Motivation

This week's readings focused on teaching principles in general and motivation in particular. It was really interesting to read about the correlation between the different types of motivation and possible ways of creating it.

I think that creating motivation is more of teacher's responsibility when working in a school setting, or working with children, anyway. One of the reasons why I decided to work with adults was/is that I don't know how to create motivations. Part of the problem here is that I come from a background, where knowledge was valued for knowledge's sake. About half the things I know, I learned because it was cool to know them. I mean, knowing what an epicycloid is and carefully inserting the word in a conversation with a math major (who is sure that you cannot add) is a lot of fun. And generally, acquiring new info is interesting, so I have a hard time understanding people, who are indifferent to learning. I stopped caring about grades back in high school, the main reason I got Honor's Diploma (Gold Medal) was that it was a family tradition, and I value that. The other reason was that even without caring I got good grades. Same happened in college. I wanted the information, and the paper stating that I can go on to grad school and, ultimately, do what I want to do career wise. It so happens that my career goals involve a Ph.D.

So, my assumption is, that when you work with adults, they are already motivated - why would they be in your class otherwise, right? My last year teaching experiences proved me to be right. That is most of my students (the number increased with the level) knew, why they were taking English classes and what potential rewards that held. By rewards I mean being able to communicate outside of the immigrant community, first and foremost, talking to their children's teachers, getting better and more legal jobs etc. Generally, I think that teachers can help with motivation, but students need to figure it out, especially adult students.

I loved the fact that we watched a Monty Python clip in class, I mean, how often do you get to see a part of your favorite movie as your classwork? I find, however, that there is a scene in another Monty Python movie that has more to do with languages.

For those of you, who have not seen The Life of Brian, here is the background to the scene. Brian was born in the stable next to the one, where Jesus was born, and the wise men originally came to him, but then realized their mistake, got the presents back and went to the next barn. Brian grew up to be a passionate anti-Roman protester and almost got accepted to an underground organization of Judea People's Front. Or People's Front of Judea. Or Judea Popular People's Front. Being anti-Roman was a popular thing at the time. Anyway, to become a full-time member of the group he has to write "Romans, go home" on the wall, surrounding Pilate's palace.

Some second language theorists have argued that second language learners, like children learning their first language, can learn a great deal of vocabulary with little intentional effort. Stephen Krashen (1985, 1989) has asserted that the best source of vocabulary growth is reading for pleasure.
L&S p. 100

The chapter discusses how it is almost impossible to guess the meaning of the words from the context without prior knowledge of at least 90% of the vocabulary. I agree, I have read somewhere that you need to see the word 50 times before being comfortable using it. What I find strange, however, is that the chapter does not make a very important distinction between active and passive vocabulary. If you see a word in the text, look it up in the dictionary, write it down and learn it, or even just see it and guess the meaning, it is most likely (I'd give my personal 99%, but I don't have scientific proof for that) that the word will enter your passive vocabulary. You will be able to recognize it, from now on, but you will hardly use it in your own sentences, especially in oral speech. It is, no doubt, great to have a large passive vocabulary, but it makes you a magnificent reader and not-so-magnificent speaker. I believe in learning vocabulary from meaningful contexts and reinforcing it with games, guided practice, matching exercises; then words become actively used.

Reading for pleasure in your L2 is a wonderful thing, but it's primary advantage is not enriching your active vocabulary.

I had an epiphany! Now I know exactly what bothers me with the innatist perspective on language acquisition. So, children perceive the "grammaticalness" of sentences due to the in-built knowledge. But different languages have different grammar systems, and a grammatical structure of one language will be ungrammatical in another. And this is where I come to a contradiction. Either our brains have a grammar encyclopedia installed, or genes carry the information about particular language, or somtehing does not work here.

I am not exactly sure yet on how I will apply the theories of language acquisition to my teaching, but so far it seems to me that everyone agrees that we need to work with our students, provide them as much practice, guidance and examples as possible, and then it will work out. It's magic. It is also important to not focus on a specific skill, but rather try and develop all of them in a more or less equal manner. I understand that you cannot be absolutely equally comfortable speaking/writing/reading/hearing a language, but there is nothing wrong with a little idealism.

I really liked the concept activity we did during class, although our group probably was over creative with making our triangle-oriented, smiley-faced, quotation-filled poster. I still enjoyed making it :)

After reading the chapter I have been thinking a lot about bilingualism. I always thought that a bilingual person is someone, who acquired both languages simultaneously and is equally fluent in both. L&S write about sequential and additive bilinguals (and subtractive, but that's too sad). In the book, it talks about types of bilingualism, but it never gives the actual criteria for differentiating a bilingual from a fluent L2 speaker. Or does fluency in L2 automatically make one a bilingual? I am fluent in Russian, English, and Ukrainian (in order of acquisition), and can sort of maybe manage German. Of course, there are all kinds of odd bits and ends, but nevertheless. I have come to consider myself almost bilingual, although I am fluent in English, and most of the time don't care which language to talk. So you could say that now I have an identity crisis.

Subtractive bilingualism, I feel, is a really sad, but very natural thing. I would assume that it mostly happens in immigrant families. Even if a child was brought to L2 country (let's say the US, for argument's sake), when he/she was already fluent in their native language, chances are (about 95% on my unrepresentative selection) that they will not retain this fluency till adulthood. I know a lot of immigrant families where parents struggle to preserve L1 in their children. They pay for the tutors and extra language schools, read only L1 books to the children, speak only their native language at home, penalize the use of L2 outside of school and whatnot. Still, the kids lose the language or speak it with horrible mistakes and very obstructed meaning. I know only few families where children, young adults by now, are able to hold a conversation in their L1. It is an extremely hard thing to achieve.

I realize, that, most likely, my children will not speak my native language as fluently as I do. And I am not sure that I'll have enough perseverance, stubbornness, and persistence in me to make them learn it. But I know that for the first 2-3 years I will talk to them in their hopeful L2/my L1. Even if they don't end up speaking it, hearing it will help their brain develop better, their associative thinking will be improved, they will have less trouble with learning languages in general. I am surprised that our textbook did not talk about purely developmental advantages of bilingualism or at least early exposure of children to a second language.

There are a lot of theories about first language acquisition: behavioural, innate, socio-cultural, cross-cultural, connectionism etcetc. Many of them corresponded to a certain method being particularly popular at a given time. Or a method appeared as a response to the theory. Apparently, the most controversial one is the innatism theory of Naom Chomsky, who managed to leave his mark on pretty much every aspect of English language study. Basically, what he is saying, is that a child has a built-in knowledge of language, in particular, grammar, so that this lucky child can magically distinguish grammatical sentences from not so grammatical. I don't agree with this theory at large, but once you read his theory attentively, you notice that he is just paraphrasing another theory.

So, Chomsky says, that children will learn the language, using this Universal Grammar thing, provided that adults offer communication to them. Isn't that exactly what behavioural theory is saying? talk to the child long enough, and they will talk back. I would totally support Chomsky's theory (I feel bad for not doing it, I loved his grammar/lexicology/structure works) if children would magically, out of the blue, acquire structures they never heard. If parents never say anything more complicated than present Simple, and the child is answering using present perfect Continuous, then - yes, innate grammar is the only explanation. Another thing that would persuade me would be if children, who were brought up outside of human interaction, still acquired languages. However, there is no research showing that the Mauglis ever achieve any level of language proficiency.

Another "loophole" of this theory is the critical age point. It is proven that if a child does not reach a certain stage of linguistic proficiency by certain age, they are never going to catch up. It does not make sense in lieu of the innate module. After all, nobody proved that grammar and the logic of language are unconditional reflexes.

It is always great to observe someone's lesson. A) It gives new ideas. B) You get an impression of what would work and what wouldn't. C) You just see a different teaching style, a different student group. However, when we observe a lesson and critique it, it's very important to remember about the difference between analyzing the decisions and making them on 1-2-3 count before a roomful of puzzled students. I had students stumble on things I considered to be most simple, and then I had to invent a new activity right there, right then. On hindsight, some of my emergency back-up tasks were far from ideal, but they worked for the time being. So did this teacher's lesson.

In the lesson we read about, I see no major mistakes the teacher made, although I would introduce this material differently. I don't think that providing verbal definitions without at least writing them down on the board could hardly be productive. The fact that students were nodding is hardly informative. I had a whole group of students, who confidently answered "Yes" to "Do you understand?", but could not say what exactly they understood. I would probably make this a sort of double-match activity. Like giving the students sets of movie categories, category definitions and movie names with possible plot outlines.

Evidently, the grammar-translation method was the most widely used one up till the 1920-s. Gouin's Series method was developed in the 1880-s, but did not acquire significant popularity. Speaking about grammar-translation method, I thought it was interesting that people actually managed to acquire speaking skills (there were diplomatic relations and trade negotiations after all), while implementing it. Then I remembered how many upper class families had private tutors for their children, who were usually native speakers. Also, it was considered good-tone for young people from wealthy families to spend a year traveling Europe, thus putting finishing touches to their education. So, maybe, we can talk about the combination of immersion method with the grammar-translation one. Probably, classical schooling provided enough grammar instruction and linguistic analysis for listening comprehension and speaking skills to nest comfortably.

In 1900 Jerome K. Jerome published a sequel to the Three Men In A Boat, which was called Three Men On A Bummel. In it the three friends (without Monmorancy, sadly) went cycling through Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. Beside the actual narrative the book has a lot of digressions on language learning and various linguistic adventures the characters get in. In particular, Jerome compares the language teaching methods used in Europe and in Great Britain, not to the latter's favour. Jerome wrote that an average German school graduate could freely converse in English, he also notes some things about the difference in school system and organization, but nevertheless. I am wondering how they could speak English freely, if the main method at that time was the grammar-translation one? I don't believe that you can learn to speak by reading and translating. This method was very popular in the USSR, and speaking was traditionally a weakness.

I also was also interested in some of the 1970-s methods, which I think have no relation to the word effectiveness. Community Learning method, for instance, is hardly different from a conference or banquet employing a consecutive interpreter. How this method could have possibly been successful remains a great mystery to me.