How about figuring out how to motivate the students?
Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here today to talk again about language learning and to
talk about how languages should be taught in school with particular reference to an
article that appeared in The Guardian from the UK, a leading newspaper in the UK.
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So this, um, article, cause I follow things in the news, uh,
related to language learning.
So here was this article in The Guardian about the recommendation
from a body in the UK, that concerns itself with education, that...
suggesting that a new approach to language learning, one that would
sort of inject some more enthusiasm into language learning would be to
have a list of 1700 basic words that students would be required to learn.
And this of course brought a tremendous sort of wave of criticism from people who
are involved with language teaching saying you can't just, uh, learn from lists.
That's going to discourage people.
That's not going to create a sort of a sense of love of learning a language.
So I, I sort of thought about this and I did a lot of reading on the subject.
So first of all, there is a bit of a crisis surrounding language
learning in the UK, even though they are just across the Channel from
France, not far away from Spain, uh, not to mention, uh, other countries.
Uh, not to mention the fact that we can easily connect with, with China, with,
uh, with the Middle East and learn all these different languages and yet interest
in language learning is declining.
And I did some research and, uh, I think more than 50% of schools give
45 minutes a week of instructional time to language learning.
So very little time is spent with language learning, interest
in languages is declining.
Uh, one of the reasons given is that students think that,
um, languages are difficult.
So it's a risky subject to take up because you may not do well.
And so that might affect your chances of getting into
university and so forth and so on.
So I thought about this.
So on the one hand, of course, it's hard to learn from a list, but on the
other hand, I thought, you know, if you have a very concrete, specific
goal, you have to learn 1700 words, then it's very clear, what you have to
do in order to get grades on language, whichever German, Spanish, French.
Um, and I think there's something to be said for that, because I think now
a lot of people don't know why they're even bothering to learn the language.
They don't know what they're supposed to achieve.
Uh, Unfortunately, this recommendation also suggested that the students
be required to use these words and to use them correctly.
That's much, much more difficult.
Um, I think the objective of any language program should be to make the students
like learning the language, even if they're not tremendously motivated
to eventually use the language.
If they like the process because it's very clear cut "I have to learn 1700 words
and I'm going to go about learning them"
um, that I think it's possible might induce more people to get
interested in, in language because the task is kind of finite.
Yeah, I can do that.
If I go at it for five years, I can learn 1700 words.
Uh, so on that level, it's not a bad idea.
It's not a good idea, in my opinion, to demand grammatical accuracy from
language learners in school, because so few of them end up speaking the language.
What does it matter whether they are able to nail niceties
of grammar at the age of 12?
To me, it doesn't matter.
Uh, if there's some way of making them enjoy the process of language
learning so that they expose themselves to the language, they develop some
degree of comprehension, they develop a certain level of vocabulary.
That's good enough.
And some of those people will be motivated enough to take
it to another level right now.
Very few relatively few graduates of schools in the UK end up speaking
another language, the lowest level of any country in the European Union.
They're not...
no longer in the European Union, say in Europe.
And I don't think the situation is much different in North America.
So, but where I think they've gone, they've got it wrong with this list
of 1700 keywords that you must learn is does let them learn any 1700 words.
Why should you determine which words they have to learn?
And if you set it up so that they learn these words through a process
of listening and reading, like LingQ where you're looking at words and
saving words, and we can keep track of the words you've learned, and we can
even test you on your comprehension of these words in context, using close
tests, using multiple choice and so forth, flashcards, whatever it might be.
Uh, but why say you have to learn these words because one thing we know
for sure is that the high frequency words they're going to show up anyway.
So the first even thousand words, if you do a lot of reading and listening,
you're going to get those words cause you're going to meet them so often,
apparently theoretically, you need to meet a word eight times in order to
have a 50% chance of remembering it.
So that's going to happen for the first thousand words.
And then if you look at any analysis of frequency, frequency drops off so
fast that for the next thousand words, so that might get us closer to where
this, uh, British, uh, educational, uh, you know, authority was proposing
1700 words, you end up having to read two or three times as much in order
to have a chance of meeting these words often enough to remember them.
Besides which...
pretty much it drops off so quickly that it doesn't really matter
whether you learn the next thousand or the next, the, the thousand
after that, they're all a lot less.
And so what matters much more is what subject matter are you covering?
If you are interested in sports, there are certain words that
will appear more frequently.
If you're interested in economics, other words will appear more frequently
and as long as you have 2000 words, in other words, if you have exposed
yourself to enough of the language, listening and reading that you
actually know 2000 or 1700 words, whichever words they are good enough.
Now I'm going to get into the difference between word families and words.
However you want to count them.
If it's 1700 word families, maybe it's 5,000 words.
It doesn't matter.
Some numbers, some arbitrary number is what a student is responsible to learn.
Not necessarily this specific list of words, but a specific number of words.
And you go on read whatever you want to read and listen to in that language.
And we will test you on it.
We'll test you on comprehension and if you do okay, then you're
considered to have passed.
In fact, I wouldn't even test them on comprehension in terms of, you
know, answering questions about what happened and something they read,
because that's a different skill.
Again, that's the skill of trying to remember what you heard.
Uh, if we just testing them on say the objective is to get you to where
you recognize in context, 2000, 3000 words, we test you on that.
You do that.
That's, what's going to give you your mark in the language.
That might give the learners our greater sense of achievement.
Those people who are inclined, those learners, who are inclined to get
enthusiastic about the language through their listening and reading
through that sense of achievement, of, of understanding more and more
of a language of enjoying content of interesting of interest to them.
Those people will take it further.
And so with them, the objective of, of turning learners into
enthusiastic learners will be achieved.
Remember, there are two keys I often talk about three, but let's talk about two
fundamental keys of language learning.
One is the attitude of the learner, the enthusiasm, the interest, the motivation,
and the other is the time spent.
So if teachers can motivate their learners to spend the time for
whatever reason, because have a very concrete task learn 2000 or 3000.
Or because through learning these words and phrases through a lot of listening
and reading, they have a sense of achievement and they have this sense
of understanding and other language.
And then they are interested in learning more about the language.
Then that again is a major, um, you know, should be a major goal
of, of language instruction.
I always have, whenever I talk about how I learn languages, inevitably, the
language teachers who prefer to have...
and who always say, well, that's fine for you because you're motivated, but I have
a classroom full of unmotivated learners.
So therefore your system would never work.
Therefore they do what they've always done, which in fact, isn't very
motivating, which is teaching grammar and then testing them on grammar and
finding that they get six out of 10.
And so therefore they're discouraged.
So that's not motivated maybe rather than saying, well, Steve you're motivated.
So your system works for you, but I have unmotivated students,
therefore it won't work.
How about figuring out how to motivate the students?
Maybe not all of them, but a larger number than are motivated right now.
And maybe with an approach like that, we won't see this dropping off of
interest in language learning, which is a major issue in the UK, uh, and
probably in, in North America, despite all of the enthusiastic teachers.
I have met them.
I've met them at the, uh, American council of teachers of foreign languages.
And there are lots of them.
And yet the statistics are there.
There's less and less interest in foreign languages.
So something is not working.
One solution suggested here by this, and I'm going to leave all the
relative links in the description.
Is this idea of having a list of words that you have to learn.
It may or may not work, but obviously what is, and this is despite
years of research like studies.
Whenever I go and search on the internet, I find detailed
studies about all different aspects of, of language learning.
Most of which refer to who what's happened, what happens in a classroom as
if that's the only place where you learn languages, which of course it isn't.
Uh, the classroom should be where you turn people on to learning languages.
They will learn them elsewhere on their own if they're turned on.
But despite 50 years of research, all we see is declining
interest in language learning.
We don't see increased success in language instruction at school,
in the UK or North America.
Maybe it's not so complicated.
Maybe people shouldn't over-complicate it.
Maybe they should just stick with what Krashen says, and what I definitely have
experienced in my language learning.
And that is if you can expose yourself to enough of the language you're going to
learn, and some people will be motivated enough to do that others won't be.
And if they at least have a very concrete task at school, you have to learn 2000
words and we're going to test you on it in using cloze tests or multiple choice.
So then they have a clear idea of what their expected to so.
Some people will only do that.
And I think maybe as many people as now or more will be motivated to take it further.
And so with that, I'll leave you with, I'd be interested in your comments on this
and maybe a couple of videos where I've talked a bit about motivation and input
and how that helps us learn languages.
Thank you for listening.
Bye for now.