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?

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).

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!

French Gestures (A.I.M.) and Li Yang’s Crazy English: building confidence for beginners

At the outset, I need to say that I am a *huge* fan of the Edmonton Public Library.  For the most part, my EPL use is limited to requesting holds online and picking them up at the branch near my office.  A couple of days ago, however, I tried something different and attended a free event at the Capilano EPL Branch.  The name of the session was “Learning French with Gestures”—as a card-carrying language geek, how could I possibly resist?

The session was basically an introduction to a way of teaching French to beginners called the Accelerative Integrated Method (AIM).  The core of the program concentrates on using a system of pared-down language, accompanied by specific gestures for about 700 key words.   Our introductory session was facilitated by an Edmonton Public School FSL teacher and one of the EPL’s community librarians.

The participants were a mix of adults, children and a few school teachers.  After the session, we were given a sample DVD that shared the background of the AIM/gesture method, as well as a few testimonials.  Most of the video material appears to be available online (start with the video below and work from there…)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWIdbaVZzKo

I really enjoyed the session– it’s not hard to see why this method would work for engaging beginning students.  As much as I loved my high school French teacher’s classes, I think this would have been right up my alley when I was originally starting to learn French.  The facilitator mentioned that a similar system of gestures is being developed for ESL and Spanish as a second language as well.

As we progressed through the session, one thought that came to mind was how gestures are also a part of how Li Yang teaches English in China.  For the uninitiated, “Crazy English” is a phenomenon that most young people in China have at least heard of— Li Yang encourages learners to read out loud (very loudly) as much as possible, and the pronunciation gestures are a way to aid students in mastering English vowel sounds not commonly found in Chinese.

Confidence as a critical base to early success

Overall, however, one of the key aspirations of Li Yang’s Crazy English is *very* similar to the AIM method, and that is to instill confidence in beginners.   If you listen to the kinds of things that Li Yang says in his public lectures, it’s fascinating how he blends the virtues of being a so-called “internationalist” with a strong sense of Chinese patriotism. In the video below, a good chunk of his Chinese ‘banter’ between English phrases is aimed at encouraging learners and playing down the anxiety that some learners might feel when speaking with native speakers of English.

Regardless of how you spin it, I think that there’s an argument to be made that the biggest challenge in beginning any new language is not memorizing all the new rules, but that the exercise puts us completely out of our zones of comfort, and it becomes easy to shut down and mentally ‘check out’ of class time.  Any tool that can keep the energy level up, and keep people communicating with smiles on their faces is a good one in my books— much more valuable than ‘clear grammar explanations’ is the caring, encouraging and inspiring teacher that can help create a safe environment where  students can step out of their shells.

I would even go so far as to argue that the key difference between a beginner and a low-intermediate speaker of a second language has less to do with comprehension and production, than it does with the person’s comfort level in the ‘skin’ of their new language.  Once that is done, then most folks are well on their way to entering the long-haul of self-directed language learning through the intermediate to advanced stages….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIk3e5S18Tg

Advanced language use= learning the language of collaboration?

“Economic competition ultimately leads to a contest of innovation; competition to innovate eventually becomes a question of human talent; in the end, the competition for the best talent boils down to competition in education.  The education system in China today will ultimately determine the Chinese economy of tomorrow.”  (QIAN Yingyi, at the Chinese Entrepreneur’s Forum)

“经济的竞争最终是创新的竞争，创新的竞争最终是人才的竞争，而人才的竞争最终是教育的竞争。中国教育的今天，就是中国经济的明天。” (钱颖一, 在中国企业家论坛)

Dr. Qian’s comments are definitely food for thought, but I would like to read more about Chinese thinking on collaboration as a key element of innovation.  That is to say, once you’ve assembled your team of talented ‘人才’, what makes a good team tick?  Does collaboration have a role to play in education as well?

You can’t just stick a bunch of brilliant people together (i.e. the competition for talent) and hope for miracles.  Are there positive steps we can take to ensure team members have the socio-linguistic skills to work together to accomplish things that haven’t been done before?  This is hard enough when everyone comes from a similar socio-economic background— but what about the global teams that are fast becoming the norm?

I don’t have an answer, but when people talk about ‘advanced’ foreign language skills, I wish that the conversation didn’t get mired in complex grammar and obscure vocabulary; in my books, the ability to nurture positive group dynamics, or recover from misunderstandings and setbacks is the true mark of an ‘advanced’ language learner–at least, those are the kinds of social/language skills to which I aspire (still a long way to go!).

As always, we’re left with the unanswered question of ‘how?’.  A colleague recently pointed me toward “Learning to work together” as one of the four UNESCO pillars of 21st century education—perhaps there are some clues there?

International Mother Language Day

Did you know that the United Nations celebrates International Mother Language Day every year on February 21st?

Collected a few clips of students using their own language to say ”  ___ is my mother language” as part of an event that will take place later during reading week.