as children, HOW did we learn the meanings of each word in our first language? That
is a big challenge, because as children, we didn’t have another “mother tongue” or
language available to us that we could find the equivalent definition of that word
through a dictionary. That was ALREADY our mother tongue. One may say that we learned
our first language through passive learning (i.e. listening to our parents saying words
over and over again).
BUT! You can listen to a word thousand times and if you are not told the meaning of it,
you still wouldn’t understand its meaning! For example, how did we just magically come
to understand every single word our parents spoke to us as kids? For example, “you want
to sleep?” “You want to eat an apple?”
I don’t remember consciously learning the definition of an apple yet I still knew what
an apple was when I went to the supermarket with my mom as a child.
If we learned our first language through passive learning, why is it so difficult for
us to do the same as adults when learning a foreign language? Why are there so many
people against listening to audio tapes in one’s target language for thousands of
hours? They say “It’s still ineffective because just by listening to the audio for 1000
hours in your target foreign language you still don’t understand what they’re saying”.
But why did we have this ability as children though? Or else, how did we learn our
first language if not through constant repetition of phrases and LOTS of hearing?
I am amazed and perplexed at the same time by our ability as children to learn a
language!
I never understood why people talk so much about learning the way children learn their first language. Despite being 100% immersed in the language, children take a very long time to learn their first language to fluency. After 11 months of learning German from scratch as a part time hobby, I am miles ahead of any 11 year old child in the German speaking world. If I am speaking German like a 5 year old child in 4 years from now, I will be very disappointed.
"If we learned our first language through passive learning, why is it so difficult for
us to do the same as adults when learning a foreign language? Why are there so many
people against listening to audio tapes in one’s target language for thousands of
hours? They say “It’s still ineffective because just by listening to the audio for 1000
hours in your target foreign language you still don’t understand what they’re saying”.
But why did we have this ability as children though? Or else, how did we learn our
first language if not through constant repetition of phrases and LOTS of hearing? "
I think you have input based learning confused with passive learning. Everyone, both children and adults, learns through context. I know about 200 Chinese words. I’m not going to magically learn chinese by listening to a Mao speech 1000 times. I’ll learn by listening to a dialogue that uses a vocabulary of, lets say, 300, words. There will be just enough words for me to learn, and just enough that I already know so that I can grap onto the words I don’t know.
I have never met anyone serious about learning how to communicate who can read and really understand who is unable to speak. There are literature specialists in the universties like this, but I think the vast majority of language learners are more worried about communication.
For example, my British Lit professor told me he had read all of the necessary classics in their original French, German, and Italian during his studies for his Romanticism thesis. His spoken French was terrible, and he readily admitted it. I’m sure if he went to France for a couple months he’d speak very well, all the same!
That entertaining blogger with the funny accent used to blog heavily against literature study. I say if you like literature, and all you want to do is read literature, go for it! I think he realized this and backed off.
Some very good answers already but this is my take.
How did we learn the meanings of each word in our first language?
When kids start to learn words, they need some time to get to about 100 words and need to have a lot of input to these words to retain them. However, when the vocabulary gets to about 100 words, then it’s the vocabulary explosion. Children can learn lots of words everyday and some that they will only hear once. It’s called “fast mapping” and it IS amazing: the child needs to perceive the sounds, infer the meaning from the context, reproduce it orally and memorize all of this information. What’s truly incredible is that they don’t make any effort to increase their vocabulary.
How did we just magically come to understand every single word our parents spoke to us as kids?
It didn’t happen “magically” although it is an incredible feat. As I said, you learn your first 100 words or so over a certain period of time, it doesn’t happen overnight and then there is an outburst. Same thing for sentences. After the first words, telegraphic sentences will appear (cat drink, apple want) and they will start to create sentences that respect more and more the structure of the language that they are exposed to. Children infer the meaning of words from context. Most likely, the reason why you knew what an apple was is because you had seen one before and heard what is was called. (I know I ate some apples when I was a toddler and that it’s where I picked it up although I don’t remember it.)
If we learned our first language through passive learning, why is it so difficult for us to do the same as adults when learning a foreign language?
That’s a misconception. We didn’t learn it through “passive learning”. Babies try to talk as soon as they can. They start babbling when the larynx gets into place so they can create human speech sounds (as soon as 5 months old sometimes). They try to utter sounds they hear around them. After some months they start to pronounce real words and over time they build their vocabulary progressively. Actually babies are the biggest advocates for the “speak as soon as you can” theory in my opinion.
Why are there so many people against listening to audio tapes in one’s target language for thousands of hours? Etc…
If there is no context that can help you to infer the meaning of the words, it is only useless… at best.
We didn’t have the ability to listen to a tape in any language as a baby and be able to learn anything from it.
We were able to learn our language because of context and thanks to our interaction with people around us.
The physical brains of small children have many trillions of synaptical connections, each of which is potentially the most efficient pathway to a given result. After some years of life, those pathways which aren’t needed tend to atrophy. The connections that are most apt for a given language tend in this way to be cemented in place. Later language learning also changes the brain, however. But the process is more one of growing new connections. For more about this, see Doidge, the Brain that Changes Itself. So children have a huge advantage, but, it does take them a long time to come online, doesn’t it. A motivated adult can be speaking in less time, albeit with slightly imperfect results.
The problem is that aside the fact that kids learn without any conscious effort , is that they are ‘‘fresh’’ from this world we live in. All the interference that makes us different compared to how we were hundreds of years before( TV ,computers,food etc.) really takes its toll on us. For example I’ve heard of a meeting in the Arab world ( around 1000 years or so ) on which hundreds of poets would gather and recite hundreds or long poems and all would be remembered by each and every participant word by word.This was possible because they lacked all the factors that weaken our mental capabilities .This what I had in mind when I called children fresh because they didn’t have the time to develop the metabolism of a XXI century person .
“For example I’ve heard of a meeting in the Arab world ( around 1000 years or so ) on which hundreds of poets would gather and recite hundreds or long poems and all would be remembered by each and every participant word by word.This was possible because they lacked all the factors that weaken our mental capabilities”
It sounds to me like they were able to do this because they spent a huge amount of time reading poems, and we are not able to do this now because this is something that we do not do so much any more. I don’t think it is about our weakened mental capabilities. I was, until recently, able to recite the entire poem Tam O’Shanter (Robert Burns Country: Tam O' Shanter: A Tale) word for word, without understanding a lot of the vocabulary in it. I was able to do this simply because I liked the poem a lot and so I read it over and over and over. I never tried to memorise it. I was also able to recite ‘The Raven’ and about 10 other poems from my head.
@ColinJohnstone: This is a fact that people from ages ago possessed an intellect which is far superior to ours ( for example Leonardo da Vinci who was an inventor , painter etc.and he excelled in all while as people in our age barely manage in one domain ).Can anyone among us today learn by listening only once hundreds of long poems ? I don’t think so( I am not saying that the Arabs then were the only smart ones but I believe anyone had I tremendous understanding and control over their brain).
@ MADARA - I don’t think people in the past possessed a superior intellect to ours. Leonardo da Vinci was an inventor when it was easier to invent useful things, and a scientist when science was easier than it is now. His paintings are of a lower quality to a lot of the artwork that you can see now.
Another example might be Issac Newton. It is not possible for somebody today to revolutionize science and mathematics in the way that Issac Newton did, and this is not because he had some sort of special ability. I am sure there are many physicists and mathematicians today who are far more intelligent and creative than Issac Newton was. This is because physics and mathematics is much more difficult now than it was in Issac Newton’s time.
Sorry, I misread slightly the part of your previous message that I quoted. I missed the part about the poems being remembered. In that case, I do not believe this story at all. I don’t think it is possible that hundreds of poets have ever gotten together, recited hundreds of long poems, and remembered each one of them word for word.
Incidentally, don’t overlook the fact that some adults really don’t know the language they are supposed to know. Not all children actually do learn their native language.
Before the children speak correctly they not only receive a huge everyday input from their parents, relatives and friends, but also they have thousands incorrect attempts.
The emigrants who arrive in the foreign country are in the situation a bit similar to the kid’s situation: they need to speak - and this neccssity helps them and forces them to speak, at first very clumsy, then with praxis better and better.
However, the kids have two big advantages: their brains are more flexible and not full with adult’s content and worries.
I never looked at it this way, but that truly is interesting.
creimann, that’s true! I know many Germans, who make many mistakes! And even when I read German books I stumble about mistakes. Authors should at least know better, but no! That’s what I tell the people who are learning German, don’t worry, if you don’t get it right the first time, many Germans do not even get it right after years and at least they are natives, how should foreigners be better? But many times they are!
@collin
Kids have only one disadvantage: they don’t understand abstract things.
That’s why they learn quickly concrete things, like: give me a toy; let’ds go walking…, but not abstract ideas.
They don’t know Grammar, they have only one way to learn - the way of trials and mistakes.
But they learn from their mistakes and gradually they are speaking more and more correctly.
@ColinJohnstone: It is your right to believe what ever you want to ( we live in a free world) but the story is 100% true. As for the intellect part I may have been a little off because it is true that they had the same brain which God bestowed even upon us but the environment was different, the food they ate and other factors .
I think it is a little bit difficult to understand it, because many people say that human beings are able to learn everything with practice every day.
And that was the way that we learnt our own language, repeat over and over the same words until we did it good, we did it without any explanation why did we have to say in that order the words? we just said the words without reflect even if we didn’t the meaning the words, but now that we are adults, we need to know the meaning of every single word before saying that we want to say. It is confuse but is the true, so let’s go to work harder and practice every day more and more to get our goals.
@ Collin
I can’t say that the kids are worse in the learning languages.
They have only one method: by trials and misrakes, but they have a very flexible mind and they have a lot of time to absorbe gradually all difficulties of the language.
We, I mean: adults, don’t have so much time, we don’t have so flexible mind - that are our disadvatages, but we have also advantages- we can faster get the structure of the new language, we can always chose what is for us more interesting, we can grasp the language not only from listening, but also by reading, writing and speaking to the topics that are interesting for us.
The big advantage adults have is that they have mastered the art of reading.
The big advantage kids have is that they are totally immersed, with full time teachers, and no option not to improve (if they want to function well in society).
@iang
You are wrong.
The little kids can’t read and write, but they effectively learn their mother langauage from 2 till 5 years: by Listening, listening, listening, listening (100 times!) > after that: ‘talking’, and not always correctly at first.