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owlectomySometimes there is a convergence of things.
I got to talking with my sister about language acquisition, and about running. Now, if you don't know my sister -- have you seen the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episode with the running of the leaves? Where everyone makes fun of Twilight Sparkle for being an egghead about running, and she is an egghead about running, but it serves her well because she's good at pacing herself through the race? That's my sister. She knows all about glycogen and VO2 Max and things.
I am going to make a few pronouncements that often are not intuitive to people who haven't studied linguistics but are pretty well accepted by linguists. That's not to say that they're definitely 100% true. I think the evidence for them is pretty solid. You should feel free to argue with me in comments but I didn't want to make this post longer!
So, the theory is, human beings in general have a Language Acquisition Device in their brains. You're essentially genetically programmed to learn language. Language is one of the most complicated things that humans do (see machine translation if you don't believe me), and yet virtually everybody acquires their own first language fluently and when they're very young. They don't necessarily become fluent in the prestige dialect, and they don't necessarily become literate, but they are genuinely fluent in their own language. (This is one of the reasons linguists are so adamant that nonstandard dialects aren't "Bad English," they're just different dialects. You can't postulate an inborn language acquisition device that poor kids don't have, or kids in certain regions of the country don't have.)
One of the remaining questions, if you accept that premise, is whether that Language Acquisition Device still works for learning a second language in adulthood. Plausible answers are:
-No. People who acquire languages as adults almost always have accents, and usually retain some grammatical awkwardness. Therefore, their language acquisition devices have stopped working.
-Yes. Very few people who acquire languages as adults get as much input (in a comprehensible context! Just turning the TV on doesn't work unless you understand what they're saying) and have as much language-learning motivation as young children do. If you could replicate that, then you would get adults learning languages fluently.
I tend to think it's somewhere in the middle, with some parts of your Device stopping working around puberty (especially stuff relating to pronunciation and hearing the distinctions between sounds) and some parts of your Device still working, maybe a little bit slower and less reliably.
I do have grammatical intuitions in Japanese. They're not as good as my grammatical intuitions in English or even in French, but I do have a gut feeling for things that sound wrong. Actually, though, I think that if we don't have some kind of still-working Language Acquisition device it's hopeless from the beginning. Because grammar isn't just the basic relationships between nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. It's things like why you can say "Alice told Bob about the movie" but not "Alice said Bob about the movie" or "Alice talked Bob about the movie." Why you can't say "Carol alleged the claim." Every verb comes with this implicit information -- an entry in your mental dictionary -- that says what you can and can't do with that verb. And no one will ever get decent at any language if we have to learn that consciously. It's just not going to happen.
Anyway, one of the big proponents of the idea that you can take advantage of your language acquisition device for all your life is Stephen Krashen, and he has a somewhat controversial proposition:
Learning doesn't become acquisition.
I think the traditional language class is conducted on the basis that you learn a verb conjugation or a sentence pattern, and you drill yourself on that a bunch of times and try making a bunch of sentences using that pattern, and then you know it and you can use it.
Krashen would say, okay, you know that at the conscious level, but in language it doesn't count unless it's subconscious. Because anything you know at the conscious level, without acquiring it at the subconscious level, is not something you can use on the fly and freely combine it in other sentences, and it's hard to communicate effectively with someone while trying to conjugate in your head.
And Krashen would say that the way to acquire language is to listen and read messages that are simple enough that you can understand them. And just to keep on doing it. And eventually your brain is going to figure it out, just like it did when you were learning your first language.
(I actually agree with this but not with programs like Rosetta Stone that claim to teach you language like a baby learns. Mainly because a computer program can't provide the real communication that a human being can. Hearing babies born to Deaf parents don't learn spoken English from watching TV.)
And to get back to running... it turns out that the way to get better at running is to run a lot of miles. Slowly. So slowly that you get bored and annoyed. So slowly that you really really want to run faster. You have to give your body time to learn how to run.
I don't spend a lot of time talking to runners but I do spend a lot of time talking to people studying second languages. Lots of them actually seem offended by the idea that the best way to learn a language is not to "study" it. It's not just that they don't believe it, although mostly it seems like they don't believe it.
So, here's what I'm coming around to. I think there's this very American myth of hard work, where if you're not getting the results you want, you just have to push yourself harder. And the more you push yourself, the more results you will get. As a matter of direct causation, and immediately.
And when I am frustrated with how my writing is going, I think in those terms too. I'm being lazy; I should work harder; obviously I'm being lazy because if I weren't, then I would have more to show for it. What has most helped me in those times is to see writing not as something I should be working super hard at, but as a practice that I'm faithful to. Something that I'm patient with.
What is in your muscles and what is in your brain are not things that you can cause to grow or force to grow, and sometimes it will be so slow that you hardly think you can bear it. You can give yourself a warm place and good food and time and then you just have to trust in the process.
When I was in the intermediate stages of learning Japanese, I spent a lot of time ignoring my homework and reading manga and BL novels, and I spent a lot of time being annoyed at myself because I wasn't reading Real Literature and I wasn't working hard enough studying kanji and if I really cared about learning I would be reading currents events magazines or something. And all the time... I was actually getting really good at reading.
I think I could maybe learn something from that.
I got to talking with my sister about language acquisition, and about running. Now, if you don't know my sister -- have you seen the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episode with the running of the leaves? Where everyone makes fun of Twilight Sparkle for being an egghead about running, and she is an egghead about running, but it serves her well because she's good at pacing herself through the race? That's my sister. She knows all about glycogen and VO2 Max and things.
I am going to make a few pronouncements that often are not intuitive to people who haven't studied linguistics but are pretty well accepted by linguists. That's not to say that they're definitely 100% true. I think the evidence for them is pretty solid. You should feel free to argue with me in comments but I didn't want to make this post longer!
So, the theory is, human beings in general have a Language Acquisition Device in their brains. You're essentially genetically programmed to learn language. Language is one of the most complicated things that humans do (see machine translation if you don't believe me), and yet virtually everybody acquires their own first language fluently and when they're very young. They don't necessarily become fluent in the prestige dialect, and they don't necessarily become literate, but they are genuinely fluent in their own language. (This is one of the reasons linguists are so adamant that nonstandard dialects aren't "Bad English," they're just different dialects. You can't postulate an inborn language acquisition device that poor kids don't have, or kids in certain regions of the country don't have.)
One of the remaining questions, if you accept that premise, is whether that Language Acquisition Device still works for learning a second language in adulthood. Plausible answers are:
-No. People who acquire languages as adults almost always have accents, and usually retain some grammatical awkwardness. Therefore, their language acquisition devices have stopped working.
-Yes. Very few people who acquire languages as adults get as much input (in a comprehensible context! Just turning the TV on doesn't work unless you understand what they're saying) and have as much language-learning motivation as young children do. If you could replicate that, then you would get adults learning languages fluently.
I tend to think it's somewhere in the middle, with some parts of your Device stopping working around puberty (especially stuff relating to pronunciation and hearing the distinctions between sounds) and some parts of your Device still working, maybe a little bit slower and less reliably.
I do have grammatical intuitions in Japanese. They're not as good as my grammatical intuitions in English or even in French, but I do have a gut feeling for things that sound wrong. Actually, though, I think that if we don't have some kind of still-working Language Acquisition device it's hopeless from the beginning. Because grammar isn't just the basic relationships between nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. It's things like why you can say "Alice told Bob about the movie" but not "Alice said Bob about the movie" or "Alice talked Bob about the movie." Why you can't say "Carol alleged the claim." Every verb comes with this implicit information -- an entry in your mental dictionary -- that says what you can and can't do with that verb. And no one will ever get decent at any language if we have to learn that consciously. It's just not going to happen.
Anyway, one of the big proponents of the idea that you can take advantage of your language acquisition device for all your life is Stephen Krashen, and he has a somewhat controversial proposition:
Learning doesn't become acquisition.
I think the traditional language class is conducted on the basis that you learn a verb conjugation or a sentence pattern, and you drill yourself on that a bunch of times and try making a bunch of sentences using that pattern, and then you know it and you can use it.
Krashen would say, okay, you know that at the conscious level, but in language it doesn't count unless it's subconscious. Because anything you know at the conscious level, without acquiring it at the subconscious level, is not something you can use on the fly and freely combine it in other sentences, and it's hard to communicate effectively with someone while trying to conjugate in your head.
And Krashen would say that the way to acquire language is to listen and read messages that are simple enough that you can understand them. And just to keep on doing it. And eventually your brain is going to figure it out, just like it did when you were learning your first language.
(I actually agree with this but not with programs like Rosetta Stone that claim to teach you language like a baby learns. Mainly because a computer program can't provide the real communication that a human being can. Hearing babies born to Deaf parents don't learn spoken English from watching TV.)
And to get back to running... it turns out that the way to get better at running is to run a lot of miles. Slowly. So slowly that you get bored and annoyed. So slowly that you really really want to run faster. You have to give your body time to learn how to run.
I don't spend a lot of time talking to runners but I do spend a lot of time talking to people studying second languages. Lots of them actually seem offended by the idea that the best way to learn a language is not to "study" it. It's not just that they don't believe it, although mostly it seems like they don't believe it.
So, here's what I'm coming around to. I think there's this very American myth of hard work, where if you're not getting the results you want, you just have to push yourself harder. And the more you push yourself, the more results you will get. As a matter of direct causation, and immediately.
And when I am frustrated with how my writing is going, I think in those terms too. I'm being lazy; I should work harder; obviously I'm being lazy because if I weren't, then I would have more to show for it. What has most helped me in those times is to see writing not as something I should be working super hard at, but as a practice that I'm faithful to. Something that I'm patient with.
What is in your muscles and what is in your brain are not things that you can cause to grow or force to grow, and sometimes it will be so slow that you hardly think you can bear it. You can give yourself a warm place and good food and time and then you just have to trust in the process.
When I was in the intermediate stages of learning Japanese, I spent a lot of time ignoring my homework and reading manga and BL novels, and I spent a lot of time being annoyed at myself because I wasn't reading Real Literature and I wasn't working hard enough studying kanji and if I really cared about learning I would be reading currents events magazines or something. And all the time... I was actually getting really good at reading.
I think I could maybe learn something from that.
(no subject)
26/2/12 02:19 (UTC)(no subject)
26/2/12 03:40 (UTC)I have been thinking a lot about that conversation also. I think you hit the nail on the head with the 'myth of direct causation'. In both cases it's not about 'try harder, then do it better'; it's about 'take the time to change your muscles/your brain, then you will do better as a result of that'.
It is counter-intuitive, in a way. If you want to be proficient Japanese you should learn all the kanji. If you want to run fast you should run fast. Those are the things that make sense. But learning the kanji doesn't actually change your brain in the ways you need to know Japanese. Running fast actually does change your muscles to be able to run faster, but it only does that for about 8 weeks-- after that your anaerobic capacity is maxed out, and if you want to keep improving, you have to run mostly slowly so that the aerobic adaptation that your muscles need can happen too. (OK obviously I'm simplifying a lot. Just in case anyone reading this wants to know more, the names to google are Hadd, Maffetone, and Lydiard, though their approaches are all a bit different.)
I think it is great that you are applying this to your writing, too. In so many things in life, progress is nonlinear or unseen. Just like the title of your post--Trees need to build roots before they can grow; they need the roots in place to stabilize them and gather enough water to feed them. Sometimes we aren't growing in a way that can be seen, but it is because we are growing our roots.
(no subject)
26/2/12 10:22 (UTC)I think in terms of... life goals? Or self-help books/rhetoric/etc.? There's a lot of "well, if you wanted to be doing X, you'd be doing X. So if you're not, you don't really want it." Which doesn't take into account, well, a whole range of things, like disability, etc. But also, no, they don't seem to consider anything more than "work hard=get results" as a model.
(no subject)
26/2/12 11:55 (UTC)(no subject)
26/2/12 11:57 (UTC)(no subject)
26/2/12 12:14 (UTC)AJATT is kind of a strange case. He refers fairly often to Krashen's writings about language acquisition but then he advocates some stuff that Krashen never would, like learning 2000 kanji before you start studying Japanese, and listening to a ton of Japanese audio before you can actually understand any of it, and not bothering with textbooks/classes... even though it's really hard to get the kind of sheltered input you need as a self-study student.
One book that was useful to me recently was "Write! 10 days to overcome writer's block. Period." It actually goes through things like whether you need a louder/quieter environment, whether you might need more rest or more energy -- rather than assuming that the only solution is wanting it more, it tries to help you figure out exactly what the roadblocks are. It would be nice if more self-help stuff would take that kind of approach.
(no subject)
26/2/12 12:21 (UTC)I have a lot of issues w/AJATT, but one of the things I like about it is that he does seem to advocate for... micromovements? in some cases. The whole "study what's fun, & if you study for 1 minute that's more than you studied before, etc. etc." Of course... I don't know how effective, say, listening to lots of audio that you can't understand is. I do know it makes me excited now that I can pick out words & phrases in things I listen to (& then I remember them! I never remember the verb "to walk" for some reason but, uh, one day I was listening to one of the Natsume OPs & there it was & I WILL NEVER FORGET IT NOW).
Also, I did maybe a quarter or a third of the first Remembering the Kanji book last summer, just to see what it was like -- it was... interesting. I think it helped in that I recognize things now (although sometimes it's just like "that kanji has something like a... a... target! With a white bird!" & not quite enough to understand what it mean), & I'm kind of interested in going through the whole thing, just as an experiment, but then the question of course is whether my (limited!) time/energy would be spent doing that kind of on a whim or in doing something else. -_-;;
(no subject)
26/2/12 13:11 (UTC)This reminds me of a book I was reading about some US Buddhist group that went cultish and toxic. Anyway, you had all these people doing the various prayers and whathaveyou in a marathon intensive sort of way (because you were supposed to attain enlightenment after doing some huge number), whereas in the original cultural context presumably the whole point was that they were being done over a much longer period in the intervals of hewing wood, drawing water, etc, and that was also part of the enlightenment process.
I'm not sure this isn't related to wider 'Western' cultural paradigms about effort and striving (the Protestant Work Ethic...)
(no subject)
26/2/12 16:05 (UTC)Obviously the whole Remembering the Kanji thing works for some people -- I think my problem with it is the idea of using it before being able to use any real Japanese. To me, seeing the kanji a lot when I'm reading is a much more powerful memory aid than a mnemonic that's totally dependent on English and often doesn't really relate to the actual derivation of the kanji. (Like in 剣, 険, 検, 験, the part they have in common doesn't really mean anything except 'pronounce this as "ken."')
Anyway, that's all me having opinions rather than anything that's based in research. The one thing I feel strongly about is not getting too hung up on knowing a lot of kanji because it's surprising how far the easy/common ones will get you.
(no subject)
26/2/12 22:40 (UTC)Yeah, I don't know how much I would've gotten out of it if I hadn't started it after already having 2 (rather lackluster) years of class. Although it was nice to be able to read more kanji, even if I didn't know how to pronounce them -- if all I wanted to do was read manga, I might just go ahead & blitz through the whole thing, ha (though I know the manga I read usually has the hiragana anyway!).
& I don't think it would be useful for me to just, say, sit around & watch hours of Japanese news: that would be the firehose thing. I keep meaning to get a few raw eps of Natsume (all mine are hardsubbed, I think) since some of them I practically have memorized anyway, ha.