夜色ブログ

Winter break is finally over and the second term, or at least my second term, has begun. Reading, "winter break", one may initially think that I'm yet another person to discard reason and bow to the voice of political correctness; however, in Japan it is most certainly not Christmas break. Christmas day is on the 25th of December like everywhere else, but everyone goes about their daily lives as per normal. Sure, there are decorations in the stores and the occasional house has lights, but by the 28th of December, the Christmas decorations have been removed in favour of the much more important New Year's ones. Anyhow, winter break was too long.

A new class

Or rather, half of a new class has been formed this term, with eight students from my class in the previous term, four students from another programme at the school, one from another class in the same programme, and one brand new student. The intake of new students may seem low, but because student visas are only issued by the government for entry in October and April, the intake is naturally lower in January and July.

The assortment of nationalities is even more varied than last term with fifteen students representing twelve countries: Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Brasil, the United States, New Caledonia, Taiwan, Mongolia, Vietnam, Korea, England, and the Netherlands.

Although perhaps it is to be expected to some degree, the six students who are new to the class seem particularly quiet. Maybe the rest of us are intimidating with Americans and Canadians who have little reservation when voicing their opinions. (You know who you are, or is that we know who we are . . . ?) Regardless, I'm sure people will warm up to each other and relax in the coming weeks.

While I occasionally, and by occasionally I mean every day or nine out of every ten days, complain about the slow progress as far as grammar is concerned, and outdated, poor teaching methodologies, since languages are so expansive there is enough wiggle room to allow for an interesting term. More accurately it's not a matter of the term being interesting; rather, the term can be made to be interesting. The preceding is doubtless an obvious statement to most of you, but some people are like me, somewhat retarded, and need to hear it explicitly.

For better or worse, I attended an introductory economics course and some of the ideas have remained with me since, one of which is referred to as opportunity cost. This is a consideration beyond the accounting cost. Neither of these ideas are limited to monetary value; both have broader applications. Put simply, opportunity cost takes into consideration the value of the other opportunities forgone by making a particular decision.

If I own a plot of land and sell it for $300,000 then invest that money in bonds at 4% interest, after three years, I will have gained $37,459.20 according to accounting costs; however, if I consider that a train station will be built five minutes from the plot in two years, significantly increasing the property value and assume that I will be able to sell it for $375,000 in three years to a condominium developer, the first option is actually a $37,540.80 loss according to opportunity cost. Or course, the $375,000 is a speculation and likewise opportunity cost is rarely certain.

For better or worse, I apply this principle to any major and many minor decisions that I make, often to the chagrin of others. In general, time is a much more valuable and scarce resource than money, and thus becomes the measure for many decisions. If I am presently learning 10 abstract learning units (ALUs) in 10 days, after a year, I will have learnt 365 ALUs; however, if instead I use a different method where by I can learn 10 ALUs in 8 days, after a year, I will have learnt 456 ALUs, a significant improvement over the first option.

As a more practical example, consider the acquisition of vocabulary, a major hurdle for most language learners who are serious about learning the language, id est, who are aiming for ability beyond that of the advanced tourist. I have an hour every day to study vocabulary. If I aim for 98% retention after a week, I can learn 15 words in that hour, 0.3 of which will be forgotten after a week on average; however, if I only aim for 80% retention, I can learn 25 words in that hour, since I don't have to spend time on the words that don't stick quickly. Of course, 5 of these will be forgotten after a week, but if you consider the long term, after a year of studying for 98% retention, I will have remembered 5365 words, but by only studying for 80% retention, I will have remembered 7300 words. Again, this is a significant difference. And I don't have to worry about the hard to remember words because I'll see them one week, forget them, see them another week, forget them, see the another week, and finally remember them.

This of course has even broader and more vague applications and that's where occasional problems arise. If I study at this school for a year, my Japanese will improve significantly. "But what if there were a better use of this year of my time?" What is that cliché yet ever so correct and incorrect expression? Ah yes! ignorance is bliss. It is the difference between hearing a sound and enjoying it and hearing a sound and trying to understand why it is enjoyable. People who are given to this sort of thought are well advised to, as Nike says, "Just do it!"

Please apply opportunity cost responsibly.

[Wow! I'm prolific today! writing in progress]

When one thinks of building vocabulary in a second language, word lists often come to mind because of their widespread use in courses, textbooks, and bookstores, that is to say in general in current second language acquisition practices. Unfortunately for the many people who use them, word lists are nearly the worst possible way to learn new vocabulary. I only say "nearly" because in theory there could be some even more counterproductive method; however, I have yet to encounter it.

But they're easy to use

Most people, myself included, are impatient and look for the easiest way to do something. Word lists seem simple enough: someone else tells you what words to learn, someone else compiles them for you, other people write quizes for them, they're easy to test so educators love them. This would be wonderful if languages were simply collections of words; unfortunately, for people who use word lists, they aren't.

Um, that sounds strage for some reason

When you learn words from a list, you don't learn how to use them. The classic example of this failing is "construction place". The definition in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of English says, "1 a particular position, point, or area in space; a location (a building or area used for a specific purpose or activity)", among other senses and variations. From this correct definition, a person learning the language doesn't understand that we simple don't say "construction place" in English. It's odd; it's weird; saying it basically marks you as a person who can't speak English. We say "construction site".

And another reason . . .

Most word lists contain a so called translation in the learner's native language. This just makes matters worse. If there was a one-to-one correspondence between words in different languages, this wouldn't be an issue. Once again, however, this isn't the case. (Disclaimer: word lists are less inappropriate for use between languages that are very closely related such as Portueges and Spanish, but still have the occasional problem. However, at present, I'm a native English speaker learning Japanese, but even when I was studying German which much more closely related to English this was a problem.)

Ah! if lists are bad, what should I do?

Learn the way your learnt vocabulary in your native language. How many words did you learn from a list in your native language? Two hundred, maybe five hundred if you really enjoyed amazingly boring study? This is somewhere between 2% of your vocabulary if you really liked lists and have a small vocabulary and 0.4% if you didn't like lists and have a large vocabulary. Gasp! How did could you possibly learn all those other words without lists? Context.

Because you learnt almost all of your vocabulary in context you don't have to think about using it naturally. Except when compositing a particularly obtuse sentence, you don't have to actively consider grammar or word choice. You say "construction site" not "construction place". You don't have to think about when to say, "On the way home, I stopped by the bank", or when to say, "On the way home, I stopped by a bank."

"But I spent 18 years learning words slowly in context and I don't want it to take that long in my second (or other) language." I agree completely; I'm impatient just list you. So we distill the process. Most words you learn aren't learned instantaneously: you saw it once, you forgot it, you saw it again a month later, you forgot it, you saw it again a week later and realized that you've seen it before, buy you still forgot it, you saw it again the following week and poof! it stuck.

We can condense the process by reducing the time between encounters with the word. In the past that would mean using index cards and writing down sentences and phrases that you think are interesting. Fortunately, in this age we have the computer; of course if you don't have convenient access to one, you can always fall back on cards. A computer can store all the sentences and phrases you've found interesting and show them to you when you want to review them. (This is just a system to make the process convenient and is a separate topic. I may write more on using such systems later or point you to others' explanations.)

Context

What does context mean? A word in a word list has no context; this is the least amount possible. You'll simply try to apply the context of the given so-called translation in your language, which is incorrect more othen than not. If we add a little context, we can look at some textbooks or phrasebooks that give you one sentence as the context for a word: 例文 (example sentences). Now you'll have an idea of how to use the word. Add some more context and we have a basic conversation, also found in a number of text books.

At this point, you may be tempted to use textbooks as a source. However, there are two rather glaring deficiencies. Even though the sentences are written by a native speaker, the content of a textbook is specifically toned down under the guise of helping the learning and making it easier to understand. While this is much better than a word list, it's still a far cry from the amount of contextual information you have when learning a word or phrase in your native langauge. Unfortunately, this often ends up producing sentences that sound very artifical and occassionally even unnatural. Sentence patterns (文型) have their place, but they're often used to the point of overkill.

Of the approximately 17 people here who have wanted to practice some variety of English with me once they find out I'm from Canada, there has been one person who managed a natural greeting. The other 16 were robotic: "How are you?" "I'm fine, thank you. How are you?" It's not a coincidence that they all used exactly the same wording. That's the example sentence found in virtually every English textbook around here. It's not that there's anything grammatically wrong with what they said. It's just that there is a very limited set of circumstances when a native English speaker will actually say that. And this introduces the second and far more serious problem with accepting the context that textbooks and other material for foreign learners.

The words, phrases, and tone that we choose are based on much more than a series of preceding words. What sort of personality do we have? What do we perceive the other person's personality to be? What's she wearing? What am I feeling? What sort of expression does she have on her face? What sort of place are we in? What happened last time we met? What's our present mode of speech and style? This sort of context is generally, and to the detriment of learners, ignored when learning a foreign language.

Context is everywhere

Anything that a native speaker is exposed to is suitable for context. Movies, television show, hanging out, warning labels, instruction books, novels, essays, novels,

[writing in progress]