Anarchocyclist

This morning i was once again inspired by the latest post over at AJATT. Having Khatsumoto’s advice compressed into a short video talk was quite helpful. He goes over a couple of really important points.

One relates to the common perception of “learning”. Through our experience in the school system, we sometimes come to believe that “learning” involves sitting in front of a boring textbook that explains a bunch of principles. Then we think about those principles, maybe do a few exercises that reinforce the principles, and then we declare that we’ve “learned” the topic. This really excludes the natural way in which the brain adapts to situations and acquires practical knowledge. Really, this description is only valid when we learn about languages, not when we acquire languages. The only way to acquire a language is to be exposed to huge amounts of input, letting the brain naturally adapt to it and become used to it, until it just becomes part of you.

I think this is the big reason why people who take university language courses almost never become fluent through that. These classes typically teach a bunch of grammar rules and phonetic principles, which is really more like linguistics or language appreciation. Ya, it can be interesting, but it usually doesn’t help you speak normally. At best, you can labouriously compose an email or a letter, and haltingly ask where the train station is (but you typically don’t understand the answer if it’s nontrivial). In contrast, when you have acquired a language, you just talk. you don’t need to compose every sentence individually, you just go.

Knowing this distinction doesn’t give you all the answers, though. Lately i’ve been feeling sorta down about my chinese skills, and some of this is due to not being able to exactly see what i’m learning each day. Khatsumoto had some good reminders about this too, though. In the video he reminds us that “for a long time you can’t tell how much you’re getting, so you have to concentrate on how much you’re doing” (ie, how many hours you’re listening and reading…gaining input to feed your hungry brain). “The whole process is a process of sucking, but you’re sucking less each day.” You just have to realize that you’re sucking less each time. Most of the learning is incidental, and nonlinear. Different things stick each time, but you just need to give your brain more and more chances to catch on. Little kids get thousands of hours of listening before they can talk. Same for you. You need to expose yourself to input all the time, and your brain will grasp all sorts of little details each time. Slowly but steadily you will progress toward fluency.

I liked his analogy about skateboarding…if you just read some books and learn *about* skateboarding, but you only spend 10 minutes per week on the actual skateboard, then you’re gonna find skateboarding incredibly hard. Same with languages…if you only listen to small amounts, it’ll be hard. You have to listen lots and lots and lots, and it’ll sink in. The amount of input you get is proportional to the speed of the reduction in your suckage.

Trust your brain. it’s good at picking things up. just give it as many chances as you can, and you’ll suck less each time. And it’s not like chapters in a textbook in class…you can’t assume you’ll be perfect at everything in that “chapter” after you’ve worked on it. Maybe you’ll get some things now, some things later. Don’t try to predict or force which ones you want to “click”, because it doesn’t work like that. Just keep exposing yourself to it and your brain will pick up different pieces each time.

Ride hard, ride free

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 25th, 2008 at 10:01 am and is filed under DIY, Front Page, chinese, languages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.