Dr. Stephen Krashen, a Conversation About Language Acquisition (3)

position to learn French if at some point they become motivated to do so.

And if they don't become motivated to learn French, they will not learn.

Absolutely correct.

I think you're right.

I'm I'm part of your team now.

Can I tell you my only French joke that I managed to pull off?

Is it, is it clean?

More than.

I was in, um, in, uh, Montreal with a group of Anglophones and we were in

a French area and we went to dinner and this is my greatest triumph.

Okay.

I'm really proud of this.

The waiter came over and said ... I raised my hand and I said

... the worst mistake you can ever make.

He understood what you were saying.

Of course he laughed.

He thought it was great.

Okay.

That was it.

That's the story?

That's it.

Why...

but you know, that's a good example.

So what?

He understood what you were saying.

You mean because you didn't say...

I did it on purpose.

Let me tell you.

Okay.

It was a joke and he liked it and he laughed.

Okay.

But, but the point is, even if you didn't do it on purpose, so what?

And I get, like, if I do a video in some other language and I make a

mistake, then there's always some people who jump on me and stuff like that.

I mean like why, why does it matter?

Uh, I have never spoken to anyone in a foreign language, say in, in English

where I felt, you know, I respected that person less because they made a mistake.

This is a big, and this is again, I'm sorry to say all these nice things

about you, but I have no choice.

Um, when I had just read what, in one of your, uh, papers, you said,

don't worry about making mistakes.

Nobody cares.

I'm more interested in what you say.

I was in Mexico at a, at a one week session.

And I had lunch and dinner with, uh, Spanish teachersand we spoke Spanish

the whole time and I thought, and I thought, gee, I'm gonna make mistakes.

And then I had just read what you wrote and it hit.

I had the best time ever, very little ..., mostly

... we gossiped the whole time.

Who was it who said, if you don't have anything good to say about

someone, come sit next to me?

Okay.

It was so much fun.

Thanks to you not worrying about mistakes.

And it gets back to your point about the Prozac pill or whatever.

And you've said this there's...

unfortunately, I mean, people should go to your website and read your material,

but there's so many quotable quotes, but this, this, what do you call it?

The emo....

emotive filter, no.

The affective filter

affective filter.

Uh, there's a formula I think, attributed to Lomb Kato that sort of has, you know,

your attitude plus the time you spend with the language and divided by inhibition,

frustration, all this negative stuff.

Obviously you wanna have a positive attitude, you wanna spend the time, but

if you can reduce the inhibition, the fear you're only gonna learn faster.

So why would you bring things in like, worrying about making mistakes,

correcting people, all this other stuff?

That's gonna increase that inhibition factor.

And it's only gonna slow down because most of your mistakes,

you will eventually correct.

So why not let people enjoy themselves, enjoy the language?

While they're enjoying the language they're hearing the language, cuz

they're interacting with other people they're using the language.

Eventually they'll retrieve the right word.

Eventually, not always, but more and more they'll speak correctly

as we say, but why inhibit them?

Lomb Kato also said language is one of the few things where

knowing just a little bit is good.

If you do that in science, you make mistakes that's serious,

but in language it's all right.

It's positive.

Don't be afraid.

Exactly.

If you, if you build a bridge, you better get it right.

but when it comes to language, Um, and, and, and of course people often

ask me, and if I speak in a language that I'm a bit rusty in and same with

you, you're have a number of languages.

You're not gonna be able to maintain them all at the same level.

So then people like to, you know, come in and dump on you.

In my experience, even those languages that I have I'm

unable really to speak now.

I couldn't quickly bring that language up.

Although at one time I was in the country using it, but still A,

the time that I spent learning that language is so valuable.

I had so much enjoyment.

I learned about the country, the people, the culture, the history, and

B, when I go back there to refresh that language, I will very quickly

get back to the same level and I'll enjoy finding my old friends again.

So it's all positive.

All positive.

Yes.

The method I use for getting back at them is of course pleasure reading

And I'd like to tell a little story.

I live about, well, 40 minutes from Los Angeles, right.

And I used to go there about twice a week to see my grandchildren, still addicted.

And of course, to pump iron with Arnold on the beach, all right.

Arnold, really nice guy, by the way.

Very...

he seems to be, yeah, he seems to be.

Oh my goodness.

You go you're there doing your bench presses.

He says, oh, can I help you with that?

Try it this way.

You know, very pleasant.

Um, anyway, what do you do driving 40 minutes, twice uh, the same day, twice?

Um, radio used to be good.

Uh, listen to the news, but now it's all Donald Trump.

Music, they took the good music and put it on paid to listen stations.

Yeah.

So I stopped at the Santa Monica library.

Okay.

And I got audio books, books on disc books on tape.

Uh, I couldn't do foreign languages cuz they only had English and

they didn't have classics.

I'm a college professor.

Okay.

They had bestsellers.

I listened to bestsellers.

They're good.

They're really good.

And I got interested in everyday pop literature, self-selected and that has

been our main thing in application.

It's not the only way to do it.

Um, my colleague ... MAson has developed a system, guided self-selected

reading, after her students.

This is English as a foreign language.

After the students have heard lots of stories she tells and

makes comprehensible, they do self-selected reading from easy books.

We used to call them graded readers.

They're really comprehensible books and they're getting better,

they're becoming literature.

I read books by bill van Patton.

I just mentioned him.

My favorite author in Spanish.

And you get better and better and you enjoy it.

That's been a major breakthrough for me.

That's an easy way of getting the language back when you've been a little bit rusty.

And I think, uh, I can't remember who, who it was said that when we go back over

things that we've learned before, in our, in other words, we're reconnecting certain

neural connections that were there before we actually end up learning those things.

Interesting.

Yeah.

That, that to relearn really consolidates your hold on that material.

Um, the other thing is obviously people's tastes differ.

I happen to like 19th century literature.

So whether when I was learning Russian or even in a language that I speak

well, like French, if I'm gardening and I can remember gardening and

listening to French literature.

It elevates your control of the language.

It's just listening to something.

It becomes like music, even if you, I'm not gaining that many words,

but I'm improving all the time improving when you use the language.

When you listen, when you read, you're constantly, constantly improving.

And if you leave it, you might slip back a bit, but it's not the end of the world.

Yeah, there, it's the problem of access.

And you've just told me how to solve that.

You know, electronic etc.

Electronic is great.

Like, and right now, just to talk a little bit about LingQ in my Persian

learning we're now beta testing a system.

This might I, in fact, I'd be interested in your, uh, reaction to this, but I,

I go through these, uh, podcasts, which are on Iranian identity and Iranian

history, and this is quite serious stuff.

And I do it sentence by sentence, uh, which is easier because if you're

looking at a whole page a little more difficult and I can actually get that

sentence translated if I, if I want to.

But the big thing now is I can I get that sentence then jumbled, when

I'm finished reviewing the words and I've listened to the thing, then I

go there and it's a form of output.

I find it surprisingly addictive.

So I've got all these words and phrases jumbled.

I've gotta recreate that sentence.

It is.

It's like trying to speak, but you're, you're looking

at how the prepositions work.

You're looking at how the, the verbs work you're looking at

what you thought the word means.

You kind of figured you knew what it meant when you heard the sentence and when you

read the sentence, but now that you have to reconstruct that sentence, but you

don't have to reconstruct it from zero.

You don't have to write it all yourself.

You don't even have to remember it.

All you have to do is go in there and start the first word,

the second, maybe it's a phrase.

It's just, it's a, it's amazing.

It slows me down in terms of new vocabulary acquisition.

Uh, but it is, it is surprisingly addictive.

I don't know whether it, I think it does help my learning because I

think it gives me a better sense of how the language works, even though

it's, it's, it's less sort of intense in terms of vocabulary acquisition.

So I, I just mentioned that to you.

What's your immediate reaction?

Yeah, that is again, I'm learning things new.

I have never thought of this, but I'm, I'm open about a good idea.

Yeah, maybe once we get it out of beta, I can send it over to you and

you can, you can have a look at it.

Uh, it is amazing.

Listen, I wonder if we have any questions.

I wonder if Eric is in the background here, if, uh, any of

the listeners have any questions?

I don't see any in my chat box, but, uh, if people do have questions,

uh, don't uh, be shy here.

Um, what do we see here, Eric?

Hello, Eric.

Everyone.

Hello?

Okay.

Maybe he'll give us some questions.

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, I, it's very disappointing that, um, you know, I'll give you an example

and again, I don't wanna be nasty to our federal government here in Canada, but

they invested in a language learning app.

Okay.

To help Canadians learn artificial languages.

First of all, they call it.

M A U R I L Mauril whatever.

No one is gonna find that no one is gonna look for that.

Call it Canadian official languages, if you want, people might find it.

But then the whole thing is based on comprehension questions.

So they work in conjunction with the CBC radio Canada, and they take certain

TV programs and they prepare them.

And then they prepare a bunch of comprehension, questions and

activities surrounding those programs.

That means that I cannot choose the radio program or, or TV

program that is of interest to me.

I only can access whatever they have selected that they think

should be of interest to me.

And then they force me to do these comprehension questions and