You Don't Need Language Instruction

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here.

We've had a sunny weekend here in Vancouver. Temperatures have been cool, which is good or not good because I'm going up north tomorrow. We're going up to Manning, Alberta, northern Alberta, where it's probably going to be 25 or 30 below centigrade. I'm going to talk a little bit about the post that I made on my blog, The Linguist on Language Blog, and that is to say that you don't need language instruction to learn another language.

I just want to make this point because I often hear people say, you know, a teacher will say you have to come to class to learn or it's all well and good to listen to the language, but ultimately if you want to speak correctly you have to have formal instruction.

I often hear, too, the statement that older language learners like formal grammar explanations. They don't like things to be loosie-goosie. So, let me address these issues here. You can certainly learn in a classroom.

I don't think it's the most efficient place to learn, but it can be done; but it's not necessary. I think the majority of people who have learned another language do it exclusively or primarily outside the classroom. That has been true since the beginning of time, I believe. It's certainly been true in my case. Either people don't go to class at all or the class manages to turn them on so that they go and seek out other resources, things to listen to, things to read, people to talk to, so the learning takes place primarily outside of the classroom.

I think it can take place entirely outside the classroom and, as I say in my post, there are three things you need to learn a language.

You need the motivation, you need the time and you need to have some degree of alertness or attentiveness to what's happening in the language. So, the motivation of course is crucial.

It's hard to learn something that you're not motivated to learn. The time -- here I think, as I've said many times, the modern technology, iPod, iPhone, mp3 players, Internet, enables us to get at the language in so many different situations so that we can use up a lot of dead time, which is certainly my case with my Russian study. It's mostly dead time that I use. So, we can find the time and, of course, the motivation and the time are connected. If you haven't got the motivation you won't find the time. You'll say I'm too busy. The other thing is noticing the language and, obviously, listening a lot you start to see some patterns.

The brain starts to pick up on certain patterns just naturally. However, you can do things to help you like flashcards. I think the things we do at LingQ with the highlighting in yellow of words that you've seen before can help. I find now that I'm more advanced in my Russian, talking to my tutor and getting my report back with all of the things that I said wrong helps me to notice.

Correcting people's writing can help them notice. Reviewing grammar can help you notice. Sitting in a classroom can help you notice, but none of them individually is necessary. I think the big thing there is to do those things that you like doing.

So if you like going to class then that's fine, but formal instruction is not necessary, especially if you don't like formal instruction, which happens to be my case Now, I hear teachers say that the older learner must have this formal structure.

But, if I look at the case here in Canada with these adult ESL learners, presumably, many of whom will say I need the formal grammar explanation. Well, if that's the case, why are they still sitting in a classroom if that worked so well for them? Many of them had 10 years of that kind of instruction, why are they still sitting in a classroom? Maybe they should look at doing it some other way. We have had adult learners who have told me, whether it be with reference to Spanish verbs or being asked to identify transitive and intransitive verbs in English, a lot of people dislike that kind of instruction.

Some adults may feel they need it, some maybe do need it, many who feel they need it may not have explored other ways of learning and many of them actually don't like it. So, I don't think we can generalize. I think there also are teachers who consider that what is done in the classroom is a bit of a game just to amuse these learners and it's a game that both the teacher and the student play with not very much in the way of great learning taking place.

Now, some teachers will say that, other teachers will claim that you can only learn in a classroom. Of course, I get into these great debates on this ListServe with teachers who feel you have to go to these structured, linguistically-sound, TESOL programs where they do sociolinguistics and all this other stuff before you can help your students learn.

I say, no, I don't think that's the case. There was research I mentioned again on my blog that in Japan some Japanese students who were studying German actually did better just listening to stories.

They picked up more words just listening to stories than through more traditional language instruction. Certainly that's been my experience. There was another point I wanted to make, but I launch into these things without any notes and sometimes I'll forget.

Oh, yes, there was the case in New Jersey or New York where in some high school they had these English-as-a-second-language students from somewhere in Latin America. They found that if they gave them all iPods and had them listen to songs or whatever they liked to listen to in English that those kids got out of there English-as-a-second-language class after one year; whereas, in a more formal sort of structured environment the kids would stay in those classes for five or six years. I'm totally persuaded that if all the people who went to these ESL classes here in Vancouver, if they could be persuaded that their language learning was up to them and that the best way to learn was to be exposed to a lot of the language, to listen to stories, to watch soap operas, but with a little bit of system.

In other words, it's not enough to watch something that you don't understand or listen to something that you don't understand and continue not understanding.

It is necessary to put a bit of effort into trying to mine this content for words and phrases, which is of course what we do at LingQ. But, I remember, too, a statement once.

I was at a conference put on by the Vancouver Board of Trade, or some organization I can't remember which, for a group of Chinese immigrant engineers. Yeah, I think that the immigrant service organization S.U.C.C.E.S.S. here in Vancouver was also involved in this thing and a fellow by the name of Edwin Wong, who is the head of Training and Development for the British Columbia Employers' Association. He's a fairly senior guy.

He's of Chinese origin. I'm not sure whether he speaks Chinese or not, but he told these engineers when they were all complaining that their credentials weren't recognized and so forth he said, you know the employers actually hire a lot of people from China. They know which universities are highly rated, which are not. They understand what your credentials are worth. The biggest problem is that you can't communicate.

What you really should do is you should read the cartoons, the comics in the newspapers. Read them until you can understand them and when you can even understand the ones that have very, very few words that means you've made it. You can communicate. Now those are the kinds of things that you're not going to learn in a classroom.

You're going to have to do that outside the classroom through a lot of listening and communicating and talking to people and so forth. So, I think I've kind of droned on enough.

I just want to reiterate then, do what you like to do in language learning. If you like the classroom and I can see why many people would, it's very social, maybe you have a delightful teacher and you have friends, go for it, but it is not necessary. You don't need to go to class. You don't need formal instruction in order to learn a language and I'm talking about right up to a very, very high level of proficiency. That's my view.

I look forward to comments and criticism. Thank you.