiring.
1:01:49
Yes? - [Woman] Thanks, Professor. You said,
1:01:54
to get the English better, to practice more. As an ESL students, most of the class that I've been in,
1:02:05
ESL students, they're doing the same, repeating the same mistakes that I'm already doing. So, separating native speakers and ESL students, from where can they get the correct language? From where can I listen if it's not from college? From the classroom, from where can I get it? - Multiple modalities, from everywhere. The good news is: You are living in an English-speaking environment. Watch television, CNN, news, listen to music. Read the newspaper, books, short stories, anything.
1:02:36
Grab an American, a native English speaker, and just talk. Remember, native speakers really appreciate when you make an effort to speak their language. They will not turn into an anal language teacher and say you have made five mistakes and I hate you. No, the purpose is to negotiate meaning. So, if you befriend native speakers of your target language, language will evolve, trust me. Language grows; most of it is internal. But as the gentleman, or scientist, pointed out,
1:03:08
that yes, some of it has to be learned from the environment of the speaking people. Are you optimizing your learning? The problem we face, and my colleagues will readily acknowledge this, there are ESL students that live in linguistic ghettos. And you only have them for two hours, four hours a week. And we can't keep them from speaking their native language in the classroom, so guess what happens when the cat is away? (audience murmuring) The mice will play, of course.
1:03:38
And they will play in their first languages. That is our problem and it's a major hurdle for us teachers of language. We're trying to maximize. I can't emphasize this enough, the more input the better. But remember, not just input, input, input, but it has to be meaning-based, and it has to be interactive. Are students interviewing each other? Are they doing formal presentations? Are they debating? Are they participating in a panel discussion? - [Woman] Well you don't think so?
1:04:04
Because in the classroom, we have only the immigrants, a person from my country. I don't have other native speakers, American who's born here and grow up so I can't interact. Just to speak-- - As a peer, you mean? As a classmate? - [Woman] Yeah. When I wanna explain my points, if it's English, I can't use any other language, I'm gonna try my best to explain my point. But if it's speaking my own language,
1:04:36
it's accidentally, I'm gonna start talking in my own language. Like even if I'm not trying to speak Arabic, I'm gonna speak Arabic because it's gonna be much easier for me to get to my point. So, I think, separate immigrants from native, I don't know. - Huddai is a former student, by the way. I had her in my reading class. Professor Lin is actually teaching a hybrid course. He has combined the two populations, native speakers and non-native speakers. I actually went to observe him.
1:05:07
Sparks were flying. I think that's an answer right there. And I am the first person to acknowledge that we are also guilty of babying our students in remediation.
1:05:21
Talking to them as if they were two-year-old, baby go bye bye today? We're going to do grammar, okay? Okay, and they're looking at me like, why are you talking to me like this? (audience laughing) Seriously. I think the burden is upon us to create a conducive learning atmosphere for the students in the classroom, whatever it takes. Interaction, more meaning-based activities, high-impact strategies, projects, formal presentations, that is what is not happening.
1:05:50
And I'll share with you one of my favorite, favorite, favorite lines, it'll only be a second. Bruce Lee, I have admired my entire life. I have his entire movie collections. In one scene he's about to fight this hunk of a man. Really furious, intimidating, and he takes a piece of a board, a wooden board, and punches it and breaks it into pieces, into smithereens. He thinks Bruce Lee is scared. And Bruce Lee has a smirk on his face and he says, "Boards don't hit back."
1:06:21
Try it on me, you will learn the hard way. Why are we giving our students that wooden board?
1:06:28
Why aren't we putting them in the boxing ring with a sparing partner?
1:06:32
If you get my analogy there. I've always loved that line, it's great: Boards do not hit back. Don't give boards to your students. I think your answer is our immediate need, combining the two populations. I would like to see that more and more in our classrooms. You can speak to Professor Lin, he's sitting right behind you. He'll share with you his experience. Yes? - [Man] I just wanted to say, President Cole mentioned what I think is the greatest thing about Queens,
1:06:59
that we have this diversity. - Very diverse, yes. - [Man] But the negative side of that is, it's possible for somebody to live in Queens and never speak English. And that's what I try to emphasize to my students: That if the only time you speak English is in class, and when you leave class, you go home you listen to television, talk to everybody. So I think the burden is on the students. Obviously, communication is to convey information. - Right. - [Man] And it's a lot easier to do it
1:07:28
in your native language. But unless the students make a serious effort to try to learn English outside, just speaking English in the classroom on campus isn't gonna work, you need to force yourself. And what I suggest is find yourself a friend, preferable of the opposite sex that you can get romantically involved with, who only speaks English. (audience laughing) And that's the greatest motivation to learn a different language. - For the record, I'm not suggesting that, okay? (audience laughing)
1:07:53
Did you hear that, students? Huh? Actually you're right. John Shuman, a German immigrant who acquired English impeccably and he's a scholar and is in many books, prolific writer, he talks about social distance factors, and psychological distance factors. Yes, I've always believed that we teachers can inspire students to do their best. But I believe that motivation comes from within. Motivation cannot be quantified on a scale of one to 10, how motivated are you to learn the English language.
1:08:27
I think it comes from within. And it is true that some of our students do what it takes to become proficient in the English language. And they do, and there are others who don't have the motivation, who are there, ah, I'm in remediation, ah, I've gotta just pass this test so I can take English 101. Yes? - [Dr. Santoro] I wanted to assure the beautiful young lady over there, just give enough input. - Thank you, Doctor Santoro. - [Dr. Santoro] U.G. will do the rest.
1:08:51
- Universal Grammar, Huddai, you have it, we all have it. U.G. is there. (man mumbling) There are a couple of schools of thought, though, about Universal Grammar. Most people who are optimistic, and I am one of them, I believe that if an adult can acquire a second language successfully, it's a human possibility. And it's a cop-out to say some language learners are exceptional. I don't know how you come to that conclusion. What does it mean to be an exceptional language learner?
1:09:21
You have U.G., but there are two schools of thought. One believe that U.G. is fully accessible, even post puberty, so you have it. And there's another school of thought that believe that once you're an adult, that U.G.'s only partially accessible, and that is why you reached only a certain amount of proficiency in your second language. Any others, yes? - [Woman] I just have three short anecdotals. First of all, regarding the blind, I don't know if this is true or not,
1:09:56
a person is blind all their life, suddenly regains sight. The counselor holds an apple and says, "What is this?"
1:10:06
"I have to touch it." Reaches out, touches the apple, "Apple." So it's very interesting, through touch the individual knew what that item was. Second anecdotal:
1:10:21
For a course at the CUNY Grad Center, the question was: Which comes first, syntax or lexicon? So I took
1:10:32
the poem Jabberwocky. - Mm hmm, yes. - [Woman] Okay?
1:10:38
With all the portmanteaus and so forth, and I went to people, just average people on the street, so to speak, and I said, "Read this poem. "Tell me what the nouns are, tell me what the verbs are. "Tell me what the adjectives were." And you know what, they pretty much could. Twas Brillig and the slivey toads that geyer and gimble and the waves, wabes, they were able to pick it out.
1:11:03
No need for lexicon, there was the syntax. Okay, my third is, I think it was in the 1970s or '80s, there was a very well-known linguist teacher by the name of John Rassias. - Mm hmm. - [Woman] And Rassias had this method where he would take these college students learning a second language and sit them in a circle and just let them have at it. And he'd walk around, my understanding, he'd walk around the perimeter of the circle, and if he heard a mistake, he would tap them and correct them.
1:11:40
And keep walking. Until he heard the next mistake, and then correct them.
1:11:46
I haven't heard of Rassias in a very long time. Do you have any comments about that technique? Or what happened to his? - You wanna answer? You seem to be familiar with Rassias. (man mumbles)
1:12:04
- [Woman] Former professor of mine, by the way. - The Rassias Method, which is also the oral lingual method in language teaching is based on the idea of imitation. Rassias would come to this, and you will imitate because it's based on the idea of lab of the dogs,
1:12:22
I don't know now, the anecdote. The lab of, it's the same idea, you know? It's conditional response. So he will say the language and you will repeat after him. The problem with that is the retention.
1:12:36
Now, all those methods that our colleague here, my colleague, who mentioned, they're based on that idea. You can
1:12:45
say words in Swahili in 10 days, but you're not acquiring the language. That's the idea of Rassias. That's why it's not popular anymore (laughs).
1:12:57
(woman mumbles) No, the other one.
1:13:02
Dartmouth. Actually, we have a couple of colleagues in the department that were trained by Rassias. - [Dr. Warsi] Yeah. - [Dr. Call] Someone tried to teach me French that way. (audience laughing) I can't say the word I remember, though. (audience laughing) This was an amazingly interesting speaker. Doctor Warsi, thank you. (audience applauding) It certainly is wonderful to know that we learn from our students, so thank you. I agree with you (laughs).
1:13:36
As our tradition, we have a small reception, so you can perhaps ask a question or two with Dr. Warsi following this. I thank you so very much for joining us. You can imagine, we have about 400-plus faculty just like him. So we're really blessed here. And we have amazing students who also teach us. (audience applauding) Thank you, have a great evening.
Here to help you learn
Sign in to keep a private conversation with your course tutor.
Ask me anything about the material…
Sign in to chat