Jeremy Thompson Catholic PhD in Biblical Languages, Programmer, Runner

Since I’ve transitioned in my work to being more interested in lexicography, I haven’t had time to do a significant amount of reading in Second Language Acquisition.  But, I recently picked up The Neurobiology of Learning: Perspectives from Second Language Acquisition.  I would highly recommend it to anyone with the responsibility of teaching languages, whether ancient or modern.

Some readers may find the neurobiology a bit dense, but it’s not too dense if you have read at least a little bit on the subject.  I may be misjudging that since I did my undergraduate work in psychology, but even so, I think the structure of the chapters makes it possible for anyone to benefit from the book.

The chapters are generally structured with an introduction, a section on the neurobiology of a particular area, e.g. motivation, attention, etc., and then a section drawing applications from the neurobiology.  I think the application sections are readable for anyone.

Some insights from the book were new to me and others not so much.  For example, one new piece of information for me was the research on aphasia and second language learners, which suggests that a second language is not learned like a first language, despite much of what modern communicative language instruction suggests following Krashen who was probably influenced by Chomskyian conceptions of Universal Grammar.  Even if there is an innate mechanism for first language learning (which the authors of the book also doubt — and so do I), it doesn’t appear that same mechanism is at work in second language learning.* The book highlights a number of other reasons for this beyond research on aphasics, but I’ll let you check out the book for that.

A less new to me insight, which nonetheless could bear repeating in the age when people like to talk about “the best way to learn a language,” is that “brains are as different as faces.”  As such, people will all learn a little bit differently, and there is not a “best” way to learn a language for that will work for everyone.

In sum, I highly recommend the book.

* I don’t mean this to suggest that Krashen’s work was all bad. In fact, some methodology he suggests has worked well in experimental research.  Only I think he gets the underlying mechanism wrong.

Every now and again because I did my PhD research on second language teaching/learning I get asked what I think about Rosetta Stone.  So, I thought I’d post a link to the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language report on Rosetta Stone entitled: “Rosetta Stone V3 Falls Short of Manufacturer’s Claims.”

As it turns out, a lot of people are interested in knowing how well Rosetta Stone works because government agencies have poured a lot of money into it (It is my understanding that the US Army recently allowed their contract with Rosetta Stone to expire, but I couldn’t find relevant links to determine if this report or others like it might provide a reason why).  So, there are plenty of people who have looked through software more thoroughly than me, and I will defer to them.  All I will say is that I looked at several languages in Rosetta Stone, for example Modern Hebrew and Latin, during my PhD research.  This report pretty well sums up the way that I felt about the product, particularly about the cultural irrelevance of the pictures and the software overstating its claims.

Here’s an excerpt from conclusions of the report:

Our review of Rosetta Stone V3 reveals that while some problems with V2 have been addressed, there is still more room for improvement. Further, it is unlikely that using V3 would have had much of an effect (if any) on the outcomes of our previous empirical study, which examined the effects of V2 on language learning.

Therefore, our conclusions and recommendations remain the same.  The claims made by the Rosetta Stone manufacturers concerning the innovativeness of their product as well as the language learning outcomes possible after use are generally overstated. While it is possible that learners using this product might learn some conversational phrases, the software does not provide the dynamic environment required to practice using the language in context. Rosetta Stone might be a useful tool to supplement vocabulary acquisition in a more well-rounded language course, but as a stand-alone package it is unlikely to be the solution to the U.S. Government’s language learning needs.

If you’re considering purchasing one of Rosetta Stone’s products, you may want to give the whole report a read at the link above.  I’m not necessarily saying not to buy the software.  This report does note some positives about it.  Only, be aware that their marketing may be setting you up with very unrealistic expectations, especially considering the price that you are paying.