Language Trainers Blog

Ah, the end of the year. The time for annual reflection and the making of promises that we probably won’t keep. Along with your the ever popular ‘eat better, exercise more, do more for others’ sorts of resolutions, what language learning goals will you set for yourself? If you keep them small (or progressive) and realistic*, there’s no reason that you won’t be able to tick at least some of them off your list in 2011.

During the last few months of this year, I have been taking my language classes, but not really been following them up. It feels like I don’t have enough time, and I am admittedly easily swayed when I am given an alternative to studying.

In 2011 I am aiming to find those extra few moments in my day and listen to my language audio (podcasts and recordings that my teacher does for me) instead of listening to music, other podcasts, or playing games. I know that I have nearly 2 hours of commute time a day, and plan to use it to review my lessons instead of taking the easy way to entertain myself (music, books, TV shows). Having the text in front of me will really help, too.

If you set your daily and weekly goals to something manageable (e.g. adding 5 new words to your word lists every day), then I think there’s a high chance of success. Getting into the habit is the hardest part, so start as soon as you can.

Good luck with your language and life goals in 2011!

*Don’t say ‘I will know how to read, write, and speak Arabic by this time next year’ if you haven’t even had your first class yet.

In news that has come as a shock to readers, writers, and educators throughout the UK, the government has announced that they will be cutting the annual £13 million grant given to book-gifting charity Booktrust. The announcement came as a surprise even to the charity, which had offered to take a 20% cut in funding earlier this year.

Through various book-gifting schemes, Booktrust has been providing books to millions of babies, children, and teenagers (and their families) for nearly 20 years, and has inspired over 20 other countries to start up similar schemes. The availability of books to children who otherwise might not have had the opportunity to read is, I believe, invaluable. Not only are children exposed to culture, adventure, information, and inspiration, but the books provide a healthy family bonding opportunity. Many parents might not think to read to their children, but having books given to them opens that door.

Understandably, well-known writers are up in arms this Christmas period. Former poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion said “The decision to scrap Bookstart is an act of gross cultural vandalism. For the last 20-odd years the scheme has successfully introduced an enormous number of young people to both the pleasure and the necessity of reading and has been of tremendous benefit in the drive towards literacy. Very well organised, and very well run by Booktrust, it has become a national institution, and the envy of the world.”

Some people don’t believe that reading is important, but it can trigger passion for learning, writing, reading, exploring, and just thinking in general. I hope that the government can work out some kind of compromise, as losing this charity totally would be devastating for future generations.

Full article: The Guardian.

Google’s NGram Viewer allows anybody to create quick graphs showing word and phrase frequencies in books going back to 1800. The tool searches a database of words from over 5 million  books, and you can filter for American English, British English, English fiction, Chinese, French, German, and Russian.

Although it has its restrictions, such as not giving us accurate information about spoken usage, it’s a great analysis tool. One of the Wall Street Journal’s blogs did a Christmas analysis to see whether the PC phrase ‘Happy Holidays’ has infiltrated the world of books. A quick graph generation later, and it seems that ‘Merry Christmas’ is still way out in front. It also seems that around 1900, people started capitalising the ‘merry’.

When I filtered for British English only, it seems that ‘Happy Holidays’ is almost never used. The tool is case sensitive, though, so there has been some use of ‘happy holidays’, but these could have been in more general sentences, rather than as a greeting. In British English, ‘h/Happy Christmas’ is much more common than in American English, and ‘happy Christmas’ was almost as popular as ‘Merry Christmas’ at a few points in time. It seems that the use of ‘happy Christmas’ is on the decline recently, though.

In other Christmas-related news, while Father Christmas and Santa Claus are about equally popular in British literature (and both much more popular than the Easter Bunny), American literature uses Santa Claus almost exclusively (with Father Christmas being about as common as the Easter Bunny).

I’ve just finished reading The Word Brain by Bernd Sebastian Kamps. Its tagline is A Short Guide to Fast Language Learning. Initial caps aside, it’s a 70-page document that covers (with a single chapter each) Kamps’s advice on words, listening, reading, teachers, speaking, memory, and nailing. The latter is a term he uses to better encompass the concept of learning a word by heart.

Kamps’s methods are not for the faint of heart, and he mentions this right at the beginning of the book. He presents the total number of hours you are likely to need to reach a competent language level (being able to at least follow along with newspapers and TV news), and drums in the fact that you will need multiple hours of study multiple times a week to make good progress. I agree with this (even though it’s not always possible for people to commit this amount of time).

He puts the different skills into a logical recommended order – listening, reading, then speaking. The kicker is that Kamps suggests not attempting to speak at all until a few months into the language learning process. His reasoning behind this is sound – receiving more input first will invariably improve your understanding, accent, and pronunciation – but I can’t help but feel that this would be a nearly impossible task for a regular person. I’m not sure what he would suggest for those of us who are somewhere in the middle of our language learning process.

The book contains some useful information about spaced repetition, a good introduction to the way the brain stores information, and some very good comparisons between the way children and adults learn language. He also debunks the myth that children are better language learners than adults (and I should add that it is with hindsight that most adults think that language learning was easy when they were children). One piece of new information for me is that if you push any new information into your brain after studying (including spending time on your favourite social network), it will decrease the likelihood that you will remember what you studied later. So, after studying, do something relaxing instead.

According to Kamps, the ideal situation for a language learner would be to be young, have a lot of time, be living in a foreign language immersion situation, and to have a speaker of the language as a lover. Now, most of us will never be in this situation (sadly), but all it means is that the learning will take more time and perhaps more dedication. This book contains a lot of interesting information and suggestions, and I’d like to hear what advice you will take away from it. Let me know in the comments!

Download the full e-book, short version, and mp3 at The Word Brain.

A few days ago I stumbled across a Christmas-themed quiz about misheard Christmas carol lyrics. I usually start listening to Christmas music (everything from choral to Mariah Carey to Run DMC) as soon as December starts, so I thought I’d give the quiz a go.

Some of the Christmas mondegreens were pretty entertaining, but I got stalled on one which I didn’t actually know the answer to: Troll the agents you’ll tie Carol…

After realising I didn’t know the first word to the line (the rest being ‘the ancient yuletide carol’), I guessed at toll (bells are quite Christmassy after all).

It turns out that the word is actually troll. Not the ugly guys who live under fairytale bridges, or the flourescent-haired naked ’80s toys, or a pesky internet lurker, of course. Back in times of yore, to troll meant ‘to sing or utter in a full, rolling voice’ and also ‘to sing in the manner of a round or catch’. Makes sense. There’s even another blog post about it (including some more explanation about Deck the Halls).

Since a lot of Christmas carols are traditional (meaning old), I guess we don’t think too hard about their meanings these days. I do find it fun to learn new (old) words, though, and am quite pleased to say that I knew what all the other correct lyrics were. Also, Dawn we now our day of peril is my new favourite mondegreen.

I’m sure it’s happened to most people before: you meet someone with a new, interesting, or strong accent, and somewhere in your conversation with them, you feel yourself start slipping into an (often awful) imitation of their speech. When you realise you’re doing it, you feel like a bit of an idiot, and you hope they haven’t noticed.

So, it turns out that accent imitation, besides being used for intentional and accidental mockery of others, can actually help you to understand the speaker’s accent. A study in the Netherlands has shown that if accented speech is repeated, it helps the listener to better understand it.

The participants in the study were first asked to listen to an unfamiliar accent of Dutch. To ensure that the accent was unfamiliar to everyone, the researchers made up a new accent by doing a consistent vowel sound change. After this, the participants were asked to listen to 100 sentences in the unfamiliar accent. Participants were asked to respond to the sentences in different ways: some repeated the sentence aloud while trying to mimic the new accent, some repeated it in their own accent, some transcribed the sentence, and some only listened. When the sentences were tested again, those that had repeated using the unfamiliar accent did far better than the other groups.

Unfortunately, in real life, even if you know this information it’s not very polite to talk to someone while trying to imitate their speech patterns. I suppose if you really wanted to, you could always use this study as justification.

Full article: Science Daily.

I’d heard that people are more likely to believe a person who speaks with the same accent as them (meaning people will be more likely to think that foreigners are untrustworthy*), and another study has shown some interesting results when comparing listener reactions to different accents.

The study, conducted at the University of Glasgow, used fMRI scans to analyse brain activity in Scottish listeners when they heard people speaking in American, English**, and Scottish accents. Participants listened to recordings of nine different female voices: three of each of American, English, and Scottish accents. The research found that brain activity was significantly different between listening to a native accent and a foreign one (even though all were speaking the same language).

“The pattern of neural activity differed strikingly in response to their own specific accent compared with other English accents,” Bestelmeyer said. “The initial results suggest that such vocal samples somehow reflect group membership or social identity, so that ‘in-group’ voices are processed differently from the ‘out-group.’”

My impression is that it takes a bit more work to understand a foreign accent, which would mean that people might unintentionally seek out people who speak in the same way, as it’s easier on the brain. However, I don’t think that this is necessarily related to in-group and out-group issues. It’s logical that a person finds it easier to understand the speech they have heard all their lives. What do you think?

Article: Science Daily.

*I wonder what kind of Google searches will be drawn in by this phrase.
**The article uses ‘British’, but I chose to use ‘English’, as that’s what I assume they meant (Scottish accents are also British accents).

This is another one of those posts where I admit something shameful, and then somehow turn it into something educational. I hope.

So, I have read the first book in the wildly popular (with teenage girls) Twilight series. I did it out of a combination of morbid curiosity (forgive the pun), and the need to know exactly what it was that I was making fun of. A little part of me even hoped that I would be pleasantly surprised. However, Stephenie Meyer has managed to write a story that is ripe for the mocking, and she hasn’t even written it well.

Luckily for the non-fans, the awfulness of the books has spawned quite the few entertaining reviews (including Alex Reads Twilight and Mark Reads Twilight). One of the ones I found surprisingly educational is the tumblog Reasoning with Vampires. Dana, the author, comments on and sometimes rewrites sentences and passages from the series, rather than reviewing chapters or entire books. Not only is it entertaining and enlightening (yes, he is a 100+ year old dead guy trying to date as well as not kill a teenage girl who is basically unlikeable), but it has proved to be a good resource for people who are looking to improve their own writing skills. You would not believe how many actual errors (spelling, punctuation, grammar) exist in the text, even if you ignore the questionable writing style.

Especially after reading some of these reviews (is it bad that I spent so much time doing so?), I won’t be able to respect the word sparkle for the foreseeable future. Luckily, Firefly fans like me have shiny instead.

Here’s a good example of what you can expect on RwV: