Bruce Lee on language learning

Great quote from Bruce Lee on language learning from this 1971 interview on the Canadian “Pierre Berton Show” (shot in Hong Kong). The quote comes at  the 13’33″ mark in the video below:

“Let’s say if you learned to speak Chinese–it’s not difficult  to learn and speak the words.  The hard thing, the difficult thing, is behind the meaning: what brought on the expression and feelings behind those words?

Like when I first arrived in the United States, and I looked at the caucasian, and I really would not know whether he was putting me on, or is he really angry–because we have different ways of reacting– see, those are the difficult things.”

So true.

2012 The 1st Alberta Chinese Bridge Competition for University Students

The local Confucius Institute in Edmonton is putting on a competition to encourage local Chinese learners.

Star Trek VI: will computers ever emulate the charm of human language learners?

For some reason, seeing Christopher Plummer in the running for his [now confirmed] Oscar for his role in Beginners, made me remember him playing the role of General Chang in Star Trek VI. I hadn’t watched a Star Trek movie in ages, so I decided to resurrect a golden oldie over the weekend. Star Trek fans may remember that the Klingon-language dialogue figures quite prominently throughout Star Trek VI…

“We must respond personally–the Universal Translator would be recognized”

I’ve actually never been one to get swept up in the idea of learning to speak Klingon, but there was something about the context of a particular scene that I found quite interesting. If you’re not familiar with the world of Star Trek, it’s set in the 23rd century and is full of futuristic gadgets and interplanetary space drama. Whenever there is a conversation between life forms, crossing the language barrier is often done with the help of the computer’s ‘Universal Translator‘. In this scene, however, they can’t use it because they’re trying to be sneaky and, as Chekov (Walter Koenig) says, “[...]must respond personally, [because] the Universal Translator would be recognized”. It’s a funny little scene with a crowd of people flipping through English-Klingon dictionaries and grammar books to help Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) communicate in very broken Klingon.  English subtitles like “We am thy freighter” help to approximate how awkward it would sound to Klingon ears. I’m sure that it was only meant to be a silly comedic moment in the movie, but I think there’s something deeper we can take away from this.

There will always be social value in learning languages

I’ve already seen people talking about the many things that the mid-20th century Star Trek essentially ‘got right’ about the future, including the hand-held tricorder (see bel0w). As the power and ubiquity of our gadgets continues to get closer to the world of science-fiction, we often hear folks talking about the idea that language learning will someday become irrelevant because computers will do all the work for us.  For example, with the announcement of Siri on the latest iPhone, isn’t it fair for us to assume that the power of google translate, voice recognition and other innovations like Word Lens will soon conspire to make it possible to communicate directly with people who speak other languages with little fuss. Add this to the incredible amount of social privilege that native English speakers currently enjoy simply because we grew up speaking the Lingua Franca of the day, it’s not surprising to hear people wonder “Why bother even trying to learn another language if we don’t have to?”.    I think that this Star Trek scene offers us an opportunity to consider the things that our machines *cannot* do for us.

Flickr image “iPhone vs Tricorder” by jdhancock

 The very fact that you are trying to learn someone’s language communicates a message of respect.

It’s sometimes said that “people really like it” when you learn to speak some of their language.  If we dig a little deeper, however, my feeling is that people simply feel respected, and it opens up the channels of communication just a little bit more.    This is especially true for situations that involve native speakers of English– in most situations, it’s the English-language learner who bears most of the stress of the language learning process.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that there are times when a simple sentence (even poorly pronounced) can, in an instant, communicate that you understand at least some the challenges inherent in learning to speak another language. On the other hand, if you are using machine translation/interpretation, or can afford to hire a personal interpreter, none of the above holds true–Believe it or not, even learning how to properly pronounce common names in a given language can be a huge positive step.

“If I am selling to you, I speak your language. If I am buying, dann muessen Sie Deutsch sprechen.” - Willy Brandt

I’ve always loved this quote from Willy Brandt–you don’t even need to understand German (which I don’t) in order to divine the essence of the last bit.   At the end of the day, this isn’t only true between speakers of German and English, it really does speak to the fact that, when it comes to choosing the language that is spoken in any given context, power comes into play. (more on this subject in a great  paper called “Linguistic justice”, by Phillipe Van Parijs). When we extend this question of ‘what’s the value in learning another language?’ to the level of international business and diplomacy, I really don’t think that we can underestimate the power of what your efforts to learn another language will communicate.

All that to say that I believe there will always be a place for human language learning that technology will not be able to take away. Advances in machine translation/interpretation will continue to thrill and delight; however, I think people will be able to see through them for the foreseeable future.  It’s a bit like the difference between acquaintances  who can’t remember your birthday without a software/app reminder and those kindred souls who remember all of the astrology signs in your circle of friends. In your heart of hearts, you know who remembers your birthday (and you know how many you’d forget without the help of technology).

On so many levels, this is an amazing time to be learning languages. Technology can help us tremendously, but I try not to forget the goal is to enrich human connection and interaction. I still think we’re a long way from automating the process of human respect and fostering friendship. Will we ever get to the point where robots can consistently emote, persuade, deceive and otherwise elicit genuine feelings in human beings? Who knows—I think, for me at least, that asking these kinds of questions is part of the attraction of the whole Star Trek world that Gene Roddenberry created.

“The human race is not nearly enough in awe of its own capabilities.  My picture of the future is not so much one of developing new technologies as it is of developing new insights into human nature.” Edward Hall ”The Dance of Life”

“A language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules; a language is a flash of the human spirit, it’s a vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities.” Wade Davis @ TED

James Earl Jones vs. Shan Tian Fang: the *way* some people can use language

It’s always amazing to listen to people who seem to have a knack for making your native language come to life, even when they’re only saying a few sentences. That was the thought that came to mind when I stumbled upon an old clip of James Earl Jones presenting Sean Connery with an award, while giving eloquent praise to Sean Connery’s voice as one that “inhabits time” .  It’s a great little video (see below) because James Earl Jones, of course, is also a legendary ‘voice’ of the North American entertainment industry.

When I think of interesting voices in languages that I’ve studied, one ‘voice’ that comes to mind is the legendary Chinese storyteller Shan Tian Fang (单田芳).  I remember first hearing him on the radio while riding in taxis when I lived in Xi’an.   I always enjoy trying to imitate voices so, after hearing his unmistakable voice several times, even though I couldn’t speak much Chinese,  I remember asking someone at work “[imitating radio voice] Who’s the guy on the radio that talks like this?” [/imitating]—my colleague was almost in tears laughing at my “Shan Tian Fang” voice speaking in English:)

As I recall, my colleague then wrote down Shan Tian Fang’s name in Chinese so I could ask for a DVD at the video store, and told me what radio station I could tune into if I wanted to listen to more of his epic tales.

Anyway, the point that I wanted to raise was that I think it’s important to find examples of people who can poetically speak the languages we’re trying to study.   Even if you don’t ‘study’ these actors, it’s always a good idea to have a sense of what an eloquent speaker sounds like in your target language. With so much audio and video available online (even for free) these days, it’s never been easier to explore old tv, movies and even commercials in any language.

Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners

I don’t count myself as a hyperpolyglot(!), but I can definitely agree that the key to successful language learning is simply finding a way to enjoy the process.  Judging from the book review in The Economist, this seems to be part of the message of Michael Erard’s new book, Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners.

from the review: “Hyperpolyglots may begin with talent, but they aren’t geniuses. They simply enjoy tasks that are drudgery to normal people. The talent and enjoyment drive a virtuous cycle that pushes them to feats others simply shake their heads at, admiration mixed with no small amount of incomprehension.”

If you’re an active language learner, are you on an upward spiral, or are you stuck in the language-learning doldrums?  What kinds of things do you enjoy doing that other people might think of as ‘drudgery’?

[*After reading the review, I submitted a suggestion to my local library and they've already agreed to order the book.  I honestly can't say it often enough: I love the Edmonton Public Library!  (update Jan 16/2012:  the book is now in the epl database]

Duolingo: crowdsource translation meets language learning

I found the TED talk below after listening to a great interview with Luis von Ahn on CBC radio (Spark).

I had previously seen clips of him talking about CAPTCHA / reCAPTCHA; however, in the Spark interview (and the TED talk), he goes on to discuss his latest project, called Duolingo.   It’s hard not to get excited about what the project (still in beta) promises: a marriage between crowdsource translation and language learning.

If you want to skip directly to the part where he talks about the research questions that led to Duolingo, skip to the 8m37s mark.   I wonder how long the waiting list is to participate in the beta?

[update March 24th, 2012: received invitation to participate in Spanish or German Duolingo beta.  I´ve tried the first couple of Spanish lessons, and I can already tell that Duolingo is going to be very addictive!]

From the TED video description:

“Duolingo will be a revolutionary product in which millions of internet users from around the world will work together to translate the internet and learn a new language at the same time. All for free.”

Glimpses of the mid-range future of language learning

JManga looks interesting!    The instant Japanese/English swap function on the manga will be great for learners (skip to 1:44 of the video)—I could imagine that, in the future, some manga could also include audio of storytellers reading the story.

 

This is yet another example of the exciting things that computers and digital media make possible for language learning.   The neat thing is that language learning doesn’t necessarily have to be the initial inspiration for innovation— advances in toy design, digital media, voice recognition, mobile technology etc. all promise to come together in really interesting and engaging ways over the next few years.

Trying Lingq again—Chinese Tracing Aug 7 – 12

Linq as a tool for online reading

For the last year or so, I’ve mainly used three tools to help with reading Chinese online:  Zhongwen is a great Chrome popup tool for being able to ‘mouse-over’ characters you don’t understand; Popup Chinese (formerly adsotrans) can be used for similar effect, but it’s amazingly useful for generating pinyin from Chinese text; finally, it’s hard to beat Google Translate in terms of continuing improvements— you can even click on the ‘listen’ button and hear a decent computer-generated reading of passages in the target language.

Another tool that I’ve tried in the past is Steve Kaufmann’s Lingq platform.  Following my last post recognizing that I need to get back on the horse with Chinese reading/writing and pass HSK 6, I went back and set myself up with a basic membership and linked a badge to this blog.

If you’re looking for a new language-learning tool, you might want to take Lingq for a spin.   They always seem to be tweaking the system and adding new features— it had been almost a year since I last used Lingq, and I was surprised to see the many subtle ways that the platform has improved.

To understand what the number of “known” Chinese words in my Lingq badge represents, you can take a look at the video below.  It’s easy to imagine how powerful Lingq can be after you use it for awhile and accumulate words in your dictionary— the basic idea is that, after importing a new passage, you have an instant sense of how many unfamiliar words are present because they’re highlighted in blue.  Words that you’ve marked as noteworthy in previous articles, for whatever reason, are highlighted in yellow.  Admittedly, I will have to do quite a bit of mundane clicking of words I know before reaching that point.

Writing practice

Admittedly, this isn’t for everyone, but I quite like the idea of keyboarding (simply re-typing target language passages) as a language learning tool.  Does it work?  Why? How?  I don’t have an argument to convince you, but somehow I find it useful.    When I recently watched Everything is a Remix, I was interested to hear that “Hunter S. Thompson re-typed The Great Gatsby just to get the feel of writing a great novel.” (skip to the 1:00 mark of the video)— I had never thought of re-typing a whole Chinese book but maybe there’s something to this?

As for writing by hand, I wrote a post on making your own tracing pages earlier this year.  Last weekend, in an effort to get back into the groove of regular writing practice, I pre-made tracing sheets for the week and worked on one every day.   My writing can be neat if I take my time, but if you look through the completed sheets below, you’ll see that most of the tracing is scratchy and rushed.   At this point, I don’t know if it’s better to try and do a better (neater) job on a smaller text, or stick with the current character count (repeat a 100-180 character passage twice) until I can comfortably get through the passage without feeling like my wrist is going to cramp.

Who knows?  At this point, putting pen to paper every day is a success, so I’ll take it as a win for now.

Passed HSK Advanced Spoken (高级口试), but not HSK 6–why?

I recently got a classic set of ‘good news/bad news’ from the staff at the Edmonton Confucius Institute.  The good news was that I passed the Advanced Spoken HSK test (yay!); the bad news was that I didn’t quite make the grade for HSK 6 (ohhhhh).   As I look at regrouping and looking at trying again, it’s worth asking the question–what happened??

Advanced HSK Spoken vs. Intermediate HSK Spoken

There was quite a jump between the Intermediate and Advanced levels on the spoken test.   A couple of things to note:

• Both tests consist of listening and reacting to questions from a pre-recorded test on a CD;  a digital audio recording of your responses is made by the proctor, and I understand the actual grading is done by Hanban officials back in China. The pre-recorded CD contains timed pauses during which you give your responses, so the test really is exactly the same, no matter where you take it in the world.
• Whereas the Intermediate HSK Spoken Test starts with a series of short sentences that you simply need to ‘repeat’ back into the microphone, I was initially surprised by how long the passages were for the Advanced HSK Spoken Test– I suppose some kind of genius could parrot the passage back word-for-word, but I think the goal of the initial section is to see if you can hold the relevant facts in your short-term memory (you can make short notes), and then reproduce a bit of a summary.
• There is a section that asks you to read a passage aloud– as I recall, you have a few minutes to read it over before speaking.
• In the final section, the voice on the tape asks you to respond to a few questions– in this part, it wasn’t so much of a question of  ”what is the correct answer?”, as it was an opportunity for you to give your personal opinion on the topic.

Overall, just as you’d imagine, the Advanced Spoken HSK Test offers more opportunities to talk about more complex things, show off some more challenging vocabulary, etc.   I still have plenty of room to improve, but I’m very happy that I passed this test!

Why I didn’t pass HSK 6

Put simply, I didn’t pass HSK 6 because, up until this point, I have concentrated almost exclusively on my listening and speaking skills, and largely ignored reading and writing.   The result is that I was easily able to pass the listening section of the HSK 6, but I still have a ways to go on the reading and writing sections.  This wasn’t really a surprise, but it’s a good reminder that I really do need to shake things up if I’m ever going to get beyond HSK and communicate like a reasonably literate person.

• I try to listen to full-length interviews and watch movies, but I don’t read short stories or books.
• During my commute to work every day, at least 2-3 Chinese podcasts and/or songs make their way into my ipod playlist, but I don’t read the news in Chinese very often.
• I do type some Chinese, but I rarely pick up a pencil and write by hand—- (Even in English, consider the difference between writing a passage on a computer, and writing it by hand without the help of a spell-checker)

As long as the above remains true, I can’t really expect to progress much farther than my current level.

This isn’t of course, to say that I can’t read and write in Chinese at all; after all, I did manage to pass HSK 5.  If I’m composing an e-mail in Chinese, I can type in pinyin and choose the correct hanzi from the options presented in order to create text that is reasonably understandable.  If I’m unsure of a particular phrase, I can even ‘test’ a phrase that I’ve written in Google to see if anyone else has created a similar sentence.

All of my preferred ‘tools’ are useless, however, when presented with a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. Here is the description of the written section of the HSK 6 written section from the Hanban chinese testing website:

The test taker will be required to read a narrative article of about 1,000 characters within 10 minutes, and then rewrite it into a shorter article of about 400 characters within 35 minutes. The test taker should also create a title for the article. The test taker should recount the article and is not required to express personal opinions.

So, to make a long story short, I need to read more and I need to practice writing more.   I have talked about writing practice before, so it’s now basically time to practice what I’ve preached.

DIY tools: make your own tracing sheets for DELF/HSK/JLPT writing practice

With a strip of  rainbow-coloured carpet weaving a path up the stairs and onto the wall around the whole store, it’s not hard to understand why any kid would love to spend a few hours hanging out in a bookstore like the Poplar Kid’s Republic Bookstore in Beijing (蒲蒲兰绘本馆).   Located right next to a cafe I used to visit in the Jianwai SOHO area, it had lots of great origami paper and Japanese (as well as Chinese and Korean) books. If anyone knows of a similar kind of international children’s bookstore in Edmonton *please* let me know!

One book that I picked up from that shop is called (えんぴつで書いて読む日本の童話), which you might translate as “Penciling through Japanese Children’s Stories”.  The concept of the book is remarkably simple: famous pieces of children’s literature printed in an large font (I’d guess 36pt?), the font colour is probably about 35% grey so, as kids read it aloud, they trace over each character with their pencil.  One can assume that their parents would also read the story to them at the same time—neat way to experience a story, eh?

In searching for the online link, I see there is another book that is similarly titled, “Penciling through famous Japanese Literature“, with excerpts from Japanese literary giants such as Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Miyazawa Kenji.

Seriously?? I am not a child, why are you telling me about tracing?

For both the Chinese HSK test and French DELF, I was surprised to find that both my wrist and my brain were tired by the end of the writing section.  After I thought about it, I realized that I rarely take time to write in other languages *by hand*.   Much like you might find that your English spelling has gone to pot because you now rely on spell checkers and auto-correct, your foreign language ‘penmanship’ might benefit from some practice and attention.

Several language tests that include a section that requires you to write a short passage in pen or pencil.  While the DELF writing section is a full-blown “write a letter/memo/etc. on a predetermined subject”, the HSK also contains a clever section that requires you to put sentence fragments together into the correct order, and then transcribe the correct sentence onto the answer sheet.  The challenge is a little more apparent for people learning Chinese— it’s very frequent to find learners who can type the pinyin into the conversion software and then ‘recognize’ the correct chinese character, but it’s a different story when they’re stuck holding a pencil….”let’s see… how does that character go again?– I’d recognize it if I saw it…hmmmm”

Writing practice vs. composition practice

Some people find the stress of “thinking about what to write” to be a little overwhelming— maybe you’re worried about making mistakes?  Perhaps you’re just not sure about the best way to describe your day in your second-language diary?  Using tracing or, at the very least, copying by sight can be a way to concentrate on your penmanship and generally increase your familiarity with common sentence structures.     I agree that it’s also important to practice our own composition skills but if you’re not working closely with a teacher or tutor, writing as a whole can often become an area of neglect.

Most bookstores in China actually contain a section with tracing pads like this– the books aren’t aimed at language learners, but those folks who are trying to practice better penmanship or ‘commonly confused characters’, etc.   The pages alternate between onionskin paper and grids of characters in bold print.

 

Save your money: DIY is the way to go!

Like many things these days, however, there’s no need to buy books in order to do this kind of practice–if you have access to a printer, then you’re set!  All you need to do to make your own tracing sheets is surf the net for some content that might interest you.  Since I’m trying to memorize more Chinese family names, I can google for the text of the classic Chinese text “百家姓” （100 family surnames), or anything else online.  When I copy the materials into my wordprocessing program, I simply highlight the text, change the font size and colour to something that works for me and then push ‘Print’ et voila!

DIY 100 family names tracing

If you’re practicing for the DELF, then we can definitely anticipate being asked to compose a piece of text that conveys our opinion on something— why not grab an article from Le Monde?

Tracing Le Monde article

Thoughts?

I know this won’t work for everyone, but facts is facts: if you’re planning on taking the DELF B2, you’re going to have to be able to write a 250-word composition in a limited amount of time (and then 1000 words for the DALF c1).  If for no other reason than exam time management, It’s probably worth knowing how long it will take you to recopy your final draft, n’est-ce pas?  Go on, try it!  See how long it takes you to copy a 250 word article; imagine adding the same time + 30% for the penultimate draft and you’ll have an idea of how long you should spend on preparing an outline and initial ideas for the written section of the DELF B2.

It seems like a new digital language-learning tool is released every day.  Make no mistake about it—I’m an extremely enthusiastic user of audio/video editing for language learning, but sometimes we forget about the simple tools that are available to us—give tracing a try!