learn a language or two

Guy de Maupassant audiobooks

2011-05-08T11:26:00.000-07:00

GUY DE MAUPASSANT
L'oeuvre intégrale en livres audio gratuits

www.guydemaupassant.fr

China Struggles With English

2011-04-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

China Struggles With English
APRIL 14, 2011
blogs.wsj.com

Mandarin lessons may be the trend in the West, but the push in China is to study English.

Now, two language-teaching companies have given China poor marks for its English abilities. China, according to two separate studies published recently, is distinguishing itself for the number of people studying, not for their skill levels.

“China still has a way to go before it can consider itself adequately proficient in English,” according to English First BV.

Separately, California-based GlobalEnglish Corp. says many of the 11,000 people it recently surveyed in China wouldn’t be able to keep up with a business meeting conducted in English.

The findings show that money’s at stake, of course.

The English grades–and recommendations to teach more English–reflect how companies peddling everything in China from dandruff shampoo to mine-safety equipment and bond ratings are solving problems faster than they are recognized.

(Admittedly, newspaper reporters are sometimes also accused of viewing China’s tea cup as half empty.)

Educating Chinese is a business that has attracted a range of entrants, including Walt Disney Co., New York University and others.

Diplomats like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have taken up the issue of improving English skills in China, as well. It appears to be one issue of agreement between Beijing and Washington.

The EF grading, based on 2.3 million test results, puts China at No. 29 among 44 nations that speak English as a second language, with a “low proficiency” rating.

Yet, EF credits China for pumping up the numbers and “To the extent that China is increasingly driving much of the regional economy, its ability to communicate in English will pressure all of its neighbors to keep pace.”

Indeed, the index is the latest to grade China above the former British colony of India. Likewise, the British Council, in various reports, has shown how China is overtaking India as an English-speaking nation–at least in numerical terms–while predicting the language’s future will be dictated by trends in the two most populous Asian nations.

Premier Wen Jiabao once estimated 300 million study English in China. But according to GlobalEnglish, “most English education focuses on general conversational English skills rather than the necessary communication tools for global business.”

– James T. Areddy

2 languages make your brain buff

2011-02-18T21:02:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Landau - CNN.com

"If you had any doubts about exposing your child - or yourself - to a foreign language, there's more evidence than ever that being bilingual has enormous benefits for your brain.

Scientists presented their research supporting this idea Friday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

As the human body begins its natural decline in old age, bilinguals seem to maintain better cognitive function, said Ellen Bialystok of York University in Toronto, Ontario. This is the case even for people with dementia. Bialystok and colleagues have studied many Alzheimer's patients, both monolinguals and bilinguals. They found that bilinguals were on average four to five years older than monolinguals at comparable points of neurological impairment.

Once Alzheimer's disease begins to compromise the brain, it appears that bilinguals can continue to function even though there’s damaged tissue, she said.

So what's going on? One theory is that language learning is an example of "cognitive reserve." It something that keeps the mind active in the same way as puzzles and games do, and works toward compensating for the build-up of dementia-causing pathology in the brain, Bialystok said.

In terms of starting language learning in middle or old age, the likelihood of becoming truly fluent in a new tongue is low, but it seems that every little bit helps in preventing cognitive decline, she said. And proficiency may be more important than age of acquisition, said Judith Kroll, researcher at Pennsylvania State University, before the conference.

Bilinguals are also better than monolinguals at multitasking, Kroll said. Juggling their languages helps bilinguals ignore irrelevant information and prioritize tasks better than those who only can only speak on tongue, she has found in her research. That makes sense considering that when a bilingual person speaks one language, the other language is still potentially active. That means that speakers of two languages are constantly inhibiting one language in favor of another, which perhaps enhances their overall attentional skills.

Why is it so hard for adults to learn a new language, compared with kids? The answer might not lie entirely in the brain. The social, educational, and other circumstantial conditions are different when an adult gets exposure to language, Bialystok said. As a child, learning a language is pretty much all you do. Adults can't devote as much time or attention to the experience of picking up a new tongue.

"It’s a change we can deal with as adults if there’s sufficient time and opportunity," she said.

Are there any downsides to being bilingual? Babies exposed to two languages throughout pregnancy, or who hear two languages in their first days of life, don’t confuse their languages, said Janet Weker of the University of California, Santa Barbara. The scientific evidence suggests bilingual and monolingual kids have similar language development milestones; it appears that children learning two languages do not experience delays in this regard generally.

There is, however, some research suggesting that the competition that’s produced by this mental juggling may introduce a delay in processing. But it’s so small that it’s not something that would be noticeable consciously, Kroll said. It appears that the benefits of being bilingual outweigh the costs."

link

An 'English goddess' for India's down-trodden

2011-02-15T10:47:00.000-08:00

4 February 2011

An 'English goddess' for India's down-trodden

By Geeta Pandey

BBC News, Banka village, Uttar Pradesh

A new goddess has recently been born in India. She's the Dalit Goddess of English.

The Dalit (formerly untouchable) community is building a temple in Banka village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to worship the Goddess of the English language, which they believe will help them climb up the social and economic ladder.

About two feet tall, the bronze statue of the goddess is modelled after the Statue of Liberty.

"She is the symbol of Dalit renaissance," says Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit writer who came up with the idea of the Goddess of English.

"She holds a pen in her right hand which shows she is literate. She is dressed well and sports a huge hat - it's a symbol of defiance that she is rejecting the old traditional dress code.

"In her left hand, she holds a book which is the constitution of India which gave Dalits equal rights. She stands on top of a computer which means we will use English to rise up the ladder and become free for ever."

Considered to be at the bottom of the traditional Hindu caste system, the Dalits have been oppressed and discriminated against for centuries.

'Unclean'
Although the caste system was abolished when India gained independence in 1947, prejudices still remain, keeping the Dalits marginalised.

Sanjay Kumar: "To live in a city, you cannot survive without English."
The 200-million-strong community was traditionally engaged in menial jobs which the other higher castes consider "unclean". And the trend continues even today.

The discrimination extended to education too with the school system dominated by the higher castes. Even today in many rural schools, campaigners say Dalit children are not welcome - they are often made to sit and eat separately.

And this is reflected in the literacy rate for the community which at below 55% is almost 10% lower than Indian literacy rates.

Mr Prasad says that in the cities, people know the importance of English. In smaller towns, there is some knowledge of its importance. But in villages, there is no awareness that you need English to get ahead.

"In 20 years," he says, "no jobs would go to anyone in India who doesn't know English. If we don't do something now, the Dalits would not be job worthy."

With the temple to Goddess English, he hopes to attract the villagers to language and learning.

The plan, however, has run into trouble with the authorities.

"The administration said we needed permission to build the temple. We've applied for it now, we hope to get it soon," Mr Prasad says.

The foundation stone was laid in April last year and when I recently visited the Nalanda Public Shiksha Niketan School in Banka, I could see the temple walls had already been built.

Dalits make up nearly 47% of the population of Banka which is estimated to be between 7,000 and 8,000. And the English goddess has generated a lot of excitement - women here can be heard singing Jai Angrezi Devi Maiyaa Ki [Long Live the mother goddess of English].

"The stoppage of work on the temple has affected morale," says Nalanda school principal Shiv Shankar Lal Nigam.

He says the importance of English cannot be overstated in today's India.

"It's not possible to get by in today's world without English. Even to communicate with people in other Indian states, you need to know either the local language or English. Since you cannot learn multiple Indian languages, English has to be used as the link language."

English, he believes, will increase the Dalit youths' chances of getting into institutes of higher education and improve their employment prospects.

Roar of ambition
For Satinder Kumar, a Dalit student in the 11th grade, English is the magic key. He believes it will open the door to a better future.

The community believes English is the key to future success
"I want to study English and then I want to be an English teacher," he tells me. "The language will help me communicate better with other people."

For the Dalits of Banka village, English is the only means their children have for escaping grinding poverty.

Farmer Sanjay Kumar knows no English, but he dreams that his one-year-old daughter Naina will learn the language and have a better life.

"It's very important to know English," he tells me. "If you want to be a doctor or an engineer or a teacher, you must know English. If you want to live in a city, you cannot survive without English."

"They say Hindi is our national language, but all official work is done in English. If you don't know English, you are a failure," says farm-worker Om Prakash.

Labourer Sarvesh Kumar says Dalits were never respected and "whatever little we have gained is because of the efforts of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar" [Dalit thinker and the architect of the Indian constitution].

"Ambedkar said English was the milk of a lioness, he said only those who drink it will roar," Chandra Bhan Prasad says.

He says with the blessings of Goddess English, Dalit children will not grow to serve landlords or skin dead animals or clean drains or raise pigs and buffaloes.

They will grow into adjudicators and become employers and benefactors.

Then the roar of the Dalits, he says, will be heard by one and all.

link

Italian Amazon

2011-01-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

The new Italian Amazon website

Anyone buying Italian books from abroad, rejoice and spread the word.

Lawrence Solomon: The failure of Chinese mothering

2011-01-14T20:19:00.000-08:00

You may also want to check out

Barbara Kay: Implications of the ‘Chinese mother’ school of oppression

Both articles refer to another article Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

In retrospect, this is the most interesting article but it's all good educational...stuff. Pardon my lack of vocabulary.

Lawrence Solomon: The failure of Chinese mothering

January 14, 2011

Western parents retain the edge in producing creators

‘Why Chinese mothers Are superior,” the disconcerting-to-many essay by Yale University’s Amy Chua in The Wall Street Journal last Saturday, feeds fears of China’s rise and the West’s decline. Political correctness in the West, combined with dread that demanding too much of our children will lower their self-esteem, is creating a society of losers, Chua argues. In contrast, the “Chinese Mother” tactics that she employs on her own daughters — a no-holds-barred insistence on excellence exacted through endless hours of practice and enforced by brutally shaming children whenever necessary — creates “stereotypically successful kids [who become] math whizes and music prodigies.”

The statistics seem to bear her out — Asians disproportionately make it to elite schools in the West — they represent 5% of the U.S. population but 20% of the student body at Ivy League schools, for example. No one can but marvel at the uniformly successful students turned out by the “tenacious practice, practice, practice” and “rote repetition” that she considers “crucial for excellence.”

But such statistics don’t tell the whole story. In truth, Chinese Mothers fare poorly in achieving excellence compared with western mothers, even western mothers burdened by political correctness.

China’s excellence was once unrivalled — no people on Earth have displayed more genius than the Chinese, who gave humanity a profuse array of inventions and scholarly accomplishments, starting well before the time of the ancient Greeks and continuing past 1000 AD. The Chinese also developed, in the centuries before 1000 AD, a remarkable education system that was based not on lineage but on merit — the humblest family in the most remote village could see its son join the Emperor’s top advisors if he could prove himself in the Imperial Examination, a gruelling nationwide competition. This system of education, which survives today in modified form, helped create the Chinese Mother culture that Chua now espouses.

The brilliant scholar-bureaucrats that resulted from this centralized education system enabled numerous Chinese dynasties to quash their neighbours and administer their expanding lands. But the brilliant inventions that had been the hallmark of China petered out in the centuries after 1000 AD and then all but disappeared. In the absence of competition from neighbouring cultures, and under an education system that stressed a uniform standard, China became an uncurious country that viewed itself as the perfect Centre of the Universe and outsiders as barbarians from whom they had nothing to learn. Foreign travel became prohibited at penalty of decapitation. The Emperor even destroyed the fleet of the great Chinese admiral and explorer Zheng He, who navigated to Africa and may have preceded Columbus in reaching America.

In the last century, China has won only one Nobel Prize, tying it with nations such as Burma, Ghana, Mauritania and Nigeria. Even China’s one Nobel, a peace prize awarded last year, went to a dissident, imprisoned for his desire for democracy for China. Ethnic Chinese outside mainland China who are exposed to more independent thought do win Nobels — 10 in all over the last century — but even here the numbers do not stand out. Americans, in contrast, have claim to more than 300 Nobel prizes, by far the greatest number by country, and Jews lay claim to at least 180, by far the largest proportion by any ethnic group — the fraction of 1% of the world’s population that is Jewish has received almost one-quarter of the Nobels.

Patents are another measure of innovation. While China has been applying for patents at an increasing rate, it nevertheless logs relatively few in the foreign countries into which it sells its technology. Only two Chinese firms appear in the World Intellectual Property Indicators list of the top 50 companies applying for patents in 2009, and no Chinese academic institutions appear in the top 50. Perhaps the most telling example of China’s failure to innovate in important ways is in the military sector, where China is sparing no effort in its drive to become a world power. This week, China displayed its most advanced accomplishment, a stealth bomber that is a copy of the U.S. design. Despite the overarching importance of military might to the Chinese leadership, and high investments in R&D over decades, China has yet to produce a single piece of military hardware that represents a leapfrog in technology. In contrast, Russia, its former Communist counterpart, has had many military firsts, as has tiny Israel.

Practice and rote learning have their limits. While imposing single-minded discipline on children will dramatically raise test scores and technical proficiency, and for most children may represent the best strategy for accomplishment and satisfaction, it can come at the cost of curbing the creativity necessary for true excellence. Chinese Mothers make great moms, as evidenced by the unusual cohesiveness of the Chinese family: Chinese kids clearly understand whatever berating they absorb as the tough love intended. Chua is justified in saying western parents are doing their underperforming kids no favours in failing to confront them.

But Western parents retain the edge in producing the next generation of creators — those whose breakthroughs will cure cancer or supplant the Internet. Here, too, Chua may be pointing to the right balance in her personal life, by choosing as her husband and father of her children someone who is anything but single-minded. Jed Rubenfeld, an American Jew determined to avoid a career in academia, waffled as a student, starting with philosophy and psychology at Princeton, switching to acting at Julliard, then moving to law at Harvard before accepting an academic position at Yale, where he is now professor and assistant dean of law. Several years ago, Rubenfeld tried fiction for the first time, writing The Interpretation of Murder, a book that sold more than a million copies.

None of this was planned, as he told Entertainment News: “everything that has happened in my life has happened by accident, contrary to my best intentions.”

What must his mother have thought?

Read more: http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/01/14/lawrence-solomon-the-failure-of-chinese-mothering/#ixzz1B4gBXF9H

Foreigners learn Hindi to connect with India, cut business deals Read more: Foreigners learn Hindi to connect with India, cut business deals

2011-01-14T20:15:00.000-08:00

Foreigners learn Hindi to connect with India, cut business deals

NEW DELHI: Hindi, one of the official languages of India may soon give popular languages of the world such as Mandarin and Spanish a run for their money.

The emergence of India as a hub for global companies seems to be attracting more and more foreigners into learning the language.

"Foreigners who wish to relocate to India or want to set up their business here feel the need to learn Hindi for more upfront results. Though English is still the business language in India, knowledge of Hindi helps to understand the cultural nuances," says Chandra Bhushan Pandey, who runs a coaching institute that teaches foreigners Hindi.

Pandey, who teaches Hindi to around 40 foreigners in a month points out, "The demand to speak Hindi has grown by 50 per cent in last eight years. The ability to speak and understand Hindi increases the opportunity of enjoying Indian culture and history."

Multinational companies have been opening their offices in India and they encourage their officials to learn Hindi for better business results and connection with their Indian clients.

"Foreign professionals who can bond with their Indian counterparts are very successful here. I teach them words like 'namaskar', 'shukriya' and 'dhanyawaad' to use in their presentations for good results," says Neeraj Mehra, a Hindi language expert based in Gurgaon.

Mehra also imparts cultural training to them which enables them to strike an instant chord with the Indian clients.

"A foreigner who greets you with 'namaste' with folded hands is more appealing than somebody who just greets you with a 'hello' and shakes hand with you," he says.

A number of foreign research scholars and people working with NGOs and UN agencies in India also learn Hindi as their field work requires them to interact with locals.

"I thought English would take me through but I realised during my fieldwork that its a must to know Hindi," says Juliet from Switerzland who works with an NGO in Delhi.

Cecelia, a French student studying in India says she is learning Hindi as she wants to show locals that she is interested in integrating in their country and culture.

The huge popularity of Hindi films abroad is also promoting the Hindi language.

Abuzar, a student from Tajikistan says, "Hindi films are very popular in our country. Thousands watch them everyday and that prompted me to learn this language."

Tourism industry is fast growing in India, with 5.58 million foreigners visiting the country in 2010 and many of them are trying to learn Hindi to make their local experience interesting.

The Indian government is also promoting Hindi and Indian culture abroad.

The Times of India

Francophone students choosing English-language schools, oh my

2011-01-14T20:07:00.000-08:00

Barbara Kay: Francophone students choosing English-language schools, oh my

"According to a study commissioned by the Centrale des syndicates du Québec (CSQ), Quebec’s largest and reliably nationalist union body, since 1997 more than half of the students enrolled in anglo cegeps (Quebec’s post-secondary, two-year college programs preceding university) come from the francophone and ethnic communities.

The study found that these students chose the anglo institutions expressly because they served as immersion centres for gaining proficiency in English. And why did they wish to learn English? Because — prepare for a shock — they felt they would get better jobs if they spoke both French and English, you see. And if that weren’t insult enough to sovereigntists, the study also found that many students of ethnic background were actually more comfortable speaking English than French.

Gaaaa!

These findings make perfect sense to any rational and objective person cognizant of the overwhelming career advantage knowledge of English confers everywhere in the world, but they are salt in open wounds to ethnic nationalists."

Ethnic nationalists in Quebec know that independence from Canada is unlikely to be achieved in the near or even distant future, but if the idea is to gain any traction at all as an issue, there is only one way to whip up public attention. That is to sow fears about the erosion of the French language.

The only problem with this strategy is that the French language is alive and well and thriving in Quebec. Bill 101, forcing immigrants’ children into the French educational stream, ensured that virtually Quebec’s entire present generation of young adults is at least proficient, and most of them fluent in French. Apart from downtown Montreal and a few Anglophone-dense neighbourhoods, Quebec is a totally francophone province.

But ethnic nationalists are not satisfied with mere fluency in French. Linguistically, hard core sovereigntists always play a zero-sum game. They perceive every word of English learned as an insult to the French language and their vision of Quebec sovereignty. In their dream palaces, Quebec would be a linguistically cleansed island paradise — or prison, depending on your perspective — in which the right to speak English would be confined to perhaps a few science laboratories and the lobbies of tourist-dense hotels.

In the current situation, once Quebec youth have graduated from high school, they are no longer bound by any language laws and may choose the seat of higher learning of their choice. To language militants, even though such a choice in no way displaces already-acquired French, the trend is a mortal insult. They would love it if the French Language Charter extended Bill 101 to include cegeps, and force students already in the francophone stream to continue their adult studies in French. This would have the salutary (to them) corollary effect of shrivelling the anglo cegep system.

The Parti Québécois has floated the idea of compulsory cegep French streaming several times, but the notion has never grown legs. Even moderate sovereigntists are not so stupid as to believe that their economic and cultural prospects are well-served by unilingualism in a global economy in which English is the universally-acknowledged lingua franca.

The 2006 census showed that Montrealers who use English more than French at work make more money than those who use French more often. Well, of course they make more money, because the areas in which English is an absolute necessity — business, law, retail sales, entertainment, real estate, you name it — are those that pay more than many civil service and unskilled labour jobs, where French unilingualism is no deterrent to job acquisition and security. The study notes: “Our figures show that young people are sensitive to this reality in the workplace.”

Mind you, there are certain people in Quebec who are unilingual, make lots of money and enjoy lifetime benefits: academics, union leaders and provincial politicians (in most ridings). Strangely enough, these are the same people who would deny all other francophones in Quebec the one sure and easy way to augment their odds for career enhancement and economic security. Ideologues have a long history of eating their young, and Quebec sovereigntists are Canada’s prime examples of the syndrome.

National Post

Waste your life, learn to speak a foreign language

2011-01-09T08:41:00.000-08:00

Waste your life, learn to speak a foreign language
By Anthony Browne

We all know le problème: we are a nation of monoglots, linguistically challenged and so culturally inferior and economically constrained. Only one in four of us can claim to speak in foreign tongues, whereas our chic European chums babble away in a veritable Babel. European governments have lobbied, and the British Government has responded: from 2010 every primary school shall teach foreign. It’s a further good intention paving the road to ruin of our education system. We should shrug off our linguistic hang-ups, and instead of reinforcing language teaching, abolish it tout de suite.
Ordering everyone to learn another language is as pointless as ordering everyone to dig holes and fill them up. The reward for our ancestors persuading the rest of the world to speak English is that there is no need for us to learn what the rest of the world speaks.

All the time we spend learning another language, we should spend instead learning something useful — like economics, business studies, politics, law or computer science. If everyone in the country were forced to study economics as remorselessly as they are forced to learn French, then Britain would be in a far better state (true reform of the NHS would have happened decades ago).

Learning another language may make you feel clever, but it is no longer necessary for speaking with the foreigners you’re most likely to want to speak to: the educated and those working in tourism. Ever regretted you didn’t spend years learning German because of problems communicating with German labourers? I thought not.

I spent three hours a week for six years learning French, but it has proved a total waste of time. I have only needed it on a handful of occasions, and even then it was tourist French learnable in a couple of weeks. I have family friends in France, and have had many enjoyable conversations with our Gallic neighbours, but always in English. I have extended family in Norway and Denmark, but hardly speak either language because I never get the chance: all my Scandinavian relatives speak perfect English.

In contrast to all our continental cousins, Britain is part of the Anglosphere, by far the most powerful linguistic bloc in the world: the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand — as well as countries such as South Africa and India where English is the language of business and politics. Three of the G7 countries are anglophone.

Even outside the Anglosphere you can thrive with impunity as an English monoglot: you can work with no problems in the European Commission, the European Central Bank and countless multinational companies around the world. There is no obvious alternative language — French is only useful in a couple of developed countries and North Africa, and Spanish helps you on holiday in Cuba.

Don’t get me wrong: I understand the smug satisfaction of mastering another tongue, but it is damaging to force it on the entire population. European children spend 15 per cent of their time learning foreign languages by the age of ten — imagine the advantages we would have if our kids did something more interesting in that time than learning how to ask for un café.

The Government is swimming against the tide of history: as more people learn English, the more pointless it is for Britons to learn another language. There are fewer and fewer people in the world worth speaking to who don’t speak English. Already the number of people studying languages at A level in Britain is plummeting.

The Government’s recent announcement that it is no longer compulsory to learn a foreign language up to GCSE is a welcome dose of reality. But it should go the whole hog, and stop forcing everyone to learn useless knowledge that they will never need, and hardly ever use.

From The Times
December 23, 2002

An interesting point of view. And if you think it's dated, here's another from 2010

Why waste time on a foreign language?

Chinese: The New Dominant Language of the Internet

2010-12-26T14:54:00.000-08:00

Chinese: The New Dominant Language of the Internet (Infographic, created by The Next Web Asia)

"China gained 36 million additional internet users last year meaning there are now over 440 million internet users in the country. English has long been the most widely used language on the internet but with Chinese Internet growth rising at the rate it is, it could be less than five years before Chinese becomes the dominant language on the internet."

This has been picked up by numerous websites and blogs as "news" although it's based on dated information from the "Internet World Stats" website.

The Atlantic reports it. The most interesting part is reader discussion.

In the same vein, you might find interesting what Google's Eric Schmidt had to say in 2009 on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years

"Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a radically changed internet five years from now: dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time.

Highlighted comments include:

Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.
Today's teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years - they jump from app to app to app seamlessly. Five years is a factor of ten in Moore's Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.
Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance - and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away. "We're starting to make significant money off of Youtube", content will move towards more video."

I personally think that Mr. Schmidt has lived on the bleeding edge (of technology) for far too long to have an intact sense of reality but there is some wisdom (and optimism) in his words and I'd certainly take the 100Mbps Internet connection. The FCC envisages the wonderful 100Mbps world in 2020: link

Going back to the source for the first Internet domination article, we can glean some interesting information:

Top Ten Languages Used "in" the Web

TOP TEN LANGUAGES

Number of Internet Users by language & Internet Penetration

English 536,564,837 42.0 %
Chinese 444,948,013 32.6 %
Spanish 153,309,074 36.5 %
Japanese 99,143,700 78.2 %
Portuguese 82,548,200 33.0 %
German 75,158,584 78.6 %
Arabic 65,365,400 18.8 %
French 59,779,525 17.2 %
Russian 59,700,000 42.8 %
Korean 39,440,000 55.2 %

I'll add these two as well:

Turkish 35,000,000 45%
Italian 30,000,000 51.7%

TOP 10 LANGUAGES 1,615,957,333 36.4 %
Rest of the Languages: 350,557,483, 14.6 %
WORLD TOTAL: 1,966,514,816, 28.7 %

It is interesting to compare these statistics with those from 1998:

link

Number of speakers (2010)

The Internet World Stats website states that "tallying the number of speakers of the world's languages is an increasingly complex task". I'd say that they have been very draconian with Russian and perhaps a bit too generous with Chinese, Arabic and French.

1 English 1,277,528,133
2 Chinese 1,365,524,982
3 Spanish 420,469,703
4 French 347,932,305
5 Arabic 347,002,991
6 Portuguese 250,372,925
7 Russian 139,390,205
8 Japanese 126,804,433
9 German 95,637,049
10 Korean 71,393,343

TOP 10 LANGUAGES 4,442,056,069
Rest of the Languages 2,403,553,891
World Total 6,845,609,960

One metric I find especially interesting is the number of pages available in a particular language. Unfortunately the available information is not very recent:

Chart of Web content (milions of webpages by language) 2002

Language Percentage
English 56.4
German 7.7
French 5.6
Japanese 4.9
Spanish 3.0
Chinese 2.4
Italian 2.0
Dutch 1.9
Russian 1.7
Korean 1.5
Portuguese 1.5
Swedish 0.7
Polish 0.7
Danish 0.6
Czech 0.6
Turkish 0.2
Hungarian 0.2
Greek 0.1
Other 8.3

link

I Want to Speak Like a Native Speaker

2010-10-19T21:50:00.000-07:00

I Want to Speak Like a Native Speaker:
The Case for Lowering the Plaintiff’s Burden of Proof in Title VII Accent Discrimination Cases
GERRIT B. SMITH

"Discrimination on the basis of a person’s foreign accent has been found to be prohibited in certain instances under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. With the steady influx of non-native speakers of English into the United States, this area of the law is likely to see an increase in litigation in the coming years. However, more often than not, plaintiffs in accent discrimination cases are unsuccessful in winning their claim. Using linguistic, demographic, and economic research, this Note argues that a plaintiff’s burden of proving accent discrimination should be lowered, in order to deter employers from discriminating against accented speakers. This in turn would better integrate immigrants into American society, allowing them to reach their full potential, at least in terms of employment.

“I pray every night before I go to bed, I want to speak like a native speaker as soon as possible"1

1Coming to America—Eye-Opening Experiences Mold Young Immigrants, SEATTLE TIMES, June 2, 1992, at F3 [hereinafter Coming to America] (spoken by Young Park, a Korean immigrant).

Sophia Poskocil is a middle-aged woman and a native of Bogotá, Columbia. She received her high school and college education in Columbia and, though her native tongue is Spanish, she speaks English fluently. From 1989 through 1991, Poskocil attended Hollins College, in Virginia, on a part-time basis. She qualified for a teaching certification from the Virginia Department of Education...Over the span of six years, Poskocil applied to a total of nineteen positions with Roanoke County schools, but was denied employment each time. On March 20, 1996, she filed charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) accusing the school division of national origin3 and age discrimination.4 During the trial, evidence was introduced that the school district based its decision not to hire Poskocil on student evaluations. Students in Poskocil’s Northside High School class complained that Poskocil was difficult to understand because of her foreign accent. In their evaluations, students wrote, among other things, that the “instructor [Sophia Poskocil] barely spoke English, [and] was hard to understand.”5
Ultimately, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the school district, stating that the plaintiff failed to demonstrate that the county
discriminated against her.6 What is disturbing about the case is that Poskocil was not applying to teach a high school English class, which might have made the students’ complaints more relevant, but rather Poskocil was applying to teach Spanish classes.7 Moreover, it appears that no one at her trial had a difficult time understanding her. However, her apparently substantial foreign accent and the school district’s argument that Poskocil’s accent interfered with her communication skills led the Poskocil court to find that Roanoke County relied on a legitimate non-discriminatory reason for not hiring her.8"

Additional information (by me):

Virginia (Roanoke): Minority Discrimination Suit Dismissed (dead link)
"In her lawsuit filed last year, Sophia Poskocil (from Colombia) said that, beginning in 1992, she applied for 19 positions, but the school system never interviewed her because English wasn't her first language. In dismissing Ms. Poskocil’s lawsuit Tuesday, Chief U.S. District Judge Samuel Wilson noted that each of the 19 teachers who was hired instead of Poskocil 'held a master's degree, was qualified for dual or triple certification, had strong interview performances, more extensive educational experiences and course work, or better references than Poskocil.'" (Roanoke Times, 01-13-99, by Michael Hemphill)
[former link http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/news/story44303.html]

"To be sure, there are countless Sophia Poskocils whose stories never make it into the hallowed halls of U.S. courts, let alone into the pages of law review articles.

(Comment: Possibly more deserving ones? The evidence listed in judge's ruling should have sufficed, the negative comments about plaintiff's English were unnecessary. The case however still illustrates well the murky side of U.S. employment practices).

Proving discrimination under the Title VII proof scheme is a difficult task, as evidenced by the discussion of the case above.9 This Note will take a critical look at the developments in Title VII foreign accent10 discrimination cases. I will argue that rapid changes in the demographic landscape of the United States, specifically the increased influx of immigrants from non-English speaking countries, makes combating accent discrimination11 more important than ever..."

"Most immigrants come to the United States because they are searching for better job opportunities and the possibility of getting higher wages than in their country of origin.112 They tend to be younger113 and less educated114 than native-born individuals. Moreover, most immigrants will earn lower wages than the average person in the United States.115

However, some immigrants, such as Sophia Poskocil and Manuel Fragante, come to the United States highly skilled and with advanced education. Often times skilled immigrants find themselves underemployed because of their “lack” of English skills, or as this Note is arguing, perceived lack of English skills due to their foreign accent.116"

"The most famous accent discrimination case to date took place in the Hawaiian Islands. In Fragante v. City & County of Honolulu, the plaintiff, Manual Fragante, applied for a job with the Honolulu Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Fragante “placed high enough on a civil service” exam, to make him eligible to be chosen for the position.74 However, Fragante was not selected for the position, because “of a perceived deficiency in relevant oral communication skills caused by his ‘heavy Filipino accent.’”75

Manuel Fragante’s story is in many ways inspirational. In 1981, at the age of sixty, Fragante immigrated to the United States from the Philippines, his birth home. By all accounts Fragante was an intelligent and educated man. He had a law degree, spoke four languages, and was an officer in the Philippine military.76 Throughout his military career he was invited to attend prestigious U.S. military schools, where he frequently performed better than his American counterparts. During his years of serving with the U.S. military, there were never any complaints about Fragante’s accent. His English language ability was rated as “excellent” by his military superiors. Fragante’s strong command of the English language can be attributed to the fact that all his schooling in the Philippines was in English."

"Manuel Fragante’s positive experiences with his American colleagues made him think about emigrating to the United States. In the early 1980s, his daughter was already living in Hawaii and in April 1981, he and his wife immigrated to the United States. He was subsequently naturalized as a U.S. citizen.78
Not wanting to sit at home, Fragante applied for an advertised position at the DMV and as stated above was rejected for the position. At the oral interview, Fragante’s two interviewers were not impressed with his oral communication skills. Both noted his “very pronounced accent” and felt that it would interfere with performing the functions of the job. As a result, they did not recommend Fragante for the position and another applicant was hired.79 As in Poskocil, the court held in favor of the employer, noting that the DMV appeared to have acted on “reasonable business necessity,” since Fragante “would be less able than his competition to perform the required duties” of the job.80

What leads one to pause for a moment (or two!) when reading the case is that Fragante not only “placed high enough” on the civil service exam to qualify to be considered for the DMV position, but scored the highest score of the 721 test takers.81 Perhaps more importantly, Fragante did not apply for a supervisory or managerial position at the DMV, but for an entry-level clerk’s job. The clerk position “involved such tasks as filing, processing mail, cashiering, orally providing routine information to the ‘sometimes contentious’ public over the telephone and at an information counter, and obtaining supplies.”82 Furthermore, a study of the position was conducted by the DMV..."

"Sulochana Mandhare earned two bachelor’s degrees in her native India, one of which was in education. After she immigrated to the United States, she obtained a Master’s of Education degree from Loyola University in New Orleans and received certification as a school librarian. Mandhare was employed as a librarian at an elementary school serving children from kindergarten through second grade. After one year of employment the school district decided not to renew her contract, stating that Mandhare had “a communication problem because of her heavy accent . . . which prevented her from effectively communicating with primary school students.”118 The district court found that the school district discriminated against Mandhare and held in her favor, stating that she was “eminently qualified” to be a librarian.119 However, the appeals court reversed without an opinion, leaving Mandhare in a state of “untold emotional anguish [and] financial difficulty.”120
Accented professionals do not fare much better in the United States. In Hou v. Pennsylvania Department of Education, the plaintiff was originally from China and had his Ph.D. in mathematics.121 Dr. Hou was refused promotion on the basis that his accent hindered his teaching effectiveness. The court noted that “[t]he issue of accent in a foreign-born person of another race is a concededly delicate subject when it becomes part of peer or student evaluations, since many people are prejudiced against those with accents.”122"

As already illustrated in the discussions about Poskocil149 and Fragante,150 customer or co-worker’s preference arguments routinely enter into the opinion of the courts in these contexts. For example, in Ang v. Proctor & Gamble,151 the Sixth Circuit rejected a Chinese-American plaintiff’s claim of accent discrimination,152 despite evidence that Proctor & Gamble (P&G) appeared to have had at least a disparaging attitude toward non-native speakers of English. P&G’s “Company Norms” brochure at the time stated “that the inability to speak the ‘King’s English’ may be viewed by those in the majority culture as equating to intelligence (i.e. lack of),”153 suggesting that accented speakers better get rid off their accent in order to be seen as smart and arguably therefore worthy of advancement.

Notes:

84 "Interestingly, the linguist, who sat through Fragante’s trial, noted that during the proceedings attorneys for both sides made mistakes in grammar and sentence structure, including the judge. When reviewing the transcript of the trial, the linguist further found that Fragante’s English “was more nearly perfect in standard grammar and syntax than any other speaker in the courtroom.” In addition, at no point in the trial did anyone state that they could not understand Fragante’s speech. Id. at 1338."

(Comment: that must have made him many friends)

"At trial a linguist testified that Fragante speaks grammatically correct, standard English, with an accent that is characteristic of someone who was born and raised in the Philippines. The linguist concluded that a non-prejudiced speaker of English would have no trouble understanding Fragante.84 Despite this, the defendant maintained that the plaintiff did not “speak clearly” and as stated above the district court and, more importantly, the Ninth Circuit sided with the defendant.85 Based on the evidence in the case, the outcome of the case is highly questionable.
"According to linguist Rosina Lippi-Green, claims by accent reduction classes to eliminate accents “is an insupportable claim.” See LIPPI-GREEN, supra note 86, at 140. Moreover, these classes can be primarily found in the New York and in southern States and are frequented by accented professionals. Id. at 140. While claims of completely eradicating one’s accent seem unsupportable, claims of a 50% reduction in accent seem more realistic."

"Linguist Rosina Lippi-Green notes that one needs to differentiate between two kinds of accents, namely a first language (L1) and second language (L2) accent. L1 accent is considered to be a variety of spoken U.S. English. Moreover, “every native speaker of US English has an L1 accent, no matter how unmarked the person’s language may seem to be.” ROSINA LIPPI-GREEN, ENGLISH WITH AN ACCENT: LANGUAGE, IDEOLOGY, AND DISCRIMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES 43 (1997)."

103 "Everyone has an accent, hence it may not be proper to speak of “accent-free” language. When employer’s refuse to hire a person because of his or her “accent”, the employer is “referring to a hidden norm of non-accent—a linguistic impossibility, but a socially constructed reality.” Matsuda, supra note 9, at 1361."

"A number of studies have analyzed how native speakers perceive the speech of non-native speakers.167 Studies have shown that persons with a foreign accent from certain countries were perceived to be “significantly less successful.”168 For example, a Swedish study demonstrated that when the listener was told the accent they heard was from a Kurd, the speaker was perceived as less successful than when the listener was told that the speaker was German, although the same person was speaking.169 Linguists have found that native speakers will often attach “cultural meanings to an accent which derive from the stereotypes and prejudices that the listener holds toward the race or ethnic group associated with that accent.”170 Speakers with accents of Western European countries, for example, appear to be less discriminated against than non-native speakers from less developed countries.171

"Moreover, hostility by some individuals toward accented speakers will likely mean that employers will continue to include customer preference as a defense if courts allow defendants to do so. Perceived problems on the part of customers with employees who are L2 speakers are widely documented. Whether it is at the doctor’s office or fast-food drive-throughs, native speaking customers are apparently “frustrated” more than ever by having to “communicate with people who aren’t from here.”178 However, one should not read too much into these “frustrations.” As linguist Rosina Lippi-Green’s notes, “breakdown of communication is due not so much to accent as it is to negative social evaluation of the accent in question, and a rejection of the communicative burden” on the part of the listener.179 Moreover, this assertion is supported by other research that shows that “a strong foreign accent does not necessarily reduce the intelligibility or comprehensibility of speech produced by non-native speakers.”180"

(COMMENT: While I may sympathize with the cause, accent is often a major cause of "frustrated attempts at communication", or "unsuccessful attempts at communication under frustrating circumstances". The customer may be a short-tempered jerk, employee language skills and accent often result in poor service and plenty of native speakers provide terrible service on a daily basis.)

"178 Gary Strauss, Can’t Anyone Here Speak English? Consumers Frustrated by Verbal Gridlock, USA TODAY, Feb. 28, 1997, at 1A. The article includes a number of testimonials from customers who have had bad experiences with people “who spoke poor English.” For example, a Ohio customer experienced the following at a fast food store: “You’re sitting there trying to order McNuggets. How can someone not understand that? You just get fed up and drive off.” Another unhappy experience occurred when a “barber who spoke poor English” was told to give a twelve-year-old a “trim.” The boy came home with a shaved head. Id. However, it needs to be pointed out that in the incidents listed above the non-native speakers apparently had more than just heavy accents, but rather were beginners of speaking English. Moreover, every day experiences tell us that these misunderstandings can happen even when both the customer and the employee are native speakers."

"...However, whether there is an economic benefit to being bilingual is unclear, at least when your native language is not English. For example, a Canadian study suggests that speaking both French and English, rather than just English, has no benefit in terms of earning higher wages. In fact, native French-speaking Canadian men still earned less after learning English than their monolingual English speaking Canadian counterparts. Geoffrey Carliner, Wage Differences by Language Group and the Market for Language Skills in Canada, J. HUMAN RESOURCES 384 (1981)."

Focused tasks, mental actions and second language learning

2010-10-18T18:41:00.000-07:00

Focused tasks, mental actions and second language learning. Cognitive and connectionist accounts of task effectiveness

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical framework to estimate the effectiveness of second language tasks in which the focus is on the acquisition of new linguistic items, such as vocabulary or grammar, the so-called focused tasks (R. Ellis 2003). What accounts for the learning impact of focused tasks? We shall argue that the task-based approach (e.g. Skehan, 1988, Robinson, 2001) does not provide an in-depth account of how cognitive processes, elicited by a task, foster the acquistion of new linguistic elements. We shall then review the typologies of cognitive processes derived from research on learning strategies (Chamot & O'Mally, 1994), from the involvement load hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001), from the depth of processing hypothesis (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) and from connectionism (e.g. Broeder & Plunkett, 1997; N. Ellis, 2003). The combined insight of these typologies form the basis of the multi-feature hypothesis, which predicts that retention and ease of activation of new linguistic items are improved by mental actions which involve a wide variety of different features, simultaneously and frequently. A number of implications for future research shall be discussed.

The Whats, Whys, Hows and Whos of Content-Based Instruction

2010-10-18T18:06:00.000-07:00

The Whats, Whys, Hows and Whos of Content-Based Instructionin Second/Foreign Language Education
MARÍA DUEÑAS
University of Murcia

ABSTRACT

"As an instructional practice in second and foreign language education, content-based instruction is not a fully revolutionary paradigm, but a spin-off approach which derives from the evolution of Communicative Language Teaching. Sharing with CLT the same fundamental principles, CBI bases its idiosyncrasy on promoting the use of subject matter for second/foreign language teaching purposes. This article aims at exploring the nature and scope of the content-based methodological framework —the whats—, the theoretical foundations that support it —the whys—, and the different prototype models for application in compliance with parameters such as institutional requirements, educational level, and the particular nature and object of instruction
—the hows. Additionally, it will also undertake a review of a copious number of references selected from the existing literature, mostly contributed by researchers and experienced practitioners in the field —the whos.

The language pedagogy arena can by no means be conceived nowadays without “the very robust contribution of communicative methodology to the language teaching community” (Pica, 2000: 4). Although some other alternative approaches have emerged in recent years —such as the lexical approach (Lewis, 1993) and the context approach (Bax, 2003)—, it is commonly agreed that the fundamentals of communicative language teaching (hereafter CTL) have remained healthily operational for the past three decades. In line with this, Richards (2002: 5) states that CLT “has survived into the new millennium. Because it refers to a diverse set of rather general and uncontroversial principles, Communicative Language Teaching can be interpreted in many different ways and used to support a wide variety of classroom procedures”.
According to communicative principles, attaining communicative competence that would
allow learners to operate effectively in the new language was set as the main goal of instruction. At the same time, using the language to communicate was seen as the best way to learn it. Under this canon, meaningful communication became both the target to reach and the medium to do so: CLT therefore came to refer to both aims and processes in language teaching and learning.

Communicative Language Teaching has spawned a number of off-shoots that share the same basic set of principles, but which spell out philosophical details or envision instructional practices in somewhat diverse ways. These CLT spin-off approaches include The Natural Approach, Cooperative Language Learning, Content-Based Teaching, and Task-Based Teaching. Rodgers (2001: 2)

Content-based approaches suggest that optimal conditions for learning a second/foreign language occur when both the target language and some meaningful content are integrated in the classroom, the language therefore being both an immediate object of study in itself, and a medium for learning a particular subject matter. In content-based language teaching, therefore, teachers use content topics rather than grammar rules, vocabulary spheres, operative functions or contextual situations as the framework for instruction...

Leaver and Stryker (1989: 270) define CBI as an instructional approach in which “language proficiency is achieved by shifting the focus of the course from the learning of language per se to the learning of subject matter”. Short (1993: 629), for her part, states that “In content-based instruction, language teachers use content topics, rather than grammar rules or vocabulary lists, as the scaffolding for instruction”.

As for the question of what qualifies as content in CBI, it is very common for it to be some kind of subject matter related to the students’ own academic curriculum in primary, secondary or tertiary education. The second or foreign language can be consequently used as the medium of instruction for literature, history, mathematics, science, social studies, or any other academic subject at any educational context or level. Nevertheless, this is not the only option available for, as some authors suggest, the content “. . . needs not be academic; it can include any topic, theme, or non-language issue of interest or importance to the learners” (Genesee, 1994: 3).

Regarding second language acquisition research, some authors (among others Krashen,
1984; Savignon, 1983; Snow, 1993; Wesche, 1993) have suggested that (. . .) a second language is most successfully acquired when the conditions mirror those present in first language acquisition, that is, when the focus of instruction is on meaning rather than on form; when the language input is at or just above the competence of the student, and when there is sufficient opportunity for students to engage in meaningful use of that language in a relatively anxiety-free environment. Dupuy (2000: 206) A major source of support for CBI derives from the work of some researchers in the area of SLA, particularly from the postulates of Krashen and Swain.

In extremely abridged terms, the theories of Krashen (1982, 1984, 1895) claim that second language acquisition occurs when the learner receives comprehensible input, not when he or she is forced to memorize vocabulary or manipulate language by means of batteries of grammar exercises.

In addition to receiving comprehensible input, researchers such as Swain (1985, 1993)
support that, in order for learners to develop communicative competence, they must also have the opportunity of using the new language productively, both orally and in writing. In line with this, scope to produce comprehensible and coherent output is constantly offered in CBI, as students are systematically pushed to produce language that is appropriate in terms of both content and language.

The appropriateness of grammar exploitation in CBI is reviewed in detail by Brinton and Holten (2001) by examining the different arguments and counter-arguments regarding its pertinence within the approach. The conclusion reached is that grammar instruction is optimally compatible with CBI methodology...

As extensive reading is an integral part of CBI, some findings in extensive reading
research have also claimed the benefits of this methodological approach. Studies in the area provide evidence that reading of coherent extended materials promotes language development and content learning. Elley (1991) has supplied sound evidence that second and foreign language learners who practice extensive reading across a variety of topics increase their language abilities in the four basic skills, expand their vocabulary, and acquire greater content knowledge and higher motivation.

Cognitive psychology reveals that when students are exposed to coherent and meaningful information, and when they have opportunities to elaborate the information, their linkages are more complex and recall is better (Anderson, 1990). Moreover, research in learning theory (Anderson, 1993) reinforces teaching approaches which combine the development of language and content knowledge, and practice in using that knowledge.

Motivation and interest research has found out that “motivation and interest come, in part, from the recognition that (1) one is actually learning and that (2) one is learning something valuable and challenging that justifies the effort” (Dupuy, 2000: 207). In line with this, CBI attempts to respond to the needs and interests of learners by focusing either on subject matter that is related to their own pedagogical or academic needs, or on content spheres which are associated with the students’ cognitive and affective preferences. Research claims as well that those students who are more motivated, who develop an interest in learning aims and practices, and who see themselves as capable and successful students, learn more and obtain better results (Alexander et al., 1994; Tobias, 1994; Krapp et al., 1992). Furthermore, according to these authors, students with high levels of motivation make more sophisticated elaborations with learning material, increase connections among content information, and are able to recall information more easily and better..."

Learning from implicit learning literature

2010-10-18T17:55:00.000-07:00

Learning from implicit learning literature: Comment on Shea, Wulf, Whitacre, and Park (2001)

Pierre Perruchet, Stephanie Chambaron, and Carole Ferrel-Chapus
University of Burgundy, Dijon, France

"In their analysis of complex motor skill learning, Shea, Wulf, Whitacre, and Park (2001) have overlooked one of the most robust conclusions of the experimental studies on implicit learning conducted during the last decade—namely that participants usually learn things that are different from those that the experimenter expected them to learn."

(Comment: that's perhaps one of the strongest points in favor of implicit learning)

"We show that the available literature on implicit learning strongly suggests that the improved performance in Shea et al.’s Experiments 1 and 2 (and similar earlier experiments, e.g., Wulf & Schmidt, 1997) was due to the exploitation of regularities in the target pattern different from those on which the postexperimental interview focused. This rules out the conclusions drawn from the failure of this interview to reveal any explicit knowledge about the task structure on the part of the participants. Similarly, because the information about the task structure provided to an instructed group of participants in Shea et al.’s Experiment 2 did not concern the regularities presumably exploited by the standard, so-called implicit, group, Shea et al.’s claim that explicit knowledge may be less effective than implicit knowledge is misleading."

The neural basis of lexicon and grammar in first and second language

2010-10-18T17:17:00.000-07:00

The neural basis of lexicon and grammar in first and second language: the declarative/procedural model
Michael T. Ullman

Also mentioned here
Acquisition vs. learning and physiology of second language acquisition were mentioned here

Another Ullman study, Contributions of memory circuits to language: here

Abstract

Theoretical and empirical aspects of the neural bases of the mental lexicon and the mental grammar in first and second language (L1 and L2) are discussed. It is argued that in L1, the learning, representation, and processing of lexicon and grammar depend on two well-studied brain memory systems. According to the declarative/procedural model, lexical memory depends upon declarative memory, which is rooted in temporal lobe structures, and has been implicated in the learning and use of fact and event knowledge. Aspects of grammar are subserved by procedural memory, which is rooted in left frontal/basal-ganglia structures, and has been implicated in the acquisition and expression of motor and cognitive skills and habits. This view is supported by psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic evidence. In contrast, linguistic forms whose grammatical computation depends upon procedural memory in L1 are posited to be largely dependent upon declarative/lexical memory in L2. They may be either memorized or constructed by explicit rules learned in declarative memory. Thus in L2, such linguistic forms should be less dependent on procedural memory, and more dependent on declarative memory, than in L1. Moreover, this shift to declarative memory is expected to increase with increasing age of exposure to L2, and with less experience (practice) with the language, which is predicted to improve the learning of grammatical rules by procedural memory. A retrospective examination of lesion, neuroimaging, and electrophysiological studies investigating the neural bases of L2 is presented. It is argued that the data from these studies support the predictions of the declarative/procedural model.

Age Effects in Second Language Acquisition

2010-10-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

Age Effects in Second Language Acquisition : Overview
Rieko Matsuoka, Ian Smith

Abstract Age has been regarded as an important factor in acquiring second languages successfully as well as in acquiring first languages. In this review article, previous studies regarding age and language acquisition are examined, and the ways in which age may affect the process of acquiring a second language are discussed. For instance, some previous research（ e.g., Johnson & Newport, 1989） evidenced the strong negative correlation（r > |－.7|） between age of acquisition/arrival and accuracy or native-like proficiency, which means the younger learners are, the more native-like they become. This correlation supports the critical period hypothesis. The focus of this study is on examining whether the critical period hypothesis
in first language acquisition is valid in second language acquisition. Some studies have revealed that adult learners whose age of acquisition/arrival is after puberty are not successful in acquiring a native-like proficiency in a second language, which again supports the critical period hypothesis; whilst others have shown cases where adult learners reached a native-like proficiency, thus refuting the critical period hypothesis. Finally, some pedagogical implications are drawn, using previous interdisciplinary studies in areas such as neuropsychology and phonology. These implications may help adult learners wanting to enhance their proficiency in a second language.

Second language acquisition researchers differ over when the critical period/sensitive period comes to an end. In first language acquisition research, as Lenneberg（ 1967） posits, the critical period ends at puberty, and humans are believed to fail to acquire a first language in cases where they are unable to expose
themselves to a human language before puberty, which is illustrated by Genie’s case in some pieces of literature（ e.g. Brown, 1968; Jones, 1995）. In second language acquisition, some researchers（ e.g. Birdsong, 2006, Birdsong & Park, In Press） claim the cutting-off age should be at puberty or at 12 years of age, the same as in first language acquisition. However, others postulate a younger age such as six years old（ e.g. Long, 1990） or an older one such as 18 years old（ e.g. Bialystok &
Hakuta, 1994） as the terminal point of the critical period/sensitive period, depending on the focal area of acquisition, i.e., whether in phonology/pronunciation（ in the younger case） or mophosyntax/grammar（ in the older case).

Different in character from first language acquisition, which humans undergo unconsciously, second language acquisition becomes more difficult and is rarely entirely successful after a certain period, i.e., the critical period/sensitive period. Selinker （1972） named this phenomenon fossilization. Many second language learners fail to reach target-language competence and establish their own internalized rule system, which is called interlanguage（ Selinker, 1972）. Ellis（ 1994） suggests that age is one of the internal factors of fossilization, arguing that
learners reach a critical age when their brains lose plasticity and certain linguistic features cannot be mastered.

Ellis（ 1994, p. 494） consolidated his research into age and second language acquisition and made proposals in six areas – in （a） sensory acuity,（ b） neurological factors,（ c） affectivemotivational factors,（ d） cognitive factors,（ e） input, and（ f） storage. In terms of sensory acuity, children or younger learners
are better in their ability to perceive and segment sounds in a second language. This leads to more native-like pronunciation among younger learners. Neurologically, loss of plasticity or lateralization and cerebral maturation, which occur at certain
ages, have been proved to affect learners’ abilities to acquire both pronunciation and grammar. Certain ages are the cuttingoff points for the so-called ‘critical period’ or ‘sensitive period’. Therefore, neurological structure may affect both pronunciation and grammar. Regarding affective and motivational factors, child learners are, in general, more strongly motivated to communicate with native speakers and to integrate culturally because they are less conscious and suffer less from anxiety about communicating in a second language. In cognitive areas, points for the so-called ‘critical period’ or ‘sensitive period’. Therefore, neurological structure may affect both pronunciation and grammar. Regarding affective and motivational factors, child learners are, in general, more strongly motivated to
communicate with native speakers and to integrate culturally because they are less conscious and suffer less from anxiety about communicating in a second language. In cognitive areas, children use their language acquisition device, while adult
learners rely on inductive learning abilities in learning a second language. In the process of inputting the language information, children input it more efficiently than adults, who may utilize more negotiation of meaning. Lastly the difference exists in the means of storage. Young children store first language and second language information separately and become coordinate bilinguals whilst adult learners store first language and second language knowledge together and become compound bilinguals. Coordinate bilinguals can use both languages automatically
whilst compound bilinguals cannot.

Brain-based evidence has been also coordinated with second language research in recent studies（ e.g. Birdsong, 2006 for review; Ullman, 2001, 2007）, looking at whether the process of second language acquisition is conducted in the same
way as, a similar way to or a different way from the process of first language acquisition.

Selinger（ 1978） proposes, there may be multiple critical/sensitive periods for different aspects of language.

Oyama（1976） examined 60 male learners who had immigrated to the United States. Their ages ranged from 6 to 20 years old and they had lived there for between 5 and 18 years. Two adult native speakers judged the ‘native-ness’ of the learners’ accents during a reading-aloud task and during free speech. The results showed a
significant negative correlation in ‘age of arrival and acquisition’, which meant that the younger their age of arrival was, the more authentic the accent they acquired. For instance, the youngest arrivals were rated the same as native speakers. However, no significant relationship was found between the length of stay and their accent.

Similar results have been provided from studies in morphosyntax/grammar, but in their studies the cutting-off age for the critical/sensitive period is later or older than the studies on pronunciation. Patkowski （1980） investigated 67 immigrants to the United States, finding that learners who had entered the United States before the age of 15 were rated as more proficient in grammar than learners who had entered after the age of 15.

The range of adult group scores was smaller than the range of child group scores. In addition, Patkowski examined the effects of the length of the stay in the United States, the amount of informal exposure to English and the amount of formal instruction. Neither the length of the stay nor the amount of formal instruction provided a significant effect but the amount of informal exposure did have a significant effect, though this was much less significant than the age factor.

In a similar line to Patkowski（ 1980）, Johnson & Newport （1989） investigated 46 native Koreans and Chinese who had immigrated in the United States between the ages of 3 and 39, using an aural grammaticality judgment test. Half of them arrived there before the age of 15 and the other half arrived after the age of 17. The participants were asked to judge the grammaticality of 276 spoken sentences. The results indicated a negative correlation between age at arrival and judgment scores, which was – 0.77, meaning that the later the learner arrived, the lower the score they got. However, one difference from Patkowski’s study was that the scores of the younger group varied less than those of the adult group. Also, neither the number of years of exposure to English nor the amount of classroom instruction was related to the grammaticality judgment scores. Johnson（ 1992） followed up on the study by Johnson & Newport（ 1989） by using the same participants in the earlier study a year later with written tests, working on the belief that written test materials eliminated extragrammatical properties that were present in the auditory materials. The results showed a negative correlation（ r = – 0.54） between age of arrival and performance, and suggested that the grammatical knowledge of young learners is native or near-native whereas that attained by older learners is ill-formed or incomplete. Thus, the critical period effects could be found in a test of grammar with a minimum number of extragrammatical properties.

DeKeyser （2000） tested the fundamental differencebhypothesis （Bley-Vroman, 1988）, which states that while children are known to learn a language almost completely through implicit domain-specific mechanisms, adults have largely lost the ability to learn a language without reflecting on its structure and they have to use alternative mechanisms, drawing especially on their problem-solving capacities, to learn a second language. The hypothesis implies that only adults with a high level of ‘verbal analytical’ ability will reach near-native competence in their second language, but that this ability is not a significant predictor of success in childhood second language acquisition. A study of 57 adult Hungarian-speaking immigrants confirmed the hypothesis. Very few adult immigrants scored in the range achieved by child arrivals in a grammaticality judgment test.

Harley （1986） investigated the levels of attainment of children in French bilingual programs in Canada, focusing on the learners’ acquisition of French verb rules. She compared early and late immersion students after both had received 1,000 hours of instruction, using data from interviews, a story repetition task and a translation task. The older students demonstrated better overall control. However, at the end of their schooling, the early immersion group showed higher levels of ability than the older group.

The morpheme studies（ Bailey, Madden & Krashen, 1974; Fathman, 1975） showed that the order of acquisition of English morphemes was the same for children and adults. They showed that adults go through the same stages of acquisition of morphemes as children and therefore age does not appear to be a factor here.

Cummins（ 1981） formulated the ‘interdependency principle’ to refer to the idea that cognitive academic language proficiency（ CALP） is common across languages, and can therefore easily be transferred from first language use to second language use by the learner.

Ioup, Boustagui, El Tigi & Moselle（ 1994） examined the linguistic competence of an adult second language learner of Egyptian Arabic, who was first exposed to the target language after the end of the critical period. The participant in this study
had acquired native-like proficiency in an untutored learning context. To determine her level of achievement more exactly, her performance in various linguistic areas was compared to that of both native speakers and a highly proficient, tutored learner of Egyptian Arabic. The results suggested that a reexamination for the critical period hypothesis might be necessary.

Harley & Hart（ 1997）, examined the relationship between language aptitude components and second language outcomes among learners whose intensive second language exposure began at different ages. This empirical study showed the different
learning styles among early and late immersion groups, without agreeing or disagreeing with the existence of the critical/sensitive period hypothesis.

This study presented evidence in support of the view that different cognitive abilities tend to be associated with relative second language success in early and late immersion programs. The eventual second language proficiency outcomes from early
immersion were more closely associated with memory abilities, and later immersion outcomes with analytical language ability.

Regarding the critical ages for acquisition, according to several researchers（ e.g. Ellis, 1994; Long, 1990） acquiring native-like pronunciation is possible until the age of 6 – the final age for arrival and acquisition. On the other hand, native-like
grammatical/morphosyntactical competence should be possible up to the age of 15（ e.g. Patkowski, 1980）. As Selinger（ 1978） proposes, there may be multiple critical/sensitive periods for different aspects of language.

Pinker（ 1994） makes the following note. Acquisition of a normal languag （phonology） is guaranteed for children up to the age of six, is steadily compromised from then until shortly after puberty, and is rare thereafter. Maturational changes in the brain, such as the decline in metabolic rate and the number of neurons during early school-age years, and the bottoming out of the number of synapses and metabolic rate around puberty, are plausible causes（. p. 293） On the other hand, the most recent neurocognitive evidence has indicated the mechanism that manages language in the brain’s system. Ullman（ 2007） argues as follows. In first language, lexical knowledge depends on the declarative memory brain system, which underlies semantic and episodic knowledge, and is rooted in temporal-lobe structures. Grammar in first language relies rather on the procedural memory system, which subserves motor and cognitive skills, and is rooted in frontal/basalganglia circuits. In contrast, evidence suggests that in later-learned second language, learners initially depend largely on declarative memory, not only for lexical knowledge, but also for the use of complex forms. However, with increasing experience second language learners show procedural learning of grammatical rules,
becoming first language-like. Importantly, because the behavioral, computational, anatomical and physiological bases of the two memory systems are reasonably well-understood, including the nature of forgetting of knowledge and skills in these systems, we can make relatively specific predictions about language, including with respect to language attrition.（ p. 9）.

Thus, second language learners are unable to acquire the target language as long as they use the declarative brain memory system for its grammatical rules. As Ullman（ 2007） points out, through experience, second language learners come to make use of the procedural memory system. Neurocognitive researchers have presented these findings as reliable through the use of advanced technology, which makes them persuasive. Given that first language grammar is dealt with in this procedural memory system, the so-called universal grammar（ morphosyntax in practice） or language acquisition device presumably may refer to the process of using the procedural memory system for grammar or language rules. If so, with the possible exception of getting a native-like accent, even adult learners could attain native-like proficiency in their target language if they practise it enough to make the language behavior their automatic routine – like riding a bicycle, which also uses the procedural memory system – and to make the procedural memory system active in utilizing the second language’s mophosyntax/grammar. The maxim that practice makes perfect may hold true for acquiring a second language. In the case of child learners, or learners before the age of 15, the procedural memory system rather than the declarative memory system is more likely to be used for second language grammar. Possibly a lack of plasticity in the brain’s system may lead to difficulty in acquiring second languages when we are older. Regarding the subtle distinction between a ‘critical’ and a ‘sensitive’ period, the question is whether completely successful acquisition is deemed to be only possible within a given span of a learner’s life（ critical）, or whether acquisition is just easier within this period （sensitive）.

In Burstall’s study（ 1975）, at the age of 16, the older group still outperformed the younger one. His study shows that age is less important and that the more sophisticated cognitive or possibly academic skills they had in their first language played a more meaningful role in their second language acquisition, except in
the area of listening, which may be biological and less influenced by external factors.

Long（ 1990）, on the other hand, concludes that a neurological explanation is best and proposes a ‘mental muscle model’, where the language-specific faculty remains intact throughout our lives, but access to it is impeded to varying degrees and impeded progressively with age, unless the faculty is used and so kept plastic. Such a view is compatible with studies of exceptional language learners, which demonstrate that some adult learners are capable of achieving native-speaker levels of competence, as seen in the study by Ioup, et al.（ 1994）. As Birdsong（ 1992） points out, the critical/sensitive period hypothesis may have to be reexamined if many such learners are found.

All those who possess a first language are certainly capable of acquiring some degree
of a second language; however, second language acquisition in a mature human is not as successful as first language acquisition in many cases. Although some researchers（ e.g. Bley-Vroman, 1988） have argued that older learners no longer have access to
their innate language acquisition device, consisting of the principles of universal grammar （Chomsky, 1981） and language-specific learning procedures, it has been found to be possible for adult learners to activate such a device by using the procedural memory system（ Ullman, 2007） instead of using the declarative memory system, by following the innate grammatical structure while using the language, and by thorough practice until the structure is internalized in the learners’ minds and
becomes automatic in their behavior. Ullman（ 2001） suggests that ‘an increasing amount of experience（ i.e. practice） with a second language should lead to better learning of grammatical rules in procedural memory, which in turn should result in
higher proficiency in the language’（ p.118）. Even in adult language learning, which has usually been achieved through first language knowledge, so-called universal grammar may be accessible to adult second language learners, but their second
languages are eventually acquired only if they are encouraged to use the procedural memory system instead of the declarative memory system.

WORKING MEMORY, SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LOWEDUCATED

2010-10-17T17:22:00.000-07:00

WORKING MEMORY, SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LOW-EDUCATED
SECOND LANGUAGE AND LITERACY LEARNERS

Alan Juffs, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Linguistics

Introduction

"The role of memory in language learning has long been of interest to researchers in first and second language acquisition (SLA) (Baddeley, 1999; Ellis, 2001). At an intuitive level, it seems obvious that part of the explanation for individual differences among adults in success at learning a second language (L2) is attributable to differences in memory capacity. In SLA, researchers have focused on short-term rather than longterm memory differences because they think short-term memory is more responsible for differences in language development. The reason for this belief is that short-term memory is an on-line capacity for processing and analyzing new information (words, grammatical structures and so on); the basic idea is that the bigger the on-line capacity an individual has for new information, the more information will pass into off-line, long-term memory. It is an open question whether low-educated second language and literacy acquisition populations (LESLLA) have short-term memory systems that are similar to literate, educated populations, and if so how their working memory capacity can be measured. This paper will survey the literature on this topic, and will make some suggestions about how models of memory (as they have been applied to second language learning) may and may not be applied to LESLLA contexts...

2 Models of Working Memory

In the psychological literature, theories of working memory can be divided into two
main approaches, each with their own constructs (or ways of operationalizing working
memory) and tests that measure those constructs in individuals. The first is called
'phonological working memory' (PWM) (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993). PWM tests measure the capacity of an individual to remember a series of unrelated items with covert ‘inner speech’ rehearsal (Ellis, 2001:34). This ability is measured by requiring participants to remember lists of unrelated digits, real words, or non-words; in some versions of this non-word repetition test, these non-words have phonemes that are not in the native language (L1). The second is reading span memory (RSM) (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). Tests of RSM claim to measure the resources available to simultaneously store and process information. RSM tests require participants to read aloud lists of sentences written on cards (or on a computer) and then recall the final word of each sentence without covert rehearsal. The key difference between the tests for PWM and RSM is that the RSM requires both processing and storage, whereas the PWM only requires the participant to repeat polysyllabic words or repeat a string of unrelated words correctly. PWM and RSM are traditionally treated as separate (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Carpenter, Miyake, & Just, 1994; Daneman & Carpenter, 1980; Roberts & Gibson, 2003; Sawyer, 1999) because scores on the tests do not correlate. Carpenter, Miyake, & Just (1994:1078) specifically state that ‘traditional’ span measures (digit, word) do not decline with age and do not correlate with sentence comprehension impairment, whereas RSM does decline with age and correlates with sentence comprehension scores. However, debate and speculation remain on the validity of this separation (Ellis, 2005:339).

...reading involves incremental sentence processing. This view holds that a native-speaker reader of an alphabetical script such as English, Dutch, or French does not ‘take in’ a large amount of text (say 7-10 words) and then decides the appropriate syntax for that set of words. Rather, each word is processed rapidly, and the reader makes assumptions immediately about a possible syntactic structure for that word and the ones that follow.

This view accounts for readers being misled by ambiguous sentences, and the
subsequent ‘surprise’ when their reading goes off track because the structure they had assumed turns out to be wrong. This ‘surprise’ is known as the garden path (GP) effect.

An interesting facet of working memory capacity in this model of reading is that the
effects of individual memory differences are not fixed, but task-dependent (Just et al., 1996; Miyake & Friedman, 1998). For example, a high-memory-capacity individual will be more accurate in comprehension and resolve an ambiguity at crucial points in
reading a sentence such as (1) more quickly than a low capacity individual.

(1) The evidence examined by the lawyer convinced the jury.

In (1) the verb 'examined' is temporarily ambiguous between a main verb and a
reduced relative clause structure. Pragmatic information may be used to quickly resolve the parse in favor of a reduced relative clause reading because ‘evidence’ is inanimate and unlikely to be the agent of any ‘examining’. High WM capacity readers are able to resolve this ambiguity more quickly than low WM capacity readers. According to Just and colleagues, this is because high capacity readers are able to combine pragmatic and syntactic information in parsing more efficiently than low span readers. On the other hand, in a sentence such as (2), while high capacity readers are also more accurate in comprehension, they take more time to resolve the parse:

(2) The soldiers warned during the midnight raid attacked after midnight.

The account of this difference in processing speed between (1) and (2) for high WM
capacity readers is that in (1) high WM individuals are able to make rapid use of
pragmatic information, whereas in (2) the ambiguity of ‘warned’ sets up three purely
syntactic possible parses: a main verb reading, an intransitive verb reading, and a reduced relative reading. Just and colleagues argue that high WM individuals in this case are able to maintain all three possible parses active in parallel, and hence take longer to process them. Ultimately, however, they are more accurate with comprehension probes, whereas low WM capacity individuals are faster, but less accurate. Low WM individuals allow the parse to crash, and therefore read more quickly. However, the cost is that they reject these sentences as implausible or fail to understand the relationships among the noun phrases...

3.2 Working Memory and Second Language Sentence Processing

Juffs & Harrington (1995) were the first L2 acquisition researchers to use a self-paced reading paradigm to look at real-time L2 processing of syntax, although some studies had investigated the lexicon using reaction time data (for a review, see Juffs, 2001). Based on this 1995 study, and further research (Juffs, 1998a,b; Juffs & Harrington, 1996), the indications are that L2 learners process their L2 word-by-word in a similar but not identical way to native speakers. (For literature reviews see Clahsen & Felser, 2006; Fender, 2001.)

The similarities between L1 and L2 processing are that the profiles of decisionmaking
at the word level during processing seem to depend on argument structure, i.e. the number of noun phrases and prepositional phrases that are required by the meaning of the verb. The evidence for this comes from Garden Path (GP) sentences. Recall that a conscious GP effect occurs when the hearer or reader cannot interpret the clause without an effort that brings the structure to his or her conscious attention. The situation in (4a) presents such a processing challenge because ‘the socks’ is initially interpreted as the object of ‘mended’, but must later be reanalyzed as the subject of the verb ‘fell’. In (4b), in contrast, no surprise effect occurs.

(4) a ¿After Mary mended the socks fell off the table.
b After Mary mended the socks they fell off the table.

Non-native speakers seem to be ‘Garden-Pathed’ in the same way native speakers are (Juffs & Harrington, 1996; Juffs, 2004); they do not seem to accumulate ‘chunks’ of text before deciding on a parse, but (like native speakers) decide on a structure as soon as possible and then go back and revise it if it is necessary...

Moreover, there is a hint from data in Juffs (1998a,b) that speakers of head final languages (Subject-Object-Verb order, e.g. Japanese and Korean) appear to slow down on processing verbs and objects, which may suggest an effect of L1 word order. Fender (2003) has subsequently reported that Japanese learners were superior to speakers of Arabic in simple word recognition, whereas Arabic speakers were superior to Japanese in syntactic integration. These results suggest that Japanese learners are at a particular disadvantage in processing head-initial syntax, despite their superior ability to recognize words...

Similar to findings for native speakers of English reported by Just and his colleagues, some of the intra-group differences are as great as the between-group differences in studies of second language speakers (Juffs, 1998a,b)...

4 Working Memory and Less-Educated Second Language Learners

In one of the few papers to emerge from the literature, Loureiro et al. (2004, p. 502) report on a study of 97 Brazilian illiterate [sic] and semi-literate adults. They found that phonological memory (as measured by real word and non-word repetition tasks) was very low in the population they term ‘illiterate’ (68 out of their total 97 participants). The scores for real words were much higher than for non-words. They also report that this memory ability was unrelated to letter knowledge. They therefore conclude that phonological memory, phonemic awareness and phonological sensitivity are not related in this population. In another study, Petersson et al. (2000) published brain-imaging results that suggest a reason for poor performance on non-word tests of working memory in non-literate populations. Petersson et al. (2000:365) report that ‘learning to read and write during childhood alters the functional architecture of the brain’. The result that is particularly

relevant for PWM is that literates do not differ in word and non-word repetition tasks, but illiterates do differ. Petersson et al. (2000:373) interpret the patterns of brain activity to indicate that ‘literates automatically recruit a phonological processing network with sufficient competence for sublexical processing and segmentation during simple immediate verbal repetition, whether words or pseudowords, while this is not the case for the illiterate group.’ The implication is that knowing an alphabetic system allows literates to process phonological segments (sublexical elements) of unknown words, whereas this is not possible for illiterates. Moreover, Kosmiris et al. (2004)’s findings that suggest level of literacy is a factor in phonological tasks is an important confirmation of suggestions made by Petersson. In their study, Komiris et al. (2004, p. 825) compare semantic and phonological processing in three groups: high and low educated literates and non-literates. They found that semantic processing was unaffected by literacy, but augmented by schooling; in contrast Komiris et al. (2004, p. 825) state that: ‘explicit processing of the phonological characteristics of material
appeared to be acquired with literacy or formal schooling, regardless of the level of
education attained: those who had attended school and had acquired symbolic representation could perform the task, but those who had not, did very poorly’.
Exploring the implications of this research for non-literate adult learners of a
second language awaits further research. A pessimistic view might be that if we assume a critical period for language (DeKeyser, 2000; Johnson & Newport, 1989), then
learning a new language will be particularly hard for non-literate adults because they will find the L2 especially challenging because by definition it consists of ‘pseudo-’ or ‘non’ words for them. However, some caution is in order before one becomes too pessimistic. First, debate on the critical period continues, even for phonology (e.g., Birdsong, 2005; Flege et al., 2005), and it may be that other factors such as motivation, exposure, and culture play an even greater role than age in predicting success. One must also take care in how one defines success in a second language, since success probably goes beyond a definition based narrowly on morpho-syntactic and phonological features to one based on the ability to participate meaningfully in another culture. In addition, evidence exists that some illiterates can become literate in their L2 as adults; this is an achievement that should not be possible if a true neurally based critical period exists. Finally, differences among children in non-word repetition capacity exist, and differences do predict vocabulary size and growth in these children.

Since children are not literate at age 3, and can learn language, the implication is that the phonological loop for non-literates might still be a useful measure to explore. In general, the results in this literature suggest that establishing a test of working memory for non-literates will be difficult, because non-literates are likely to perform at floor level with non-word repetition tests. Without a range in scores, there can be no correlation with other language proficiency measures, not even those that are not related to literacy. Since pseudo-words are not processed in the same way in illiterates as they are in literates, real word and digits in the L1 could possibly be used exclusively. Overall, given that some researchers (e.g. Pappagno & Vallar, 1995; Williams & Lovatt, 2003) have used span tasks successfully, the span tasks hold out the most promise for preliminary research with illiterates.

Finally, Baddeley’s construct of the ‘episodic memory buffer’ may have some promise as a test for the ability to relate long-term knowledge and memory. Differences may exist in the ability to recall characteristics that are associated with known words
and construct imaginary situations with those words. For example, Baddeley (2000b)suggests that when accessing long-term memory for use on-line, one could imagine an
exercise that would require a participant to think about how an elephant would perform as an ice-hockey player. This novel situation would require the participant to hold in memory the characteristics of elephants (large, ungainly, long trunk) and ice hockey (slippery surface, fast, violent) to construct a scenario: an elephant might play well in goal, be slow, and able to ‘body-check’ effectively. Differences in the ability to access such knowledge and construct ‘new’ or imaginary situations with that knowledge might be used to predict language learning outcomes. This task may be particularly promising because some researchers report that the participants who are most successful at the RSM task are those participants who covertly construct a story with the words that are the target of recall, even though they are not supposed to engage in covert rehearsal (Osaka & Osaka, 1992; Juffs, 2004). Hence, episodic memory may mediate between visual spatial long-term memory and long-term memory for language...

5 Conclusion

The role of working memory in explaining individual differences in L2 learning has a
history of less than twenty years. Many problems remain in replicating the relationships between PWM, RSM, language proficiency and reading even when experimental participants are literate L2 learners. The role of the L1 appears more important than differences in working memory in explaining performance on some on-line processing and reading tasks (c.f. Marinis et al., 2005). Moreover, the little research that does exist with non-literate populations suggests that they perform poorly on such tests and that literacy may change brain architecture to the extent that non-word tests may not be useful as a measure of working memory. Given the cultural assumptions that decontextualized psychometric tests make, and the problems that LESLLA populations have in understanding such tests, extreme caution is necessary before any predictions or conclusions about the abilities of non-literate and low-educated learners’ ability to succeed in acquiring proficiency in an L2 can be made on the basis of current tests of working memory."

MIT researchers find that Sirtuin1 may boost memory and learning ability

2010-10-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

MIT researchers find that Sirtuin1 may boost memory and learning ability

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The same molecular mechanism that increases life span through calorie restriction may help boost memory and brainpower, researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory report in the July 11 issue of Nature.

Resveratrol, found in wine, has been touted as a life-span enhancer because it activates a group of enzymes known as sirtuins, which have gained fame in recent years for their ability to slow the aging process. Now MIT researchers report that Sirtuin1 — a protein that in humans is encoded by the SIRT1 gene — also promotes memory and brain flexibility.

The work may lead to new drugs for Alzheimer’s disease and other debilitating neurological diseases.

“We demonstrated previously that Sirtuin1 promotes neuronal survival in age-dependent neurodegenerative disorders. In our cell and mouse models for Alzheimer’s disease, SIRT1 promoted neuronal survival, reduced neurodegeneration and prevented learning impairment,” said Li-Huei Tsai, director of the Picower Institute and lead author of the study.

“We have now found that SIRT1 activity also promotes plasticity and memory,” said Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. “This result demonstrates a multi-faceted role of SIRT1 in the brain, further highlighting its potential as a target for the treatment of neurodegeneration and conditions with impaired cognition, with implications for a wider range of central nervous system disorders.”

In separate work at MIT, researchers discovered that the sir2 (silent information regulator) gene is a key regulator of longevity in both yeast and worms. Ongoing studies are exploring whether this highly conserved gene also governs longevity in mammals.

The mammalian version of the gene, SIRT1, seems to have evolved complex systemic roles in cardiac function, DNA repair and genomic stability. SIRT1 is thought to be a key regulator of an evolutionarily conserved pathway that allows organisms to cope with adversity. These genes and the enzymes they produce are part of a feedback system that enhances cell survival during times of stress, especially a lack of food.

Recent studies linked SIRT1 to normal brain physiology and neurological disorders. However, it was unknown if SIRT1 played a role in higher-order brain functions.

The Picower Institute study shows that SIRT1 enhances synaptic plasticity, the connections among neurons, and memory formation. These findings demonstrate a new role for SIRT1 in cognition and a previously unknown mechanism by which SIRT1 regulates these processes.

MicroRNAs are small RNA molecules encoded in the genomes of plants and animals. These gene regulators are involved in many aspects of normal and abnormal brain function. The Picower study found that SIRT1 aids memory and synaptic plasticity through a previously unknown microRNA-based mechanism: SIRT1 keeps a specific microRNA in check, allowing key plasticity proteins to be expressed.

In addition to helping neurons survive, SIRT1 also has a direct role in regulating normal brain function, demonstrating its value as a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of the central nervous system.

New research finds key proteins involved in the process of memory and learning

2010-10-17T14:28:00.000-07:00

New research led by the University of Leicester and published in a prestigious international scientific journal has revealed for the first time the mechanism by which memories are formed.

The study in the Department of Cell Physiology and Pharmacology found one of the key proteins involved in the process of memory and learning. The breakthrough study has potential to impact drug design to treat Alzheimer's disease.

The discovery was made in the University of Leicester laboratory of Professor Andrew Tobin, Professor of Cell Biology, who is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow.

Professor Tobin said: "The work, which was done wholly at the University of Leicester, is focused on the mechanisms by which we form memories. We found one of the key proteins involved in the process of memory and learning.

"This protein is present in the part of the brain in which memories are stored. We have found that in order for any memory to be laid down this protein, called the M3-muscarinic receptor, has to be activated.

"We have also determined that this protein undergoes a very specific change during the formation of a memory - and that this change is an essential part of memory formation. In this regard our study reveals at least one of the molecular mechanisms that are operating in the brain when we form a memory and as such this represents a major break through in our understanding of how we lay down memories.

"This finding is not only interesting in its own right but has important clinical implications. One of the major symptoms of Alzheimer's disease is memory loss. Our study identifies one of the key processes involved in memory and learning and we state in the paper that drugs designed to target the protein identified in our study would be of benefit in treating Alzheimer's disease."

Professor Tobin said there was tremendous excitement about the breakthrough the team has made and its potential application: "It has been fascinating to look at the molecular processes involved in memory formation. We were delighted not only with the scientific importance of our finding but also by the prospect that our work could have an impact on the design of drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease."

Gene linked with language, speech, reading disorders identified

2010-10-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

Gene linked with language, speech, reading disorders identified
Washington, August 28 : An international group of American and Spanish researchers have identified a new candidate gene for Specific Language Impairment.

Mabel Rice at the University of Kansas, Shelley Smith of University of Nebraska Medical Center, and Javier Gayan of Seville-based Neocodex in Spain have shed light on the KIAA0319 in the current issue of the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

The researchers have revealed that the gene found on Chromosome 6 was associated with variability in language abilities in a study of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and their family members.

They say that the gene was also found to be linked with variability in speech and reading abilities.

According to the researchers, the children they selected for the study had no hearing loss, general intellectual deficit or autism

Language ability involves vocabulary and grammar, whereas speech involves the accuracy of sound production. Both language and speech ability contribute to a child''s ability to read.

The researchers say that the finding that a candidate gene could influence all three abilities suggests a common pathway that could contribute to overlapping strengths or deficiencies across speech, language and reading.

Rice said: "We don''t understand the biological mechanisms yet but it''s important that we have identified the first gene that could be involved across these three different dimensions of development."

The study involved 322 individuals, including children with SLI, their parents, siblings, and other family members.

"We have come to realize that language really sets the platform for reading to emerge and to thrive. Without a solid language system, it''s much harder to get reading going," said Rice. (ANI)

Infants born to bilingual mothers exhibit different language preferences

2010-10-17T14:19:00.000-07:00

Infants born to bilingual mothers exhibit different language preferences

17. February 2010

It may not be obvious, but hearing two languages regularly during pregnancy puts infants on the road to bilingualism by birth. According to new findings in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, infants born to bilingual mothers (who spoke both languages regularly during pregnancy) exhibit different language preferences than infants born to mothers speaking only one language.

Psychological scientists Krista Byers-Heinlein and Janet F. Werker from the University of British Columbia along with Tracey Burns of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in France wanted to investigate language preference and discrimination in newborns. Two groups of newborns were tested in these experiments: English monolinguals (whose mothers spoke only English during pregnancy) and Tagalog-English bilinguals (whose mothers spoke both Tagalog, a language spoken in the Philippines, and English regularly during pregnancy). The researchers employed a method known as "high-amplitude sucking-preference procedure" to study the infants' language preferences. This method capitalizes on the newborns' sucking reflex - increased sucking indicates interest in a stimulus. In the first experiment, infants heard 10 minutes of speech, with every minute alternating between English and Tagalog.

Results showed that English monolingual infants were more interested in English than Tagalog - they exhibited increased sucking behavior when they heard English than when they heard Tagalog being spoken. However, bilingual infants had an equal preference for both English and Tagalog. These results suggest that prenatal bilingual exposure may affect infants' language preferences, preparing bilingual infants to listen to and learn about both of their native languages.

To learn two languages, bilingual newborns must also be able to keep their languages apart. To test if bilingual infants are able to discriminate between their two languages, infants listened to sentences being spoken in one of the languages until they lost interest. Then, they either heard sentences in the other language or heard sentences in the same language, but spoken by a different person. Infants exhibited increased sucking when they heard the other language being spoken. Their sucking did not increase if they heard additional sentences in the same language. These results suggest that bilingual infants, along with monolingual infants, are able to discriminate between the two languages, providing a mechanism from the first moments of life that helps ensure bilingual infants do not confuse their two languages.

The researchers observe that, "Monolingual newborns' preference for their single native language directs listening attention to that language" and that, "Bilingual newborns' interest in both languages helps ensure attention to, and hence further learning about, each of their languages." Discrimination of the two languages helps prevent confusion. The results of these studies demonstrate that the roots of bilingualism run deeper than previously imagined, extending even to the prenatal period.

Source: Association for Psychological Science

How Practice Tests Improve Memory

2010-10-17T13:42:00.000-07:00

How Practice Tests Improve Memory

ScienceDaily (Oct. 15, 2010) — Although most people assume that tests are a way to evaluate learning, a wealth of research has shown that testing can actually improve learning, according to two researchers from Kent State University. Dr. Katherine Rawson, associate professor in Kent State's Department of Psychology, and former Kent State graduate student Mary Pyc publish their research findings in the Oct. 15, 2010, issue of the journal Science.

"Taking practice tests -- particularly ones that involve attempting to recall something from memory -- can drastically increase the likelihood that you'll be able to remember that information again later," Rawson said. "Given that hundreds of experiments have been conducted to establish the effects of testing on learning, it's surprising that we know very little about why testing improves memory."

In the article titled "Why Testing Improves Memory: Mediator Effectiveness Hypothesis," Rawson and Pyc reported an experiment indicating that at least one reason why testing is good for memory is that testing supports the use of more effective encoding strategies.

Rawson offered this illustration. "Suppose you were trying to learn foreign language vocabulary," she said. "In our research, we typically use Swahili-English word pairs, such as 'wingu -- cloud.' To learn this item, you could just repeat it over and over to yourself each time you studied it, but it turns out that's not a particularly effective strategy for committing something to memory.

"A more effective strategy is to develop a keyword that connects the foreign language word with the English word. 'Wingu' sounds like 'wing,' birds have wings and fly in the 'clouds.' Of course, this works only as well as the keyword you come up with. For a keyword to be any good, you have to be able to remember your keyword when you're given the foreign word later. Also, for a keyword to be good, you have to be able to remember the English word once you remember the keyword."

The research done by Rawson and Pyc showed that practice tests lead learners to develop better keywords. People come up with more effective mental hints or keywords, called mediators, when they are being tested than when they are studying only.

Rawson joined Kent State's faculty in the fall of 2004. Her grant-funded research, undertaken with colleague Dr. John Dunlosky, psychology professor and director of Experimental Training at Kent State, seeks to identify effective study strategies and study schedules for students to learn classroom material in a durable and efficient manner.

Earlier this year, Rawson traveled to the White House and received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on young professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. Nominated by the U.S. Department of Education, Rawson was one of 100 beginning researchers named by President Barack Obama to receive this award. She resides in Stow, Ohio.

Pyc received her master's and doctoral degrees from Kent State. She worked in Rawson's cognitive psychology lab. Pyc's research interests involve promoting student learning, including when retrieval practice is beneficial for memory, evaluating theoretical accounts for why retrieval practice is beneficial for memory, how students self-regulate learning, and how students' metacognition is related to their self-regulated learning. She is now a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University.

Evidence of Post-Stroke Brain Recovery Discovered

2010-10-17T13:39:00.000-07:00

Evidence of Post-Stroke Brain Recovery Discovered

ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2010) — The world's largest study using neuroimaging of stroke patients struggling to regain ability to communicate finds that brain cells outside the damaged area can take on new roles.

Julius Fridriksson, a researcher at the University of South Carolina's Arnold School of Public Health, said the findings offer hope to patients of "chronic stroke," characterized by the death of cells in a specific area of the brain. The damage results in long-term or permanent disability.

"For years, we heard little about stroke recovery because it was believed that very little could be done," Fridriksson said. "But this study shows that the adult brain is quite capable of changing, and we are able to see those images now. This will substantially change the treatment for chronic-stroke patients."

The study, reported in the Sept. 15 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, involved 26 patients with aphasia, a communication disorder caused by damage to the language regions in the brain's left hemisphere. Aphasia impairs a person's ability to process language and formulate speech.

About 35 percent of stroke patients have speech and/or communication problems. While many patients with aphasia regain some language function in the days and weeks after a stroke, scientists have long believed that recovery is limited after this initial phase. "Stroke is the leading cause of disability among adults, more than accidents or complications from Parkinson's or Alzheimer's diseases," said Fridriksson, director of the university's Aphasia Laboratory and an associate professor in the department of communication sciences and disorders.

"When someone has brain damage as a result of a stroke, the recovery is expected to be limited," he said.

But Fridriksson's study shows that the brain can recover and that a patient's ability to communicate can improve.

Stroke patients underwent a functional magnetic resonance imaging test, also called fMRI, which measures brain activity. Patients received multiple MRI sessions before and after undergoing 30 hours of traditional speech therapy used to improve communication function in patients with aphasia.

By using fMRI -- an imaging technique more improved and widely used in the past decade -- Fridriksson was able to see the healthy areas of the brain that "take over" the functions of the areas damaged as a result of a stroke.

"The areas that are immediately around the section of the brain that was damaged become more 'plastic,' " Fridriksson said. "This 'plasticity,' so to speak, increases around the brain lesions and supports recovery. In patients who responded well with the treatment for anomia [difficulty in recalling words and names], their fMRI showed evidence that areas of the brain took over the function of the damaged cells."

The study found that patients who did not experience these changes did not have as improved a recovery, he said.

This research lays the foundation for future studies of aphasia, including research on the use of low-current, electrical stimulation for the brain.

"Knowing where the brain has been damaged -- and the section that is taking over that function -- will enable us to better use electrical stimulation to promote recovery," said Fridriksson, the lead author of another paper published last month in the Journal of Neuroscience that examined the mapping of brain lesions that cause speech/communication impairment.

"It is believed that electrical currents to the brain will promote secretions of neurotransmitters that support brain plasticity," he said. "This could dramatically improve the quality of life for stroke patients."

Editor's Note: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Cramming doesn't work - flashcards

2010-10-17T13:28:00.000-07:00

Why Cramming Doesn't Work

Most college instructors probably are not about to start giving the daily quizzes that some researchers recommend to improve learning, so students might want to try testing themselves when they study on their own. But there's a catch: When people study with flashcards, by far the most common method of self-quizzing, they're notoriously bad at judging when they have mastered the material. Immediately after looking at a flashcard, the item "feels" very accessible because it's sitting in short-term memory but that's not necessarily an accurate gauge of whether you will remember it a week from now, says a Purdue University instructor, adding that to implant facts in long-term memory, it's best to receive feedback on a quiz after a short delay of 5 to 20 minutes, unlike flashcards which, as generally used, give immediate feedback. Similar results were demonstrated in an experiment presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, where people were asked to study 20 word pairs on flashcards during a one-hour period. Half the participants reviewed the full cycle of 20 cards eight times. The other half broke up the pile into small stacks, studying five cards at a time, reviewing them eight times, then moving on to the next small stack. The people who repeatedly studied the full cycle of cards had an average exam score of 80 percent, while the "small stack" participants scored only 54 percent. This is just the latest piece of evidence, says one of the experiment presenters, that cramming does not work. When an unfamiliar fact is studied again and again in immediate succession, it feels better embedded in your memory than it actually is. It is much better to create an interval between the times you study an item. But cycling through a large stack of flashcards, like many other effective study methods, is more frustrating than the less-effective techniques people usually use. Ultimately, it may be a balancing act between studying effectively and studying at all.

Cramming doesn't work in the long term

2010-10-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

Back To School: Cramming Doesn't Work In The Long Term

ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2007) — When you look back on your school days, doesn't it seem like you studied all the time? However, most of us seem to have retained almost nothing from our early immersion in math, history, and foreign language.

Were we studying the wrong way during all those wee hours? Well, as it turns out we may have been. Psychologists have been assessing how well various study strategies produce long-term learning, and it appears that some strategies really do work much better than others.

Consider "overlearning." That's the term learning specialists use for studying material immediately after you've mastered it. Say you're studying new vocabulary words, flash-card style, and you finally run through the whole list error-free; any study beyond that point is overlearning. Is this just a waste of valuable time, or does this extra effort embed the new memory for the long haul?

University of South Florida psychologist Doug Rohrer decided to explore this question scientifically. Working with Hal Pashler of the University of California, San Diego, he had two groups of students study new vocabulary in different ways. One group ran through the list five times; these students got a perfect score no more than once. The others kept drilling, for a total of ten trials; with this extra effort, the students had at least three perfect run-throughs. Then the psychologists tested all the students, some one week later and others four weeks later.

The results were interesting. For students who took the test a week later, those who had done the extra drilling performed better. But this benefit of overlearning completely disappeared by four weeks. In other words, if students are interested in learning that lasts, that extra effort is really a waste. They should instead spend this time looking at material from last week or last month or even last year.

In other words, as reported in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, "massing" all the study on a single topic into a single session reduces long-term retention. It's better to leave it alone for a while and then return to it. Rohrer and Pashler also wanted to see if the duration of study breaks might make a difference in learning. It did. When two study sessions were separated by breaks ranging from five minutes to six months, with a final test given six months later, students did much better if their break lasted at least a month. So, rather than distribute their study of some material across just a few days, as millions of school children do when given a different list of vocabulary or spelling words each week, students would be better off seeing the same words throughout the school year.

All these experiments involved rote learning, but Rohrer and Pashler have also found similar effects with more abstract learning, like math. This is particularly troubling, the psychologists say, because most mathematics textbooks today are organized to encourage both overlearning and massing. So students end up working 20 problems on the same concept (which they learned earlier that day) when they should be working 20 problems drawn from different lessons learned since the beginning of the school year. In brief, students are wasting a lot of precious learning time.

Article: "Increasing Retention without Increasing Study Time"

Overhearing a language during childhood

2010-10-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

OVERHEARING A LANGUAGE DURING CHILDHOOD

Abstract
Despite its significance for understanding of language acquisition, the role of childhood language experience has been examined only in linguistic deprivation studies focusing on what cannot be learned readily beyond childhood. This study focused instead on longterm effects of what can be learned best during childhood. Our findings revealed that adults learning a language speak with a more nativelike
accent if they overheard the language regularly during childhood than if they did not. These findings have important implications for understanding of language learning mechanisms and heritage-language acquisition.

The prevailing wisdom is that children cannot learn a language by merely overhearing it (Pinker, 1994; Rice, 1983; Sachs, Bard, & Johnson, 1981; Snow et al., 1976). Yet little is known about what might best reveal the effects of childhood overhearing, namely, later acquisition of an overheard language. Finding such effects would benefit current understanding of language-learning mechanisms (Au & Romo, 1997). Consider the timing of input. If deprived of early linguistic input, children generally do not fully acquire a language—especially its phonology and morphosyntax even when input is available later (e.g., Curtiss, 1977; Flege, 1987; Flege, Yeni-Komshian, & Liu, 1999; Johnson & Newport, 1989; Newport, 1990; Oyama, 1976). This implies that language learners can best make use of relevant input during certain maturational states. Despite its significance, input timing has thus far been investigated only in linguistic deprivation studies focusing on what cannot be learned readily beyond childhood. The study of childhood overhearing reported here constitutes a first step in exploring long-term effects of what can be learned readily during childhood. Specifically, it explored whether adults learning a language would have more nativelike mastery of its phonology and morphosyntax if
they overheard the language regularly during childhood than if they did not.

This study also has applied implications. Although there are advantages to being bilingual (e.g., Taylor, Meynard, & Rheault, 1977), raising bilingual children in a predominantly monolingual environment such as the United States is not easy (Taylor, 1987; Wong-Fillmore, 1991). Is there any point for bilingual parents so situated to try? If childhood experience with a language—even if incomplete or discontinued— turns out to help older learners master that language, the answer would be “yes” after all. It would then also make sense for policymakers to allocate more resources to language programs for young children. Our study focused on phonology and morphosyntax because these aspects of language seem easy for children to acquire and difficult for adults to master. They are therefore good candidates for revealing long-term effects of childhood overhearing.

Production benefits of childhood overhearing

ABSTRACT
The current study assessed whether overhearing Spanish during childhood helps later
Spanish pronunciation in adulthood. Our preliminary report based on a subset of the data (Au, Knightly, Jun, & Oh, 2002) revealed that adults who overheard Spanish during childhood had better Spanish pronunciation, but not better morphosyntax, than adult learners of Spanish who had no childhood experience with Spanish. We now present data from the full sample with additional morphosyntax and pronunciation assessments, as well as measures to help rule out possible confounding prosodic factors such as speech rate, phrasing, and stress placement. Three groups of undergraduates were compared: 15 Spanish-English bilinguals (native Spanish
speakers), 15 late learners of Spanish who overheard Spanish during childhood (childhood overhearers), 15 late learners of Spanish who had no regular experience with Spanish until middle or high-school (typical late L2 learners). Results confirmed a pronunciation advantage for the childhood overhearers over the typical late L2 learners on all measures: phonetic analyses (VOT and degree of lenition), accent ratings (phoneme and story production), but no benefit in
morphosyntax. Importantly, the pronunciation advantage did not seem attributable to prosodic factors. These findings illustrate the specificity of overhearers' advantage to phonological
production.

The loss of first language phonetic perception in adopted Koreans

Does early exposure to a language leave permanent traces in the brain? We examine this issue by testing a group of native Koreans who were adopted by French-speaking families and have stopped using their first language for many years. Previous results suggest that they are not able to recognize Korean sentences, nor to identify Korean words (Pallier et al. 2003). In the present study, we focus on the possible remnants of L1 phonology, by assessing the adoptees’ capacity to discriminate Korean voiceless consonants which are difficult to perceive by native
French speakers. Data from groups of adoptees, native speakers of French, and native speakers of Korean, show that the adoptees do not perceive the differences between Korean phonemes better than native French speakers previously unexposed to Korean. Also, adoptees having been reexposed to Korean and those without reexposure perform similarly on this task. These results demonstrate that the Korean adoptees do not have easy access to the phonetic categories of the Korean language.

Early childhood language memory in the speech perception of international adoptees

ABSTRACT

It is as yet unclear whether the benefits of early linguistic experiences can be maintained without at least some minimal continued exposure to the language. This study compared 12 adults adopted from Korea to the US as young children (all but one prior to age one year) to 13 participants who had no prior exposure to Korean to examine whether relearning can aid in accessing early childhood language memory. All 25 participants were recruited and tested during the second week of first-semester college Korean language classes. They completed a language background questionnaire and interview, a childhood slang task and a Korean phoneme identification task. Results revealed an advantage for adoptee participants in identifying some Korean phonemes, suggesting that some components of early childhood language memory can remain intact despite many years of disuse, and that relearning a language can help in accessing such a memory.

Salvaging a Childhood Language
Abstract

Childhood experience with a language seems to help adult learners speak it with a more native-like accent. Can analogous benefits be found beyond phonology? This study focused on adult learners of Spanish who had spoken Spanish as their native language before age 7 and only minimally, if at all, thereafter until they began to re-learn Spanish around age 14 years. They were compared with native speakers, childhood overhearers, and typical late-second-language (L2)-learners of Spanish. Both childhood speakers and overhearers spoke Spanish with a more native-like accent than typical late-L2-learners. On grammar measures, childhood speakers—although far from native-like—reliably outperformed childhood overhearers as well as typical late-L2-learners. These results suggest that while simply overhearing a language during childhood could help adult learners speak it with a more native-like phonology, speaking a language regularly during childhood could help re-learners use it with more native-like grammar as well as phonology.

Languages Plus

2010-10-14T17:59:00.000-07:00

Languages Plus

July 23, 2010

Timothy A. Bennett strives toward a new vision for the foreign language department. “You can think of a university as a little continent full of different kingdoms,” said Bennett, chair of the foreign languages and literatures department at Wittenberg University, a Lutheran liberal arts college in Ohio. “I’d prefer that language departments suffused the curriculum rather than just be another kingdom among many kingdoms.”

To that end, Wittenberg’s language department has revised its own intermediate-level language classes -- making them more interdisciplinary in nature -- and has spread outward across the university in the form of a new “Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum” (CLAC) program. In making these recent changes -- with the help of a two-year, $179,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education -- Wittenberg’s foreign language faculty were responding both to a charge to “internationalize” the curriculum and to a growing sense that student interests were changing. “The traditional study of language and literature really wasn’t addressing the current generation,” Bennett said. “So how could we begin to reach out and find ways for students to understand the importance of language and culture study and to see language not necessarily as an end unto itself but as a tool of discovery, a way of encountering the world and the disciplines?”

In Wittenberg’s CLAC program, students sign up for a one-credit language module as an optional add-on to a non-language class in another discipline. In a tutorial fashion, the student designs an independent project in consultation with the professor of the content class and executes it under the guidance of a foreign language faculty member (advising CLAC students now counts toward a foreign language professor’s teaching load). “The point is not to make it into a language class,” said Bennett. “The point is to make it an experience with the content area where the language is the key to being able to complete the project.” For instance, Bennett, who teaches German, worked with a student in a geology class as she researched geothermal energy and seismic activity in Germany. Students in a Chinese-language module for a course on Japanese history researched how China responded to the bombing at Hiroshima.

“That’s a really tough nut to crack,” said Bennett. “You’re working with students with an intermediate knowledge of Chinese and they may only get a small chunk of that problem solved. They may only be able to look at very small portions of newspaper articles, or maybe only look at propaganda posters in some cases, but nonetheless what happened is they were able to see ways in which language and culture construct knowledge.”

The only prerequisite for the CLAC modules is to be enrolled in or have completed a two-credit intermediate-level language course. “One of the points we want to make with students is even if you’re at a beginning/intermediate level, you can begin doing something with a language,” Bennett said.

Which brings up the revised intermediate-level courses. Wittenberg threw out the traditional model in which skills – composition and conversation – are the organizing principle. Instead the college teaches language through interdisciplinary study. After one year of college language -- the French, German, Russian or Spanish 1 and 2 sequence – students can now elect to take a variety of half-semester, two-credit intermediate-level language courses in topics in history, the environment, film, national identity, and translation, for example. (Chinese and Japanese retain more traditional intermediate-level courses, due to the steeper learning curve for those languages.) “What we’re trying to do is build as many gateways for students to come in and study language and culture, connect it to as many issues, topics as we can,” said Bennett.

Or, as Timothy L. Wilkerson, an associate professor of French put it, “We had to find a way to make second-year French not suck.” In the traditional composition class, as he explained, “Everything you do is wrong. Everything you do is circled in red and everything has to be rewritten and often by the teacher.” Prior to the curricular changes, the French department was struggling. It wasn’t uncommon for Wilkerson to teach upper-level literature courses with just three students. But after he taught an intermediate French course on the natural environment this year – the title of the French-language text he used translates as Ecology for Idiots – three of the students from that single class signed up for a French minor, Wilkerson said. “It taught them something about the world, in French, that they didn’t know. It was all bad news unfortunately,” Wilkerson said, cheekily.

In broad strokes, Wittenberg’s two-pronged reforms – an embrace of interdisciplinarity within the department’s offerings and a movement across departmental boundaries to make language study relevant to a broader demographic of students – represent a microcosm of the kind of change language departments across the nation are debating and discussing. An influential 2007 Modern Language Association report, “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World,” called for giving students options for language study beyond the traditional literary track, and for increased collaboration with departments across campus. Noting that only 6.1 percent of foreign language majors attain a doctoral degree, the report states that, “for those students and for others who enjoy literary studies, one path to the major should be through literature. But to attract students from other fields and students with interests beyond literary studies, particularly students returning from a semester or a year abroad, departments should institute courses that address a broad range of curricular needs.”

“The foreign language programs at many institutions are facing budget cuts, and a lot of institutions have been looking hard to strengthen the programs, especially in collaboration with other units on campus,” said Rosemary Feal, the MLA’s executive director.

“What we’re seeing is a shifting in thinking on the part of faculty members in foreign language departments. They are rethinking their curricula in the light of changing needs of students in the 21st century, a desire to internationalize the campus, and in response to shifting budget priorities.”

Integrating Content and Language

More students than ever are studying abroad, albeit increasingly on short-term programs. Virtually every college seems to have added “international” or “global” to its mission statement or strategic plan. Colleges are offering more languages than in the past and increasing numbers of students are signing up (total foreign language enrollments climbed 12.9 percent from 2002 to 2006, according to an MLA survey). And yet depressingly small numbers of students ever reach the advanced levels of proficiency that a “global citizen” might be presumed to possess (as that same MLA survey found, enrollments beyond introductory-level language courses drop off dramatically).

“If you’re going to internationalize the curriculum, it seems to me that languages should be leading the charge,” said Bennett, of Wittenberg. “I think sometimes the reason we’re not is it does require some rethinking of what we’re doing.”

Language departments increasingly have had to look beyond the pool of potential majors and minors and ask “Who’s my audience?” said Heidi Byrnes, a professor of German at Georgetown University and president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics. “And I think the potential audience has to be everybody.”

“The challenge I see now in a more globalized environment is it is not just sufficient for people to be able to communicate with others on a daily basis, and learn to appreciate each other on a personal level, but what’s happening now is we’re finding more and more of a need to use language in a professional environment,” she said. Students should be prepared to use language in a variety of professional contexts, Byrnes said, and thus the need for integrating content and language acquisition has never been greater -- and her own German department at Georgetown has gained national recognition for doing just that. But while it can be done, Byrnes cautions, linking the two isn’t easy. “From the standpoint of applied linguistics, it continues to be very challenging to come up with a principled link, not just an ad-hoc link, between language learning and content learning,” she said.

Content-based language generally describes what happens when language professors offer courses in other disciplines -- in ecology, history, or politics, for instance. The goal, first and foremost, remains teaching the language, with interdisciplinary study a means to this end. On the other side of the spectrum are the "language across the curriculum" programs, which Stephen Straight of the State University of New York at Binghamton, has described as "language-based content instruction."

Straight, a professor of anthropology and linguistics and senior adviser for international initiatives, spearheaded the creation of a language across the curriculum program at Binghamton in the early 90s. In Binghamton’s program, graduate students facilitate study groups in a target language for a select number of courses. “It’s not a language acquisition program, it’s a language use program,” Straight explained. “We use the language to help students have a more international perspective on the content of a course,” by examining applicable texts written in the target language, for instance.

The language across the curriculum programs aren’t new – a member of the “across the curriculum” family (writing, science, communication, etc.) – the initiative was born of the late 80s and early 90s, and at some campuses faded when federal grant support ran out. But a core group of believers feels that the movement never reached its full potential and has new relevance as colleges increasingly incorporate international perspectives in their curriculums.

“For so many of our U.S. students, the only time they’re going to use a non-English language in an applied way is if they’re doing an immersion program in study abroad,” said Diana K. Davies, vice provost for international initiatives at Princeton University and president of the Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum consortium, which is made up of 10 institutions: Baldwin-Wallace and Skidmore Colleges; Binghamton, Drake, Portland State and Wittenberg Universities; and the Universities of Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Richmond.

While one of the 10 universities in the CLAC consortium, Drake University, eliminated its foreign language departments about a decade ago and now offers language instruction in new ways, Davies stressed that CLAC initiatives should not be seen as replacements for language programs but as international elements of the curriculum.

“Some people might say, ‘Here comes languages across the curriculum’ and they’ve found a way to outsource what language experts are doing. That’s not the goal of CLAC,” said Davies. “It’s not, if you will, to teach foreign language on the cheap, to outsource it to native speakers. The goal is rather to get over this idea that so many students have that French or German or Russian is something you do or study in your French or German or Russian class. Yes, you do that, and you need a French, German or Russian expert to help you, but what we’re showing is that French or German or Russian are things you can use in your history or biology or business course. And you don’t have to be fluent in those languages to really benefit from whatever ability you have.”

A criticism of CLAC, in fact, is that, in privileging the study of disciplinary content, it involves too little attention to language acquisition. “If we’re talking about students eventually reaching advanced-level skills, the language piece can’t be left out,” said Carol A. Klee, assistant vice president for international scholarship and a professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese studies at the University of Minnesota.

Language Across the Curriculum

A variety of different models for language across the curriculum programs exist. Like Binghamton, UNC Chapel Hill hires graduate students – at a rate of $5,000 per semester – to teach discussion sections in target languages. For instance, this fall students can sign up for a Spanish discussion section for a business course in Global Marketing, or a French discussion section for a history course on 20th Century Europe. For less commonly taught languages, there are combined discussion sections, in which students from three courses dealing with related issues in the Middle East, for instance, can sign up for a single discussion section conducted in Arabic. Graduate students who teach in North Carolina’s program can earn a graduate certificate in LAC instruction.

Baldwin-Wallace College, in Ohio, has experimented with a number of models, including LAC-embedded courses, in which interested faculty allow students to complete selected assignments in a specific language. For instance, in a macroeconomics course, students can take up the instructor’s option to complete certain assignments in Spanish. Baldwin-Wallace also offers a one-credit course, in French, German, or Spanish, as an optional add-on to a required core course called Enduring Questions for an Intercultural World.

This latter option hasn’t proven particularly popular, but Baldwin-Wallace just received a $195,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop two-credit stand-alone courses within the majors, taught in target languages – for instance, a biology professor has developed a Spanish-language course on environmental science in Latin America, and an education professor has developed a course on the use of Spanish in primary and secondary classrooms. These courses will not generally be team-taught but instead will rely on a cadre of professors in a variety of disciplines who have professional-level expertise in another language. The grant also allows Baldwin-Wallace to hire a new professor of Chinese and business, and provides scholarship funding – $750 per student to be matched by another $750 from Baldwin-Wallace – for students who’ve taken a LAC course to study abroad.

“We have tried to develop incentives to get students interested,” said Judy B. Krutky, director for intercultural education and professor of political science and international studies at Baldwin-Wallace. “From my perspective the question has always been, ‘How do we get more Americans to study a foreign language?’ ”

— Elizabeth Redden

Foreign language enrollments at US colleges and universities

2010-10-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

A good analysis of the 2007 MLA language enrollment survey

More Students, More Languages

November 14, 2007

Overall enrollments in languages other than English continue their steady climb, increasing by 12.9 percent from 2002 to 2006, with the most dramatic growth seen in the study of Arabic (up 126.5 percent) and Chinese (up 51 percent), according to the Modern Language Association's survey on "Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2006."

“As a professor of French, I’m reassured that the traditional languages are holding their own. But I’m really impressed with the increased enrollment in languages we thought of as very difficult. They still are, but students are willing to put in the effort," Catherine Porter, second vice president of the MLA and professor emerita at the State University of New York at Cortland, said during a telephone press conference Tuesday about the results of the survey, which had a 99.8 percent return rate among 2,801 colleges and universities.

Against the backdrop of increasing government support for language programs post-September 11, the MLA, which has conducted its survey periodically (every four years, of late) since 1958, found gains in all of the 15 most widely taught languages save Biblical Hebrew, down 0.3 percent from 2002 to 2006. Enrollments in the less commonly taught languages also increased by 31.2 percent from 2002, fueled largely by a 55.9 percent growth in Middle Eastern and African languages (the most popular being Aramaic, Swahili and Persian). In all, 204 of the less commonly taught languages were in fact taught in 2006, an increase of 42 languages over 2002.

Enrollments in language courses have been steadily climbing since 1998 and language enrollments, in raw numbers, are at their highest since the MLA's 1960 survey. Yet, the report notes that the number of language course enrollments per 100 student enrollments is, at 8.6, about half the ratio in 1960 and 1965 (16.1 and 16.5, respectively).

Also, enrollments in language courses beyond the introductory level drop off dramatically. For advanced courses alone, the 2006 ratio falls to 1.4 language course enrollments per 100 students. This was the first time the MLA completed a breakdown of enrollments in introductory versus advanced courses, and Rosemary G. Feal, the MLA's executive director, cited the caveat that the numbers do not reflect students who take advanced-level languages during study abroad but not at their home campuses.

Among the most widely taught languages, Spanish remains the most popular by far with more than 50 percent of all language enrollments, and a 10.3 percent increase in enrollments from fall 2002 to 2006. Enrollments in French and German increased gradually, continuing a reversal of declines in the 1990s. Yet, as a share of total language course enrollments, the percentage studying Spanish, French and German declined from 74.4 percent in 2002 to 71.3 percent in 2006.

Enrollments in American sign language grew by 29.7 percent to put it right behind German at No. 4 -- a placement fueled in part by its much more astronomical 432.2 percent growth in enrollments from 1998 to 2002. Other languages with dramatic growths in enrollment over 2002 include, of course, Arabic and Chinese, as well as Japanese (up 27.5 percent) and Korean (up 37.1 percent).

Fall 1998, 2002 and 2006 Language Enrollments at U.S. Colleges

2006 Ranking and Language 1998 2002 % Change 98-02 2006 % Change 02-06
1. Spanish 656,590 746,267 +13.7% 822,985 +10.3%
2. French 199,064 201,979 +1.5% 206,426 +2.2%
3. German 89,020 91,100 +2.3% 94,264 +3.5%
4. American Sign Language 11,420 60,781 +432.2% 78,829 +29.7%
5. Italian 49,287 63,899 +29.6% 78,368 +22.6%
6. Japanese 43,141 52,238 +21.1% 66,605 +27.5%
7. Chinese 28,456 34,153 +20% 51,582 +51%
8. Latin 26,145 29,841 +14.1% 32,191 +7.9%
9. Russian 23,791 23,921 +0.5% 24,845 +3.9%
10. Arabic 5,505 10,584 +92.3% 23,974 +126.5%

Total enrollments at the four-year college and graduate level comprise the vast majority of enrollments, with about 1.2 million in total (about 41,000 of which are at the graduate level). Community colleges, by contrast, accounted for 366,282 of total language enrollments in 2006.

At the community college level, language enrollments grew by 4.6 percent from 2002 to 2006, compared to 15.9 percent among undergraduate enrollments at four-year colleges. At community colleges, American sign language enrollments grew by 14.2 percent (among four-year college undergraduates, American sign language is the seventh-most common language, while it is the second-most common at community colleges), and Arabic by 135.8 percent. Enrollments in Armenian, Chinese and Persian also grew dramatically at community colleges, with 53.8, 37.6 and 86 percent increases. Enrollments in Ancient Greek dropped sharply, by 79.6 percent, and enrollments in French, German and Latin fell, by 8.5, 1.5 and 16.4 percent.

Since 1986, enrollments in Vietnamese at the community college level have risen by 2,048.2 percent, and Arabic by 1,138.4 percent.

“I don’t think that this is just a temporary spike in enrollments. I think these figures indicate a real shift of interest on the part of American students,"
Karin Ryding, a member of the MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages and a professor of Arabic at Georgetown University, said of increasing Arabic enrollments during Tuesday's press event.

“They’re coming to the study of Arabic and other languages with serious professional goals in mind, including -- and let me list some examples -- work with international organizations, diplomatic service, global environmental efforts, humanitarian relief efforts, security studies, international communications and media studies.”

While some of the growth has been fueled by heritage learners, “who are ready to reconnect with their culture and the language of their parents or grandparents," Ryding said, "also it has to do with a readiness of many students to tackle what have generally been considered more unfamiliar and more difficult languages.”

— Elizabeth Redden

Raising the Bar

2010-10-14T17:32:00.000-07:00

Raising the Bar

September 10, 2010

Leah Gilman’s “job” this summer was to learn Arabic. A multimedia journalism major at the University of Texas at Austin, she took Arabic from 9:30 to 3:30 every day, for 10 weeks. She took time out for an interview during her lunch break midway through week 10.

“Aside from one day out of the week, my whole days are spent on Arabic,” said Gilman, a junior who started Arabic the fall of her sophomore year. “From when I get up in the morning to when I go to bed on the weekdays I’m completely immersed in Arabic, and at least one day on the weekend is spent completely at the coffee shop doing my homework. They give you about 10 hours of homework during the weekend and then it’s about four during the weekdays.”

It was worth it, she said, and she’s keeping her eye on the reward – a capstone year studying abroad in Damascus. “My plan is to work in the Middle East or to do work with Middle Eastern countries and Arab countries, and it’s just really necessary that I learn Arabic to do that,” Gilman said. “The program here is really grueling but in the end my commitment and desire to learn Arabic is what pushes me to go through all of this. The language itself is beautiful, and once I get out in the real world I know I’m going to be directly applying this in my work.”

Gilman is enrolled in a Language Flagship program. Begun in 2002, the federal Language Flagship initiative originally funded graduate-level study in the so-called critical languages – those languages for which demand for trained speakers exceeds supply -- but has since expanded to encompass undergraduate education and three pilot K-12 programs, too. In 2009-10, about 825 undergraduates were enrolled in Language Flagship programs, and 89 graduate students. Undergraduate enrollment is expected to grow to at least 1,000 in the current academic year, while graduate enrollment will stay steady.

The budget is about $20 million a year, and 23 universities now host Flagship Centers, each offering intensive instruction in a single critical language: Arabic, Chinese, Hindi/Urdu, Korean, Persian, Russian, Swahili, or Yoruba. Undergraduates study language over and above a major of their choice, and each Flagship program includes at least a yearlong study abroad “capstone” experience at one of 11 overseas Flagship sites.

A component of the National Security Education Program, housed at the U.S. Department of Defense -- a not-insignificant detail that has been the cause of some controversy – the Language Flagship has an immodest objective: “to change the way Americans learn languages.”

Indeed, the Language Flagship programs represent a significant shift in the model for foreign language education at American universities. Each curriculum is organized around a very clear and ambitious learning outcome: that students graduate at the Superior level on the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages scale or with a score of 3 on the Interagency Language Roundtable scale (which spans from 0 to 5). To put that in perspective, said Catherine Ingold, director of the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland at College Park, state standards for teaching Spanish at the K-12 level generally require proficiency levels of 1+ or 2. And this is for teachers of Spanish, which millions of Americans speak.

“What the Flagship programs have really achieved is to demonstrate that colleges and universities with well-structured programs that really target serious levels of language proficiency can do it,” said Ingold. “A general problem with language programs in higher education is that relatively few of them target specific levels of language proficiency, or measure it. They don’t necessarily know what their language outcomes are. Relatively few students enroll in longer sequences. But by this time we know what it takes to get to a 3. And Flagship has shown that you can actually set up a higher ed-based program that does it, even in category 4 languages, the languages that are most difficult for English speakers to learn.”

“We are taking people who are at zero,” said Mahmoud Al-Batal, associate professor of Arabic and director of the Arabic Flagship Program at Texas. “Zero to three, this is the model, to show that Arabic is very doable for students who have the determination and motivation. Providing them with a very challenging program and rewarding program, we believe we can do it.” And they have. Of the 17 graduates of Texas’ undergraduate Flagship so far, 15 have achieved ratings of 3 and two of 2+. “If our failure is 2 or 2+, this is a wonderful failure to have,” said Al-Batal.

Up until recently, in fact, that would have been considered an unequivocal success. “Until the advent of Flagship, the average product of an American undergraduate language program would typically come out with something like a 1 or 1+ proficiency,” said Dan E. Davidson, president of the American Councils for International Education and a professor of Russian and second language acquisition at Bryn Mawr College. “They would go abroad for a year, which is the longest you could go, and come back a 2. To this day that’s still considered a good outcome, but it falls short of the level people need to use the language in a professional way.”

“What if you could send people overseas with 2-level proficiency instead and you could give them an intensive year of training? What would happen then?” Davidson asked. The American Council administers many of the overseas study centers for Flagship students, for the study of African languages (in Nigeria and Zanzibar), Arabic (in Egypt and Syria), Chinese, Persian (in Tajikistan), and Russian. This spring, Davidson published a peer-reviewed study analyzing 15 years of language acquisition data from 1,881 students studying abroad in Russia, including five years of data from Flagship students studying at St. Petersburg State University.

“The answer is they [the Flagship students] do not come back as 2s or 2+s, they come back as 3, 3+s and 4s. We have never had that kind of outcome in the past.”
While the total population of Flagship students studying abroad remains small, the (still unpublished) data collected for Flagship students in Arabic, Chinese and Persian are consistent with the findings for Russian, Davidson said. If students enter the capstone study abroad year already at level 2, they leave at level 3 – a professional level – or higher.

The Not-So-Secret Sauce

How have the Flagship programs achieved this? “The answer is there’s no magic new method here at all,” said Davidson. “Flagship draws on an array of best practices that have been developed by the field for decades. No one came up with anything new here. It’s more a matter of having the resources from an administrative point of view for configuring all the best things that we know for learning a language as a young adult.”

While studying abroad at the Flagship overseas centers, for instance, students benefit from homestays, internships, direct enrollment in a host university, peer tutors, and individualized language training with online, biweekly reports sent to U.S.-based academic advisers. “We pull out every stop we know to pull out for a well-designed program,” Davidson said.

“The point is to combine language study with a four-letter word, work,” said Galal Walker, who directs both the National East Asian Languages Resource Center and the Chinese Flagship Program at Ohio State University.

Consider the sample four-year undergraduate curriculum for an incoming Ohio State student starting Chinese from scratch. The summer before freshman year, the hypothetical student could take an intensive summer program in Columbus covering the first year of Chinese. Taking an intensive, two-hour-a-day track, the student could then complete the second and third levels of Chinese during the freshman year. He could take another intensive summer course, this one at the Flagship center in Qingdao, the summer before sophomore year, and then fifth-level Chinese at Ohio State upon return. He could go again to Qingdao the next summer, before the junior year, and subsequently take advanced-level Chinese and language tutorials in his “domain” -- his area of study or professional interest – during the academic year.

His senior year he’d go abroad for a “capstone year” in Nanjing, where he would enroll directly at Nanjing University and complete an internship. There are substantial scholarships available for this student to pursue intensive summer and overseas study -- up to $3,500 to support domestic summer study, up to $7,000 for overseas summer study and up to $15,000 for the full capstone year abroad.

But even when financial barriers are taken care of, there’s still that pesky matter of time. Keep in mind: this hypothetical student is not a Chinese major (or at least not solely a Chinese major). A stated goal of Flagship is not to graduate more language majors but to create a cadre of “global professionals” – professionals in a variety of fields with superior language abilities. Flagship language students complete their coursework in their major at the same time they work toward Flagship certification.

Not everyone can follow the ideal path for language study. Some students have more demanding majors; some discover the language their freshman year and have to start language study as sophomores. Some Flagship students, not surprisingly, take an extra year.

“Basically, there are two variables for whether they get out of here in four years. The first one is the student’s aptitude and the second is the student’s major,” said Anne Baker, associate director of the Arabic Flagship Program at Michigan State University.

“If you think about it, we’re asking kids who are 17 or so to make a commitment,” said Susan Gass, director of the Michigan State Flagship and a professor in the department of linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African languages. “Most of these students who are coming in have not had Arabic before and we’re asking them to make this major commitment about their future and what they’re going to do for their four years to five years in college.”

“What’s unique about [Flagship] is the extreme attention that’s paid to it, the individualization of the program and the commitment, the commitment on the part of faculty, the commitment on the part of the students,” Gass said. “There is a goal; they know what they have to do. They understand what it takes to get where they need to go and they’re committed. If they’re not committed they’re not going to be successful and if they’re not going to be successful they’re not going to stay in the program.”

"Trying to establish language programs based on proficiency means that you have to work backwards,” said Michael Nugent, deputy director of the National Security Education Program (NSEP) and director of the Language Flagship. "Where do you want to be at the end of this process? You want to be at a level 3.”

"People will say, in order to get students to that level, we have to do things differently. By setting that goal you're putting the pressure on the language faculty and everyone else involved to change what we do."

From Controversial Beginnings...

The source of funding for the National Security Education Program – which encompasses the Language Flagship – has been a source of controversy. In 2002, when the first Flagship grants were awarded, the boards of both the Middle East Studies Association and the African Studies Association issued resolutions stating concerns about the link between Defense Department dollars and language learning.

The African Studies Association’s motion stated opposition to “the application for and acceptance of military and intelligence funding of area and language programs, projects, and research in African studies.... We believe that the long-term interests of the people of the United States are best served by this separation between academic and military and defense establishments. Indeed, in the climate of the post-Cold War years in Africa and the security concerns after September 11, 2001, we believe that it is a patriotic policy to make this separation.” The association’s board reaffirmed this statement at a meeting in 2008.

“Obviously the ASA very strongly supports the idea of promotion of language learning, that’s obvious, and in general education and scholarship on Africa,” said Charles Ambler, the association’s president and a professor of history at the University of Texas at El Paso. “But our position is driven by two fundamental concerns. The first is a principled one that philosophically, we believe that the promotion of language learning and knowledge about cultures shouldn’t be a consequence of strategic needs but of educational goals and therefore that the funds ought to be funneled through the Department of Education or some other appropriate unit like the National Endowment for the Humanities, rather than as it is now through the Department of Defense. That’s one aspect of it.”

As for the second, Ambler continued, “I know that in general people can respond and say, ‘Well, you need to be realistic and so forth,’ but we also have to understand that the parts of the world we’re dealing with have histories vis-à-vis the major powers, including especially the United States, that leave them sensitive about their sovereignty. And the association of research with [military and] intelligence can appear to complicate the research agenda. And it can put, certainly American researchers, but also their colleagues in various African countries in difficult positions.”

“We’re not doubting the sincerity of these efforts,” Ambler said. “It’s just a matter of principle on the one hand, and perception on the other.”

The Middle East Studies Association’s 2002 resolution, revised in 2003, expresses similar concerns as to whether the link between the academy and defense and intelligence agencies could make scholarly research more difficult and dangerous. In addition the statement notes, “While MESA welcomes enhanced attention to language-study programs, we are uneasy about the directed goals of NFLI-P [the National Flagship Language Initiative – Pilot Program], and in particular the direct link that it envisions between academic programs and government employment.”

But Ingold, of the National Foreign Language Resource Center, said that the Flagship programs are not as tightly tied to government employment goals as they were at the beginning, when it was a graduate-only initiative. “One of the realities of the United States is we need speakers of a lot of different languages,” she said. “The only way to achieve that is to have a really broad-based program from which you can grow a much larger pool of people who might be drawn to government service or contract work or teaching …the [government] service requirement is only one piece of the pie and probably strategically appropriately so.”

Graduate students who receive Flagship fellowships -- of which 20 to 25 are awarded, nationally, each year -- incur a government service commitment, as do undergraduate Flagship students who apply for Boren Scholarships to support study abroad (15 Flagship students received Boren Scholarships in 2009-10). But the rest of the students enrolled in the Flagship programs -- the vast majority of them -- do not have any government service commitments.

“All these grants that we [as an institution] have received do not carry any obligation on the part of students,” said Al-Batal, the director of the Arabic program at Texas and a member of the Middle East Studies Association’s board.

From Al-Batal’s perspective, the initial concerns about the Flagship program haven’t come to pass. He added that another initial concern -- that academic freedom would be impinged upon and that the government would intervene in the curriculum – has, in his experience, proven unfounded. “ [The government’s] only concern is, ‘What are you doing as a program to help these students reach level 3 proficiency in Arabic?’ Which is a goal that we completely support as the Arabic program at the University of Texas.”

Furthermore, Al-Batal said, the federal funding that Texas’ Arabic Flagship program receives – $700,000 last year for operating costs, plus another $250,000 for student scholarships, mainly for study abroad – has allowed for improvements across the Arabic program that benefit Flagship and non-Flagship students alike. For instance, faculty have increased the contact hours for first and second-year Arabic classes to six hours per week. They’ve added new advanced content-based language courses, in which students study topics like "Modern Arab Societies" and "History of Modern Egypt" – in Arabic. “The standard now for us is we are striving to push all our students to superior-level proficiency by the time they finish their undergraduate curriculum,” said Al-Batal.

“The Flagship model is changing our approach to foreign language education and is definitely raising the standards and setting a new standard, a standard of excellence.”

Disappearing Languages at Albany

2010-10-14T17:25:00.000-07:00

Disappearing Languages at Albany

October 4, 2010
The State University of New York at Albany's motto is "the world within reach." But language faculty members are questioning the university's commitment to such a vision after being told Friday that the university was ending all admissions to programs in French, Italian, Russian and classics, leaving only Spanish left in the language department once current students graduate. The theater department is also being eliminated.

While the last two years have seen many language departments threatened or eliminated, faculty members at Albany said they were stunned that so many languages were being eliminated at the same time and that this was happening at a doctoral university that has prided itself on an international vision. The French program extends to the doctoral level while all the other programs have undergraduate majors as well as many students who take language courses as part of general education but who do not major.

Ten tenured faculty members in language programs were told Friday that they would have two years of employment in which to help current students finish their degrees, but that they would then be out of their jobs, according to several who were at the meeting. About 20 adjuncts and several others on the tenure track but not tenured are also at risk of losing their jobs, potentially even earlier, although details are not available.

A university spokeswoman, asked about the details of faculty jobs, said that "no faculty are losing their jobs this year and at this stage it's too early to determine when faculty positions will actually be impacted," but those who were at the briefing for the dropped departments Friday said that they were told explicitly that their jobs would be eliminated. The spokeswoman, however, said that the meeting Friday was "the beginning of a conversation about the future," without any decisions about faculty jobs.

"We were told [of the eliminations] without any hint" in advance of any concern about the programs, said Jean-François Brière, a professor of French studies and chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Brière, who has taught at the university since 1979, said that even in the context of budget cuts this year, he was shocked. "No other university of the caliber and size" of Albany has done this, he said.

George M. Philip, Albany's president, cited deep, repeated budget cuts as requiring the university to move beyond across-the-board cuts or identifying one-time savings.

Under current budget projections, he said in a statement on the cuts, by the end of 2012, administrative units will have had state funds cut by 22.4 percent and academic units will have had funds cut by 16 percent. Hundreds of positions have been eliminated, largely through leaving vacancies unfilled. "This decision was based on an extensive consultative process with faculty, and in recognition that there are comparatively fewer students enrolled in these degree programs," Philip said. While all the programs slated for elimination are part of the university's liberal arts offerings, he said that "this action does not reflect the quality of the faculty appointed to these program areas, or the value of these subjects to the liberal arts." (Faculty union leaders and language faculty said that they knew of no consultation, and Faculty Senate leaders did not respond to inquiries.)

He also cited the failure of the New York Legislature to pass legislation -- strongly backed by SUNY leaders -- that would have given more control over tuition rates and the use of tuition revenue to the state's university systems, and would have saved them money by releasing them from a range of regulatory requirements.

Language faculty dispute the idea that there was sufficient consultation, saying that they were never given a chance to explain their enrollment numbers.

Eloise Brière, an associate professor of French studies, said that the seven tenured French faculty members each year collectively teach about 500 students who are not majors, about 40 at various stages of the major, and about 40 graduate students. She said that these numbers may seem low compared to departments that are able to have large introductory courses with hundreds of students.

"You cannot teach languages to an auditorium of 200," she said. "It is the nature of what we do that we are then seen as unproductive." Making decisions in this way "devalues the liberal arts," she said.

Like her husband, Brière is long-term at Albany, having taught there since 1982. She said she was particularly concerned about younger faculty members, citing those recruited in recent years, one of whom gave up tenure elsewhere. "This is devastating," she said.

Phil Smith, president of United University Professions, the SUNY faculty union, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, said that it was correct that SUNY has suffered deep budget cuts, but he questioned both the process and the decision. He said that the Albany chapter of the union was not consulted on the cuts, even though changes of this magnitude should have led to such discussions.

Even with a need for cuts, he said, some programs need protection at a comprehensive university like Albany. "I can't understand how a university can eliminate classics programs and languages like Italian and French," he said.

Rosemary G. Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association, said via e-mail: "The plans of the State University of New York at Albany to deny students access to higher learning in three modern and two classical languages are a distressing reverse to the university’s recent efforts to promote global competencies. The advanced study of the languages, literatures, and cultures of the French-, Italian-, and Russian-speaking world are essential components of a liberal arts education in a university setting. While these are financially difficult times for the SUNY system, an institution of the caliber of the University at Albany should honor its claim to offer students a comprehensive, world-class education."

— Scott Jaschik

Will Americans Really Learn Chinese?

2010-10-14T10:15:00.000-07:00

Will Americans Really Learn Chinese?

The Times recently reported on the rise of Chinese-language instruction in American schools, a push supported by aid from the Chinese government. While language fads come and go — there was Russian during the cold war, then Japanese in the 1980’s, then Arabic after 9/11 — thousands of public schools have stopped teaching foreign languages in the last decade. Is the boom in Chinese language education going to last?

Some very interesting opinions

We’d Better Learn It

Imagine that your monthly mortgage bill arrives, unremarkable except that it’s suddenly written in Mandarin. Then, your bank sends over a Chinese translator to explain that you are falling deeper into debt. Mind-boggling? Well, this is America’s contemporary predicament as the Chinese finance a growing share of our national debt. Beijing holds $1.8 trillion in U.S. bonds and other instruments of borrowing. We are fused at the hip with the Chinese, economically speaking.

So, we better get to know them. They certainly want to know us, sending over hundreds of teachers to spark our children’s interest in Mandarin and East Asian ways. Affluent urban parents get it. (One San Francisco colleague felt compelled to apologize that his 6-year-old daughter had access only to a dual-language Spanish-speaking school, rather than to the Mandarin immersion he wanted.) But unlike Europe, the U.S. has no coherent strategy for making our society bilingual, unless you count our growing Babel of texting as a second tongue.

We are pathetically slow in realizing that East Asia will soon dominate the global economy. We believe, as did the last living Romans, that the American empire will reign forever. So, we fail to grasp the hard work, collective spirit and enormous investment in public institutions advanced by Chinese citizens.

(Comment: The smell of American decline. A bit overdone, I'd say. What (some) Americans really need nowadays is a kick in their self-deprecating butt. Any opinion, coming from the increasingly less affluent West Coast urban parents should obviously not be taken lightly. Judging solely by their involvement and investing acumen, Chinese should be given a wide berth. Fortunately, there are other reasons for studying Chinese and other languages.)

An expert opinion
Hongyin Tao, professor of Chinese language and linguistics

"We have heard claims that Chinese is among the world’s most difficult languages, if not the most difficult language, to learn. This is bit of an overgeneralization, as it really depends on who the learner is and what aspects of the language we are talking about. Chinese is not necessarily harder than, say Korean, for English (non-heritage) speakers. After all, the grammar is rather simple..."

(Comment: Chinese is not harder than Korean. Brilliant! He should be flipping houses.)

Dedicated to Monolingualism

Is the new interest in learning Chinese another language fad? We certainly hope not. But the U.S. record with foreign language instruction is underwhelming.

This has deep roots in American history. Benjamin Franklin’s excessive anxieties about German (and Germans) in Pennsylvania and Teddy Roosevelt’s chilling “We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language” have echoed through the ages.

Parochial, and Proud of It

Susan Jacoby is the author of nine books, most recently “The Age of American Unreason.”

"The disproportionate media attention devoted to a mini-blip increase in Chinese classes in U.S. schools only underlines the parochialism and mediocre education standards that undercut America’s attempts not only to compete in the global economy but to lay claim to any cultural sophistication beyond the world of video.

Between 1997 and 2008, according to a survey by the Center for Applied Linguistics, the proportion of elementary and high schools offering some sort of instruction in Chinese rose from 1 to 4 percent. This is a meaningless statistic. Many of the schools rely on a Chinese government program that subsidizes salaries for teacher-ambassadors it sends to the lowly, economically deprived U.S. The fad for Chinese will pass — born, like the promotion of Russian studies during the cold war, out of the idea that we must know the language of our chief competitor.

Americans have never been particularly interested in learning other languages and are even less interested today (with the exception of conversational Spanish).

Our problems are rooted in the much larger dumbing down of the American concept of what it means to be an educated person."

(Comment: hehe, my kind of gal)

How Europe Does It

"For decades, U.S. policy makers, business leaders, educators, and research organizations have decried our students’ lack of foreign language skills and called for better language instruction. Yet, despite these calls for action, we have fallen further behind the rest of the world in preparing our students to communicate effectively in languages other than English."

"I believe the main reason for this disparity is that foreign languages are treated by our public education system as less important than math, science and English."

(Comment: maybe they are less important?)

"In contrast, E.U. governments expect their citizens to become fluent in at least two languages plus their native tongue. "

(Comment: how good are Europeans at languages other than English? I'd venture to guess, not very good)

"Many U.S. school programs offer general exposure to languages but don’t expect proficiency."

Not Just a Passing Fad
Norman Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California.
He is the developer of KuaiXue, a Chinese language software tool.

"Americans have a bad rap in linguistics. Europeans relish speaking multiple languages, we’re told, while Americans simply aren’t interested.

Unfair comparison. Most Europeans live within a couple hundred miles of another nation, so they speak multiple languages out of necessity."

"But CAN Americans learn Chinese? All those characters to memorize! And then the curveball–those dreaded, elusive tones! Much better instructional methods are needed."

(Comment: And here the good professor comes to save the day with his amazing software tool. A few others are about as disinterested as a fox in a henhouse. Bad rap? And with all those miles of Spanish books courtesy of your local Borders, the average American student must really rock at Spanish? China is close to the US? Americans sometimes have strange notions about European geography, languages, distances and about Europeans in general).

Room for debate? Indeed.

link

Valuing Foreign Language Study

2010-10-14T10:12:00.000-07:00

Valuing Foreign Language Study
Aug 11, 2010 Catherine E Whitehead

Language study is on the rise in U.S. universities but not K-12 schools, partly due to neglect of electives. Reasons and techniques for language teaching.

In The Measure of Reality, Alfred W. Crosby [Cambridge University Press, 1997] argues that European development during the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance was the result of Europe's adopting modern methods of measurement and mapmaking. The spread of gunpowder from Asia, which paralleled the spread of the decimal system, may have also helped Europe. Similarly, multilingualism and technical savvy may be the skills most critical to national and individual progress in the information age.

Foreign Language Study in the U.S.: Current Trends
Foreign language competency is a part of the U.S.'s National Education Goals 2000. Language enrollment has increased at the university level according to the Modern Language Association's 2006 survey ("Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2006" ), with a 13% overall increase from 2002 to 2006. Enrollment in Arabic and Chinese has mushroomed.

On the other hand, K-12 foreign language study in the U.S. is decreasing, according to a Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) National K-12 Foreign Language Survey (2008), which observed an overall decline between 1997 and 2008 in language study in public elementary and middle schools, with fewer offerings in Russian, German, and French at all levels, and fewer offerings in all languages – excepting Latin, Chinese, and Arabic – at the elementary level. Elementary programs today do however offer more "immersion-style" instruction in which the target language is used to teach other content areas.

Elementary schools also reported to CAL that language teaching had been negatively impacted by "No Child Left Behind." Teacher Melissa Tempel observes that students in urban schools tend to have fewer elective options than suburban peers. Further, when urban students score poorly on tests, interpretations of "No Child Left Behind" leave them no electives. According to "No Child Left Behind," resources in deficient schools must be reallocated to "those activities most likely to increase student achievement" in mandated basic skills tests. Departments of Education may interpret this as limiting instruction to math, English, science.

Benefits of Language Study
Researchers Olson and Brown (Spring, 1992) don't agree. They reported that students who "completed a foreign language course" scored higher on ACT English and math tests regardless of class rank. Of course it's possible that students studying foreign languages are simply more motivated. But foreign language study may encourage students to pay attention to word and sentence structure, or to cultural differences in expression and logic, and may help left brain development. With more foreign capital fueling America's economy, and with U.S. dependence on international business relations, foreign language study is increasingly a national priority.

Rethinking Electives to Increase Language Enrollment
One way to provide options for students who don't get electives is to allow them to replace their last year of English with a year of study in any subject they are interested in, including foreign languages, so long is that subject is either writing- or speaking-intensive. Students could even choose mathematics if it involved writing about mathematics or space. English teachers might then act as resource teachers to help other teachers facilitate writing and speaking in the content areas. This approach was adopted by Mount Holyoke College's "Speaking, arguing, and writing" program. The key is making electives challenging and relevant.

The Center for Applied Linguistics' Ingrid Pufahl (interviewed in the New York Times, "Will Americans Really Learn Chinese?") points out that Finnish students,who spend sixteen hours weekly studying foreign languages, and study content through the medium of the foreign language, "nevertheless top the charts in international math, science and reading achievement tests."

Teaching Languages: Ideas
Try for fun a really "exotic" language, such as Dinka, spoken along the Nile, or Navajo. Nebel's Dinka grammar is good. A site with Navajo lessons is gomyson.com. Content-based and literature- or art-based language instruction are increasingly popular. In content-based instruction, students use their second language to learn math, sciences, social sciences, and more. Habla.org is an organization committed to arts-based language instruction.

Role playing in a foreign language is a traditional favorite. Another option is games which require students to cooperate in the foreign language. Teachers might try pairing students with "language buddies" – who speak a different primary language – and organize "jigsaw-style" competitions. In these jigsaws, students join first with classmates who share their language skills to develop word games or grammar activities and discuss culture, and then work with their language buddy[ies] to complete the activities, solve puzzles, translate games. Mary Lynn Redmond of Wake Forest University provides additional suggestions for teaching language to children in a Wake Forest news release.

Increasingly, it's considered acceptable to use the student's first language some to facilitate instruction. Of course communication in the second language should continue to be facilitated, and activity in the second language should increase over time.

Social Networks and Bilingualism
Faciliting multilingual social networks may be important, particularly for students who were born speaking a non-English language. Speakers – even second generation speakers – whose social networks include heritage language speakers seem more likely to maintain fluency in the heritage language. For students who enjoy electronic communication, the web can facilitate such social networks. Online social networks may also help students learn a second language.

The Falling Time Cost of College

2010-10-14T10:06:00.000-07:00

The Falling Time Cost of College: Evidence from Half a Century of Time Use Data

March 24, 2010

ABSTRACT
Using multiple datasets from different time periods, we document declines in academic time investment by full-time college students in the United States between 1961 and 2003. Full-time students allocated 40 hours per week toward class and studying in 1961, whereas by 2003 they were investing about 27 hours per week. Declines were extremely broad-based, and are not easily accounted for by framing effects, work or major choices, or compositional changes in students or schools. We conclude that there have been substantial changes over time in the quantity or manner of human capital production on college campuses.

Russia(n) Is Back

2010-10-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

Russia(n) Is Back

December 15, 2009
At the College of Holy Cross this year, language instructors had to scramble to set up a second section of introductory Russian -- for the first time since the Cold War.

Not only are more students enrolling, but different kinds of students. "Our core has always been those with a love of the literature and we are still getting them, but now we are getting students with all sorts of other interaction with Russian culture," said Amy Adams, associate professor of Russian.

She has Reserve Officers' Training Corps students who want careers in intelligence. She had parents of one student tell her recently that their daughter wants to be a sports lawyer and hopes to deal with Russian hockey players. She has a group of seniors who want to go into the business world in Moscow after they graduate. She has some "heritage speakers" who are from immigrant families and grew up speaking the language, but never learned to read and write it.

"Students view Moscow as glittering and exciting, and they want to be there as young people," said Adams.

The move from one to two sections may seem small compared to the numerous sections of Spanish one can find at many colleges. Indeed, Russian professors are the first to admit that increases of 50 or 100 percent are possible in part because the base was small.

But Russian programs at colleges around the country are reporting such gains, some starting last year but many seeing the gains take off this year. The increases are particularly welcome to those teaching Russian, given the vulnerability during a recession of programs that don't have meaningful enrollments. And the increase could yield a much larger cohort of potential experts to study language, culture, history, politics and society of an obviously important country.

Stetson University last year marked the first time ever it filled two sections of introductory Russian. Indiana University went from three sections of introductory Russian to four. Union College, which used to enroll 5 or 6 students in its introductory Russian course, now has 13, and for the first time in years, there are enough students that the college is offering third year Russian.

The University of Kentucky in the last year saw enrollment in introductory Russian go to 32 from 16 and the Russian department's courses on Russian folklore and culture (taught in English) are at capacity. At the University of Pittsburgh, enrollment in first year Russian has gone to 57 from 39 in the last year, and enrollment in fourth year Russian has gone to 9 from 5. At Portland State University, enrollment in all Russian language courses is 257 this fall, up from 161 a year ago and 112 two years ago.

There are no current national data available on Russian enrollment. But many Russian professors have been trying to figure out what's happening, since it is in such contrast to a post-Cold War depression in interest. The Modern Language Association's periodic surveys of foreign language enrollments provide the best national data, and those figures were last collected in 2006, prior to the recent surge. The MLA data show that Russian enrollments went up only marginally between 1998 and 2006, a period that saw huge gains for languages such as Chinese and Arabic.

The recent increase has implications for many fields. William Taubman, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, said that advanced work in many disciplines depends on graduate students and professors with ability to do research in Russian. Taubman is a political scientist at Amherst College, which is also seeing an increase in Russian language enrollments, and he said that Russian studies is seeing a notable growth in work by sociologists and anthropologists -- in addition to work by historians, literary scholars and political scientists -- and that all of them need the language.

"This is very, very good news for Russian studies," he said.

Why Russian Now?

Many Russian professors, while thrilled with the surge in interest, want to figure it out. Some, like Adams at Holy Cross, point to a confluence of factors. Cynthia A. Ruder, associate professor of Russian at Kentucky, agrees. The U.S. government has classified Russian as a "critical language" and that designation helped attract three Air Force ROTC students to Kentucky's program; more of her students have friends who are immigrants from Russia; others have career goals, such as the art history major planning a career in art research or the international relations major who wants to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Other experts, who note that American students flocked to Russian during the Cold War, say that a friendly Russia (as in the immediate post-Soviet era) is less interesting to students than an in-your-face Russia in which leaders joust (verbally) with the United States and (not verbally) in places like Georgia.

Eugene Huskey, director of Russian studies at Stetson, quoted the Russian saying chem khuzhe, tem luchshe (the worse, the better) as applying to the field. "The worse U.S.-Russian relations are, or the worse the conditions are inside Russia, the more likely students are to read about the country," Huskey said. "The current generation of high school students is growing up with the perception of a more menacing Russia, and that has piqued their curiosity in a way that is not dissimilar to what I experienced as a boy growing up in central Florida during the Cuban missile crisis."

Jeffrey D. Holdeman, Slavic language coordinator at Indiana University, when asked whether the interest is more due to Pushkin or Putin, said that it's both, and added Pasha (a common Russian nickname) as a third reason. When he started teaching Russian in 1996, as a graduate student at Ohio State University, he said Pushkin would have been the answer because literature was the draw. "It was common for students to say that they wanted to be able to read Tolstoy or Dostoevsky in the original," he said.

Holdeman got in the habit of asking students each year why they enrolled in Russian, and he still hears about literature, but also other reasons. Of late, he said, he hears "more practical and personal reasons," such as "our neighbors are Russian," "my hockey coach is Russian," "I got to go to Russia in high school," "this video game I play has a lot of Russian in it," "my best friend is Russian and I spent all of my time over at his house, his parents feeding me, and I even picked up some words." That's what he thinks of as the Pasha explanation.

As for Putin, Holdeman said that he also hears students say things like, "I think Russian is still relevant in the world" and "Russia is still an important country."

Huskey, of Stetson, said that whatever draws students to Russian, the difficulty for most Americans of learning a language with a different alphabet from the one they know puts a lot of pressure on the professors who teach beginning students, and Huskey credited people like Michael Denner -- an associate professor at Stetson who teaches these students -- with keeping the students. "Every vibrant Russian program has a stellar professor to bring students in the door," Huskey said.

Adams, of Holy Cross, said that because the attraction of Russian language comes from interest in culture and society, not just politics, the classroom and non-classroom offerings can be broad -- and that builds more interest. Holy Cross has a lecture series that has featured a Russian journalist, a Russian novelist, and a Russian professor who is an expert on rock music.

In classes, Adams said doesn't speak any English, and uses YouTube videos of Russian musicians to illustrate some concepts. While some of her students are reading Pushkin, the program "isn't about Pushkin's Russia," she said. At the same time, she was quick to add that once students are engaged with Russia, they embrace the literary classics. One of her former ROTC students recently told her about reading Pushkin during down time in a tank in Iraq.

Some Russian programs may have focused in the past decade on just serving a small number of students, but Adams said that this is the time for these programs to be more visible on campuses. "We have so many professors who can really light up a room, and we need to let people know," she said. "These enrollments are ours to lose."

One of her students is typical of many of the trends Adams and her colleagues elsewhere see.

Nicholas Pope, a freshman at Holy Cross, said he's thinking of going into diplomacy or teaching English as a second language -- and that Russian has appeal for either choice. His mother is Czech, so he has some familiarity with a similar language and grew up "with a fascination of Russia." As more students study Russian, teaching activities that require a critical mass (and that are fun) are also possible. Pope's song and dance routine didn't win this year's "Russian Idol" contest at Holy Cross, but he's hoping for next year.

— Scott Jaschik

Colleges strive to make foreign languages relevant

2010-10-14T10:02:00.000-07:00

Colleges strive to make foreign languages relevant

Elizabeth Redden Inside Higher Ed

Timothy A. Bennett strives toward a new vision for the foreign language department. "You can think of a university as a little continent full of different kingdoms," said Bennett, chair of the foreign languages and literatures department at Wittenberg University, a Lutheran liberal arts college in Ohio. "I'd prefer that language departments suffused the curriculum rather than just be another kingdom among many kingdoms."

To that end, Wittenberg's language department has revised its own intermediate-level language classes — making them more interdisciplinary in nature — and has spread outward across the university in the form of a new "Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum" (CLAC) program. In making these recent changes — with the help of a two-year, $179,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education— Wittenberg's foreign language faculty were responding both to a charge to "internationalize" the curriculum and to a growing sense that student interests were changing.

"The traditional study of language and literature really wasn't addressing the current generation," Bennett said. "So how could we begin to reach out and find ways for students to understand the importance of language and culture study and to see language not necessarily as an end unto itself but as a tool of discovery, a way of encountering the world and the disciplines?"

In Wittenberg's CLAC program, students sign up for a one-credit language module as an optional add-on to a non-language class in another discipline. In a tutorial fashion, the student designs an independent project in consultation with the professor of the content class and executes it under the guidance of a foreign language faculty member (advising CLAC students now counts toward a foreign language professor's teaching load).

"The point is not to make it into a language class," said Bennett. "The point is to make it an experience with the content area where the language is the key to being able to complete the project." For instance, Bennett, who teaches German, worked with a student in a geology class as she researched geothermal energy and seismic activity in Germany. Students in a Chinese-language module for a course on Japanese history researched how China responded to the bombing at Hiroshima.

"That's a really tough nut to crack," said Bennett. "You're working with students with an intermediate knowledge of Chinese and they may only get a small chunk of that problem solved. They may only be able to look at very small portions of newspaper articles, or maybe only look at propaganda posters in some cases, but nonetheless what happened is they were able to see ways in which language and culture construct knowledge."

The only prerequisite for the CLAC modules is to be enrolled in or have completed a two-credit intermediate-level language course. "One of the points we want to make with students is even if you're at a beginning/intermediate level, you can begin doing something with a language," Bennett said.

Which brings up the revised intermediate-level courses. Wittenberg threw out the traditional model in which skills —composition and conversation —are the organizing principle. Instead the college teaches language through interdisciplinary study. After one year of college language — the French, German, Russian or Spanish 1 and 2 sequence —students can now elect to take a variety of half-semester, two-credit intermediate-level language courses in topics in history, the environment, film, national identity, and translation, for example. (Chinese and Japanese retain more traditional intermediate-level courses, due to the steeper learning curve for those languages.) "What we're trying to do is build as many gateways for students to come in and study language and culture, connect it to as many issues, topics as we can," said Bennett.

Or, as Timothy L. Wilkerson, an associate professor of French put it, "We had to find a way to make second-year French not suck." In the traditional composition class, as he explained, "Everything you do is wrong. Everything you do is circled in red and everything has to be rewritten and often by the teacher."

Prior to the curricular changes, the French department was struggling. It wasn't uncommon for Wilkerson to teach upper-level literature courses with just three students. But after he taught an intermediate French course on the natural environment this year – the title of the French-language text he used translates as Ecology for Idiots – three of the students from that single class signed up for a French minor, Wilkerson said. "It taught them something about the world, in French, that they didn't know. It was all bad news unfortunately," Wilkerson said, cheekily.

In broad strokes, Wittenberg's two-pronged reforms – an embrace of interdisciplinarity within the department's offerings and a movement across departmental boundaries to make language study relevant to a broader demographic of students – represent a microcosm of the kind of change language departments across the nation are debating and discussing.

An influential 2007 Modern Language Association report, "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World," called for giving students options for language study beyond the traditional literary track, and for increased collaboration with departments across campus. Noting that only 6.1% of foreign language majors attain a doctoral degree, the report states that, "for those students and for others who enjoy literary studies, one path to the major should be through literature. But to attract students from other fields and students with interests beyond literary studies, particularly students returning from a semester or a year abroad, departments should institute courses that address a broad range of curricular needs."

"The foreign language programs at many institutions are facing budget cuts, and a lot of institutions have been looking hard to strengthen the programs, especially in collaboration with other units on campus," said Rosemary Feal, the MLA's executive director.

"What we're seeing is a shifting in thinking on the part of faculty members in foreign language departments. They are rethinking their curricula in the light of changing needs of students in the 21st century, a desire to internationalize the campus, and in response to shifting budget priorities."

Integrating Content, Language

More students than ever are studying abroad, albeit increasingly on short-term programs. Virtually every college seems to have added "international" or "global" to its mission statement or strategic plan. Colleges are offering more languages than in the past and increasing numbers of students are signing up (total foreign language enrollments climbed 12.9% from 2002 to 2006, according to an MLA survey). And yet depressingly small numbers of students ever reach the advanced levels of proficiency that a "global citizen" might be presumed to possess (as that same MLA survey found, enrollments beyond introductory-level language courses drop off dramatically).

"If you're going to internationalize the curriculum, it seems to me that languages should be leading the charge," said Bennett, of Wittenberg. "I think sometimes the reason we're not is it does require some rethinking of what we're doing."

Language departments increasingly have had to look beyond the pool of potential majors and minors and ask "Who's my audience?" said Heidi Byrnes, a professor of German at Georgetown University and president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics. "And I think the potential audience has to be everybody."

"The challenge I see now in a more globalized environment is it is not just sufficient for people to be able to communicate with others on a daily basis, and learn to appreciate each other on a personal level, but what's happening now is we're finding more and more of a need to use language in a professional environment," she said. Students should be prepared to use language in a variety of professional contexts, Byrnes said, and thus the need for integrating content and language acquisition has never been greater — and her own German department at Georgetown has gained national recognition for doing just that. But while it can be done, Byrnes cautions, linking the two isn't easy. "From the standpoint of applied linguistics, it continues to be very challenging to come up with a principled link, not just an ad-hoc link, between language learning and content learning," she said.

Content-based language generally describes what happens when language professors offer courses in other disciplines — in ecology, history, or politics, for instance. The goal, first and foremost, remains teaching the language, with interdisciplinary study a means to this end.

On the other side of the spectrum are the "language across the curriculum" programs, which Stephen Straight of the State University of New York at Binghamton, has described as "language-based content instruction."

Straight, a professor of anthropology and linguistics and senior adviser for international initiatives, spearheaded the creation of a language across the curriculum program at Binghamton in the early 90s. In Binghamton's program, graduate students facilitate study groups in a target language for a select number of courses. "It's not a language acquisition program, it's a language use program," Straight explained. "We use the language to help students have a more international perspective on the content of a course," by examining applicable texts written in the target language, for instance.

The language across the curriculum programs aren't new —a member of the "across the curriculum" family (writing, science, communication, etc.) —the initiative was born of the late 80s and early 90s, and at some campuses faded when federal grant support ran out. But a core group of believers feels that the movement never reached its full potential and has new relevance as colleges increasingly incorporate international perspectives in their curriculums.

"For so many of our U.S. students, the only time they're going to use a non-English language in an applied way is if they're doing an immersion program in study abroad," said Diana K. Davies, vice provost for international initiatives at Princeton University and president of the Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum consortium, which is made up of 10 institutions: Baldwin-Wallace and Skidmore Colleges; Binghamton, Drake, Portland State and Wittenberg Universities; and the Universities of Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Richmond.

While one of the 10 universities in the CLAC consortium, Drake University, eliminated its foreign language departments about a decade ago and now offers language instruction in new ways, Davies stressed that CLAC initiatives should not be seen as replacements for language programs but as international elements of the curriculum.

"Some people might say, 'Here comes languages across the curriculum' and they've found a way to outsource what language experts are doing. That's not the goal of CLAC," said Davies. "It's not, if you will, to teach foreign language on the cheap, to outsource it to native speakers. The goal is rather to get over this idea that so many students have that French or German or Russian is something you do or study in your French or German or Russian class. Yes, you do that, and you need a French, German or Russian expert to help you, but what we're showing is that French or German or Russian are things you can use in your history or biology or business course. And you don't have to be fluent in those languages to really benefit from whatever ability you have."

A criticism of CLAC, in fact, is that, in privileging the study of disciplinary content, it involves too little attention to language acquisition. "If we're talking about students eventually reaching advanced-level skills, the language piece can't be left out," said Carol A. Klee, assistant vice president for international scholarship and a professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese studies at the University of Minnesota.

Language Across the Curriculum

A variety of different models for language across the curriculum programs exist. Like Binghamton, UNC Chapel Hill hires graduate students —at a rate of $5,000 per semester —to teach discussion sections in target languages. For instance, this fall students can sign up for a Spanish discussion section for a business course in Global Marketing, or a French discussion section for a history course on 20th Century Europe. For less commonly taught languages, there are combined discussion sections, in which students from three courses dealing with related issues in the Middle East, for instance, can sign up for a single discussion section conducted in Arabic. Graduate students who teach in North Carolina's program can earn a graduate certificate in LAC instruction.

Baldwin-Wallace College, in Ohio, has experimented with a number of models, including LAC-embedded courses, in which interested faculty allow students to complete selected assignments in a specific language. For instance, in a macroeconomics course, students can take up the instructor's option to complete certain assignments in Spanish. Baldwin-Wallace also offers a one-credit course, in French, German, or Spanish, as an optional add-on to a required core course called Enduring Questions for an Intercultural World.

On the Web: Outsourcing Language Learning

This latter option hasn't proven particularly popular, but Baldwin-Wallace just received a $195,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop two-credit stand-alone courses within the majors, taught in target languages —for instance, a biology professor has developed a Spanish-language course on environmental science in Latin America, and an education professor has developed a course on the use of Spanish in primary and secondary classrooms. These courses will not generally be team-taught but instead will rely on a cadre of professors in a variety of disciplines who have professional-level expertise in another language. The grant also allows Baldwin-Wallace to hire a new professor of Chinese and business, and provides scholarship funding —$750 per student to be matched by another $750 from Baldwin-Wallace —for students who've taken a LAC course to study abroad.

"We have tried to develop incentives to get students interested," said Judy B. Krutky, director for intercultural education and professor of political science and international studies at Baldwin-Wallace. "From my perspective the question has always been, 'How do we get more Americans to study a foreign language?' "

Auf Wiedersehen

2010-10-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

Auf Wiedersehen

June 12, 2009

Last year, German scholars and other advocates for foreign language education were outraged when the University of Southern California eliminated its German department, abandoning a major in the field.

It turns out that was just the start of a bad period for German in American higher education. This year, of course, the economic mess has prompted many colleges to kill programs or to draft lists of departments that may be eliminated or scaled back. USC is not alone in rethinking the need for a university to maintain a program in the language.

At Florida State University, German (which has both bachelor's and master's programs) is on a list of programs for possible elimination, pending adoption of a final budget. The program could get word on its survival (or not) as early as today, following several months of petitions and lobbying on its behalf, and there are rumors circulating that the program may survive.
The University of Iowa announced this month that it is suspending admissions to its master's and doctoral programs in German for at least two years.
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is studying the German studies major for possible elimination.
The University of Idaho plans to eliminate an undergraduate major and a master of arts in teaching in German.
Washington State University is planning to eliminate its German major, although there is some talk of continuing to offer first-year German.
At least 10 job searches for tenure-track positions in German or Germanic languages have been suspended or canceled so far this year, according to academic job wikis. And the losses aren't limited to the United States. The number of scholars at British universities doing research on German language and literature is down 12 percent since 2001, and Queen's University Belfast is planning to close its German department, The Guardian reported.

To many advocates for German, the losses this year, following the lingering concerns over the USC shutdown, could seriously damage the field. Some of the programs that could be eliminated train the teachers who are needed to keep programs alive in high schools, which in turn produce some of the students who might keep German programs functioning in higher education. It's bad enough that members of the German Studies Association now have a "programs in danger" e-mail list so they can trade news on departments that may be eliminated and brainstorm about ways to build support.

Rosemary G. Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association, said that she realized that "in light of the budget crises at many colleges and universities, hard decisions have to be made." But she said that given the oft-stated commitments of academic leaders to promote international understanding among students, "it certainly is shortsighted to eliminate these programs, especially for undergraduates."

She noted that this rollback in institutional commitment to German is taking place at a time of excitement in the programs themselves, with more ties being built to departments such as music and linguistics and Jewish studies and history. "The demand for the programs is still there. The enrollments are still there," she said.

In fact, German enrollments have been going up at a slow but steady rate. In the MLA's study on 2006 language enrollments in the United States, German attracted 94,264 students, landing it in third place among all languages (Spanish and French were first and second, with 822,985 and 206,426 students, respectively). The German figure was up by 3.5 percent from 2002. But the languages just below German on the chart saw much larger percentage gains during that period: 29.7 percent for American Sign Language, 22.6 percent for Italian, 27.5 percent for Japanese, and 51 percent for Chinese.

At the universities considering the elimination of German, nobody says anything remotely negative about the language or the faculty members involved -- the issue is simply presented as one of needing to identify cuts in areas that have relatively small enrollments that aren't growing. Given the magnitude of the cuts being talked about this year across higher education, whole programs must be included in the mix of cuts to reach meaningful savings. At Washington State, for example, eliminating the German major is estimated to save about $100,000 -- not a huge sum, but savings that are needed.

And educators in German programs acknowledge that the numbers of students involved in German degree programs are small on a per-campus basis. At the University of Iowa, there are 18 enrolled in the graduate programs that aren't gaining new students.

Roland Racevskis, the chair of German (as well as of French and Italian) at Iowa, said that the decision was "a bit of a shock to us." He said that "all that talk about globalization and internationalization in university culture doesn't make sense if we are Anglophone."

Defenders of German are rallying around programs, making a variety of arguments. A statement on the planned cuts at Washington State, issued by the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, said in part: "To close the German Program would cut off many students from the study of their own intellectual, cultural, and social histories. And such a closing would clearly also impoverish the study of the writings of many non-Western postcolonial, economic, literary, and political theorists, whose texts are in frequent dialogue with those of Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Adorno, and Einstein, to name but a very few of the most important German and German-Jewish thinkers in the intellectual history of the last 250 years."

David Barclay, executive director of the German Studies Association and a historian at Kalamazoo College, said that he is dismayed by the idea that last year one German program was killed off and this year several are in danger. "Germany remains the dominant country in the European Union. German is the the largest of the languages within the EU, and the largest European language after Russian," he said. "It is critically important that more Americans have a knowledge of the language."

While anyone visiting Germany would find no shortage of English speakers, and there is a wealth of material in English about Germany, Barclay said that scholars need to remind people of the difference that language makes. "The assumption that one can understand the culture and not the language is flat-out wrong," he said.

Barclay said it was important for humanities scholars to enter these debates earlier, before programs are targets for elimination. Specifically, he said that it was important for German studies professors (and those who study other regions and languages) to talk more about the "service function" of language departments. It's true that the number of graduate students in German at a place like Iowa is small, he said. But Iowa's history department has an outstanding program studying German history -- and those graduate students benefit from a vibrant language program. That left him "horrified" at the idea of ending graduate admissions, Barclay said.

"We need to emphasize our interaction with other programs," he said.

Likewise, he said that German programs may want to explore making such ties formal as a way to attract more students and support within the university. He mentioned as an example the International Engineering Program at the University of Rhode Island, which is a five-year program in which engineering students study foreign languages and culture and in five years earn degrees in both engineering and one of the languages. Those who study German study in Germany in their fourth year and have internships there with companies that relate to the students' areas of engineering interest.

John Grandin, who runs the German division of the program, said that the approach works: "We have about 135 German majors at URI, and business is booming."

— Scott Jaschik

Who needs English? (in Japan)

2010-10-12T18:16:00.000-07:00

According to the Japanese Ministry of Trade and Industry enrollment at language schools in Japan has dropped from 826,858 students in February 2006 to 335,604 this year. In February 2007, there were approximately 750,000 students taking foreign language lessons in Japan. By 2008, the number was 360,000. Fewer young people are going to U.S. for school.

For some, grass is greener at Japan’s campuses

TOKYO — Takuya Otani would love an MBA from a top US business school, but he won’t apply. When he graduates from college in Tokyo next year, he’ll pass on an American degree and attend graduate school in Japan.

“I am a grass-eater,’’ Otani said wistfully, using an in-vogue expression for a person who avoids stress, controls risk, and grazes contentedly in home pastures.

(Comment: a disinterested observer could mention that cows get milked and butchered)

Once a voracious consumer of American higher education, Japan is becoming a nation of grass-eaters. Undergraduate enrollment in US universities has fallen 52 percent since 2000; graduate enrollment has dropped 27 percent.

It is a potentially harmful decline for an export-dependent nation that is losing global market share to its highly competitive Asian neighbors, whose students are flocking to US schools...

"Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust said that when she visited Japan last month, she met with students and educators who told her that Japanese young people are inward-looking, preferring the comfort of home to venturing overseas. They also told her they view the economic advantage of attending a U.S. college as questionable.

"An international degree is not as valued," Faust said she learned from her encounters here.

Bottom-line considerations are steering many young Japanese away from U.S. colleges, said Tadashi Yokoyama, chairman of the board of Agos Japan, a Tokyo company that prepares students to take language exams and other tests needed for admission to foreign schools.

"This is not a time in Japan for intellectual curiosity," said Yokoyama, who graduated from UCLA in the early 1980s. "You have to think about investment and return."

In the 1970s and '80s, when Japan's economy was booming, the bottom line did not matter for many young Japanese. It was fashionable, stimulating and affordable for them to travel the world, study English in foreign settings and attend college in the United States. Their parents had money, and jobs were plentiful when they came home.

The collapse of the bubble economy in the 1990s changed those calculations. And the construction inside Japan of more than 200 new universities has made it easy to find an affordable education without enduring jet lag and having to learn English.

At the same time, Japan's low birthrate is constricting college enrollment, both inside and outside the country. The number of children under the age of 15 has fallen for 28 consecutive years. The size of the nation's high school graduating class has shrunk by 35 percent in the past two decades."

link

The Decline of the English Department

2010-10-12T17:31:00.000-07:00

The Decline of the English Department

How it happened and what could be done to reverse it

By William M. Chace

During the last four decades, a well-publicized shift in what undergraduate students prefer to study has taken place in American higher education. The number of young men and women majoring in English has dropped dramatically; the same is true of philosophy, foreign languages, art history, and kindred fields, including history. As someone who has taught in four university English departments over the last 40 years, I am dismayed by this shift, as are my colleagues here and there across the land. And because it is probably irreversible, it is important to attempt to sort out the reasons—the many reasons—for what has happened.

First the facts: while the study of English has become less popular among undergraduates, the study of business has risen to become the most popular major in the nation’s colleges and universities. With more than twice the majors of any other course of study, business has become the concentration of more than one in five American undergraduates. Here is how the numbers have changed from 1970/71 to 2003/04(the last academic year with available figures):

English: from 7.6 percent of the majors to 3.9 percent
Foreign languages and literatures: from 2.5 percent to 1.3 percent
Philosophy and religious studies: from 0.9 percent to 0.7 percent
History: from 18.5 percent to 10.7 percent
Business: from 13.7 percent to 21.9 percent

In one generation, then, the numbers of those majoring in the humanities dropped from a total of 30 percent to a total of less than 16 percent; during that same generation, business majors climbed from 14 percent to 22 percent. Despite last year’s debacle on Wall Street, the humanities have not benefited; students are still wagering that business jobs will be there when the economy recovers.

Au revoir for study of French, German?

2010-10-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

Au revoir for study of French, German?
By MACKENZIE CARPENTER Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Updated: 07/17/2010

PITTSBURGH—Jaclyn Davis, of Akron, Ohio, may be as American as apple pie, but when she answers the phone at La Gourmandine bakery in Lawrenceville, her accent is as rich, fruity and authentically French as the tarte aux fraises sold there.
And therein lies the problem: the 22-year old cashier at the new bakery is also a student at the University of Akron, working towards a teaching certificate in French, a culture she adores but a career choice she has to defend to her fellow Americans nearly every day.

"When I was working at Home Depot, I'd get wisecracks all the time," Ms. Davis said, mostly from people who couldn't understand why she'd want to learn French. "They'd say, 'Oh, the French are cowards, they didn't fight with us in the Iraq war, what do you want to do that for?' "

Ditto for Megan Leinbach, a German major at the University of Pittsburgh.

"My classes are full," said Ms. Leinbach, 21, who hails from Lancaster County. "But some of my friends say German's a dying language, and I have to remind them that Germany is an economic powerhouse, so I don't think it's dying, exactly."

Once upon a time, they were known as The Big Three: Spanish, French and German, and they are still the top three languages taught in colleges across America—although Spanish leads the other two by a mile.

Think about it: in what is widely referred to as "The Asian Century," nearly a billion people speak Mandarin Chinese. Nearly half a billion

speak Spanish. And now, a raft of studies are showing that higher percentages of American students are likely to tackle Pinyin—the alphabetized version of Chinese—than the intricacies of the French subjunctive or German punctuation.
Ach!! Is French passe? Is German kaput?

Not exactly, but signs of decline are there, locally and nationally: Some of Pennsylvania's state-owned universities are seriously debating whether to offer French and German majors after current students graduate. Enrollment in French classes is shrinking in Pittsburgh's public schools, and one high school is considering phasing out its longtime German program. Shady Side Academy, a private school with campuses in Fox Chapel and the East End of Pittsburgh, is eliminating French and German from its middle school curriculum to focus on Spanish, Mandarin and Latin.

A study released this year by the Center for Applied Linguistics found that elementary school students taking French decreased from 27 percent in 1997 to 11 percent in 2008.

At the college level, "The Big Three" still predominate in terms of numbers of students, with Spanish first at 822,985, French second at 206,426 and German third at 94,264, according to a 2006 study by the Modern Language Association.

But that same study found that percentages of enrollment growth for those two languages from 2002 to 2006 was in the single digits, compared to double-digit growth for Chinese and Spanish and triple-digit growth for Arabic.

Of course, fashions in language change. In the 19th century, all well-educated Americans studied German and French. Russian took off in American schools after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in the 1950s. In the 1980s, Japan's economic boom—and subsequent bust—set off a similar cycle in that language's popularity.

These days, neither French nor German is considered central to the modern American's life or sensibility, says John McWhorter, a linguist and contributing editor at The Manhattan Institute, a New York City think tank.

"The emphasis on French learning back in the day was based on a logical desire to teach people a language that most foreigners they were likely to meet could speak," he said. "Today knowing some French is one part a marker of middle-class propriety and one part a key to reading 'Madame Bovary.' "

Tight budgets are forcing the issue for many schools, notes Martha Abbott of the American Council for Teachers of Foreign Languages. As the effects of the economic recession hit school districts, "... when you have to choose between math and a foreign language, you're going to cut out a foreign language."

Budget concerns weren't directly to blame for some state-owned universities in Pennsylvania placing French and German majors "in moratorium"—which means they will not be accepting new students, although that could change.

In some cases, State System of Higher Education spokesman Kenn Marshall said, only a handful of students were enrolled in those classes.

"Given the resources we have available, we want to be sure we're offering students programs they want and need and that also meet the state's needs, since we're public universities," he said.

Some of the colleges in the system have been talking about combining resources to preserve French and German majors, he added.

Pennsylvania is one of the few states in the Northeast with no foreign language requirement for high school graduation, said Marsha Plotkin, who heads the Pittsburgh Public Schools' world language program. Citing the state's 500 school districts—one of the highest numbers of any state—"requiring a foreign language for every small school district would be a big expense."

Nonetheless, "the decline of French is puzzling to me because of all the emerging economies in Africa where many educated people speak French," said Ms. Plotkin, who notes that Pittsburgh once had two French and German magnet elementary schools and now has only one of each—while it has two Spanish magnet elementary schools and a third offering a special focus on Spanish.

Pittsburgh Allderdice High School and Pittsburgh Schenley offer French and German along with three other languages, although there have been discussions about phasing back the German program at Allderdice. Other city schools, faced with budget cuts, have responded in different ways: French language was cut to a half-day at Pittsburgh Westinghouse High School, although at Pittsburgh Oliver High School the principal cut Spanish rather than French. At Pittsburgh Milliones 6-12, the principal kept French, Ms. Plotkin said.

In Mt. Lebanon, French enrollment has declined slightly, while interest in German has been "fairly steady, with slight ups and downs," said Nancy Campbell, who supervises the district's language program. Shady Side Academy decided to end French and German in middle school in order to focus on Spanish, Mandarin and Latin—in part because it was more difficult to schedule five different language classes. When parents were notified, "we didn't hear a word in response. Not a peep," said Amy Nixon, head of Shady Side's middle school.

French holds its own in some quarters. Springdale Junior/Senior High School just added it at the request of parents, and French classes at Carnegie Mellon University are filled, with a 25-person waiting list for introductory French next fall. Bonnie Youngs, a teaching professor in CMU's modern language department said students use the language to read architecture and engineering texts and for drama and music.

"The death of French is greatly exaggerated," contends Richard Shryock, chairman of the foreign language and literature department at Virginia Tech.

French is spoken on all populated continents, he said, while Spanish is mostly confined to the Western Hemisphere. Twenty-seven of our trading partners are French-speaking countries, many of them in the emerging economies of Africa, he added.

Bob Kubiak, 54, of Park Place, is taking French classes from Christine Frechard, who offers them at her art gallery in Squirrel Hill. He is a huge fan of French cinema. And as a technology consultant and fine arts photographer with contacts in Paris, he's polishing his language skills.

"Spanish has a little more applicability, but I'm just more interested in French culture," he said.

These days, younger students—and parents—seem more attracted to the language of commerce rather than of diplomacy. "Children everywhere are learning Chinese!" shouts a headline on mandarinadvantage.com. Even English is touted as the new global language of business—one book recently called "Globish" the new lingua franca of commerce.

Still, "It takes three times as long to master Chinese, and a lot of people don't realize that," Mr. Shryock said.

Louis Schwartz, president of China Strategies LLC, a Squirrel Hill-based company that advises on trade and investment with China, said he took his first Mandarin course in the 1970s after graduating from Allderdice and before heading to the University of Michigan, where eventually he earned a bachelor of arts degree in Asian studies. A year spent in Taiwan helped him achieve proficiency in the language.

"My interests in China grew out of an interest in the culture and the language and the people," he said. "It was only later that I felt the need to turn a strong interest into a vocation."

So will the languages of Moliere and Goethe become a luxury and not a necessity for a well-rounded young person living in "The Asian Century"?

Perhaps, but China is hardly a cultural wasteland.

"I don't want to disparage France. It's a lovely country. And we have a lot of history with France," said Mr. Schwartz. "But I think there is probably no civilization with as deep and rich a cultural heritage as China."

Foreign Languages Fade in Class — Except Chinese

2010-10-12T17:08:00.000-07:00

Foreign Languages Fade in Class — Except Chinese

WASHINGTON — Thousands of public schools stopped teaching foreign languages in the last decade, according to a government-financed survey — dismal news for a nation that needs more linguists to conduct its global business and diplomacy.

But another contrary trend has educators and policy makers abuzz: a rush by schools in all parts of America to offer instruction in Chinese.

Some schools are paying for Chinese classes on their own, but hundreds are getting some help. The Chinese government is sending teachers from China to schools all over the world — and paying part of their salaries.

At a time of tight budgets, many American schools are finding that offer too good to refuse.

In Massillon, Ohio, south of Cleveland, Jackson High School started its Chinese program in the fall of 2007 with 20 students and now has 80, said Parthena Draggett, who directs Jackson’s world languages department.

“We were able to get a free Chinese teacher,” she said. “I’d like to start a Spanish program for elementary children, but we can’t get a free Spanish teacher.”

(Jackson’s Chinese teacher is not free; the Chinese government pays part of his compensation, with the district paying the rest.)

No one keeps an exact count, but rough calculations based on the government’s survey suggest that perhaps 1,600 American public and private schools are teaching Chinese, up from 300 or so a decade ago. And the numbers are growing exponentially.

Among America’s approximately 27,500 middle and high schools offering at least one foreign language, the proportion offering Chinese rose to 4 percent, from 1 percent, from 1997 to 2008, according to the survey, which was done by the Center for Applied Linguistics, a research group in Washington, and paid for by the federal Education Department.

“It’s really changing the language education landscape of this country,” said Nancy C. Rhodes, a director at the center and co-author of the survey.

Other indicators point to the same trend. The number of students taking the Advanced Placement test in Chinese, introduced in 2007, has grown so fast that it is likely to pass German this year as the third most-tested A.P. language, after Spanish and French, said Trevor Packer, a vice president at the College Board.

“We’ve all been surprised that in such a short time Chinese would grow to surpass A.P. German,” Mr. Packer said.

A decade ago, most of the schools with Chinese programs were on the East and West Coasts. But in recent years, many schools have started Chinese programs in heartland states, including Ohio and Illinois in the Midwest, Texas and Georgia in the South, and Colorado and Utah in the Rocky Mountain West.

“The mushrooming of interest we’re seeing now is not in the heritage communities, but in places that don’t have significant Chinese populations,” said Chris Livaccari, an associate director at the Asia Society.

America has had the study of a foreign language grow before, only to see the bubble burst. Many schools began teaching Japanese in the 1980s, after Japan emerged as an economic rival. But thousands have dropped the language, the survey found.

Japanese is not the only language that has declined. Thousands of schools that offered French, German or Russian have stopped teaching those languages, too, the survey found.

To prepare the survey, the Center for Applied Linguistics sent a questionnaire to 5,000 American schools, and followed up with phone calls to 3,200 schools, getting a 76 percent response rate.

The results, released last year, confirmed that Spanish was taught almost universally. The survey found that 88 percent of elementary schools and 93 percent of middle and high schools with language programs offered Spanish in 2008.

The overall decline in language instruction was mostly due to its abrupt decline in public elementary and middle schools; the number of private schools and public high schools offering at least one language remained stable from 1997 to 2008.

The survey said that a third of schools reported that the federal No Child Left Behind law, which since 2001 has required public schools to test students in math and English, had drawn resources from foreign languages.

Experts said several factors were fueling the surge in Chinese. Parents, students and educators recognize China’s emergence as an important country and believe that fluency in its language can open opportunities.

Also stoking the interest has been a joint program by the College Board and Hanban, a language council affiliated with the Chinese Education Ministry, that since 2006 has sent hundreds of American school superintendents and other educators to visit schools in China, with travel costs subsidized by Hanban. Many have started Chinese programs upon their return.

Since 2006, Hanban and the College Board have also sent more than 325 volunteer Chinese “guest teachers” to work in American schools with fledgling programs and paying $13,000 to subsidize each teacher’s salary for a year. Teachers can then renew for up to three more years.

The State Department has paid for a smaller program — the Teachers of Critical Languages Program — to bring Chinese teachers to schools here, with each staying for a year.

In the first two years of its Chinese program, the Jackson District in Ohio said it had provided its guest teacher housing, a car and gasoline, health insurance and other support worth about $26,000. This year, the district is paying a more experienced Chinese guest teacher $49,910 in salary and other support, in addition to the $13,000 in travel expenses he receives from Hanban, bringing his compensation into rough parity with Ohio teachers.

Ms. Draggett visited China recently with a Hanban-financed delegation of 400 American educators from 39 states, and she came back energized about Jackson’s Chinese program, she said.

“Chinese is really taking root,” she said. Starting this fall, Jackson High will begin phasing out its German program, she said.

Founders of the Yu Ying charter school in Washington, where all classes for 200 students in prekindergarten through second grade are taught in Chinese and English on alternate days, did not start with a guest teacher when it opened in the fall of 2008.

“That’s great for many schools, but we want our teachers to stay,” said Mary Shaffner, the school’s executive director.

Instead, Yu Ying recruited five native Chinese speakers living in the United States by advertising on the Internet. One is Wang Jue, who immigrated to the United States in 2001 and graduated from the University of Maryland.

After just four months, her prekindergarten students can already say phrases like “I want lunch” and “I’m angry” in Chinese, Ms. Wang said.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 21, 2010, on page A18 of the New York edition.

Global English in the Humanities?

2010-10-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

Global English in the Humanities? A
Longitudinal Citation Study of Foreign-
Language Use by Humanities Scholars

Charlene Kellsey and Jennifer E. Knievel

The authors counted 16,138 citations within 468 articles found in four journals from history, classics, linguistics, and philosophy in the years 1962, 1972, 1982, 1992, and 2002 in order to identify trends in foreign language citation behavior of humanities scholars over time. The number of foreign-language sources cited in the four subjects has not declined over time. Consistent levels of foreign-language citation from humanities scholars indicate a need for U.S. research libraries to continue to purchase foreign-language materials and to recruit catalogers and collection development specialists with foreign-language knowledge.

The foreign-language education community has documented a sharp decline since the 1960s in the percentage of college undergraduates studying languages, most severely in the 1980s, from a high of 16.5 per 100 students in 1965 to 7.9 in 1998.

Contributing to this decline was the drop in numbers of colleges with language entrance and/or graduation requirements. Similar studies also noted steep declines
in the proportional numbers of college students taking French and German, the most commonly used non-English languages for humanities scholarship, versus large gains in the proportion taking Spanish...

Anecdotal evidence also indicates a decline in the number of students entering graduate studies with the requisite language skills for research in their fields.

A broader study by W. J. Hutchins, L. J. Pargeter, and W. L. Saunders used several ways of measuring, according to their subtitle, “the place of foreign language
materials in the research activity of an academic community.” Using the University of Sheffield in England as a case study, they sampled the book collection and articles in the journal collection...

Items borrowed by humanities faculty (excluding modern language departments) over the course of a year were found to be 81.5 percent in English, 4.3 percent in French, 4.2 percent in German, and 5.6 percent in Latin or Greek, with other languages under 1 percent (number of borrowers = 69). Their citation analysis looked at fify-one publications and a total of 5,017 citations and found that 61.7 percent
were to English publications. The average number of foreign-language citations per publication (which included books, articles, and theses) was 18.8 and the most-cited languages were German (11.4%), French (5.35 %), Spanish (0.75 %), and Italian (0.4%)...

This study focuses on one journal in each of four fields in the humanities: history,
philosophy, classics, and linguistics. These fields were chosen to represent a variety of research approaches in the humanities. Because the fields of literature are language specific, we did not include a literature field.

Though the data collected for this study yielded many interesting results, the focus of this article is the usage of foreign language sources. Contrary to our expectations upon beginning this study, the data do not show a consistent trend of either increasing or decreasing usage of foreign-language sources.

Finally, of interest to this study, was the distribution of foreign-language sources.
Over all years and all disciplines of the study, English represented 78.6 percent of all citations and foreign citations represented 21.3 percent of all citations.

Of the foreign languages, German and French were the dominant cited languages with 7.8 and 5.7 percent of the total citations, respectively. The next most commonly cited language was Italian with 2.0 percent. All other languages tracked were minimal.

Another interesting result of this study is the finding that German and French
remain the most important non-English languages of scholarship for the humanities.
As with the citation analysis in the Hutchins, Pargeter, and Saunders study, this study found that German was more often cited than French. The percentages for
German, French, and Spanish are slightly lower in this study than in the Hutchins,
Pargeter, and Saunders study, but the percentage for Italian is higher...

The implications of the study results for cataloging and collection development needs in U.S. research libraries are worrisome, especially because of the decline in the study of German in the United States. Although comprehensive statistics for high school enrollments in German are difficult to find because of the decentralized public school system in the United States, Roger P. Minert reported a decline from 3.3 percent in 1968 to 2.7 percent in 1990 of public school students who were studying German.28 Jeremy D. Finn reported that in 1998, 66.3 percent of public schools did not offer German, 37 percent did not offer French, and only 4.7 percent did not offer Spanish. College German and French departments have shrunk as Spanish departments have grown.

Contributions of memory circuits to language

2010-10-11T19:17:00.000-07:00

Contributions of memory circuits to language:
the declarative/procedural model
Michael T. Ullman

Abstract

The structure of the brain and the nature of evolution suggest that, despite its uniqueness, language likely depends on brain systems that also subserve other functions. The declarative/procedural (DP) model claims that the mental lexicon of memorized word-specific knowledge depends on the largely temporal-lobe substrates of declarative memory, which underlies the storage and use of knowledge of facts and events. The mental grammar, which subserves the rule-governed combination of lexical items into complex representations, depends on a distinct neural system. This system, which is composed of a network of specific frontal, basal-ganglia, parietal and cerebellar structures, underlies procedural memory, which supports the learning and execution of motor and cognitive skills, especially those involving sequences. The functions of the two brain systems, together with their anatomical, physiological and biochemical substrates, lead to specific claims and predictions regarding their roles in language. These predictions are compared with those of other neurocognitive models of language. Empirical evidence is presented from neuroimaging studies of normal language processing, and from developmental and adult-onset disorders. It is argued that this evidence supports the DP model. It is additionally proposed that “language” disorders, such as specific language impairment and non-fluent and fluent aphasia, may be profitably viewed as impairments primarily affecting one or the other brain system. Overall, the data suggest a new neurocognitive framework for the study of lexicon and grammar.

Striatal degeneration impairs language learning: evidence from Huntington's disease

2010-10-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

Striatal degeneration impairs language learning: evidence from Huntington's disease

Brain (2008) 131 (11): 2870-2881

Summary

Although the role of the striatum in language processing is still largely unclear, a number of recent proposals have outlined its specific contribution. Different studies report evidence converging to a picture where the striatum may be involved in those aspects of rule-application requiring non-automatized behaviour. This is the main characteristic of the earliest phases of language acquisition that require the online detection of distant dependencies and the creation of syntactic categories by means of rule learning. Learning of sequences and categorization processes in non-language domains has been known to require striatal recruitment. Thus, we hypothesized that the striatum should play a prominent role in the extraction of rules in learning a language. We studied 13 pre-symptomatic gene-carriers and 22 early stage patients of Huntington's disease (pre-HD), both characterized by a progressive degeneration of the striatum and 21 late stage patients Huntington's disease (18 stage II, two stage III and one stage IV) where cortical degeneration accompanies striatal degeneration. When presented with a simplified artificial language where words and rules could be extracted, early stage Huntington's disease patients (stage I) were impaired in the learning test, demonstrating a greater impairment in rule than word learning compared to the 20 age- and education-matched controls. Huntington's disease patients at later stages were impaired both on word and rule learning. While spared in their overall performance, gene-carriers having learned a set of abstract artificial language rules were then impaired in the transfer of those rules to similar artificial language structures. The correlation analyses among several neuropsychological tests assessing executive function showed that rule learning correlated with tests requiring working memory and attentional control, while word learning correlated with a test involving episodic memory. These learning impairments significantly correlated with the bicaudate ratio. The overall results support striatal involvement in rule extraction from speech and suggest that language acquisition requires several aspects of memory and executive functions for word and rule learning.

German children's language acquisition

2010-10-11T17:38:00.000-07:00

A collection of research papers.

German children's productivity with tense morphology: the Perfekt (present perfect).

Abstract
Two nonce-word studies examined German-speaking children's productivity with the Perfekt (present perfect) from 2;6 to 3;6. The German Perfekt consists of the past participle of the main verb and an inflected form of an auxiliary (either haben 'have' or sein 'be'). In Study 1, nonce verbs were either introduced in the infinitival form, and children (seventy-two children, aged 2;6 to 3;6) were tested on their ability to produce the Perfekt, or introduced in the Perfekt, and children were tested on their ability to produce the infinitive. In Study 2 twenty-four children aged 3;6 were given the past participle form of nonce verbs to see if they could supply the appropriate auxiliary (based mainly on verb semantics). The results were that many children as young as 2;6 used past participles productively (more than used infinitival forms productively), but all children had much difficulty in supplying both auxiliaries appropriately. The current findings suggest that mastery of the Perfekt construction as a whole does not take place before the age of four and that frequency of exposure is an important factor in determining the age at which children acquire grammatical constructions.

Aspectual interpretation of early verb forms in German

Abstract
In the present paper, I will argue that even in a language like German, where the verb system does not contain a grammaticized aspect distinction, aspectual features do underlie the early form-function-mapping of verb forms in L1-acquisition. Furthermore, it will be argued that it is not only past tense forms that may receive an aspectual interpretation in early child language but also other forms of the verbal input. In the case of German, these are the forms of the present tense paradigm and the past participle. Showing and discussing various pieces of evidence for this assumption should strengthen the “aspect before tense” or “primacy of aspect” hypothesis. In general, the paper aims at a deeper understanding of the hierarchical relation between tense and aspect whereby aspect is the basic category and, therefore, aspectual features are the inevitable starting point of the acquisition of grammar.

2 Previous research on L1-acquisition of German verb inflection

From previous studies (cf. Clahsen 1988; Bittner 2003; Ingram, Welti & Priem forthcoming), it is well-known that German children gain command of verb morphology in the following order: -en forms > -t forms (>) -Æ forms; past participles > -st forms … (cf. the verb machen ‘to do’: mach-en – mach-t – mach – ge-mach-t – mach-st). With the exception of the past participle, all of these forms belong to the present tense paradigm and are assumed to assign person-number categories in adult German

The Acquisition of Prefix and Particle Verbs in German: Evidence from CHILDES

Early verb development in one Austrian child

Verb In ections in German Child Language: A Connectionist Account

German children's comprehension of word order and case marking
in causative sentences

Abstract
Two comprehension experiments were conducted to investigate whether German children
are able to use the grammatical cues of word order and word endings (case-markers) to
identify agents and patients in a causative sentence, and whether they weigh these two cues differently across development. Two-year-olds correctly understood only sentences with both cues supporting each other – the prototypical form. Five-year-olds were able to use word order by itself, but not case-markers. Only seven-year-olds behaved like adults by relying on case-markers over word order when the two cues conflicted. These findings suggest that prototypical instances of linguistic constructions with redundant grammatical marking play a special role in early acquisition, and only later do children isolate and weigh individual grammatical cues appropriately.

Children's verbalizations of motion events in German

Abstract
Recent studies in language acquisition have paid much attention to linguistic diversity and have begun to show that language properties may have an impact on how children construct and organize their representations. With respect to motion events, Talmy (Towards a cognitive semantics: Concept structuring systems, Cambridge University Press, 2000) has proposed a typological distinction between satellite-framed (S) languages that encode path in satellites, leaving the verb root free for the expression of manner, and verb-framed (V) languages that encode path in the verb, requiring manner to be expressed in the periphery of the sentence. This distinction has lead to the hypothesis (Slobin, From “thought and language” to “thinking for speaking”, Cambridge University Press, 1996) that manner should be more salient for children learning S-languages, who should have no difficulty combining it with path, as compared to those learning V-languages. This hypothesis was tested in a corpus elicited from German children and adults who had to verbalize short animated cartoons showing motion events, and the results are compared with previous analyses of French and English corpora elicited in an identical situation (Hickmann et al., Journal of Child Language, 36: 705–741, 2009). As predicted, and as previously found for English, German children from three years on systematically express both manner (in the verb root) and path (in particles), in sharp contrast to French children, who rarely package manner and path together. These results suggest that, when they are engaged in communication, children construct spatial representations in accordance with the particular properties of their mother tongue. Future research is necessary to determine the extent to which cross-linguistic differences in production may reflect deeper differences in the allocation of attention and in conceptual organization.

Young German children's early syntactic competence: a preferential looking study.

Abstract
Using a preferential looking methodology with novel verbs, Gertner, Fisher and Eisengart (2006) found that 21-month-old English children seemed to understand the syntactic marking of transitive word order in an abstract, verb-general way. In the current study we tested whether young German children of this same age have this same understanding. Following Gertner et al. (2006), one group of German children was tested only after they had received a training/practice phase containing transitive sentences with familiar verbs and the exact same nouns as those used at test. A second group was tested after a training/practice phase consisting only of familiar verbs, without the nouns used at test. Only the group of children with the training on full transitive sentences was successful in the test. These findings suggest that for children this young to succeed in this test of syntactic understanding, they must first have some kind of relevant linguistic experience immediately prior to testing--which raises the question of the nature of children's linguistic representations at this early point in development.

The input–output relationship in first language
acquisition

On German Verb Syntax under Age 2

Prosodic Constraints on the Emergence of Grammatical
Morphemes: Crosslinguistic Evidence from
Germanic and Romance Languages

The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: the data
edited by Dan Isaac Slobin

How French and German Children of Preschool Age Conceptualize the Writing System.

Presents a continuation of previous research on a general development process consisting of successive levels in conceptualization. Explores how young children conceptualize the writing system. Considers both social background and preschool system of education. Concludes that teaching activities used in French nursery schools are less effective than game activities in German kindergartens in helping students conceptualize writing.

German-speaking children’s productivity with syntactic constructions and case morphology: Local cues act locally

Abstract
It has been proposed that children acquiring case-marking languages might be quicker to acquire certain constructions than children acquiring word order languages, because the cues involved in grammatical morphology are more ‘local’, whereas word order is an inherently distributed cue (Slobin, 1982). In the current studies using nonce nouns and verbs, we establish that German-speaking children are not productive with passive and active transitive sentence-level constructions at an earlier age than English-speaking children; the majority of children learning both languages are not productive until after their third birthdays. In contrast, in the second and third studies reported here, the majority of German-speaking children were productive with nominative and accusative case marking inside NPs before their third birthdays - and these are of course the very same case markers centrally involved in passive and active transitive constructions. We conclude from these results that, whereas for some functions mastering local cues is all that is required, and this is fairly simple, in other cases, such as the case marking involved in sentence-level syntactic constructions, the mastery of local cues is only one part of the process of forming complex analogical relationships among utterances.

Interlingual and Intralingual Interference during Gender Production in Czech and German

The alignment of lexical and prosodic words in child German: The case of compounds

Based on these observations, I argue that German children align lexical word boundaries with prosodic word boundaries.

Amblyopia, brain plasticity and language acquisition

2010-10-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

Abstract: I cite a lot of abstracts and speculate.

Amblyopia. Greek for dim eye. Essentially, you may have perfectly healthy eyes, normal vision and still be unable to see details on one eye. Amblyopia may be caused by childhood eye injuries - the visual brain cells receive no stimulation or "input" from the closed eye, and the brain learns to favor the other eye. This condition persists after the eye has healed. If caught early amblyopia may be reversible up to the age of 17. Adults suffering from this condition may try to "exercise" the affected eye, usually with little to no improvement. Some clinical literature contains reports suggesting that "improvement of visual acuity can occur in adult patients with amblyopia, a central disorder of visual acuity, following patching of the normal eye." link

From lazyeye.org:

Dr. Leonard J. Press: "It's been proven that a motivated adult with ...amblyopia who works diligently at vision therapy can obtain meaningful improvement in visual function. As my patients are fond of saying: "I'm not looking for perfection; I'm looking for you to help me make it better". It's important that eye doctors don't make sweeping value judgments for patients. Rather than saying "nothing can be done", the proper advice would be: "You won't have as much improvement as you would have had at a younger age; but I'll refer you to a vision specialist who can help you if you're motivated."

Another vision expert could easily tell you that these places are about taking money from unhappy people for a dubious service. You can always insist that the patient was not motivated enough.

One can certainly draw parallels between the amblyopia dilemma and the battle raging around the "critical period" hypothesis. An interesting question is whether or not amblyopia can be treated in adults and whether adults can perceive and learn to produce foreign sounds in a native fashion. Both issues are related to brain plasticity. Eye patching causes long-lasting profound negative effects in young children and animals fairly quickly. The brain is very plastic. It adapts quickly (which is good and bad). Sometimes, occlusion of the good eye aimed at fixing the amblyopic eye can lead to amblyopia in the occluded eye and a return of normal vision in the previously amblyopic eye. Adults don't react quickly, if at all. One cannot easily treat or even cause adult amblyopia.

"Clinical disorders of brain plasticity are common in the practice of child neurology. Children have an enhanced capacity for brain plasticity compared to adults as demonstrated by their superior ability to learn a second language or their capacity to recover from brain injuries or radical surgery such as hemispherectomy for epilepsy. Basic mechanisms that support plasticity during development include persistence of neurogenesis in some parts of the brain, elimination of neurons through apoptosis or programmed cell death, postnatal proliferation and pruning of synapses, and activity-dependent refinement of neuronal connections. Brain plasticity in children can be divided into four types: adaptive plasticity that enhances skill development or recovery from brain injury; impaired plasticity associated with cognitive impairment; excessive plasticity leading to maladaptive brain circuits; and plasticity that becomes the brain's ‘Achilles’ Heel’ because it makes it vulnerable to injury.

Clinical disorders of brain plasticity
Brain and Development
Volume 26, Issue 2, March 2004, Pages 73-80

"lack of linguistic acuity"

Feral children have been deprived of all human contact and later in life they have serious trouble learning the most basic communication patterns. No child has ever been exposed to the full range of human speech. An idea for early education? Adult language learners have all been shut off from target language "input" during a "critical period" of their lives (i.e. childhood). Their language circuits have been naturally established through stimulation. As adults they look at the world through their lazy native eye. Can we hope to bypass this by patching it through passive assimilation? Explicit instruction might help us see better right away, but the danger is that the learner will keep the artificial. I am not sure that through pure passive assimilation one is not slowly figuring things out on his own.

Mission Impossible?
Understanding English with French Ears

"Prototype formation P. Kuhl (1994, 1992, 1984,) has proposed a theory of speech development called the Native Language Magnet Theory (NLM). From birth babies fine tune their perception of native language vowels by storing prototype representations of these sounds in their memories thereby eliminating the flexibility to perceive foreign language sounds. By three months babies are capable of retaining vowel sounds which means that their memory for sounds is taking shape (Jusczyk, 1995). By six months babies begin to form vowel prototypes for their native language. For example Boysson-Bardies et al. (1992) studied the babbling of 6 – 8 month infants and found that for English babies 21% of their productions were "ha". An amazing 11%
of the production of French babies was "ha" too. However, when infants were at the 15-word phase of production, French babies no longer produce "h" and English babies produced the same quantity of "h" sounds as an adult would. By the age of nine months, prototypes are forming and babies are beginning to ignore sounds that do not belong to their native language and focus their attention on native language vowels...

When learning a second language, listeners do not notice phonological regularities in the target language because they are using their native language automatic processing system. Second language listeners have a deficient phonological representation of the second language. Compensating for this deficient phonological representation puts a strain on working memory. French listeners, not having developed their capacity to encode and store English phonological representations, will have more difficulty understanding fluent speech in that language...

Therefore Japanese listeners can easily hear the difference between English phonemes in a laboratory situation. However, during a recent study using ERP (event-related brain potential) tests, no brain activity was observed for Japanese listeners with an "r" or "l" sound stimulus. Of course the same tests, when give to English speaking listeners, showed an automatic reaction (Locke, 1997)...

The origin of the difficulty for French people in perceiving spoken English is found in these characteristics deeply buried in the early stages of linguistic development. Not being aware of the linguistic cues used for understanding their own language, French people cannot voluntarily modify these cues to master another language. It is not possible to list all of the characteristics of the French and English languages which are the source of these differences. However some of them are indispensable for understanding why it is so difficult for a French person to understand English. The prosodic system of the two languages is essential for dividing fluent speech into word segments. Basically the French automatic processing system is constantly monitoring for syllable segments. The English system is searching for the stressed syllable. In a fascinating study by Cutler et al (1983) the conclusion was : "We conclude, therefore that the syllabification strategy is characteristic of listeners rather than of stimulus language. We suggest that listeners who have acquired French as their native language have developed the syllabification procedure, natural to the human language processing system, into an efficient comprehension strategy. On the other hand, listeners whose native language is English, where this strategy would not necessarily achieve greater comprehension efficiency, have not included syllabification in their repertoire of processing strategies." In later studies they showed that French listeners continue to use syllabification strategies "even when listening to English words" (1986) and native English speakers use a stress-based segmentation system even when listening to French words...

Besides the prosodic system, basic differences in phonemic structure influence the automatic processing system. English phonemes are characterized by movement whereas French phonemes are stable. In 1990 Drach filmed an American saying the word "know" and a French person saying "nos" in French. The resulting films show that that the jaws, tongue and lips of the American are constantly moving but that in French all of these organs are relatively stable. A second important difference in the phonemic structure of the two languages is that both length and reduction are significant in English whereas French vowels are considered "pure". Finally the automatic processing system does not depend on the sound system alone, but on other linguistic strategies. Since English usually follows a strict word order (Subject-Verb-Object), English speakers rely heavily on word order to interpret a sentence (MacWhinney et al [1984]). Especially when speaking spontaneously, French people rarely follow the Subject-Verb-Object pattern.

The above description barely touches on the complexity of the differences between French and English. Understanding spontaneous speech depends on very diverse elements many of which are buried deep in our earliest linguistic acquisition. We are totally unaware of most of these elements and therefore cannot easily modify our listening strategy...

Taken together, the above findings led to the hypothesis that the problems of listening comprehension could better be addressed through a method that would access the automatic processing system of the subject. This method would have to take into account the fundamental differences between the French and English languages but would not explicitly teach them...

As an application of Anderson's theory on the importance of training for automaticity
acquisition (Perruchet, 1988), the repetition of regular phonological sequences should facilitate the formation of a framework or a structure that would permit the development of memory span. As the capacity for imitation of longer and longer phrases develops, second language learners have available more raw material from which they can construct a linguistic system. Automatic processing cannot develop unless working memory can retain units of sufficient length (Spiedel, 1989)...

Group R and L subjects used headphones with built-in microphones enabling them to hear both their own voices and the words and phrases recorded on the cassettes. The use of this system allowed subjects to work under audio-phonatory feedback conditions, which is indispensable for the method. By listening to this feedback, subjects automatically modified their production to make it better correspond to the model.

Results
Substantial Improvement

The overall level of all of the subjects improved substantially. Even though these subjects had been studying English since the age of eleven, attending an average of eight years of English classes, a large portion (between 20 and 30 %) understood almost no spoken English. At the end of the study, the percentage of those who understood very little went down to less than 10%.

For all the groups, individual results are far from homogeneous. Some subjects did not progress at all whereas others doubled their score, going from 7/20 to 14/20 for example. This could easily be explained by analyzing the listening strategy used. Subjects in Group E who enjoyed studying the differences between English and French, using the top down reasoning method proposed, benefited from the method. On the other hand, subjects in the implicit learning groups who repeated with pleasure, allowing themselves to follow the music of the language profited from a bottom up approach...

The most striking difference, however, concerned the students who had been raised as Arabic, Portuguese or an African language bilinguals. These students, who had learned this other language with very little contact with reading and writing, were very receptive to the methods of Group R.

(Comment: they were already on their third language.)

Conclusion

These results show an overall improvement in listening comprehension. However, they do not take into account the reasons for this improvement. Group E subjects progressed through the use of explicit learning processes whereas Group R and L subjects improved through their implicit learning processes. On a long-term basis, it would seem that these two processes would not lead to the same results. The ideal situation would be to reeducate the automatic processing system. Having to compensate for a deficiency in this system by using attentional processes inevitably leads to a slower and often erroneous interpretation of oral discourse.

Even if listeners are able to use explicit knowledge of the phonetic characteristics of the language, allowing them a better interpretation of the representation computed from the sensory input, without automatisation performance will still deteriorate. Processes that should have been carried out automatically, by requiring attention, will slow down the system and overload working memory.

Any activity that could help to lighten memory load by favorising automatic processing should be developed and integrated into academic programs. We feel that because of the complexity of both the phonological system and the cognitive and linguistic resources necessary for oral comprehension, explicitly teaching difficult points will lead to failure. It is not sufficient to work on the symptoms or the apparent difficulties of second language acquisition because this does not access the source of the problem. We are convinced that certain phonological information is only accessible through progressively introducing English temporal patterns. Procedures that lead to avoiding the use of higher order reasoning and explicit learning strategies, allowing more receptivity to a novel phonological system, should be developed."

(Comment: I don't understand why explicit learning needs to lead to failure or lack of direct, unpolluted automatization. Such students are not sentenced to use their knowledge as crutches forever.)

Anatomical Correlates of Foreign Speech Sound Production

Those little grey cells:

"Previous work has shown a relationship between brain anatomy and how quickly adults learn to perceive foreign speech sounds. Faster learners have greater asymmetry (left > right) in parietal lobe white matter (WM) volumes and larger WM volumes of left Heschl's gyrus than slower learners. Here, we tested native French speakers who were previously scanned using high-resolution anatomical magnetic resonance imaging. We asked them to pronounce a Persian consonant that does not exist in French but which can easily be distinguished from French speech sounds, the voiced uvular stop."

(Comment: my guess here is that these random French speakers did not beef up their brains through language learning. This would perhaps suggest that Emil Krebs' superbrain was naturally endowed for language learning. I could ask, I suppose.)

Second-language speech perception and production in adult learners
before and after short-term immersion

"Several studies have reported that added second-language (L2) experience results in a more native-like L2 speech performance in adult L2 learners. The amount of experience has often been quantified in terms of the length of residence (LOR) in an L2 speaking community. While some studies reported an effect of LOR on L2 performance (e.g., Bohn & Flege, 1990; Flege, Bohn, & Jang, 1997; Flege &
Hillenbrand, 1984; Yamada, 1995) other studies reported no effect of LOR (e.g.,
Flege, 1988, 1993; Flege, Munro, & Skelton, 1992)."

"The fact that the Experience Group received significantly higher scores after a
relatively short period of immersion in an English-language environment and the fact
that one subject achieved native-like pronunciation ratings do not appear to be
consistent with the Critical Period Hypothesis..."

"Experiment 3A and 3B supported Hypothesis 4 that English language experience would have a stronger effect on the perception than the production of L2 speech sounds."

(Comment: you have the ear for it, but your tongue trips).

..."the findings suggest that the phonetic system in adults is still malleable in young adults and that perception leads production in L2 speech acquisition. The finding that global foreign accent ratings improved but that no improvement was found in the select speech sounds might suggest that important improvements happened in the prosodic dimension."

And now, three blind mice (and a cat).

Abstract

The adult cerebral cortex can adapt to environmental change. Using monocular deprivation as a paradigm, we find that rapid experience-dependent plasticity exists even in the mature primary visual cortex. However, adult cortical plasticity differs from developmental plasticity in two important ways...

A primary function of the brain is to integrate the individual into a continually changing environment. Some aspects of this integration are accomplished through developmental processes, other aspects through learning. Although learning can occur throughout life, many behaviors, from language to sexual behavior, are shaped profoundly by early life experience. In this study, we have examined how the adaptive capacity of the cerebral cortex changes with maturation.

link

Amblyopia

word frequency: TV vs books

2010-10-07T20:31:00.000-07:00

And why you need both (and more). A frequency list of words occurring in a collection of movies and TV series vs. a collection of texts (a possible sample of extensive reading). More on this and many other related things, here.

Subtlexus vs Brown (TV vs books)

Word frequency per million words of running text:

This 7,979 vs 5,146
Now 3,202 vs 1,314
Was 5,654 vs 9,815
In 9,773 vs 21,345
Out 3,865 vs 2,096
Me 9,242 vs 1,183
My 6,763 vs 1,319
Mine 251 vs 59
Can 5,247 vs 1,772
Will 2,124 vs 2,244
Would 1,768 vs 2,715
There 4,348 vs 2,725
But 4,418 vs 4,381
By 1,340 vs 5,307
He 7,637 vs 9,542
Him 3,484 vs 2,619
So 4,244 vs 1,985
Go 3,793 vs. 626
Goes 217 vs 89
Going 2,123 vs 399
Went 411 vs 507
Gone 297 vs 195
Like 3,999 vs 1,290
Likes 76 vs 20
Liked 79 vs 58
How 3,056 vs 836
If 3,541 vs 2,199
Just 4,749 vs 872
Get 4,583 vs 749
gets: 223 vs 66
Got 3,306 vs 482
Had 1,676 vs 5,131
Come 3,141 vs 630
comes 229 vs 137
came 464 vs 622
Coming 527 vs 174
They 4,102 vs 3,619
See 2,557 vs 772
saw 403 vs. 352
seen: 385 vs 279
Time 1,959 vs 1,601
Let 2,419 vs 384
Did 2,341 vs 1044
From 2,039 vs 4370
Want 2,759 vs 329
Wants 307 vs 71
Wanted 502 vs 226
Think 2,691 vs 433
thinks 103 vs 23
Thought 809 vs 516
thinking 281 vs 145
Take 1,891 vs 611
Took 342 vs 426
Taken 281 vs 139
Look 1,947 vs 399
looks: 311 vs 78
looked 121 vs 361
Some 1,727 vs 1,617
Then 1,490 vs 1,377
Why 2,248 vs 404
Where 1,830 vs 938
Too 1,372 vs 833
More 1,299 vs 2,216
Down 1,490 vs 895
Yes 1,997 vs 144
Tell 1,724 vs 268
Little 1,446 vs 831
Thing 1,088 vs 333
Mean 1,244 vs 199
Said 1,109 vs 1,961
Sure 1,100 vs 264
First 840 vs 1361
Put 829 vs 437
Please 1,101 vs 62
Mexico 31 vs 19
Wildlife 2 vs 19
victims 23 vs 19
Father 555 vs 183
Mother 480 vs 216
English 74 vs 195
hasn't 91 vs 20
Tuesday 24 vs 59
January 7 vs 53
Halloween 13 vs n/a
Economical 0.33 vs 22
Arrested 35 vs 19
Run 350 vs 217
Court 101 vs 230
Office 204 vs 255
Planet 39 vs. 21
Planets 4 vs 22
Political 22 vs 258
Theoretical 2 vs 21
sixty 5 vs 21
Troops 19 vs 53
College 85 vs 267

One million words is about 170 hours of audio or ten average literary novels of about 400 pages (60,000 sentences). A sample of TV documentaries would have a much higher percentage of popular science words that are not present in TV series, words like "theoretical" and "wildlife". "Focused reading" (gotta love the old man) of teen novels (sorry, young adult fiction) would have a higher percentage of useful general words and, if one is reading a series of novels, some more specialized, but still general vocabulary (e.g. horses, magic). Read a few newspapers and you can get exposure to words like "troops" (unfortunately), and "court" and examples of their usage. Magazines may expose the reader to some very useful everyday vocabulary or a very specialized one. Of course newspapers are written in a different manner from magazines and the two differ from fiction. Good textbooks should have samples from all of these but they're insufficient.

SUBTLEXUS was compiled by Brysbaert & New on the basis of American subtitles (51 million words in total). A corpus of 8,388 films and television episodes with a total of 51 million running words (16.1M from television series, and 14.3M from films before 1990, and 20.6M from films after 1990).

The Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English (Brown Corpus) contains 1,014,312 words sampled from many categories: press (politics, sports culture, financial, theatre and book reviews), religious texts, skills and hobbies, biographies, memoirs, government documents, natural science, medicine, math, humanities, technology, mystery and detective fiction, adventure and western, romance and love story, humor. The Brown Corpus is made up of 500 texts of about 2,000 words each. The first American Heritage Dictionary (1969) was based on the Brown Corpus.

Passive vs active listening

2010-10-03T21:52:00.000-07:00

I have tried to explain some communication theory terms that concern listening with a particular focus on language learning. These definitions are not set in stone and they often refer to native face-to-face conversation. A brief mention of TV watching as a passive language learning activity.

Attention is a prerequisite of learning. We cannot understand, learn or remember something unless we pay attention. Attention may be active or passive. Active attention is a conscious, voluntary mental effort that involves the ability to selectively focus on what is deemed important and ignore what is deemed unimportant while exploring or suffocating a range of other actions and thoughts. Open attention focuses on the whole instead of the parts and gives you an overall impression of what you're observing. Focused attention requires active filtering of excess information. Both are varieties of active attention. Active attention is facilitated by factors such as alertness, concentration or interest. The main characteristic of active attention is conscious effort.

Passive attention is involuntary and dependant on external factors (sudden loud noise). Passive attention is often exemplified by the activities such as listening to radio, watching television or reading for pleasure. Information may be acquired, even if not intentionally. Any learning is incidental. New learning acquired in this way is in no way inferior to that acquired through active effort. As far as language learning is concerned, one may argue that passive learning would favor natural acquisition of forms and structures and in a natural order (assuming Krashen's theory is correct) vs. arbitrary, forced decisions concerning what is important and what should be learned first.

Some recent research blurs this traditional separation between active and passive attention. The studies suggest that "the active-passive divide splits the processes that bias attention, rather than attention itself (Reynolds & Desimone, 2003; Carrasco et al., 2004)". link

In order to understand better the passive/active listening divide it is good to first look at the active/passive reading definitions:

Active reading - a manner of reading in which the reader is mentally engaged with a text and reads for comprehension and criticism as well as reads selectively and with a purpose. Active reading includes applying prior knowledge, critical reading ("interacting" with the author), summarizing, problem solving etc.

Passive reading may be defined as reading from start to finish, for recreation purposes or reading with little mental effort.

Listening

Hearing is passive; listening is active. Hearing is a passive physiological process that occurs without any attention or effort. Listening involves some kind of attention. Listening involves hearing, attending, understanding, remembering, evaluating and responding to spoken messages. In foreign language learning a disproportionate amount of effort is expended on deciphering and learning. The native speakers spend more time listening than reading, writing, or speaking combined. Currently there is no clear, commonly accepted differentiation between different modes of listening. In the real world they blur together and we shift from one mode to another or stay somewhere in between.

Passive listening – listening that may be attentive and supportive but occurs without any further conscious engagement from the listener (no talking, responding or nonverbal cues directed to the speaker). It is nearly effortless or it feels as such. The listener assumes that he has heard and understood correctly and does not interact or seek verification. The term is problematic because it is also used disparagingly to refer to inattentive and uninvolved listening. Passive listening is the natural process of listening without reacting. The speaker is likely not available for normal interaction. Passive listening does not have to involve doing something else (multitasking). If the person is half-listening while being focused on something else or if the TV is playing in the "background", we're observing passive, inattentive, or semi-attentive listening. Even the most passive listening experience in order to be termed listening requires a minimum of attention.

Empathic listening – listening that warrants that you feel and see what speaker feels and sees.

Inattentive listening: into one ear and out the other. Listening to one's wife while reading a newspaper and watching TV (who gets least attention?). Little or no attempt to comprehend the entire message or respond. Anyone counting thousands of hours of "study time" performing this form of listening should divide by ten. It should be noted that some repetitive, non cognitive tasks may be performed while listening without jeopardizing the communication (or learning).

Pretend listening— inattentive listening where a person maintains an interested facial expression but is paying little attention. The listener is fooling the speaker. I would use it also in such cases where language learners are fooling themselves into thinking they're actually studying when in fact they are using language material as background noise.

Active or Reflective listening is engaged empathic listening that also involves techniques such as prompting, paraphrasing, verbalizing emotions, asking, clarifying, encouraging, summarizing. The listener is active in checking out his understanding before responding. Used for both face-to-face communication and for engaged passive listening (e.g. to an audio recording). Active listening involves an effort and active mental participation. In conversation it is often accompanied by inadvertent non-verbal cues like nodding, making eye contact etc. These non-verbal cues should happen naturally. If the listener uses these cues consciously he is partially pretending to listen and is in effect practicing bad passive listening disguised as active listening. Examples of this behavior abound in schools, consultancies, courtrooms etc.

A few other types of listening that I will mention only briefly:

Conversational listening - the roles of talker and listener alternate frequently. The speaker is often interrupted etc.

Argumentative listening— the listener is looking for flaws in the speakers's arguments.

Informational listening - information gathering

Following Krashen's theories in language teaching and learning it is possible to speak of intensive and extensive listening and narrow listening.

Extensive listening - listening for pleasure TO a wide variety of native content.

Intensive listening - in classroom setting, repeated, engaged listening to a short audio or audiovisual piece. In self-directed learning it means the same, with the difference that the learner chooses his own material.

Narrow listening - listening to a variety of content or material from a specific field or topic. In classroom setting this could involve listening to a number of clips about a similar topic. An independent learner could listen to food podcasts, watch science documentaries etc. Certain types of material are naturally full of specialized vocabulary while others are not.

TV watching is a passive activity in the sense that it is a passive sedentary activity. It is also passive in the sense that it does not involve a two-way interaction. For the majority of viewers TV is mostly a passive receptive experience. As a language learner you can’t have a conversation with your TV and you're at a clear disadvantage vs. someone studying abroad. TV on the other hand is also the best source of spoken native language content most language learners could ever hope to find. Under ideal circumstances watching a foreign TV program should involve both passive and active listening. Due to the nature of the medium the majority of the experience will likely remain passive (which is not necessarily bad). Watching an interesting show is a passive viewing experience which often puts people into a much-maligned passive, trance-like state (observe anyone engrossed in a TV show). The viewer's mind is on autopilot but he is paying full attention and participating emotionally. Or rather, his attention and emotions are seized by the program. The redundant visual information present in TV images makes native speakers lazier listeners - the benefit for language learners is that this information may help decipher meaning.

German podcasts

2010-09-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

Podcast.de

Podcast.de has pretty much everything and it is a good starting point. I don't like the website, though. It is a bit quirky and sometimes slow.

WDR video podcasts

Some favorites:

Die Sendung mit der Maus

Excellent for intermediate students and advanced beginners.

Quarks & Co

Kopfball

Tagesschau - news

Computerclub2 Computers - very popular.

Radiotatort - Krimis

SWR2 Wissen

GEO audio

WDR radio podcasts

Click on individual radio stations to get a list of podcasts.

Favorites

sonntagsfragen

Erlebtegeschichten

leonardo

klartext

philosophischesradio

I wouldn't worry about the title. Some excellent stuff here.

politikum

essenundtrinken

presseclub

leonardo_darwin

Zeitzeichen

wdr2kompakt

WDR 5 Bücher

Radioquarks

fhgespraeche

hallouewagen

comedy

Merkels Mailbox

Schlaflos in München

Slow German

BR podcasts

Children's podcasts

Die Sendung mit der Maus

Klicker - Nachrichten für Kinder

Käpt'n Blaubär

It's very...German.

Lilipuz

Baerenbude

For very small children.

An update

2010-09-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

Morgen, morgen, nur nicht heute, sagen alle faulen Leute. Or something like that. My German studies have stalled, Italian is deteriorating to such an extent I'm afraid it's at this point irreparably damaged, French is a disaster... Linguistically, I am in a corner, ready to curl up into the fetal position and suck my thumb. On the positive side, I am still alive...

I'm alive

2010-08-22T19:16:00.000-07:00

and still learning German. Or trying to. If I find the holy grail of language learning I'll let you know... I am occasionally drifting off/away into other things and languages. I have decided not to post too much crap er, interesting news items I find online. Anyone following (if you're still alive) is probably not hitting the refresh button every five minutes anyway :)

Ok, I have discovered German podcasts (where have I been?). I've been listening to a lot of that - (computers, cars, politics, you name it). I find it very useful. I'm mostly listening in the afternoon, while walking. During the day I can sneak some passive listening. Evenings are tough. I was bad during the last two-three weeks, very little done language or otherwise. I will try to remedy that. I am enthusiastic about the content. I have completely lost any desire to discuss language learning methodologies. I have not touched a language course or a grammar. Not asking for approval/disapproval here. I need to do some real reading. I did manage to listen through several audiobooks. I am not keeping track of what I do - it's a chore. On the other hand when I do it I do get motivated (I did all that?).

Benny's German adventure

2010-07-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

"Benny the Irish polyglot" and his C2 exam results and analysis. In his own words:

"In a few short hours I’ll be flying into Berlin where I’ll be spending the next 3 months! The next mission is of course German. My mission will be to convince Germans that I’m a Berliner by the end of June, and to sit the Goethe-Zertifikat C2: Zentrale Oberstufenprüfung examination. The level required for this examination goes way beyond fluency; it is for Mastery of a language...

"The C2 level exam: "Think “very hard” & multiply that by a thousand".

More here

Benny's prior experience with German:

- "FIVE years of studies," "the familiar story of a wasted academic background"
- High school exit exam (which requires cramming)
- A two-month visit to Germany

Comment: High school German is around 500 hours of instruction and not "years of studies".

Result:

"INDIVIDUAL SECTION RESULTS:
ORAL Result: 60/80 (75%: ‘good’ grade)
WRITTEN Result: 52/70 (74%: ‘good’ grade)
GRAMMAR Result: 43/70 (61%: ‘satisfactory’ grade)
READING Result: 25/50 (50%: would just be ‘pass’ grade due to ‘good’ in written)
LISTENING Result: 15/40 (37%: not a pass)"

"There were five different aspects to the exam. Based on four of these aspects I “passed” the exam and have a C2 level in German in these parts, doing better in certain sections than I originally thought I would! However, I did not pass one aspect: Listening comprehension. Because you must pass all of the five sections, the overall result is not a pass and I will not be awarded the C2 diploma."

Comment: What's "not a pass"? :) His conclusion is that he "almost passed", which I suppose is a good philosophy.

Writing: "This nice result was a bit of a surprise as writing is usually not something I focus much on... If you can speak confidently and correctly, then you simply transfer it to written format... The only difference is that I removed casual empty-softeners (like, you know, isn’t it?) and conversational connectors, which would make speech sound more natural, but not work in written form.

Comment: There is a big difference between speaking and writing but the two active skills certainly support each other.

Grammar: "I just barely got within the safe pass grade both in German and in Spanish. I still remember the Spanish result was precisely 80%. One tiny slip up and I would have failed the entire exam! I don’t like to focus so much on grammar and the rules of a language: speaking ‘perfectly’ is definitely way less important than speaking confidently. People who focus on this perfection will never actually reach it since they still aren’t confident enough to speak."

Comment: The grammar part does not test the terminology or explicit knowledge of grammar rules.

Reading
Result: 25/50 (50%: would just be ‘pass’ grade due to ‘good’ in written)

"This part was the only surprise for me, as I thought I had passed it safely, but I actually did quite poorly...

Despite the title, reading a lot does not necessarily help. I read enough for the purposes of this exam and I wouldn’t have increased my focus on reading if I were to resit it."

Comment:

"I read enough for the purposes of this exam." "reading a lot does not necessarily help."

What does this mean? He spent three months in Germany running around like one of those duracell bunnies and according to his own log he began reading books (while studying) one month before the exam. His suggestion is that anyone trying to pass this part of the exam should not read but study vocabulary:

"What I would have done differently: more focus on vocabulary study, to be more precise. My answers were likely ‘correct’, but not good enough."

He was supposed to find synonyms for words taken from a particular context. Only some words can be matched in a given context. Reading is indispensable. And this piece of advice comes from "context is the KEY" guy.

Listening comprehension
Result: 15/40 (37%: not a pass)

"My biggest mistake here was (as mentioned above), presuming that to prepare for the listening exam, I simply had to listen to a lot of German. Ever since I arrived, I have had the radio on almost constantly, mostly on news and discussion stations. I somewhat paid attention and definitely got the general gist most of the time, and all of the time in the last month.

This did not actually help me for my listening exam....

Other learners swear by passive listening all day long as a means of learning a language. I was already sceptical about it, but now I’m convinced that it’s not a practical use of time (at least for me). If you like listening to the foreign language, then listen away, but don’t think that you are actually learning much. Listening while washing the dishes or driving a car will give you important exposure, and this is important to get a ‘feel’ for the language to make it sound less strange. But it is not necessarily improving your actual level of the language; definitely not your ability to produce, and not even so much for your ability to understand... Unless you are actively involved in the audio, you can only improve your level if you give it all of your attention, or if you have the ability to efficiently split your attention so that it is getting crucial focus...

What I would do differently if I were to sit this again: be 100% focused on listening when preparing (not doing anything else at the same time) and try my best to get as many details as possible out of the audio, rather than just feeling good about myself that I got the ‘gist’ of it."

Comment: blaring the radio for a couple of months while doing other things is not a good preparation for any exam. It's also a bad argument against passive listening or simply listening (and paying attention). Passive listening (with or without multitasking) requires time and is usually combined with other types of activities (especially when the learner is still struggling to understand the gist).

More on his C2 German exam here

What Makes An Accent In A Foreign Language Lighter? More Empathy

2010-07-13T06:54:00.000-07:00

What Makes An Accent In A Foreign Language Lighter? More Empathy And Political Identification With Native Speakers
ScienceDaily (Aug. 11, 2009) — The more empathy one has for another, the lighter the accent will be when speaking in a second language.

This is the conclusion of a new study carried out at the University of Haifa by Dr. Raphiq Ibrahim and Dr. Mark Leikin of the Department of Learning Disabilities and Prof. Zohar Eviatar of the Department of Psychology at the University of Haifa. The study has been published in the International Journal of Bilingualism.

"In addition to personal-affective factors, it has been found that the 'language ego' is also influenced by the sociopolitical position of the speaker towards the majority group," the researchers stated.

We all know how to identify the average Hebrew speaker trying to speak English: the Israeli accent is an easy give-away. But why is there an accent and what are the factors that make one speaker have a heavier accent than another? One possibility is based on the cognitive discipline, which suggests that our language system limits the creation of language pronunciations in a non-native language. Another explanation is derived from the socio-lingual field, which claims that socio-affective elements have an effect on accent and that the second language constitutes an image label for the speaker in the presence of a majority group.

"Israel is a perfect lab location for testing the topic of second languages, because of the complex composition of its population. This population is made up of immigrants who learn Hebrew at an advanced age; an ethnic minority of Arabs, some of whom learn Hebrew from an early age, and others who learn the language as mature adults; and a majority group of native Hebrew speakers," the researchers explained.

The first stage of the study divided participants – students from the University of Haifa – into three groups: 20 native Hebrew speakers, 20 Arabic speakers who learned Hebrew at the age of 7-8, and 20 Russian immigrants who learned Hebrew after age 13. The participants' socioeconomic characteristics were identical. All were asked to read out a section from a report in Hebrew, and then to describe – in Hebrew - an image that was shown to them. The pieces were recorded and divided into two-minute sections. Additionally, the participants filled out a questionnaire that measures empathetic abilities in 29 statements.

The second stage of the study took 20 different native Hebrew speaking participants. They listened to the pieces that had been recorded in the first stage, and rated each piece according to accent "heaviness". Subsequently, each participant from the first stage was given a score on the weight of his or her accent and another score for level of empathy.

The study has shown that the accent level of Russian immigrants and of native Arabic speakers is similar. It also revealed that for the Russian immigrants, there is a direct link between the two measures: the higher the ability to exhibit empathy for the other, the weaker the accent. Amongst the Arabic speakers, however, no such link – either positive or negative – between level of empathy and heaviness of accent could be seen.

The researchers' hypothesis is that in the group of Arabic speakers, a new factor enters the 'language ego' equation: sociopolitical position. "We believe that the pattern among Arabic speakers demonstrates their sentiment toward the Hebrew-speaking majority group, and the former consider their accent as something that distinguishes them from the majority.

Our research shows that both personal and sociopolitical aspects have an influence on accent in speaking a second language, and teachers giving instruction in languages as second languages, especially among minority groups, must relate to the social and political connection when teaching," the researchers explain.

University of Haifa (2009, August 11). What Makes An Accent In A Foreign Language Lighter? More Empathy And Political Identification With Native Speakers. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 13, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/08/090810104931.htm

Exposure To Two Languages Carries Far-Reaching Benefits

2010-07-13T06:52:00.000-07:00

Exposure To Two Languages Carries Far-Reaching Benefits
ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) — People who can speak two languages are more adept at learning a new foreign language than their monolingual counterparts, according to research conducted at Northwestern University. And their bilingual advantage persists even when the new language they study is completely different from the languages they already know.

"It's often assumed that individuals who've learned multiple languages simply have a natural aptitude for learning languages," said Viorica Marian, associate professor of communication sciences and disorders at Northwestern University. "While that is true in some cases, our research shows that the experience of becoming bilingual itself makes learning a new language easier."

In the first study to explore a possible advantage in bilinguals who learned a second language at a parent's knee, Northwestern researchers asked three groups of native English speakers -- English-Mandarin bilinguals, English-Spanish bilinguals and monolinguals -- to master words in an invented language that bore no relationship to English, Spanish or Mandarin.

They found that the bilingual participants -- whether English-Mandarin or English-Spanish speakers – mastered nearly twice the number of words as the monolinguals.

And they believe the bilingual advantage is likely to generalize beyond word learning to other kinds of language learning, including learning new words in one's own language and a very basic ability to maintain verbal information.

"After learning another language, individuals can transfer language learning strategies they've acquired to subsequent language learning and become better language learners in general," said Northwestern School of Communication's Marian.

Marian and Margarita Kaushanskaya, now assistant professor of communicative disorders at University of Wisconsin-Madison, are co-authors of "The Bilingual Advantage in Novel World Learning." Their study will be published in the August issue of Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.

The study has important implications for educators who are considering the appropriate age at which to introduce foreign language instruction as well as for parents who in increasing numbers have an option to enroll their children in dual language immersion programs.

"We're seeing that exposure to two languages early in life carries far-reaching benefits," said co-author Kaushanskaya. "Our research tells us that children who grow up with two languages wind up being better language learners later on."

Although there are more opportunities today for children to participate in dual language immersion programs than in the past, parents often avoid them for fear that dual language instruction may end up confusing or distracting their children and inhibit subject learning.

In research presented in the May issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology, however, the two co-authors demonstrate that bilinguals actually are better able than monolinguals to inhibit irrelevant information while learning a new language. Repressing irrelevant information, after all, is something bilinguals do every time they speak.

What's more, the majority of the world's population outside the United States is bilingual or multilingual, Marian noted. In the U.S., approximately one out of five American households speaks a language other than English at home, according to the U.S. Census. And, with higher birth rates among Hispanics relative to the rest of the population, that proportion is rapidly growing.

Previous research already indicates that individuals who have formally studied two or more languages as adults more easily acquire a new language than monolinguals. New research even indicates that the onset of Alzheimer's disease in bilinguals is, on average, delayed by four years compared to monolinguals.

The Northwestern researchers chose to study bilinguals who learned a second language at an early age and in a non-classroom study to avoid suggestions that their subjects simply were exceptionally talented or motivated foreign language learners.

For their study in Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, the researchers controlled for age, education, English language vocabulary size and, in the case of bilinguals, second language proficiency. Sixty Northwestern University students in their early twenties -- 20 monolinguals, 20 early English-Mandarin speakers and 20 early English-Spanish speakers – participated.

All participants were tested twice for word mastery in the invented language. The initial test took place immediately after they heard and repeated the invented language words. The second test occurred a week later.

Northwestern University (2009, May 20). Exposure To Two Languages Carries Far-reaching Benefits. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 13, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/05/090519172157.htm

Bilingual Children More Likely To Stutter

2010-07-13T06:51:00.000-07:00

Bilingual Children More Likely To Stutter
ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — Children who are bilingual before the age of 5 are significantly more likely to stutter and to find it harder to lose their impediment, than children who speak only one language before this age, suggests new research.

The researchers base their findings on 317 children, who were referred for stutter when aged between 8 and 10.

All the children lived in Greater London, and all had started school in the UK at the age of 4 or 5.

The children's carers were asked if they spoke a language other than English exclusively or combined with English at home.

Just over one in five (69) of the children spoke English and a second language at home. Thirty eight had had to learn English as one or more family members did not speak English at home.

Fifteen of the 38 children spoke only one language (not English) before the age of 5, while 23 spoke their family's native language as well as English before this age.

Thirty one children stuttered in both languages.

Stuttering began at around the age of 4.5 years, and boys outnumbered girls by 4 to 1.

Comparison with a group of children who didn't stutter showed that three quarters of them were exclusive speakers of a language other than English at home; only a quarter spoke two languages.

The recovery rate was also higher among children who exclusively spoke one language other than English at home.

Over half of children who either spoke only their native language at home up to the age of 5, or who spoke only English (monolingual), had stopped stuttering by the age of 12, when they were reassessed.

This compares with only one in four of those children speaking two languages up to this age.

There was no difference in school performance between children who stuttered, but the authors suggest that children whose native language is not English may benefit from deferring the time when they learn it. "...this reduces the chance of starting to stutter and aids the chances of recovery later in childhood," they say.

This research was published ahead of print in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

BMJ-British Medical Journal (2008, September 10). Bilingual Children More Likely To Stutter. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 13, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/09/080908215938.htm

Toddlers As Data Miners

2010-07-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

New Thoughts On Language Acquisition: Toddlers As Data Miners
ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2008) — Indiana University researchers are studying a ground-breaking theory that young children are able to learn large groups of words rapidly by data-mining.

Their theory, which they have explored with 12- and 14-month-olds, takes a radically different approach to the accepted view that young children learn words one at a time -- something they do remarkably well by the age of 2 but not so well before that.

Data mining, usually computer-assisted, involves analyzing and sorting through massive amounts of raw data to find relationships, correlations and ultimately useful information. It often is used and thought of in a business context or used by financial analysts, and more recently, a wide range of research fields, such as biology and chemistry. IU cognitive science experts Linda Smith and Chen Yu are investigating whether the human brain accumulates large amounts of data minute by minute, day by day, and handles this data processing automatically. They are studying whether this phenomenon contributes to a "system" approach to language learning that helps explain the ease by which 2- and 3-year-olds can learn one word at a time.

"This new discovery changes completely how we understand children's word learning," Smith said. "It's very exciting."

Smith, chair of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at IU Bloomington, and Yu, assistant professor in the department, recently received a $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to fund this research for five years. Here are some recent findings:

*In one of their studies, published in the journal Cognition, Yu and Smith attempted to teach 28 12- to 14-month-olds six words by showing them two objects at a time on a computer monitor while two pre-recorded words were read to them. No information was given regarding which word went with which image. After viewing various combinations of words and images, however, the children were surprisingly successful at figuring out which word went with which picture.

*In the adult version of the study, which used the same eye-tracking technology used in the Cognition study, adults were taught 18 words in just six minutes. Instead of viewing two images at a time, they simultaneously were shown anywhere from three to four, while hearing the same number of words. The adults, like the children, learned significantly more than would be expected by chance. Many of the adult subjects indicated they were certain they had learned nothing and were "amazed" by their success. Yu and Smith wrote in the journal Psychological Science, "This suggests that cross-situational learning may go forward non-strategically and automatically, steadily building a reliable lexicon."

Yu and Smith say it's possible that the more words tots hear, and the more information available for any individual word, the better their brains can begin simultaneously ruling out and putting together word-object pairings, thus learning what's what.

Yu, who has a doctorate in computer science and writes much of the software programming for their studies, said that if they can identify key factors involved in this form of learning and how it can be manipulated, they might be able to make learning languages easier, through training DVDs and other means, for children and adults. The learning mechanisms used by the children to learn words also could be used to further machine learning.

Indiana University (2008, February 4). New Thoughts On Language Acquisition: Toddlers As Data Miners. ScienceDaily Retrieved July 13, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/01/080129215316.htm

Children Under Three Can't Learn Action Words From TV

2010-07-13T06:41:00.000-07:00

Children Under Three Can't Learn Action Words From TV -- Unless An Adult Helps
ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2009) — American infants and toddlers watch TV an average of two hours a day, and much of the programming is billed as educational. A new study finds that children under age 3 learn less from these videos that we might think—unless there's an adult present to interact with them and support their learning.

The study, by researchers at Temple University and the University of Delaware, can be found in the September/October 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.

The researchers studied children who ranged in age from 30 to 42 months to explore whether they could learn the names of actions (verbs) from videos. The names of verbs are generally harder for children to learn than names of objects. Yet verb learning is critical because verbs are the centerpiece of sentences, the glue that holds the words together. Using modified clips from the program Sesame Beginnings, the researchers showed children a video of characters performing unfamiliar actions that were labeled with new words (for example, "Look, she's daxing"). In some instances, the children watched without adult support, while in others, they watched with an adult who demonstrated the action that later appeared on the screen. The researchers then measured the children's ability to learn a new verb and apply that word to a new scene.

Without adult support, children under age 3 could not learn the words directly from the program, nor could they understand them when they appeared in a different context within the video. When they watched with an adult who reinforced what they were viewing, they could learn the words. In contrast, children over age 3 were able to learn the verbs from the video program and understand them later, even without an adult interacting with them.

"Learning verbs is difficult," suggests Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Lefkowitz Professor of Psychology at Temple University and one of the study's authors. "Young children need social support from adults to help them learn verbs from television. Watching on their own is not as 'educational' as watching with an engaged adult."

The study's take-home message, according to Hirsh-Pasek: "Amid the plethora of videos in the marketplace aimed at children under 3, our findings caution against using videos to teach language to very young children."

Research for this study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Science Foundation.

Society for Research in Child Development (2009, September 21). Children Under Three Can't Learn Action Words From TV -- Unless An Adult Helps. ScienceDaily.

Proficiency and age of acquisition of the second language

2010-07-13T06:32:00.000-07:00

The bilingual brain. Proficiency and age of acquisition of the second language
D Perani, E Paulesu, NS Galles, E Dupoux, S Dehaene, V Bettinardi, SF Cappa, F Fazio and J Mehler
Istituto di Neuroscienze e Bioimmagini-CNR, Scientific Institute H. San Raffaele, University of Milan, Milano, Italy.

Functional imaging methods show differences in the pattern of cerebral activation associated with the subject's native language (L1) compared with a second language (L2). In a recent PET investigation on bilingualism we showed that auditory processing of stories in L1 (Italian) engages the temporal lobes and temporoparietal cortex more extensively than L2 (English). However, in that study the Italian subjects learned L2 late and attained a fair, but not an excellent command of this language (low proficiency, late acquisition bilinguals). Thus, the different patterns of activation could be ascribed either to age of acquisition or to proficiency level. In the current study we use a similar paradigm to evaluate the effect of early and late acquisition of L2 in highly proficient bilinguals. We studied a group of Italian-English bilinguals who acquired L2 after the age of 10 years (high proficiency, late acquisition bilinguals) and a group of Spanish-Catalan bilinguals who acquired L2 before the age of 4 years (high proficiency, early acquisition bilinguals). The differing cortical responses we had observed when low proficiency volunteers listened to stories in L1 and L2 were not found in either of the high proficiency groups in this study. Several brain areas, similar to those observed for L1 in low proficiency bilinguals, were activated by L2. These findings suggest that, at least for pairs of L1 and L2 languages that are fairly close, attained proficiency is more important than age of acquisition as a determinant of the cortical representation of L2.

Brain, Vol 121, Issue 10 1841-1852

Do Bilingual Persons Have Distinct Language Areas In The Brain?

2010-07-13T06:28:00.000-07:00

Do Bilingual Persons Have Distinct Language Areas In The Brain?
ScienceDaily (July 9, 2009) — A new study carried out at the University of Haifa sheds light on how first and second languages are represented in the brain of a bilingual person. A unique single case study that was tested by Dr. Raphiq Ibrahim of the Department of Learning Disabilities and published in the Behavioral and Brain Functions journal, showed that first and second languages are represented in different places in the brain.

The question of how different languages are represented in the human brain is still unclear and, moreover, it is not certain how languages of different and similar linguistic structures are represented. Many studies have found evidence that all the languages that we acquire in the course of our life are represented in one area of the brain. However, other studies have found evidence that a second language is dissociated from the representation of a mother tongue.

According to Dr. Ibrahim, there are various ways of clarifying this question, but the best way to examine the brain's representation of two languages is by assessing the effects of brain damage on a mother tongue and on the second language of the bilingual individual. "The examination of such cases carries much significance, since it is rare that we can find people who fluently speak two languages and who have sustained brain damage that has selectively affected one of the languages. Moreover, most of the evidence in this field is derived from clinical observations of brain damage in English- and Indo-European-speaking patients, and few studies have been carried out on individuals who speak other languages, especially Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Arabic, until the present study," he added.

The present case examined a 41-year-old bilingual patient whose mother tongue is Arabic and who had fluent command of Hebrew as a second language, at a level close to that of his mother tongue. The individual is a university graduate who passed entrance exams in Hebrew and used the language frequently in his professional life. He suffered damage to the brain that was expressed in a language disorder (aphasia) that remained after completing a course of rehabilitation. During rehabilitation, a higher level of improvement in use of the Arabic language was recorded, and less for the use of Hebrew. After rehabilitation, the patient's language skills were put through various standardized tests that examined a range of levels language skills in the two languages, alongside other cognitive tests. Most of the tests revealed that damage to the patient's Hebrew skills were significantly more severe than the damage to his Arabic skills.

According to Dr. Ibrahim, even if this selective impairment of the patient's linguistic capabilities does not constitute sufficient evidence to develop a structural model to represent languages in the brain, this case does constitute an important step in this direction, particularly considering that it deals with unique languages that have not yet been studied and which are phonetically, morphologically and syntactically similar.

University of Haifa (2009, July 9). Do Bilingual Persons Have Distinct Language Areas In The Brain?. ScienceDaily.

Study Suggests The Brain Can Remember A 'Forgotten' Language

2010-07-13T06:17:00.000-07:00

Use It Or Lose It? Study Suggests The Brain Can Remember A 'Forgotten' Language
ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2009) — Many of us learn a foreign language when we are young, but in some cases, exposure to that language is brief and we never get to hear or practice it subsequently. Our subjective impression is often that the neglected language completely fades away from our memory. But does “use it or lose it” apply to foreign languages? Although it may seem we have absolutely no memory of the neglected language, new research suggests this “forgotten” language may be more deeply engraved in our minds than we realize.

Psychologists Jeffrey Bowers, Sven L. Mattys, and Suzanne Gage from the University of Bristol recruited volunteers who were native English speakers but who had learned either Hindi or Zulu as children when living abroad. The researchers focused on Hindi and Zulu because these languages contain certain phonemes that are difficult for native English speakers to recognize. A phoneme is the smallest sound in a language—a group of phonemes forms a word.

The scientists asked the volunteers to complete a background vocabulary test to see if they remembered any words from the neglected language. They then trained the participants to distinguish between pairs of phonemes that started Hindi or Zulu words.

As it turned out, even though the volunteers showed no memory of the second language in the vocabulary test, they were able to quickly relearn and correctly identify phonemes that were spoken in the neglected language.

These findings, which appeared in a recent issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that exposing young children to foreign languages, even if they do not continue to speak them, can have a lasting impact on speech perception. The authors conclude, “Even if the language is forgotten (or feels this way) after many years of disuse, leftover traces of the early exposure can manifest themselves as an improved ability to relearn the language.”

Association for Psychological Science (2009, September 25). Use It Or Lose It? Study Suggests The Brain Can Remember A

Why Learning A New Language May Make You Forget Your Old One

2010-07-13T06:16:00.000-07:00

A New Language Barrier: Why Learning A New Language May Make You Forget Your Old One
ScienceDaily (Jan. 18, 2007) — Traveling abroad presents an ideal opportunity to master a foreign language. While the immersion process facilitates communication in a diverse world, people are often surprised to find they have difficulty returning to their native language. This phenomenon is referred to as first-language attrition and has University of Oregon psychologist Benjamin Levy wondering how it is possible to forget, even momentarily, words used fluently throughout one's life.

In a study appearing in the January, 2007 issue of Psychological Science, Levy and his colleague Dr. Michael Anderson discovered that people do not forget their native language simply because of less use, but that such forgetfulness reflects active inhibition of native language words that distract us while we are speaking the new language. Therefore, this forgetfulness may actually be an adaptive strategy to better learn a second language.

In the study, native English speakers who had completed at least one year of college level Spanish were asked to repeatedly name objects in Spanish. The more the students were asked to repeat the Spanish words, the more difficulty they had generating the corresponding English labels for the objects. In other words, naming objects in another language inhibits the corresponding labels in the native language, making them more difficult to retrieve later.

Interestingly, the study also showed that the more fluent bilingual students were far less prone to experience these inhibitory effects. These findings suggest that native language inhibition plays a crucial role during the initial stages of second language learning. That is, when first learning a new language, we have to actively ignore our easily accessible native language words while struggling to express our thoughts in a novel tongue. As a speaker achieves bilingual fluency, native-language inhibition becomes less necessary, accounting for the better performances of fluent bilingual speakers in the study.

Although the value of suppressing previously learned knowledge to learn new concepts may appear counterintuitive, Levy explains that "first-language attrition provides a striking example of how it can be adaptive to (at least temporarily) forget things one has learned."

For more information on this subject and about the research please visit the University of Oregon Memory Lab website at http://memorycontrol.uoregon.edu.

Association for Psychological Science (2007, January 18). A New Language Barrier: Why Learning A New Language May Make You

Bilinguals Are Unable To 'Turn Off' A Language Completely

2010-07-13T06:11:00.000-07:00

Bilinguals Are Unable To 'Turn Off' A Language Completely, Study Shows
ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2009) — With a vast majority of the world speaking more than one language, it is no wonder that psychologists are interested in its effect on cognitive functioning. For instance, how does the human brain switch between languages? Are we able to seamlessly activate one language and disregard knowledge of other languages completely?

According to a recent study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, it appears humans are not actually capable of "turning off" another language entirely. Psychologists Eva Van Assche, Wouter Duyck, Robert Hartsuiker and Kevin Diependaele from Ghent University found that knowledge of a second language actually has a continuous impact on native-language reading.

The researchers selected 45 Ghent University students whose native-language was Dutch and secondary language was English. The psychologists asked the students to read several sentences containing control words - plain words in their native-language - and cognates. Cognates are words that have a similar meaning and form across languages, often descending from the same ancient language; for example, "cold" is a cognate of the German word "kalt" since they both descended from Middle English.

While the students read the sentences, their eye movements were recorded and their fixation locations were measured--that is, where in the sentence their eyes paused. The researchers found that the students looked a shorter period of time at the cognates than at the controls. So in the example sentence "Ben heeft een oude OVEN/LADE gevonden tussen de rommel op zolder" (Ben found an old OVEN/DRAWER among the rubbish in the attic), the bilingual students read over "oven" more quickly than "lade."

According to the psychologists, it is the overlap of the two languages that speeds up the brain's activation of cognates. So even though participants did not need to use their second language to read in their native-language, they still were unable to simply "turn it off." It appears, then, that not only is a second language always active, it has a direct impact on reading another language--even when the reader is more proficient in one language than another.

Association for Psychological Science (2009, August 19). Bilinguals Are Unable To 'Turn Off' A Language Completely, Study Shows.

German comics and cartoons for adults

2010-07-04T20:18:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately German comics and cartoons industry is dominated by foreign productions. Slim pickings here. Possible recommendations for adults:

Nick Knatterton comics (a bit dated)

Walter Moers:

Das kleine Arschloch (comic and Kleines Arschloch a 1997 animated feature film)
Der alte Sack
Adolf, die Nazisau

Brösel: Werner comics (and several cartoons)

Felidae (1994) a cartoon based on Akif Pirinçci's cult novel.

Monolingual dictionaries vs bilingual dictionaries

2010-07-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

Some excerpts from "The Art and Science of Learning Languages" by Amorey Gethin (AG) and Erik V. Gunnemark (EVG). The book is worth checking out (available on Amazon). The excerpts were edited by the author Amorey Gethin. I suppose I'm doing this because his ideas reflect very much my own. One thing I find objectionable is the frequent use of "never".

"However; you should beware of monolingual dictionaries that claim to be the latest in scientific lexicography because they are based on a huge 'corpus' of millions of words scanned by computer. (A well-known example is the Cobuild English dictionary.) These computer collections are almost entirely of sentences and phrases found in written texts. The result is that not only are many of the examples quoted in the dictionary completely untypical of the real everyday use of the words, which is mainly found in speech; they have also been taken out of their broader context in newspaper articles, novels etc., which makes it even harder for the dictionary user to understand how the words are used.

Dictionaries - which way round?

When I first became interested in foreign languages I often heard people say that it is perfectly all right for English-speakers to use French-English dictionaries as much as they like, but that they should be very wary of using English-French dictionaries. In other words, it was all right to use dictionaries from the foreign language into one's own, but not dictionaries the other way round. I entirely accepted this principle. The grounds for it were that when one uses an 'own-to-foreign' dictionary, the chances are that one will not know how to use the foreign words one finds."

The only times I use a 'foreign-to-own' dictionary a lot are when I am doing translation work. I do not use the dictionary to find out what the foreign words mean. I do not consider people have any business to be translating if they have to use a dictionary more than very occasionally in order to understand. I use the dictionary to remind myself of the possible words in my own language. For a competent translator (into his own language) it is always and only his own language that presents the real problems. He understands the sense of the original perfectly - but how should he express it in the language he is translating into?

Monolingual or bilingual dictionaries?

It has been the orthodox view for a very long time now that more advanced students of foreign languages should only use monolingual dictionaries in the language concerned (i.e. if you study English you should use an English-English dictionary, if Russian, a Russian-Russian dictionary, and so on). Indeed, it is customary in language teaching circles to go even further and insist that one should begin to use monolingual dictionaries as soon as possible; from then on they are preferable to bilingual dictionaries. Thus, for example, according to this view, a dictionary which contains only French is better than a one- or two-volume dictionary with French-English and English-French.

It seems to be a principle that many, perhaps most, language teachers take for granted, something that is beyond question, so much so that there is virtually no debate on the issue. On the rare occasions when anybody bothers to explain why monolingual dictionaries are so superior; the argument seems to be that they make students think in the foreign language instead of immediately turning the foreign words into equivalents in their own language.

There are very few true synonyms

It has already been explained why it is a bad idea to think in terms of equivalents in your own language. But what is an even worse idea is to translate a word into another word in the same language. The whole 'point' of a word is that it does not mean anything but itself. Practically every word is unique.

So never try to find out how words are the same. Find out how they are different! Never try to learn alternative words. For example, if we imagine you are learning English, do not think about what the words face, confront and oppose might have in common, never attempt to connect them to each other in your mind. Connect each one, instead, to the ideas to which it naturally belongs; one builds up understanding of how words are used from being alert to the contexts they fit into.

He must face-his-problems-alone.

Simply confront-the-boss-with-the-evidence.

She will oppose-the-motion.

Then, when you feel you really need an alternative, you will be able to judge which word is the right one from your knowledge of how the words are truly used, and where they fit naturally. If you learn like that, you are unlikely to think of replacing the three words above with each other.

How monolingual dictionaries mislead

Monolingual dictionaries give the impression that the opposite of all this is true. They give definitions (see below, Section 59), and describe words in terms of each other; tell us that this word means the same as that word. Over the years I has noted down examples of mistakes and misunderstandings that have resulted from using one of the most well-known monolingual English dictionaries produced for foreign students. Here are just a few of them. The words in brackets are what the writers really meant. I was able to establish exactly what was happening because in each case the writers were reporting on something they had read in English.

She died after a long disease (illness).

If people criticize our handling of our children, we bubble over (seethe).

My wife said nothing, in spite of my incompetence, until lastly (finally) I dropped the spare wheel on her foot.

They considered (thought of) a genuinely British solution to the problem.

18th century furniture is rather breakable (fragile).

Luckily things could be worse. The monolingual dictionary often turned up in rows on the desks in front of a new group of my students, but I noticed, even if I hadn't had the heart to tell them they had wasted their money, that at the end of the term most of these thick tomes still had their pristine, unfingered shine.

The temptation to resist new words

Unfortunately, though, it is what one might call the 'monolingual' philosophy that does so much harm, even when monolingual dictionaries are not actually used. It not only encourages a completely false idea of the nature of language, and misleads students about the meaning of thousands of words; it also encourages the great reluctance of so many students to adopt new words.

Naturally if one accuses them of such an attitude, most will deny it. Of course they want to learn new words, they assure us with complete sincerity. But their actions belie their protestations. Led to believe - and only too willing to believe - that the new word means the same as a good old safe familiar word, students will stick to the familiar one, and won't bother with the new one. It will often be as if they had never read or heard it, and they will persevere with the old one in all sorts of contexts where it won't do at all.

The trap of thesauruses

The only thing worse than a monolingual dictionary is a thesaurus. The native speaker sifts the 'synonyms' she finds in a thesaurus, and discards most - or even all - of them. She is able to do this precisely because she already knows exactly what they mean and can accept or reject accordingly. If she is not sure of the meaning and use of a word, she does not dream of using it. A foreign student cannot possibly discriminate in this way.

To try to learn foreign words by learning definitions (in the foreign language) is as big a mistake as to try to learn them by learning 'synonyms'. We do not in effect learn the words of our own or any other language through explanations and definitions. We understand a word and master its use when we can make a direct association with the 'reality' it refers to, whether that reality is a thing or action or quality or an abstract idea or anything else. In a sense the word is the association; there is no interpreting link between the word and what it means.

When we hear a word in our own language we do not stop and ask ourselves what the definition of that word is, in order to understand it. Nor; when we want to use a word, do we find the right one by deciding on a definition and then remembering the word attached to that definition.

It is worth considering here that when we judge that a definition of a word, in a dictionary or elsewhere, is a good one, we can only do so because we already know the meaning in a quite different, precise way that has nothing to do with definition. We do not tell ourselves that a definition is a good one because it is similar to a definition we have heard before. Equally, one can only produce one's own definition of a word if one first knows it in some other way.

But a foreign student cannot possibly be led by a definition to a proper apprehension of a word she does not know. A definition, far from being a quick path to mastery of a word, is a barrier between the word and the reality it belongs to. It is an extra and misleading burden on the memory, and goes right against the psychology of the way we experience words in practice. Mastery of a word is a matter of apprehending it - directly, in a flash.

The false logic of monolingual dictionaries

What exactly is this 'thinking' we are supposed to do in the foreign language when we use a monolingual dictionary? It is very unclear. At best it can only be thinking about the words of the definition, which is not what we need to be thinking about at all. The definition is in a foreign language, too, which can only increase the student's confusion, conscious or unconscious. Nor is there anything to stop an English-speaker, say, 'thinking in English' about a French definition in a French monolingual dictionary.

Whatever the thinking is, it is certainly not the sole kind of 'thinking in the foreign language' that is either possible or relevant: that linking of a word directly to a reality. And what sort of definitions are we talking about? Here are three examples taken from the same dictionary that I mentioned above that bring out the failure of the monolingual approach particularly clearly:

blast - strong, sudden rush of wind

gust - sudden, violent rush of wind

dangle - hang or swing loosely

floppy - hanging down loosely

sarcasm - bitter remarks intended to wound the feelings

taunt - remark intended to hurt sb's feelings

Let us also look at a monolingual dictionary compiled in accordance with the recommendations on vocabulary of the Council of Europe, namely the New basic dictionary, published by Macmillan-Lensing. There we find among other definitions:

packet = a small container [a bottle?]

language = a way in which we communicate [a telephone conversation perhaps?]

tax = money paid to the government [what for?]

In an English-French dictionary, on the other hand, we get a direct and far more exact answer:

packet paquet

language langage

tax impot

How to use bilingual dictionaries

If you are studying a foreign language, you need a way of arriving in your mind at the reality the foreign words refer to as directly, quickly and accurately as possible. If you have to use a dictionary, you should always therefore use a bilingual dictionary. The word in your own language will immediately summon up the idea of a particular reality; there will be no barriers in the way.

But there are two things you must always do, two fundamental principles for using a bilingual dictionary. (Let us assume you are reading, not listening, although the principles remain the same.)

In the dictionary you will nearly always find several meanings in your own language for the one word you are looking up. You should go straight back to the foreign text and first see which meaning fits into the reality the text describes. Note 6

Then you should forget the word in your own language. Instead you should concentrate solely on the context of the foreign language. You have now discovered the reality which that language is talking about; observe - consciously or unconsciously - how it expresses it. In this way you will learn the exact meaning of the foreign words, just as the native speakers have done.

Perhaps to understand the principle better, imagine you come to a little river, a stream. The bank you are standing on is a sentence in the foreign language. You want to cross to the opposite bank, which is the meaning of the sentence. The stream is too wide to step across - an unknown word. But in the middle of the stream there is a stepping stone, the dictionary translation of the troublesome word. With the help of the stepping stone you step over to the other side. Now you are where you wanted to be - you understand the whole sentence, including the use of the new word. That is all you need. At this point you do not lean back to pick the stepping stone out of the stream and carry its weight around with you for the rest of your life. It has served its purpose and you can ignore it.

You should never forget that basic truth, that languages are not translations of each other. This means quite often that although the dictionary suggests many words in your own language as an equivalent of the foreign word you have looked up, none of them would be suitable as a translation for the context you have before you. But unless you are making a formal translation for someone, that does not matter at all. What is important is that you should understand the reality which the foreign language is referring to. The dictionary will usually give enough indications for you to be able to do that.

But finally, never forget that the dictionary should always be a last resort. Don't let it dominate you and steal from you the precious time you should be spending with the language itself.

Final advice

Summing up

(a) Never spend money and time listening to teachers talking about words. Instead, spend that time reading and listening and finding out directly what words mean and how they are used.

(b) Never waste money on books about vocabulary. Instead, again, read and listen and find out directly what words mean and how they are used.

(c) Never make lists of one-word equivalents. (If you need such a list for the most basic words, try to find one that has been made by a linguist who has studied the problem carefully.)

(d) Never translate into your own language "to be sure you really understand". If you don't already understand you cannot translate.

(e)Never think that a word means the same as another word.

(f)Never believe that a definition tells you what a word really means.

(g)Never use a dictionary more than you absolutely have to – and "absolutely having to" is much less often than you think."

Popular science corpora

2010-05-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

Materials for Vocabulary In Context: Short Popular Science Texts for EST
Robin NAGANO

Key Words: English for Specific Purposes, subtechnical vocabulary, popular science

Excerpts:

A major need of all second or foreign language learners is knowledge of the target vocabulary, without which little can be expressed or comprehended. With unlimited time and opportunities, a broad and diverse vocabulary can be built; however, for the student in an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) environment, opportunities and time spent in contact with the language are limited. For the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) student, the area of need is relatively well defined, and materials and vocabulary can be chosen in accordance with goals. This can be fairly clear-cut with a homogenous group of learners but is more difficult with students from a variety of fields of study or interest. It is, therefore, necessary to search for what is held in common.

TYPES OF VOCABULARY

Not all words are created equal. Some are used again and again, in various contexts, both written and spoken, while others can be found only in specific situations, or are rare enough to send adult LI speakers to an unabridged dictionary.

A distinction must be made, for practical purposes, between common and uncommon vocabulary, words that can be used in a wide range of situations and those which are very specific.

High frequency or general service words are found in several collections based primarily on word frequency, among them West's General Service List (1936), the Brown Corpus of Francis and Kucera (1982) , and the Cambridge
English Lexicon (Hindmarsh, 1980). These are said to cover about 87% of the running (total) words in a text. Above this, Nation (1990) places an academic vocabulary of approximately 800 word families, which make up another 8% of an academic text.

Academic vocabulary is that which appears widely, across many subjects, and is sometimes called subtechnical or semi-technical vocabulary. Subtechnical words form a bridge between the technical terms of a field, while being supported by general or function words (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987).

The remaining portion is made up of technical and low frequency vocabulary. These last two categories are distinguished by the relationship of the word to the subject of the text; technical vocabulary will be closely related to the subject and is likely to occur repeatedly within that section of a specialized text, although the section may be quite limited or specific. Low frequency vocabulary is unlikely to occur again, and can be found in texts of any type...

SCHOLARLY TEXTS VS. POPULAR TEXTS

Myers (1994), who has studied popularizations of scientific discoveries, has found that different presentations of a discovery represent and foster different views of science. Scientists writing for other researchers see them as "much more tentative and mediated" than the general public does. When writing for an audience of fellow specialists, researchers are reluctant to make unqualified statements, and place
evidence and techniques in the foreground of research articles. Myers looked at articles reporting discoveries written by the same authors in two forms: as scholarly research articles and for publications such as Scientific American or New Scientist, aimed at audiences familiar with general science. The latter tend to highlight the people involved, as opposed to the techniques and results stressed in the research article. Myers found that one technique for focusing on the people is
to begin a paragraph with "I" or "we" and an active verb, while treating procedures with the passive. Another alteration is to place events in chronological order.

News articles, on the other hand, focus on the discovery and its implications, mentioning the discoverers much later in the article, and techniques scarcely at all (Myers, 1994). Nwogu (1991) examined the 'moves' of news articles (which he calls the Journalistic Reported Version) of medical research articles, and identified nine types of 'moves' . The Journalistic Reported Version followed normal journalistic
patterns, aside from bringing background from the end of the article to the front, making it the initial move. This type of 'lead' presumably aids the reader in placing the topic in a context with which the reader can relate.

The popularization of research articles, whether in science magazines or news articles, also involves other changes in syntax. The long, involved, many-claused sentences of research articles are changed into shorter, straightforward sentences, that is, clauses are unpacked. This can lead to a reduction in lexical density, a key feature of written English in general, and even more so of formal scientific writing (see Halliday, 1985). Nominalizations are reduced to verbs, once again emphasizing what was done (by whom). Myers also remarks on a wider range of cohesive devices being used in writings for the public.

Clearly, research articles and popular accounts of science and technology differ in form and, if not in content, then in emphasis.They are separate genres with different aims (Swales, 1990), and it would not be appropriate to present popularizations as representative of the whole field of "scientific writing."

Phillips and Shettlesworth warn that "caution needs to be exercised in accepting the relative simplicity of the popularized account,.. .which is frequently achieved at the expense of introducing an unrepresentative register of discourse
(1988: 107).

On the other hand, popular science texts offer subtechnical vocabulary in areas connected with science and technology. They also share some of the features of scientific English, nominalization and density, although not to the extent of a scholarly article. Because of the less complex structure, such materials are more accessible to lower level students or those inexperienced with technical texts. Short popularized pieces could help bridge the gap between general English and more
specialized texts, by increasing skill and confidence in reading and building a fundamental vocabulary. They do not require specialized knowledge on the part of the student or the teacher, and they are readily available.

CONCLUSION

Popular science texts have the advantage of being authentic and applicable to a broader range of students than specialized materials, while still exposing learners to the subtechnical vocabulary needed for future dealings with specialized material.

The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain

2010-05-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

The Talents of a Middle-Aged Brain
April 30, 2010
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Well Blog

After we hit 40, many of us begin to worry about our aging brains. Will we spend our middle years searching for car keys and forgetting names?

The new book “The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind,” by Barbara Strauch, has the answers, and the news is surprisingly upbeat. Sure, brains can get forgetful as they get old, but they can also get better with age, reports Ms. Strauch, who is also the health editor at The New York Times. Ms. Strauch, who previously tackled teenage brains in her book “The Primal Teen,” spoke with me this week about aging brains and the people who have them. Here’s our conversation:

After exploring the teenage brain, why did you decide to write a book about grown-ups?

A.Well, I have a middle-aged brain, for one thing. When I would go give talks about “The Primal Teen,” I’d be driven to the airport or back by a middle-aged person, and they’d turn to me and say: “You should do something about my brain. My brain is suddenly horrible. I can’t remember names.” That’s why I started looking into it. I had my own middle-aged issues like going into an elevator and seeing somebody and thinking, “Who are you?”

Q.So what’s the bad news about the middle-aged brain?

A.Obviously, there are issues with short-term memory. There are declines in processing speed and in neurotransmitters, the chemicals in our brain. But as it turns out, modern middle age is from 40 to 65. During this long time in the middle, if we’re relatively healthy our brains may have a few issues, but on balance they’re better than ever during that period.

Q.Do teenage brains and middle-aged brains have much in common?

A.The thing the middle-aged brain shares with the teenage brain is that it’s still developing. It’s not some static blob that is going inextricably downhill. Scientists found that when they watched the brains of teenagers, the brains were expanding and growing and cutting back and shaping themselves, even when the kids are 25 years old. I think for many years scientists just left it at that. They thought that from 25 on, we just get “stupider.” But that’s not true. They’ve found that during this period, the new modern middle age, we’re better at all sorts of things than we were at 20.

Q.So what kinds of things does a middle-aged brain do better than a younger brain?

A.Inductive reasoning and problem solving — the logical use of your brain and actually getting to solutions. We get the gist of an argument better. We’re better at sizing up a situation and reaching a creative solution. They found social expertise peaks in middle age. That’s basically sorting out the world: are you a good guy or a bad guy? Harvard has studied how people make financial judgments. It peaks, and we get the best at it in middle age.

Q.Doesn’t that make sense, since our young adult lives are often marked by bad decisions?

A.I think most of us think that while we make bad decisions in our 20s, we also have the idea that we were the sharpest we ever were when we were in college or graduate school. People think if I tried to go to engineering school or medical school now, I couldn’t do it. Because of these memory problems that happen in middle age, we tend to think of our brains as, on the whole, worse than in our 20s. But on the whole, they’re better.

Q.So what’s happening in middle age that leads to these improvements?

A.What we have by middle age is all sorts of connections and pathways that have been built up in our brain that help us. They know from studies that humans and animals do better if they have a little information about a situation before they encounter it. By middle age we’ve seen a lot. We’ve been there, done that. Our brains are primed to navigate the world better because they’ve been navigating the world better for longer.

There also are some other physical changes that they can see. We used to think we lost 30 percent of our brain cells as we age. But that’s not true. We keep them. That’s probably the most encouraging finding about the physical nature of our brain cells.

Q.Is there anything you can do to keep your brain healthy and improve the deficits, like memory problems?

A.There’s a lot of hype in this field in terms of brain improvement. I did set out to find out what actually works and what we know. What we do with our bodies has a huge impact on our brains. Our brains are more like our hearts in that everything you do for your heart is thought to be equally as good or better for your brain. Exercise is the best studied thing you can do to your brain. It increases brain volume, produces new baby brain cells in grownup brains. Even when our muscles contract, it produces growth chemicals. Using your body can help your brain.

Q.What about activities like learning to play an instrument or learning a foreign language?

A.The studies on this are slim. We’ve all been told to do crossword puzzles. Learning a foreign language, walking a different way to work, all that is an effort to make the brain work hard. And it’s true we need to make our brains work hard. One of the most intriguing findings is that if you talk to people who disagree with you, that helps your brain wake up and refine your arguments and shake up the cognitive egg, which is what you want to do.

Q.Do social connections and relationships make a difference in how the brain ages?

A.There is a whole bunch of science about being social and how cognitive function seems to be better if you are social. There is a fascinating study in Miami where they studied people who lived in apartments. Those who had balconies where they could see their neighbors actually aged better cognitively than others. There are a whole bunch of studies like that. People who volunteer and help kids seem to age better and help their brains. We forget how difficult it is to meet, greet and deal with another human being. It’s hard on our brains and good for them.

Q.What was the most surprising thing you learned about the middle-aged brain?

A.The hope I saw from real scientists was surprising. A lot of the myths we think of in terms of middle age, myths that I grew up with, turn out to be based on almost nothing. Things like the midlife crisis or the empty nest syndrome. We’re brought up to think we’ll enter middle age and it will be kind of gloomy. But as scientists look at real people, they find out the contrary. One study of men found that well-being peaked at age 65. Over and over they find that middle age, instead of being a time of depression and decline, is actually a time of being more optimistic overall.

Migraine Gives Woman Foreign Accent

2010-04-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

Migraine Gives Woman Foreign Accent
Tuesday April 20, 2010

Tim Hewage, Sky News Online

A woman from Devon has begun speaking with a Chinese accent after suffering severe migraines.

Thirty-five-year-old Sarah Colwill puts the startling change down to an extremely rare medical condition known as Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS).

"I knew I sounded different but I didn't know how much and people said I sounded a bit Chinese.

"Then I had another attack and when the ambulance crew arrived they said I definitely sounded Chinese."

The rare disorder is thought to be caused by strokes and brain injuries and causes sufferers to lose the ability to talk in their native accent.

There have been an estimated 60 recorded cases of FAS since it was first identified in the 1940s.

"It is not the kind of problem that there are any easy generalisations about."

Sufferers can develop an accent without ever having been exposed to it as it is the change in speech patterns from a brain injury which causes the lengthening of syllables, change in pitch or mispronunciation of sounds...

Experts believe FAS is triggered following a stroke or head injury, when tiny areas of the left side of the brain linked with language, pitch and speech patterns are damaged.

The result is often a drawing out or clipping of the vowels that mimic the accent of a particular country, even though the sufferer may have had limited exposure to that accent.

One of the first reported cases was in 1941 when a Norwegian woman developed a German accent after being hit by bomb shrapnel during an air raid.

As a result, she was shunned by her community, who falsely believed she was a German spy.

In 2006 Linda Walker, 60, woke from a stroke to find that her Geordie accent had been transformed into a Jamaican one.

Multitasking brain

2010-04-17T17:08:00.000-07:00

Multitasking Brain Divides And Conquers, To A Point

April 15, 2010 | Jon Hamilton | National Public Radio

Our brains are set up to do two things at once, but not three, a French team reports in the journal Science.

The researchers reached that conclusion after studying an area of the brain involved in goals and rewards. Their experiment tested people's abilities to accomplish up to three mental tasks at the same time. The tasks involved matching letters in different ways, and for incentive, participants were paid up to a euro for doing a task perfectly.

When volunteers were doing just one task, there was activity in goal-oriented areas of both frontal lobes, says Etienne Koechlin, a professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. That suggested that the two sides of the brain were working together to get the job done, he says.

But when people took on a second task, the lobes divided their responsibilities. "Each frontal lobe was pursuing its own goal," Koechlin says.

The lobe on the left side of the brain focused on the first task, while the lobe on the right focused on the second. When the researchers offered a greater reward for a task being supervised by one side of the brain, the amount of activity on that side increased accordingly.

Brain Maxes Out At Multitasking

But the brain has only two frontal lobes, suggesting there might be a limit to the number of goals and rewards it can handle. So the team decided to do another experiment.

They offered people rewards to do three things at once.

And when people started a third task, one of the original goals disappeared from their brains, Koechlin says. Also people slowed down and made many more mistakes. That suggests that our frontal lobes "can't maintain more than two tasks," Koechlin says.

The evidence that the brain assigns one task to each side of the brain is "very surprising," says Rene Marois, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University.

He says the findings, if they hold up, have implications for people trying to do more than two things at a time.

For example, Marois says, someone who is writing a report might be able to take on a second task, like checking e-mail, without losing their train of thought. But if that e-mail asked for a decision about something, that would amount to a third task, and the brain would be overwhelmed, he says.

High Stakes Could Improve Performance

David Meyer, who studies multitasking at the University of Michigan, says he doesn't think the study shows it's impossible to keep three tasks in mind.

"In the real world, there are life and death matters which hinge on exactly what happens with multitasking, which certainly wasn't the case with this study," Meyer says.

The frontal lobes of the brain might respond differently if the reward was survival, instead of the equivalent of a couple of dollars, he says. Meyer is also puzzled by what he sees as a disconnect between what was happening in people's brains and what they actually did.

For example, offering people more money increased their brain activity quite a bit. But the extra brain activity didn't make people much faster or more accurate at multitasking, Meyer says.

"The effects of these motivational manipulations on the behavior were extremely small for the most part," he says. "At most only a few percentage points."

That could mean studies need to use more powerful rewards, Meyer says. Or, he says, it could mean that no reward or internal goal can make us very good at doing even two tasks at once.

Neural predictors of auditory word learning

2010-04-07T19:07:00.001-07:00

Neural predictors of auditory word learning

Abstract

The present fMRI study aimed to identify neurofunctional predictors of auditory word learning. Twenty-four native Chinese speakers were trained to learn a logographic artificial language (LAL) for 2 weeks and their behavioral performance was recorded. Participants were also scanned before and after the training while performing a passive listening task. Results showed that, compared to 'poor' learners (those whose performance was below average during the training), 'good' (i.e. above-average) learners showed more activation in the left MTG/STS and less activation in the right IFG during the pretraining scan. These results confirmed the hypothesis that preexisting individual differences in neural activities can predict the efficiency in learning words in a new language.