Posts tagged with "Applied Linguistics"

Must a person speak a language to understand it?

This is an important question to ask for instructors of ancient languages who want to move toward communicative approaches to language instruction, and the answer to this question is: no.  This doesn’t necessarily rule out that we should use communication in ancient language instruction (though for this and a number of other reasons I wouldn’t), but it should at least mitigate the degree to which instructors insist on it for everyone.

One problem with the view that a person must speak a language in order to properly understand it, which we sadly learn about mostly from the misfortunes of people with language disorders, is that language production and understanding dissociate.  In other words, different language problems can affect either production or comprehension.  I was reminded of this while reading Gregory Hickok’s The Myth of Mirror Neurons shortly after writing my previous post which pertained to some extent with language instruction and understanding.  Hickok describes at length the observations of Eric Lenneberg on one of his patients:

Lenneberg noted that the child’s ability to speak was effectively nil. The child cried and laughed normally but made only cough-like grunts that accompanied his attempts to communicate via pantomime. When he played alone, he often made sounds that resembled Swiss yodeling, although he had never been exposed to the art form. Lenneberg further noted that as the child got older, and after years of speech therapy, he could repeat a few words after his therapist or mother, but even these attempts were “barely intelligible” and were never produced on his own.

Lenneberg was fascinated by the boy’s ability to comprehend language, which the scientist characterized as “normal and adequate understanding of spoken language.” This observation was confirmed over more than 20 visits and by several doctors and speech therapists, both informally and formally. The boy could follow complex commands such as “Take the block and put it on the bottle” and he could appropriately respond, albeit nonverbally, to questions about a short story that was read to him. He was not merely cuing off the body language of the researchers: he accurately followed commands even when he couldn’t see the investigator. The cause of the speech production deficit could not be determined. Lenneberg called it “congenital dysarthia” – difficulty controlling the speech articulators – and concluded that the ability to master receptive language, to understand, did not depend on the ability to produce or imitate speech.

Dissociations between production and comprehension are also present in different kinds of aphasia (for good introductions to aphasia see Basso and Goodglass; Basso is probably the better of the volumes, but Goodglass is a little easier to read). Aphasias also differ in how they affect the ability to read.  Yet Lenneberg’s patient and others like him demonstrate that a person can understand a language though they may never have been able to produce it. Of course, this should be taken with a bit of a grain of salt since, as I pointed out in my last post, a second language will never be the same as a first language.  But, even working on that analogy, it does not seem to be the case that the ability to speak a language is a necessity for understanding it.

Reading a second language will never be like reading a first language

This post is in partial reply to one written by Daniel Streett. I should start off by saying that I applaud the efforts of all those attempting to make biblical language instruction better and to train better interpreters of the bible. Changes in biblical language instruction still have a long way to go and have been quite a long time coming.

Against that background, I think there are different paths that we could take to do that. So, I will offer here a differing perspective, which suggests reasons for a more positive role for a first language in the interpretation of a second language. I think this may logically lead to a more positive view of the first language in the instruction of the second language.

The main thrust of this post has to do with one of Streett’s* overarching analogies: We should try to read and understand Greek texts like we read and understand English ones. Perhaps more broadly, we should try to read second language texts like we read first language ones. The analogy comes out most clearly in his second to last and final paragraphs:

So, I find that the question, “what about exegesis?” presupposes that to interpret a text, one must be able to label, diagram and translate it into another language. I disagree with this. When I read and discuss English literature, I do not analyze syntax or diagram sentences. I also do not label each element using linguistic metalanguage. Rather I discuss meaning, themes, characterization. I summarize. I paraphrase. I make connections with other parts of the text. I tease out logical implications. I examine elements of literary artistry. All of this can be done, indeed, is best done, in the language itself.

To summarize, when you can read a language fluently, much of what we call exegesis becomes basically unnecessary.

At this stage, I should say that from an idealistic point of view I agree. In particular, aside from everything else I will say below, I do absolutely agree that much of what we call biblical exegesis is too atomistic. What I’m really dealing with here is the final two sentences in the quotation. From a realistic point of view, my feeling is that the strong form of what he saying is not possible. Reading a second language will never be like reading a first language.

In what follows, I will very briefly state why I think this is the case in hopes that this will point toward a more positive role for a first language in the understanding of a second. First, second languages are not stored in the brain in entirely the same way as first languages. Evidence for this can be found in the phenomenon of paradoxical aphasia. This phenomenon is discussed at length in The Neurobiology of Learning: Perspectives from Second Language Acquisition by Schumann, et al chapter 3 (I think this book is a must read for anyone working in the area of applied linguistics). In paradoxical aphasia, a first and second language are differentially affected by lesions or some other brain insult. This form of aphasia suggests that a first language relies more heavily on procedural memory and a second language a combination of declarative and procedural memory (the author of the chapter goes on to suggest that this along with other findings suggest that Krashen’s strong distinction between learning and acquisition, which is at the heart of many communicative approaches, is wrong and based on a faulty understanding of Chomsky’s concept of Universal Grammar that ignores the concept of critical periods; however, I will perhaps leave that for another time).

Second, we should ask whether the fact that different pathways are used for first and second languages has any psychological effects. Based on at least one line of very recent research that I’ve mentioned on this blog, though in light of the biological factors mentioned above I would predict that you could find others, this does seem to be the case. Some potential psychological effects might result from the second language not being as closely tied in with the emotional pathways in the brain. One particular example of this is that, on the description of the researchers involved in the study I just linked to, people are more “logical” when reading and reasoning about a moral dilemma in a second language than in their first language.

Some readers of this blog may want to brace themselves for one possible implication here if you haven’t already felt it: The irony is that if someone wants to feel more strongly the emotional impact of a biblical text, they might actually be better off reading the text in good translation … I know. I think I just vomited a little in my mouth. We do, indeed, need to place a strong emphasis on students learning biblical languages. I obviously think they are extremely important, else I would not have pursued a PhD in biblical languages. But alas, the biblical languages aren’t magic no matter how well one knows them. From the standpoint of a linguist, I have to be open to the idea that we might actually lose something by only reading and thinking about (I leave aside the whole debate about whether or not we actually think in a natural language) a text in a foreign language (unless you’re a Vulcan and think that more logic always should trump emotion). All meaning is constructed. A different kind of construction texts place when understanding a second language text due to the biological factors at work.

If you’re not quite ready to admit a strong version of what I said in the last paragraph that’s okay. I understand. And, this is a blog, so I’m only citing one study and leaving you to follow that trail out for yourself if you want to (I have a day job and blog very rarely by night). But, I’ll come back to the main point. Is the idea that we should try to understand a second language text by simply reading it just like, or even almost like, we would read a first language text a good analogy? Ideally, I would say yes. But realistically, I think the above suggests that this may not be possible and that statements like “All of this can be done, indeed, is best done, in the language itself” require some rethinking. This might include some rethinking about a more constructive role for a person’s first language in the understanding of a second language text. I think the exact role a first language should play is up for quite a bit of debate, but it’s a role I think is made necessary by the very biology of the learners that we may work with.

* I’m not trying to sound all academic or anything, I just don’t know him and don’t want to presume to call him Daniel.

Postscript: For those interested in information of a more practical sort (though perhaps less scientific since it would be impossible outside of a controlled environment to isolate the individual factors that have lead to its failing), you may be interested in looking into the recent reports about the failings of Rosetta Stone, an instructional software in which all instruction is in the second language. It has not lived up to its claims to such an extent that, to my knowledge, they have begun to lose their government contracts.

The Limited Usefulness of Semantic Domains for Learning Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary (Part 2)

I should preface this second post on the limited usefulness of semantic domains for learning Biblical Hebrew vocabulary by stating that I did not always think this was the case.  In my intermediate Hebrew course, I remember having Landes as the vocabulary text and thinking it was great to see someone finally do something other than a strict word list.  And, going into my dissertation research on Biblical Hebrew vocabulary learning, I believed that I would use this approach heavily, but supplement it with more vocabulary learning strategies.

However, I started my vocabulary research by reading vocabulary texts written by researchers who focus specifically on Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (particularly the three at the end of this post plus a couple of others), rather than Second Language Acquisition in general.  And, I am glad I did so because I don’t believe these two groups of researchers are saying the same things (Yes, I have read many more general SLA texts as well).  I began to see the use of semantic domains as an overarching strategy as problematic after reading Nation.  He states the following:

Care should be taken in introducing lexical sets because this goes against the criterion of frequent use… Further arguments against the presentation of lexical sets as a way of introducing vocabulary can be found in the research of Higa (1963), Tinkham (1993 and 1997) and Waring (1997b) which show the difficulty caused by learning similar items together (387).

I, like some of the readers of my first post, was not completely convinced by the principle of frequency as there could be ways of tweaking this.  However, after reading the experimental studies referenced by Nation (as well as about five or six others) on “the difficulty caused by learning related items together,” I became much more strongly convinced that introducing vocabulary by lexical relationships was not a beneficial practice.  That is not to say that I think there is no place for lexical sets in vocabulary learning.  I do not have time to elaborate on this here, but word knowledge is multi-faceted, with semantic associations being one of those facets.  So, this should receive attention; however, in my opinion the focus should come later in the learning process when learners are consolidating their knowledge of a word for which form and meaning has already been paired.

At any rate, what is it that these studies report?  The studies report on a problem that Nation refers to as interference (303).  As in the comments of a previous post, interference in this context basically means that learning items like “mouth” and “nose” together does not make it more likely that these items will be remembered because of their close association, but rather makes it more likely that learners will have problems retrieving the meaning of either of these words because the initial learning was not distinct enough.  More simply, learners may be more likely to confuse the words, whether this results in delay or error.

As a basic summary of the experiments in these articles, researchers present groups with two different ways of learning words.  One group learns a set of unrelated words and another group learns a set of semantically related words (sometimes there are variations like pictures being used, etc.).  Then, the groups are each given a task to perform using the vocabulary.  Across the board, in the 10 studies that I have put into a bibliography, the subjects who learn words in related sets perform worse on the task in which they put the vocabulary to use.  These results have been replicated so often, I think, because they are so unexpected.  Throughout the psychological literature we are told that we learn by association.  These studies seem to violate that principle until one realizes that the idea of learning by association is extremely complex.

Against this background though, these results have been replicated so often that linguists and psychologists have developed a reasonably good explanation for them them.  In the comments section of a previous post, I noted that Finkbeiner and Nicol explain these results in terms of spreading activation, a concept that will be familiar to almost anyone who has reviewed psychological literature on language.  Spreading activation basically means (at least in this context) that when a person sees a lexical item all the other items associated with it are activated as well.  This obviously has a lot of beneficial effects in terms of language processing.  It helps us to read quickly because when we see a particular word we can begin to expect which words might come next.

Yet spreading activation also has an inhibitory effect.   This effect is possibly at work in the results of the studies cited here.  When a person learns words in lexical sets, the learning is not distinct enough.  Thus, in some cases, when a learner sees a particular lexical item all of the associated items are activated too strongly for the learner to make a correct or timely decision about the meaning of the item.  This happens time and time again in the literature.

At this point, I suppose a number of objections might be raised.  But, I think there is enough evidence here to suggest that there is at least something to this and that this is a very important issue for vocabulary learning.  There is enough here to suggest that these studies cannot be dismissed off-hand.  These are studies that I feel must be at least grappled with by those who develop the vocabulary component of a course.  On the other end of the spectrum, I, as Finkbeiner and Nicol, have not seen any empirical research that suggests introducing vocabulary in lexical sets can be beneficial.  Most, if not all, evidence proposed in this line comes from monolingual studies in which subjects learn lists of words.  This is not the same thing as pairing form and meaning in vocabulary learning.

Finkbeiner and Nicol on Interference

Yesterday I posted a bibliography on the problem of interference when learning semantically related words, which I have updated this morning.  However, I know that not everyone will have access to all of those works and that not everyone will have the time to read them all.  But, I have found one of the articles online for free at the website of one of the authors:

Finkbeiner, M. & Nicol, J. (2003). Semantic category effects in second language word learning. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 369-383.

The article can accessed by clicking HERE and scrolling down to the second to last entry.

Here are some notable quotes with emphasis added:

The present study addresses a long-standing assumption in the field of applied linguistics: that presenting new second language (L2) vocabulary in semantically grouped sets is an effective method of teaching (369).

Although many SLA theorists and practitioners endorse (implicitly or explic-
itly) the seemingly sensible position that teaching new L2 vocabulary in seman-
tically grouped sets is an effective method of teaching, there is actually very
little empirical evidence to support this position
. The body of literature often
cited in support of presenting learners with semantically grouped words includes
(monolingual) memory studies (370).

In studies that record the number of learning trials needed to reach a predetermined learning criterion, it has been shown that participants take longer to learn new labels for sets of semantically related items than for sets of semantically dissimilar items (Higa, 1963; Kintsch & Kintsch, 1969; Nation, 2000; Tinkham, 1993, 1997; Underwood, Ekstrand, & Keppel, 1965; Waring, 1997) (371).

Overall, then, presenting semantically grouped L2 words to learners has a
deleterious effect on learning (376, from the discussion section after their experiment dealing with interference).

The implications that this study has for vocabulary instruction and curriculum
development are not trivial. As pointed out in the introductory section, several
authors in the teaching methodology literature have argued that vocabulary
should be taught in semantic groups. The results of the present study converge
with those of Tinkham (1993, 1997) and Waring (1997) to suggest that teaching
words in semantic sets creates competition between items, which in turn in-
creases difficulty during learning and during memory retrieval in language pro-
duction
.

I will still have another of my own posts on this topic, so I hope that this article and the others in the previous post will be helpful in the meantime.

The Limited Usefulness of Semantic Domains for Learning Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary (Part 1)

New related post: Interference When Learning Semantically Related Words (A Bibliography)

I hope that no one takes this post as too harsh of a critique as I applaud anyone’s effort to make Biblical Hebrew instruction better.  I have noticed in two recent posts materials for learning Biblical Hebrew vocabulary that make use of semantic domains.  The use of semantic domains has been cited by Schmitt in Vocabulary : Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy [Cambridge Language Teaching Library] as a helpful strategy for learning vocabulary in a second or foreign language.  However, further research into the strategy reveals that its use should likely be limited to some degree.  There are two reasons for this limited usefulness, one of which I will mention in this post and another of which I will mention in a future post.

First, the use of semantic domains in vocabulary learning can lead to a violation of the principle of frequency (this forms the basis for most current Biblical Hebrew vocabulary materials, i.e. Zondervan [see 2, 3, and 5], Mitchel, etc.).  Most Many researchers in second language vocabulary acquisition would agree that the most frequent words in a language should be learned first as these words are the most useful.  This seems only logical, though I don’t think the principle has to be applied in an overly rigid manner.  Yet in many resources and materials where semantic domains are used the principle of frequency is violated.

This fact becomes abundantly clear by even a cursory glance at a Biblical Hebrew vocabulary text like Landes.  In the resources mentioned in the two blogs above, one might take the diagram of the body as an example (diagram by Adam Couturier).  This diagram appears as though it would be useful until one realizes that many of the words on it are not among the most frequent in the Hebrew Bible.  The word geviyah (“body”) occurs only 13 times, ‘etsba’ (“finger, toe”) only 31 times, yarech (“thigh”) only 34 times, and tsava’r (“neck”) only 41 times.  There are other less frequent words on the diagram as well; however, the basic problem is that in order to fill out the diagram students must be presented with items that they will not see very often.  Time spent learning the diagram might be better spent studying the more frequent words in the Hebrew Bible, or, using a staggered approach, the more frequent words in a particular book of the Hebrew Bible that are also frequent throughout the rest of the corpus.

In my opinion, I think that diagrams like the one cited in this post are helpful primarily for advanced students who have already mastered many of the most frequent vocabulary items in the language.  This to me indicates that the strategy of using semantic domains is of limited usefulness. However, this is not the only indication that the strategy should be applied carefully.  In a subsequent post, I will discuss the problem of interference, which is cited by Nation as a reason why use of semantic domains in vocabulary learning should be limited, especially early on.

If you’re interested, here are three absolutely indispensable books on second language vocabulary acquisition: