Minds matter: Psychology of language learning

‘It’s all in the mind!’ – How true when it comes to learning a foreign language. Every teacher knows that you can have the best resources in the world, but if the learner is not in the right frame of mind to engage with the new language and use the opportunities before them, then they are unlikely to do so. There are all kinds of reasons why a learner may put obstacles in their own way or simply avoid engaging, but many of these reasons often lie in how learners view themselves, their competences, and their relationship to the language, classroom, peers, and the teacher.

Our psychologies are complex, and care must be taken not to oversimplify, but I have chosen to focus on 5 key areas of learner psychology which I think can make a difference to learning and which we as language educators can work on developing. Introducing the two Gsand the three Cs!

Have they got Grit?

Firstly, learners need to have a Growth mindset and become Gritty about their language learning. It is a well-known adage that learning a foreign language is like a marathon, not a sprint. It takes time, progress is slow and incremental, and there can be many setbacks along the way. Language learners need to develop persistence and even in the face of challenges, be able to roll up their sleeves undeterred and tackle problem areas all over again with renewed vigour – that is grittiness.

Learning a foreign language is like a marathon, not a sprint.

Growth Mindset

To have grit, language learners first need to have a growth mindset. This is when they believe that their abilities in learning a language are not fixed but can be developed. Not all learners will reach the same level of proficiency, but with the right kind of effort, strategies, and investment of time and will, every learner can improve. However, if a learner holds a fixed mindset, believing that language learning competences stem primarily from a fixed ability, then they are more likely to give up easily, and in some cases not even try to succeed. These learners feel helpless, believing there is little they can do to improve or overcome difficulties. In contrast, those with a growth mindset are typically willing to put in the effort to improve and explore a range of possible pathways to proficiency.

With a growth mindset, learners believe that their abilities can be developed.

What are the 3 Cs?

In terms of the three 3 Cs, learners need to feel a sense of Competence, Control, and Connectedness.

Competence

Learners need a sense of ‘I can’ in respect to learning a language. Much of this can stem from their mindset; however, they also need to feel that they are personally able to manage and cope with learning a language.

Control

A key part of that feeling can be generated when learners are empowered with a sense of control. Learners benefit from being able to intentionally and proactively select and initiate approaches to learning where possible in their contexts. A sense of control also concerns how learners explain their perceived successes and failures to themselves and others. Do they attribute these outcomes to factors within their control or to external factors beyond their control? With internal attributions, learners are likely to be motivated and willing to expend effort on learning, knowing that they can make a difference.

Connectedness

The third C refers to learners feeling connected not only to their teachers, but also their peers, their institution, and the language per se. When learners feel they belong in a group or institution and when they feel cared for as people and in terms of their learning progress, they are much more likely to engage and be active in their own learning. However, learners also need to build a personal connection to the language itself. Even if they feel competent and able, without a compelling reason to engage with the language, they might not bother! Help your learner’s to find a purpose, why are they learning a language and what value could it have for them and their future lives – be that in terms of relevance, importance, utility, and/or interest.

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https://oupeltglobalblog.com/2018/03/27/psychology-language-learning/

The Sardinian professor fighting to save Gaelic – and all Europe’s minority tongues

It is an impending extinction that will change the world and how people communicate: within 20 years, half of all the planet’s languages will be dead.

Experts agree that nothing can stop it happening but one academic is trying her hardest to slow it down, to help preserve what may be part of a golden ticket for our brains. Professor Antonella Sorace – a Sardinian who was discouraged from learning her own dying language in favour of “proper” Italian – is one of a growing number who believe learning a second language has enormous untapped benefits for the human brain. This is true not only for young children but also for adults and people at risk from dementia, where research consistently shows that learning a new language could delay the onset of the disease for four to five years – a better result than with any medication to date.

It is those benefits of bilingualism that should encourage us to preserve and protect Britain’s minority languages – Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Irish, Cornish and Ulster Scots, she says.

“All minority languages are declining,” said Sorace, professor of developmental linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. “If a language is not learned by children then that language is bound to die. There are big forces out there that help to speed this process along. Eventually Gaelic will die, Welsh and Sardinian will die. Many of these are languages that are still relatively healthy; others are being actively suppressed or stigmatised.

“We are trying to contribute to slowing that decline. We know linguistic diversity is important because it makes us human. We lose that and we lose an essential part of what it means to be human.”

Already her work and the project she founded three years ago in Edinburgh,Bilingualism Matters – now expanding across Europe and in the US – have convinced the Scottish government to introduce languages to primary schools. From 2020 all Scottish children will be learning a language other than English in their first year at school, with two other languages being introduced later.

“It’s all about the teaching, but young children are adept at picking up tones, so tonal languages, like Mandarin for example, are a lot easier for children than for adults,” she said.

Just as disappearing forests take with them secrets of undiscovered medicines, disappearing languages can take the key to a longer and better quality of life. The first battle is to unpick the popular myth that bilingualism might damage children’s brains. There were even suggestions it could encourage schizophrenia.

Study after study has shown the reverse to be true, says Sorace. “These prejudices are ingrained, but we are perhaps halfway to persuading people that the brain can cope. Then we have to persuade people that it is actually of benefit.

“In Sardinia, if a child speaks Sardinian it’s thought they can’t then speak Italian very well. There is an inferiority complex around these languages. My mother insisted I speak Italian, not this common dialect.”

Bilingualism Matters is working to encourage businesses to consider the benefits of their staff learning languages. “In business, people say ‘English is the language of business, why would I need to learn another language?’” said Sorace. “Maybe it would mean you could do better business.”

There is also the question of how long English can hold its dominance, not only because of the possibility of leaving the EU but also because of China’s emergence as an economic force.

The British are notoriously poor at languages, and interest in taking the subject among schoolchildren has been waning for years – encouraged, Sorace thinks, by parents who do not understand their value. “Monolingualism is a privilege, but also a limitation. Why is Chinese emerging as a powerful language? Because the economy is. The pace is much more rapid than it used to be, so who knows how long it might take for Mandarin to overtake English?”

The Scottish schools language initiative is expected to include Chinese as one of the three languages that will be introduced to primary curriculums.

The refugee crisis is throwing up another concern for Sorace. Many people arriving in new countries are encouraged to take up the language of their new home instead of – rather than alongside – their own. “It is true that some families feel their home language is a problem. They want their child to fully integrate and they think their language will hold them back. This is sometimes the message that comes from the school.

“Even in the Netherlands, a bilingual country, there is this message, you should speak Dutch as soon as possible. Yes of course you must learn to integrate, but don’t speak Dutch to your child. Unfortunately we have this perception that there is a good kind of bilingualism and a bad kind. There is no bad kind.”

Her colleague and research collaborator, Thomas Bak, a reader in human cognitive neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, agrees: “It is the most important change in our understanding of the brain in recent times. Now we know the brain is not static, a set of drawers where things are stored, it has an elasticity, a cerebral elastic. Now we know that brains adapt and adjust all our lifetime. If you start a sport late you may not get to the Olympics, but it will still impact positively on your health. That’s how I look at it. Linguistics meets neuroscience.”

Bak also grew up “protected” from what were then perceived as the dangers of bilingualism. “As a son of a Polish-speaking father and German-speaking mother in Kraków, my parents took a considered decision to not teach me German, to protect me. They were educated people but thought they were doing what was best.” In the 1960s there were academics linking a “foreign language at home” to “mental retardation”.

But is taking up French really necessary to stave off dementia, as opposed to doing crosswords and sudoku?

“Yes, to use the sports analogy, the fact that swimming is good for you is not to say tennis isn’t,” said Bak. “But with language it’s not just words, its about sounds, social interaction, cultural interaction.” He said there was already some early language research suggesting that the prevalence of dementia may already be declining.

“Maybe we are starting to see the first effects of people trying to avoid the risk factors. Bilingualism doesn’t make you immortal, it doesn’t cure dementia but it delays it. In stroke patients twice as many people in the bilingual group recovered their cognitive abilities completely after a stroke than monolinguals. The bilingual brain is better equipped to cope with the damage.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/13/sardinian-professor-fighting-to-save-gaelic-bilingualism?CMP=twt_gu

Russian: beautiful, complex and a window to the unknown

What gives Russian its romantic complexity? Over the past two months, we’ve explored the ten languages essential for the UK’s future. We turn to Russian in the eighth post of our series, by Keira Ives-Keeler of the British Council in Russia.

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The Cyrillic alphabet can intimidate non-native Russian speakers, but it shouldn’t!

Водка, meaning ‘little water’, or as the rest of the world knows it, ‘vodka’, was the very first word I learnt how to write in Russian. It might be a huge cliché, but it is a deceptively easy word to learn, and one of the few that I would argue is just about decipherable from Cyrillic for an English speaker. Here’s how each of the Cyrillic letters translates:

В = V

О = O

Д = D

К = K

А = A

Easy right? Three of the five letters are exactly the same! Of course, it gets a bit more difficult when you start constructing sentences, but in general, with 33 letters in total it’s not so bad, and once you’ve cracked it you can move onto the joys of Russian grammar. I would certainly argue that it isn’t the alphabet that makes Russian so difficult for foreigners to learn. Rather, it is the fact that as a Slavic or Slavonic language, lexically and grammatically Russian shares very few links with English (fashionable Anglicisms aside).

Slavic languages like Russian are not closely related to English 

The Slavic or Slavonic family of languages consists of three branches – East Slavic (Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian), West Slavic (Czech, Slovak, Polish and others) and South Slavic (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian). In reality, I find that what this means is that as an English native speaker, most of the time if you don’t know a word it’s pretty difficult (read: near impossible) to guess.

Nevertheless, in recent years, English has had a growing influence on the Russian language, which is particularly noticeable in Russian spoken in business settings, and in the Russian media. From стейкхолдеры (stakeholderi/stakeholders) to ‘брокеры’ (brokeri/brokers) there are countless examples to choose from. One of the most bizarre examples of this has got to be the legendary Moscow ‘фейс контроль’ (face control) – the policy of upscale nightclubs, casinos, restaurants and similar establishments to strictly restrict entry based on a bouncer’s snap judgement of the suitability of a person’s looks, money, style or attitude, especially in Russia and other former Soviet countries.

Russian pronunciation and grammar can be challenging

This growing influence of English might mean that in years to come it will be easier for foreigners to learn Russian, but I can’t help feeling that that may well still be a long way off. In the meantime, there is plenty for non-native speakers of Russian to be getting on with. Verbs of motions, verbal aspect, and anything to do with numbers/dates/numerals are the dreaded cases, but it has to be said that although there are lots of rules,  there are equally few exceptions.

Also, pronunciation is tricky and once you step into the real world and away from your lovely Russian textbooks, predicting where the stress falls in a word and how to pronounce it correctly becomes a lot more complicated (unlike Spanish, for example, with its penultimate syllable stress unless where marked). This is one area lacking in rules when it comes to Russian, as stress is not fixed (so can fall at the beginning, middle or end of a word) and placing the stress on the wrong part of the word can cause all sorts of confusion, mainly resulting in blank faces or potentially laughter depending on what you might (unintentionally) have come out with.

Russian is intensely lyrical 

In spite of this, complex as it might be, Russian is an incredibly beautiful and lyrical language. It’s no coincidence that some of the world’s greatest poets hailed from here. And once you have achieved some level of proficiency, the sense of achievement makes it all worthwhile.

Russian culture is not easy to grasp, but it’s worth the investment

As with most languages, the best way to learn Russian is through immersion. This was my experience, although unlike many students who come to Russia on their year abroad at university I chose to live in a student dorm (общежитие) rather than with a host family. I will never forget arriving at St. Petersburg, exhausted after a long journey via Germany, stepping out into the cold, gloomy Russian afternoon and wondering quite what I’d let myself in for, as the university driver grabbed my bags and trudged off to the car park, muttering and grumbling to himself along the way. I was fresh from a summer in sunny Florence and had been repeatedly told that St. Petersburg truly was ‘the Venice of the North’. As it turned out, two years of studying beginner’s Russian at university hadn’t quite equipped me for the numerous encounters with angry babushkas, disgruntled cashiers and perpetually miserable and erratic marshrutka (shared taxi) drivers that awaited me.

However, what my first years of studying Russian in the UK also hadn’t prepared me for was the overwhelming grandness of what has to be one of the most stunning cities in the world, and the unforgettable experiences and people that would shape the future of my career and the next few years of my life. Russia may initially seem like a grey country on the surface – grey skies, grey buildings, grey people even! – but if you delve deep enough you will see that there is a humanity and ‘realness’ about Russia that is difficult to describe and endlessly fascinating. Social etiquette may be quite different, most notably perhaps in the traditional Russian approach to smiling – generally smiles are reserved exclusively for people you know and not for strangers (for example, in shops and supermarkets). However, having the opportunity to put my language skills into practice gave me an insight into the country and culture that no number of textbooks, history books or travel guides ever could. Furthermore, Russian hospitality is difficult to rival and just like the British (although this is not actually the impression that Russians tend to have of us) they like a good party!

Understanding Russian opens up a world of incredible art, theatre, literature and culture

So, in spite of Russian’s reputation as an extremely difficult language to learn, for those who do give it a go, the potential rewards can be huge.  With some of the finest literature, theatre and art in the world coming from the Russian-speaking world, if you do love culture then you are simply spoilt for choice. Nothing can compare with reading Russian works in the original; Anton Chekhov, Ivan Bunin and the modernist poet Anna Akhmatova are probably my personal favourites. A night at the theatre is par for the course and generally won’t break the bank, Moscow and St. Petersburg regularly host some of the most famous and revered art works the world over, and once you get used to the fact that smiling at strangers is a no-no (I’m still getting there with that) you’re halfway there.

Russian is the eighth most widely-spoken native language in the world

Furthermore, you have the whole of the Russian-speaking world to explore. Russian ranks eighth in the world with 140-150 million native speakers, and is also spoken as a second language by over 120 million people in Russia and the neighbouring countries of Central Asia – the majority of these people, will not, in fact, speak English.

Speaking Russian gives a useful edge in your career

Although Russian may still be seen as a niche language (something that should be challenged in my opinion, considering the global role that Russia and the Russian-speaking world has to play), speaking a language that many other native English speakers do not speak opens up opportunities that might not be available otherwise. From interpreting at international conferences in Asia, to working as a translator at the UN in Vienna, my knowledge of Russian has helped me to see the world. I’ve met some amazing people and learnt more than just vocabulary along the way. It even led me to the British Council, through my participation in the organisation’s Graduate Scheme.

So all in all, although I may not have had a clue what I’d let myself in for when I first started learning Russian, I have to say that I agree with the BBC’s Bridget Kendall, who is quoted in the Languages of the Future report as saying that ‘deciding to learn Russian was probably the best decision I ever made’. It might not always feel like it on the days when it’s -20 degrees in Moscow and the threat of ice underfoot and icicles overhead loom ominously. But on the whole, learning this beautiful and complex language has opened up an equally beautiful and complex country for me. Russia might well be a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but life in Russia is certainly never boring, and learning Russian is never dull. Besides, in true Russian spirit – if you don’t have to suffer for it, then surely it’s not worth it anyway!

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http://blog.britishcouncil.org/2014/09/26/russian-beautiful-complex-and-a-window-onto-the-unknown/

Neuroscientists find that trying harder makes it more difficult to learn some aspects of language

When it comes to learning languages, adults and children have different strengths. Adults excel at absorbing the vocabulary needed to navigate a grocery store or order food in a restaurant, but children have an uncanny ability to pick up on subtle nuances of language that often elude adults. Within months of living in a foreign country, a young child may speak a second language like a native speaker.

Brain structure plays an important role in this "sensitive period" for learning language, which is believed to end around adolescence. The young brain is equipped with neural circuits that can analyze sounds and build a coherent set of rules for constructing words and sentences out of those sounds. Once these language structures are established, it's difficult to build another one for a new language.

In a new study, a team of neuroscientists and psychologists led by Amy Finn, a postdoc at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, has found evidence for another factor that contributes to adults' language difficulties: When learning certain elements of language, adults' more highly developed cognitive skills actually get in the way. The researchers discovered that the harder adults tried to learn an artificial language, the worse they were at deciphering the language's morphology—the structure and deployment of linguistic units such as root words, suffixes, and prefixes.

"We found that effort helps you in most situations, for things like figuring out what the units of language that you need to know are, and basic ordering of elements. But when trying to learn morphology, at least in this artificial language we created, it's actually worse when you try," Finn says.

Finn and colleagues from the University of California at Santa Barbara, Stanford University, and the University of British Columbia describe their findings in the July 21 issue of PLOS ONE. Carla Hudson Kam, an associate professor of linguistics at British Columbia, is the paper's senior author.

Too much brainpower

Linguists have known for decades that children are skilled at absorbing certain tricky elements of language, such as irregular past participles (examples of which, in English, include "gone" and "been") or complicated verb tenses like the subjunctive.

"Children will ultimately perform better than adults in terms of their command of the grammar and the structural components of language—some of the more idiosyncratic, difficult-to-articulate aspects of language that even most native speakers don't haveconscious awareness of," Finn says.

In 1990, linguist Elissa Newport hypothesized that adults have trouble learning those nuances because they try to analyze too much information at once. Adults have a much more highly developed prefrontal cortex than children, and they tend to throw all of that brainpower at learning a second language. This high-powered processing may actually interfere with certain elements of learning language.

"It's an idea that's been around for a long time, but there hasn't been any data that experimentally show that it's true," Finn says.

Finn and her colleagues designed an experiment to test whether exerting more effort would help or hinder success. First, they created nine nonsense words, each with two syllables. Each word fell into one of three categories (A, B, and C), defined by the order of consonant and vowel sounds.

Study subjects listened to the artificial language for about 10 minutes. One group of subjects was told not to overanalyze what they heard, but not to tune it out either. To help them not overthink the language, they were given the option of completing a puzzle or coloring while they listened. The other group was told to try to identify the words they were hearing.

Each group heard the same recording, which was a series of three-word sequences—first a word from category A, then one from category B, then category C—with no pauses between words. Previous studies have shown that adults, babies, and even monkeys can parse this kind of information into word units, a task known as word segmentation.

Subjects from both groups were successful at word segmentation, although the group that tried harder performed a little better. Both groups also performed well in a task called word ordering, which required subjects to choose between a correct word sequence (ABC) and an incorrect sequence (such as ACB) of words they had previously heard.

The final test measured skill in identifying the language's morphology. The researchers played a three-word sequence that included a word the subjects had not heard before, but which fit into one of the three categories. When asked to judge whether this new word was in the correct location, the subjects who had been asked to pay closer attention to the original word stream performed much worse than those who had listened more passively.

Turning off effort

The findings support a theory of language acquisition that suggests that some parts of language are learned through procedural memory, while others are learned through declarative memory. Under this theory, declarative memory, which stores knowledge and facts, would be more useful for learning vocabulary and certain rules of grammar. Procedural memory, which guides tasks we perform without conscious awareness of how we learned them, would be more useful for learning subtle rules related to language morphology.

"It's likely to be the procedural memory system that's really important for learning these difficult morphological aspects of language. In fact, when you use the declarative memory system, it doesn't help you, it harms you," Finn says.

Still unresolved is the question of whether adults can overcome this language-learning obstacle. Finn says she does not have a good answer yet but she is now testing the effects of "turning off" the adult prefrontal cortex using a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation. Other interventions she plans to study include distracting the prefrontal cortex by forcing it to perform other tasks while language is heard, and treating subjects with drugs that impair activity in that brain region.

English edge: Those who speak the language fluently ‘earn 34% more than others’

NEW DELHI: Those who speak English fluently earn up to 34% more than those who don't speak the language, a recent report has found, confirming the link between an education in English and the scope of employment opportunities.

But given the constraints of cost and access, the number of those studying in English medium is yet to pick up. Less than 25% of students of higher education are studying in English medium in the north central region of India, including Bihar and UP, compared to around 75% in south India.

Higher education in Indian languages costs between Rs 1,200 and Rs 3, 000 a year, while English medium costs 6-8 times more, between Rs 8,000 and 15,000 a year. But the investment is seen as worthwhile since education in English is likely to to yield higher wages, says the report authored by Dr Abusaleh Shariff of the Centre for Research and Debates in Development Policy, New Delhi and Amit Sharma, research analyst with the National Council for Applied Economic Research.

"Men who speak English fluently earn wages about 34% higher and men who speak a little English earn wages about 13% higher than those who don't speak any English," the report said.

According to the report, only 20% of the Indian population can speak in English, and only 4% would be considered fluent. Where one lives is a key determinant in accessing English medium education, it found.

"Politicians who don't like English are captains of a sinking ship. Higher education in English helps us get better integrated into the globalized organized sector and labour market. Those without access to higher education in English are being left out," Dr Shariff told TOI.

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/English-edge-Those-who-speak-the-language-fluently-earn-34-more-than-others/articleshow/28414991.cms