How our linguistic mind guides language learning
[Music]
monolingualism is the
illiteracy of the 21st century
the statement was made in a recent
report by the british academy
the report calls for action to address
the shortage of language skills in the
uk
more recently in a report with sister
academies in australia and canada
the british academy highlights the
crucial role multilingualism plays
in international collaboration to fight
covet 19
through being able to exchange
information
accurately so why
learn a language learning a new language
opens a window to another culture it
broadens our mental horizons it enhances
our creativity
languages are important for economic
prosperity
the economic cost due to uk’s linguistic
underperformance in terms of lost trade
and investment
has been estimated to 48 billion
pounds per year or 3.5 percent of gdp
multilingualism has also become
important for the individual
as non-english online content
content increases continually
and yet many people find learning a
second language a daunting task
why is that after all we seem to have
learned our mother tongue or native
language almost without effort
when we are babies or parents siblings
carers speak to us we slowly start
replying to them
and before we know it most of our native
language is in place
before we even get to go to school
while learning a second language later
in life seems so
difficult do we lose our knack for
languages i would like to explain
how our linguistic mind guides the
process of second language learning
and how adjusting our teaching to the
native languages of different learners
can have an impact on their learning
there are many aspects in learning a
second language that are different from
how we learned our mother tongue
one key difference is how much language
data we get to work with
unlike our loving family providing us
with language data
24 hours per day seven days a week when
we are babies
when we get to learn a second language
we might only have access to a few
hours of foreign language classes per
week in a school
but even when we do get to work with
plenty of data
learning progresses differently i
am a living example of this i have been
living in uk
for 27 years studying and then working
using english every single day over
these years
in real life situations and yet
there are small aspects of english that
i still
struggle to get right
do you arrive at paris or in paris
um see you at the weekend or see you
in the weekend of course these mistakes
are not crucial for my
everyday communication in fact a lot of
learners are too high mastering their
second language
without ever sounding native
but it is a curious fact how after
so many years of using the language
every day and living in uk i still
struggle
with some aspects of english
so what is different in our mind
one key difference is that we come to
learn a second
language already knowing one
imagine you visit a country where you
speak
no word of the local language what do
you do where would you start
you would probably reach out for it
dictionary looking for translations of
words
so you start with words why would words
do
words link small pieces of language with
concepts like table tiger big
small fear freedom concepts we use
every day to organize the knowledge of
our world
mapping your concepts to new words in
your new language
seems like an obvious first step to take
to get going
and it can be fast
but of course we don’t just speak in
lists of words
we group and organize words into
sentences
when we hear a sentence we assign
abstract structure to it to see this
consider the example i saw the girl with
the binoculars
who has the binoculars is it the girl
or is it me it could be either
so we get two possible meanings out of
one string of words one sentence
how do we get two possible meanings out
of one sentence
when we hear a sentence the first step
is to break the continuous stream of
sound into words the next step
is to group these words into sentences
this job is done by our syntax person
it is our parser that in the earlier
example
groups together binoculars with a
speaker or binoculars with a girl
we apply unconsciously and constantly
our parser when we speak
one interesting property of our syntax
parser is that it can take
small simple sentences and put them
together to make longer sentences
for example it can take the sentence
you ate the chocolates and put it
together with a sentence
mom gave me chocolate for my lunchbox to
create the longer sentence
you ate the chocolate mom gave me for my
lunchbox
it sounds like a very ordinary sentence
yet we call such sentences complex ones
because they take up much more memory
space and require
more brain power to process and yet
we use them all the time without
effort now the core mechanics of our
parser
are universal across all human languages
what this means is that we can use our
syntax parser
from our native language to process
sentences in our second language
this then allows us to understand
and produce basic and complex sentences
in our second language at a remarkably
fast rate
we linguists are very interested in
complex sentences
because they’re a good measure of
learners advancing proficiency
one good way to study complex sentences
is by investigating learner writings
online learning platforms accessed daily
by
thousands of learners can provide us
with
unprecedented amounts of learner
writings
i have worked with the online school of
education
first and international school of
english as a foreign language
together we have built a unique corpus
of writing submitting to ef’s online
school
the corpus is open access making
available to the research community
1.2 million scripts from learners
from all around the world across
different proficiency levels
analyzing this corpus material we find
very quickly that learners use complex
sentences right from the beginning of
their learning
let’s take a look at this graph the
horizontal
axis maps proficiency to the common
european framework of reference
or cfr for short
a1 is beginner levels and c1 is advanced
proficiency
to give you some context for these bonds
the home office would require b1
proficiency to grant you citizenship
while
for entry to a uk university you would
normally
need a c1 qualification the vertical
axis
shows the percentage of complex
sentences in learner writings
to calculate this measure of linguistic
complexity we use natural language
processing technology
which provides us with a machine parser
that can extract the complex sentences
out of the learner writings
automatically
you can see learners use complex
sentences
right from beginner levels increasing as
their learning progresses
what makes this interesting is that many
teachers and textbooks
consider complex sentences difficult
and so they won’t start teaching them
before intermediate
levels b1 b2 so this is an example
showing how important it is for our
teaching to reflect
what we know about the learner internal
processes
in this case it would mean introducing
the learners to aspects of complex
sentences while they’re still at
beginner levels
you may wonder if we can bring so much
ace to our second language learning
through our syntax parser from our
native language and our knowledge of the
world
how is it possible that so many people
feel that learning a second language is
such a difficult task
this is because languages can be very
similar at their
core but they can also be very diverse
and worlds apart
in some very important ways
learning gets difficult when you
encounter in your second language
small bits of words small bits of
structure
that are different from your native
language or even non-existent
these small bits of structure or forms
are often
perceived as insignificant but in fact
getting them wrong
might even distort the message you are
trying to convey
let’s look at some examples imagine a
learner hearing the following phrases
i’m loving it i love it i loved it
i am living tomorrow so in the first
three one
three phrases there is a common part
love
which the learner might easily grasp the
meaning of after all love
is a universal concept but what about
the other small baits
you might easily grasp that love loving
is about
now and i loved is about the past
but what about the difference between i
love it and i’m loving it
is the contrast about the intensity of
love it’s duration
how permanent it is your native language
cannot be any help here
things get even trickier because it
seems that these small elements can
change meaning depending on context
for example i’m loving it is about now
but i’m living tomorrow
is about tomorrow is going to happen
tomorrow
so this small bits of structure and
world beats
are very difficult for learners for many
reasons
they are small and difficult to hear and
we know that at
early stages of acquisition learners
have difficulty noticing them and
processing them
so even though they are abundant in the
language data learners get to hear
learners don’t process them and if they
don’t process them they cannot learn
them
a key factor to how well learners are
going to do with these
small bits of language depends on the
similarity between their mother tongue
and the second language
what we call the linguistic distance
between the mother tongue and the second
language
in fact a recent study looking at
learning dutch as a foreign language has
demonstrated
that the learn the linguistic distance
between the learner’s
mother tongue and their second language
can even predict their scores in
speaking proficiency tests
let’s take a look at an example in
english
when we say i walked to the park
the small d at the end of walk tells us
that the working happened in the past
not now not in the future so english
changes the form of words to sh to show
when things happen
every language has a way of indicating
when different events happen but not all
languages do this by
changing the form of their words let’s
look at the chinese example
here we have the sentence go to dinner
with mother
happening at three different times
yesterday today and tomorrow
as we can see in the english translation
we have two versions of the word go
depending on when the going takes place
the corresponding word in chinese
ki remains unchanged this means that
chinese learners
are very likely to say yesterday i
walked to the park so not
mark the 10th of on the verb work by
adding the small element d
small words like uh and they are equally
problematic for learners
for example if you’re a brazilian
learner you’re much more likely to
overuse the definite article there
let’s take a look at the example
of a writing of an intermediate
brazilian learner
as you can see this learner is quite
articulate with her language but
yet keeps getting the definite article
wrong throughout this piece
how can we help learners overcome such
confusions
well we need in our teaching to consider
the way their native language
influences their learning one good way
to do this is to focus on the way our
brain
processes language data and help
learners process those difficult
bits of structure and figure out their
meaning
in our research we adopt the input
processing instruction method
a method developed by the american
linguist bill van patten
we combine input processing instruction
with learner profiles based on the
native languages of the learners to
develop learning activities
the key idea is to get learners to
process
those difficult bits of structure that
they tend to ignore because they can
rely on other information
for example we take away helpful words
like yesterday tomorrow every day once
in a while
and ask learners to tell us if a
sentence like i walked across the beach
is about something that happened in the
past or will happen in the future
whether it’s an event that might have
been repeated was a habit or ongoing
the key idea here is that this small d
element in walked is only compatible
with some of those meanings
and research shows that once learners
start processing these small elements
and figure out their meaning
the accuracy of their language improves
greatly
now these grammar processing activities
can
happen very easily online and support
blended
learning they can be very helpful
for enhancing the language skills of
immigrant kids
to ensure a quality and make
classrooms inclusive and cohesive
grammar processing activities addressing
the individual
needs of learners can be offered in
addition to classroom tasks for instance
online
classroom time then can focus on tasks
that engage
all learners with meaningful language
use providing varied and rich input that
is essential for language learning
this is just one practical example of
how this new approach to second language
learning can make a difference of course
this applies for every individual
learner
untaggling the networks of our
linguistic mind
is our learner’s guide to acquiring and
mastering new languages
understanding these learner internal
processes
and tuning our learning to them is
essential
everyone’s native language is their own
personal key
to unlocking bilingualism and beyond
thank you very much
you