JP Reads

Chapter 2:  Research Insights

This chapter deals with the research that lead teachers away from ALM and toward communicative method. 

One of ALM’s assumptions was that language learning was behaviorist; operant conditioning (which is what I think of Rosetta Stone).  In ALM, classroom discussion is tightly regulated and structured so that learners would never hear or generate an error, and that learning a new language is as simple as learning a series of good habits. 

Here’s a video I made, that’s about making errors as a learning strategy.  Yes, it’s an anecdote.  Sue me.

Anyway, some second language acquisition findings showed that ALM assumptions were inadequate.  Orders of acquisition, stages of development, and formulaic speech (chunking!) all showed that habit-formation instruction at the base of ALM was pretty irrelevant. 

Ok, ok… transfer!   I’ve always thought that theories of tranfer and interference were total bs invented by paranoid monolinguals… or worse:  literature majors, people who want to emphasize the difficulty of language study.  Transfer/interference hypothesis basically say that second languages compete in your head, play defense on each other, make learning Spanish impossible because you had a year of middle school French.  So now middle school French is a hockey team, desperately trying to clear the puck from Spanish’s power play. 

If you want a dictionary definition of transfer and interference, go ask google. 

Anyway, give me a break. I’m not going to subscribe to any theory that says learning a language will somehow adversely affect your brain. 

So just this morning, I was late to work, so I stopped at McDonalds for a sausage mcmuffin with egg.  I know, gross.  Never again.  Anyway, I was talking to the lady in Spanish about how I was moving to China.  So she asked me, you’ll be back though, right?  And I almost answered “不是！ 去上海就住那里…”  But then I realized that wasn’t Spanish, so I froze, and I wasn’t able to answer in Spanish. 

So what happened?  Chinese came in and blocked Spanish, right?  Chinese came in and flexed it’s mighty muscles, leaving Spanish whimpering in the corner.  Right?  Wrong. 

First of all, there’s a difference between language competence and language performance, and you all have to know my Spanish competence is just fine. It could use some practice, but it has not been victimized by Chinese.   Chinese is not a criminal. 

If my Spanish performance suffered, it’s because I’m out of the habit. 

As ridiculous as it may sound, assumptions about transfer and interference are widespread in American culture.  Just the other day I asked someone to “gift” me something.  He said, oh, you borrowed that meaning from “regalar” didn’t you? Not really, I just wanted you to give me something for free.  As a gift.  I wasn’t thinking about ‘regalar’ at all. 

I got this in college too, a Spanish prof knew I studied French, and when he found errors in my paper, he said, this is interference from French.   Like I had picked up an itchy rash from French class that had infected my Spanish paper. 

Yah, I said “*oír hablar,” which looks a lot like “entender parler.”  So the hell what?  It’s because I didn’t speak Spanish yet… that’s why I was TAKING THE CLASS.  Dude, I expect you to point out my errors, but I can do without your ad hoc error diagnosis. 

I actually remember choosing to write “*oír hablar,” and no, I didn’t know if it was right or not, but I had a deadline to meet, and I thought, what the hell, it works in French…. so I went with it. 

Which is why I want to high five somebody when I read on page 28 that transfer/interference is often a negligent misdiagnosis of a learner strategy.  That is to say, I made a choice to dress up a French structure with Spanish words, to see how far it got me.  Because sometimes, it totally works. 

No, it didn’t work in this case, but so what?  It was me making a choice, it wasn’t French posting up under the basket, throwing elbows to protect it’s rebound. 

So I just won’t take seriously any theories about transfer and interference, or any other theory that language learning is detrimental to any previously learned knowledge. 

And yes, I’m familiar with that feeling of being on the spot, needing a Spanish word but only remembering the French version.  Yes, my English spelling suffered once I started learning French.  But if you are going to accuse French of causing that situation, then the burden of proof is on the accuser (that means YOU). 

You know, when brown kids come to this country that don’t speak English, they’re treated like they have a disability.  They don’t even speak English.  It’s a problem.  They are not looked at as potential bilinguals.  My parents were told not to speak to me in Filipino, because it would impede my success in school…. even though they themselves learned four languages simple through exposure in the Philppines INCLUDING ENGLISH.

Yet, when white kids in America reach any kind of second language milestone, this culture celebrates how smart they are. 

So here’s the score:  white kids with a developing knowledge of Spanish = smart, potential bilinguals.  Brown kids with a developing knowledge of English = social problem.  Filipino language = an impediment to learning English (and by extension, success in school). 

Bullshit.  I am not going to believe in any of it.  You transfer and interference people better get yourselves some data.  Oh, wait, you can’t, you’re all literature majors. 

So to the nice ladies in my evening Italian class, who started introducing themsleves with “je” and then interrupeted yourselves with laughter, shrugging and saying, “sorry, I studied French in middle school,”  I’m not going along with you when you blame your French.  Because I don’t blame your French, I blame you. 

This post is terrible; it wanders all over the place between the book, transfer and interference, and they hydrolic theory of language learning.  Oh well, nobody’s reading.  I will publish it now, and clean it up later, when I have time.  Right now I have to get out of this bakery and get on a bus to see some free art. 

Chapter 1: On Roles and Tasks. 

So Chapter One has a central message:  Don’t be Atlas.  Atlas is the instructor who believes the world is on her/his shoulders.  Atlas is responsible for managing all classroom discussion,  to the point where no reasonably intelligent person can make and error.   Because spoken errors are to be feared and avoided at all costs.  And any errors must immediately be exposed to a horrified public, and be flogged with a tedious explanation. Because students learn from tedious emergency explanations. 

Don’t be Atlas. 

Of course, in my last 9 years of teaching, I’ve been Atlas.  I had to be. 

Here’s why:  I taught HIGH SCHOOL.  In my first year, there were thirty 13 year olds in my class who did not understand ANYTHING but discipline.  I couldn’t give them group or pair work, because they just would not do it.  I couldn’t count on them to ask each other communicative questions, because they didn’t get it:  they didn’t get that they were supposed to TALK to each other.  It was gross.  If they had a task, they would employ every strategy they could think of to get the task done as fast as possible; every strategy but following the directions. 

If I told them, work through these four questions in a group, they would say, ok, you do the first two, I’ll do the last two, and then we’ll copy.  Honestly, I had to teach these burros how to be in a language class.  And they resented me for it, they resented the low grades that they earned.  And no, I did not GIVE them low grades, they EARNED them.   

After my first three years, my department chair had mercy on me and put me in higher level courses with older students, so Advanced Grammar and Short Story Survey.  Although my strenth had always been input, I did not have the skills to do it with kids that young.  and sheltered.  and priviledged.  and needy. 

No, my colleagues were much better at teaching them how to be students, so teaching the higher levels worked out much better for everyone.  Me, I ended up reviewing verb tenses and short stories, where communicative input is a little less natural.  Sure, I tried every day to be an Architect rather than an Atlas, and my classroom ambiance certainly reflected that. 

In fact, when teaching grammar I was more like the passive agressive Atlas, I set up my lessons so that after a while, they were absolutely begging for the grammatical explanation, but in the end, it was still a form of lecture format.  I still couldn’t get them to talk meaningfully TO EACH OTHER about, for example, what they thought was a shame (subjunctive), or what they would do with $20,000,000 (conditional).   I think they just didn’t accept the model of classroom community.   They didn’t believe in it, and they wouldn’t do it. 

So yah.  I was Atlas.  But I was a high school teacher; at the university level, I was all communicative, all the time.  Believe it, baby.  Of course, by now, teaching at the university level is a foggy, distant memory. 

(p.s., the next post won’t be so all-about-my-students)

So I’m rereading Lee & Van Patten 1995 Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen, and I’m so excited about it that I’ve sent Bill Van Patten some fan mail and I’ve decided to keep my reflections on this page in my blog. 

I’m sitting at the BEAUTIFUL Montlake branch of the Seattle Public Library, thinking about foreign language pedagogy and wondering if there’s anyplace in Shangai that can possbily be this cool (and have free wireless).  This building is all about hardwood and windows. 

Anyway, I’m keeping these notes online, because I don’t want to forget my thoughts as I read this book.  I learned in grad school that when I read texts, I look at and understand the words, and then forget them just as fast.  Of course, this would not do for my courses in Minimalist Syntax, so I developed a strategy of summarizing every single paragraph with a sentence or two in my laptop.

The result was astounding; I remembered everything I summarized, even if I never went back to my notes. 

So now that I’m reading Lee & Van Patten again, and I hope that the knowledge in this book will stick with me.  As a text book, it very profoundly influenced how I teach in the classroom, but over the years, the theoretical background has fallen away from me, and left me with teaching practices that are good, but feel more like habit and instinct than capital M “Method.”  So it will be good to reaccquaint myself with the capital M. 

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