Should Your Child Be Learning Mandarin?

Reports in the NY Times and elsewhere point to the rise of Chinese language instruction in our schools, against the backdrop of the demise of language learning in general. People justify this rush to Chinese by referring to the growth of the Chinese economy. The US government has declared Chinese a “critical language.” How realistic is this Chinese boom, and will it last? Here is a reality check.

1) Chinese will probably not help your kid get a job.

Chinese is being touted as the language of the future, given the growth of the Chinese economy. Some predict that a knowledge of Chinese will be big advantage in the job markets of the future. It is worthwhile remembering that Chinese is the language of business in only one country, China. Relatively few American kids are going to be working in China after graduating. Read the Rest of This Article »

6 Steps To Effective Self Learning

Image courtesy of Slorp@Flickr

This report and other recent studies show that online learning, distance learning, and self-learning in general, are not only more convenient, but, in fact, more effective than the classroom, for high school, college and adult learners. In the last decade, the Internet, the MP3 player, the iPhone, and other mobile devices,as well as social networking sites, language exchange communities, online learning systems, university courses online and more, have changed how we deal with knowledge. Independent programmer-entrepreneurs are constantly developing new learning applications. The language lab is already obsolete, can the college lecture hall be far behind? The walls of academia, and the costs of learning, are crumbling before our eyes and ears.

For those who are conditioned to think that learning only happens in a classroom, the world of self-learning can be a little daunting. How do we best take advantage these new opportunities.

1. Get interested

Make no mistake. Your interest in the subject is the essential driver of success. You can’t learn what you do not want to learn. Emotion is an important part of the learning process. If you are even moderately interested in a subject, give yourself  a chance. The key is to get started. If you can create some pleasurable routines, you may find that the subject grows on you. “L’appetit vient en mangeant” (the appetite comes with eating) as they say in French. Read the Rest of This Article »

7 Concepts of Natural Language Learning

Language learning is essentially fun, or should be, if it is done naturally, in line with how the brain learns. We learned our first language quite well, without explicit instruction. Unfortunately, the teaching of second languages has been turned into a complex classroom ceremony, consisting of obtuse grammar rules, annoying drills, rote memory and tests. The result is that many people are discouraged from learning languages. Maybe they would not learn their first language if it were taught in this way.

One of the most innovative thinkers on language learning is Stephen Krashen, who has pointed out that languages are acquired through meaningful input and not deliberate instruction. His insights are being confirmed by the latest research on how the brain learns, as described in an excellent book by German brain researcher, Manfred Spitzer, Learning: The Human Brain and the School for Life. As Spitzer says, learning takes place in the brain, not at school.

Here are seven concepts of natural language learning that reflect the most recent research on how the brain learns.
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7 Steps That Might Save A Life

Image of a defibrillator courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Lists of seven ways to improve yourself are popular on the web. Here is a seven-item list that could save lives. But first a little background.

A few days ago in Russia, one of the most promising young hockey players in the world, Alexei Cherepanov, died when his heart stopped working during a game in the Russian elite Continental Hockey League. Apparently there was one non-functioning defibrillator in the building.

How may people know what a defibrillator is and how to us one? A week ago I didn’t. Now I do. Here is my story and I hope it helps someone some day.
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The Three Stages of Language Fluency

“You are what you eat” – popular saying

In the global information age, maybe it should be “you are what you can say”. Language, in its varied manifestations, is mankind’s defining achievement, and it also defines us. Language can be social, political, technical, practical, entertaining, sensual, philosophical, and much more. At the banquet of life, each language is another course. The better you can use languages, your own and others, the more you can enjoy the feast. At least that has been my experience.

I have achieved varying degrees of fluency in 12 languages, and look forward to learning more. To me, there are three natural stages in language growth, which I outline here. Billions of dollars are wasted on ineffective language and literacy instruction programs, which ignore these natural stages.

The First Stage: Connecting With the Language (60-90 hours)

My Goal:	To become familiar with a strange language
My Measurable:	Learn to recognize 1000 words
Main task:	Listen repeatedly to short, simple content
My Target Languages:	(planned) Czech, Arabic, Hindi, Turkish

When I begin, I need to “connect” with the new language and overcome my resistance to its strange sounds and structure. I don’t need to speak. I don’t need to understand any grammar. I don’t need to get anything “right”. I am not interested in mastering a few phrases or simple greetings. I want to get into the language, to get a feel for it.
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5 Poor Excuses For Not Learning a Foreign Language

We all have the ability to learn to speak more than one language. Throughout history, whenever languages co-existed in close proximity, people managed to naturally communicate across the language divide. They had to. That is still true today. Where different languages brush up against each other, people have no trouble learning another language and using it, whether it be children selling souvenirs in the market, or business people in international meetings. This is true in Asia, Africa, America and Europe.

We don’t need a special gift for language learning. Doing so is natural to us all. Today, in the Internet and information age, we no longer live in isolation, linguistically or culturally. The opportunity to engage with other languages is greater than ever.

So why don’t more people learn other languages, especially in North America? In part it is because of the seven common misconceptions about language learning, which confuse people. There are also five common excuses for not learning a language. But are they valid?

1. I am not interested in languages, I don’t need them

Is this really true? What if you could do it for free, free of cost and free of effort?

I sold encyclopedias door to door, almost 50 years ago. My door-opener was, “if you could get a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica, free of charge, would you be interested?”. That often got me in the door. Parents could visualize an encyclopedia to share with their children. Once I explained that it was not free, “but for less than you spend on coffee or cigarettes…,” I was usually shown the door.
I use the same question with reluctant language learners. “If you were guaranteed to learn to speak another language, without a lot of hard work, would you be interested?” The answer is usually “yes”.

Many people who say they are not interested, would really like to speak another language. Some may even have heard that language learning is excellent stimulus for the brain. But too often the image they see is one of tedious study. They do not have the experience of speaking another language. They cannot visualize the feeling of satisfaction that this brings. So in many cases the interest is there, it is just a matter of getting started.
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7 Common Misconceptions About Language Learning

There are over 6,000 languages in the world. Some are more important than others, not better or more advanced, just more important. Why? Because they are spoken by more people, in more countries. That does not mean that Finnish is not important to the Finns, and Maori is not important to the Maoris. It is just that these languages are not so important to the rest of us.

On the other hand, Mandarin Chinese is spoken by over one billion people. Chinese origin words account for 60% of Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese vocabulary. Knowing Chinese will help you learn these languages too. It helped me. Chinese culture has influenced the world for thousands of years with its art, philosophy, technology, food, medicine and performing arts. Today China’s economy is booming. Chinese seems well worth learning.

Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese are essentially dialects of the same language. If you learn one, you can learn the others. I did. If you learn Spanish, you open the door to the culture, music, history and possible business dealings with 800 million people in 60 countries, including the US and Canada.
If you get ambitious you could try Russian, as I have been doing for the last two years. Once you have Russian you can probably communicate with other Slav speakers.

But hold it here! Before getting carried away, let’s look at the present situation of language teaching. According to one Canadian survey, after 12 years of daily French classes, only one high school graduate out of 147 (0.68%) achieved “intermediate” proficiency. Another survey of immigrants learning English in the US showed that “classroom instructional hours” had little impact on progress.

If we cannot teach our own official languages in North America, what hope is there for other languages like Chinese or Spanish, let alone Russian, Arabic or Hindi?

As a speaker of 10 languages I know the benefits of speaking more than one language. We simply have to change the way we go about teaching languages. To start with we need to dispel seven common misconceptions about language learning.
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7 Pleasurable Ways to Improve Your Reading Ability

“There is a total incompatibility between the joy of reading, a vagabond experience, and the experience of reading in order to answer questions, and explain what you understood.” - Rubem Alves, Brazilian educator.

What is most likely to influence your success at school or at a job? The ability to read well. And that goes for your kids too. The declining literacy of our society has been a major concern of educators for a while now, and yet things are not getting better. One reason might be a failure to recognize that reading and literacy are personal skills, best acquired when associated with pleasure.

In most cases, how well we learn to read will depend largely on our exposure to language as children. If we hear people around us talking about a wide variety of subjects as children, we naturally pick up the words and phrases they use. If we pick up a lot of words, we will have an advantage when we start reading, and we will learn to read better. This, in turn, helps us to acquire more words, leaving the poor readers, who know few words, further and further behind. The literacy divide usually begins early in life, and can only be overcome by lots of reading later in life.

Much of the traditional advice to struggling readers, these days, seems to involve developing “cognitive strategies”. In this approach, readers are asked to focus more, to think, to be curious and ask questions, to analyze, to predict, to infer, and to monitor their understanding, or worse still to answer questions on their comprehension of what they have read. In other words they are asked to become self-conscious readers.I do not agree with this approach.

Here are my seven strategies for reading improvement.
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How the Internet is Changing Education

The word “university” would seem to imply the universe, infinity, no limitations. The reality of today’s universities is quite different.

Limitations of the Traditional System

University today is an institution with severe limitations. There are limitations on who gets in, limitations on who is teaching courses, limitations on what courses are offered, limitations on which courses you can enroll in, limitations on when courses are offered and on and on.

What’s more, universities are tremendously expensive. The average cost in North America is in excess of $25,000 per year per student, or around $5,000 for an 8 month course of study in one subject. In Canada, for example, 6.1% of GDP is spent on “higher education”.

The Potential of Online Education

The Internet is a much more promising model. The possible methods of delivery of educational content include video, audio, text, web conferences, blogs, podcasts, forums, and other forms of interactive learning.

Face to face meetings can also be efficiently organized through the web. Age, nationality and language need not restrict this interaction. Read the Rest of This Article »

Nail Your Next Presentation with these Classic Principles of Public Speaking

I have only recently begun contributing articles to self-help blogs on the internet. Many of the articles are genuinely helpful, as can be judged by the appreciative comments from many savvy readers.

I am trying to learn how to become more efficient myself, to reduce clutter, and establish priorities. I have quite a way to go, and therefore have nothing to offer in terms of advice about efficient work habits.

I am interested in language learning, however, and how humans use language for different purposes, including using eloquence to persuade other people to do things.

When I studied political science in Paris in the 60s, great importance was placed on oral presentations, and these had to follow a precise formula. Subsequently, as a diplomat and corporate executive, I often had to speak publicly in different languages. I still do now, even as a private businessman. Having an effective presentation formula in my pocket has made it all a lot easier. Read the Rest of This Article »

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