By David Barker
Author and Publisher of Materials for Japanese Learners of English
Back to Basics Blog for Teachers

People often ask me how long it took me to learn Japanese, and I normally tell them that it took me about six months. When they look surprised, I add, “But it took me about two years to learn how to learn it.” This is not a joke; this is exactly how I feel about the stages I went through when I began learning the language. Of course, I didn’t really learn it in six months, but I did go from not being able to say anything to being able to survive daily life in Japan within that time frame.

The two years prior to that six-month period were not completely unproductive, but they did involve a great deal of frustration and time-wasting because I failed to grasp a number of key concepts about the learning process. The particular misunderstanding I want to focus on today is the idea I had that learning a language should be “linear.” In other words, I believed that I would study a particular item, understand it, master it, and then move onto the next thing. As anyone who has learned a foreign language will know, that is simply not how it works.

One experience that still sticks in my mind is the time when I was taught the expression shika nai, which means “only.” The problem was that I had already learned another word (dake) that also apparently meant “only,” and I couldn’t understand the difference. To be more exact, I couldn’t really understand why there had to be a difference. “English seems to manage okay with just one way of saying ‘only,’” I thought, “so why does Japanese need two?” In the end, I decided to give up trying to work it out and just use the simpler dake.

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By Tamara Jones
EAL Instructor, British School of Brussels
jonestamara@hotmail.com

Recently I attended a professional development session offered by renowned educator and educational psychologist, Dr. Jo Ann Deak. Among many other interesting things, Dr. Deak spoke about the brain’s physiognomy and how it relates to language learning. It was a fascinating session; I learned some new things and found some of my long-held beliefs upheld by current research. (I just love it when both of these things come out of the same professional development session. Don’t you?)

Windows

According to Dr. Deak, everyone is born with about one hundred billion “short, skinny and naked” neurons in their brain. James Zull, in The Art of Changing the Brain, likens these neurons to a “leafless tree in an Ohio winter” because apparently that’s what they look like under a microscope. These neurons become robust at different times. This means that there are optimal time periods for certain kinds of brain development. For instance, the judgement centers of our brains aren’t fully formed until we are in our 40s. So, the window for the growth and expansion of the neurons in the part of our brains that controls the judgements we make is open until we are almost middle aged.

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By David Barker
Author and Publisher of Materials for Japanese Learners of English
Japan

Most people are familiar with the motto “Just do it,” which was introduced by the Nike sports company in 1988. This slogan struck a chord with so many people because it is simple, but incredibly powerful. If followed, it could be a life-changing piece of advice.

There are many fields in which “Just do it” could be said to be an effective philosophy, and language learning is definitely one of them. However, I think that this motto can be made even more appropriate for language learners by changing it slightly, and that is what I want to discuss in this article.

There are basically three stages that successful language learners will go through:

1) Decide to do it.
2) Do it.
3) Keep doing it.

The first step on the road to eventual success is deciding to embark on the journey. All of us have limited time on this earth, and we constantly need to make decisions about how we are going to spend that time. These decisions have particular significance when they relate to an activity that requires us to invest a huge amount of time in the hope of reaching a desired goal at some point in the future. The decision to learn a foreign language is therefore not one that should be taken lightly. Partially learning a language (and then forgetting what you have learned) is a bit like partially building a house—you may learn some things through the experience, but there are probably lots of other ways in which that time could be better spent.

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By Tamara Jones
EAL Instructor, British School of Brussels
jonestamara@hotmail.com

The Magic of Flying

I am not a nervous flyer, but I really have no idea how a plane actually manages to stay in the air. I mean, if you drop a rock, if falls. So, how on earth does an airplane, which weighs so much more than a stone, even manage to take off from the ground? Of course, there is a scientific explanation for this, but as I strap myself into my tiny little seat on the plane, I am just glad that I can get from my home in Belgium to my mother in Western Canada in hours rather than days.

Similarly, for a long time, I was content with being ignorant as to how learning physically happens in the brain. Just like I can fly all over the planet without understanding exactly why I am able to do so, I had been comfortable teaching without understanding exactly what was happening in students’ brains as they were learning (or not). However, in recent years, I have come to learn that this learning isn’t something opaque or magical. It is physical, and it can now be seen with a microscope because, “[t]hanks to neuroimaging, scientists can now see inside a living, thinking brain.” (Zadina, 2008) How exciting is that!

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By Tamara Jones
ESL Instructor, SHAPE Language Center, Belgium
jonestamara@hotmail.com

In the middle of a lesson about the second conditional, I was calling on students to check a routine grammar exercise from the text that they had just completed in pairs. One student, Guy, shared the correct answer and I praised him, “Well done!” At this, he assumed a slightly philosophical air and said, “Well, yes, it is correct. But this is difficult when it is not in the book.” In other words, Guy was making the complaint I have heard many time from students; filling in the gaps is (sometimes) easy, but remembering grammar rules when one is in the middle of a spontaneous conversation is an entirely different matter. Guy and all the other students who have similarly grumbled are absolutely right. This is usually the point in the semester when I dust off my handy Learning Square.

The Learning Square?

I learned about this depiction of the learning process from Linda Grant (2008) in her talk about how to teach pronunciation. However, she said the chart was not her own invention. Rather, it came from somewhere completely unrelated to English Language Teaching, and is applicable to mastering any new skill in general. Once I get up on my little Learning Square soapbox, I remind students that if they are learning any new skill, it takes time. For instance, if they decided to take up fencing out of the blue, they would go through a similar learning process as they are with learning another language.

The Goal: Unconscious Competence!

The Learning Square looks like this:

My explanation (which I must caution might be a distortion of what Linda Grant said two years ago) goes like this:

• When a student is just beginning to learn new target language (for instance the second conditional), he/she doesn’t know the rules and can’t correctly use the target language. This is stage 1.
• After a while, the student learns the rules, but still has trouble using the target language accurately in either written exercises and/or conversations (stage 2). This is the stage Guy is at, in my opinion. He knows how to form the second conditional (if + simple past + , + would + base), but he still has questions when he does his homework and he has trouble remembering the form in the less controlled conversation activities I assign in class. (For example, If your house was on fire, what one item would you save?)
• The third stage is reached when the student is consistently accurate whenever he/she is thinking consciously about the grammar rule.
• The fourth, final and most coveted stage is when the student uses the target language correctly without thinking about it, or unconscious competence.

Quality Input

Progressing up the ranks from level 1 to level 4 depends on continuous quality input. In terms of language learning, this could mean continuing to take ESL classes or it could mean listening to the radio or making English-speaking friends. Of course, this square does not describe the learning process of ALL students. Moreover, a student might be at a level 3 when it comes to the present progressive, but a 1 when it comes to the passive voice. Also, a progression up the chart is never assured. Even when they receive quality English input, we have all seen fossilized students who never progress past the second level; and there is no “schedule” by which the Learning Square operates. One student may jump from 1 to 4 quickly, while another student might be stuck at a 2 for years. However, the Learning Square helps students to see that even if they can’t master a skill completely within 2 or 3 lessons, there is still hope for them. If they continue to receive quality input, at some point, they may find themselves unconsciously competently using the second conditional.

Grant, L. (2008) Teaching Pronunciation: Meeting Individual Needs, paper presented at TESOL 2008, New York.