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"You Can't Get One from Me, But You Can Make Your Own"
by Reid Wilson
First appeared: LANGUAGE LEARNING #16
Earlier today I sent a few close friends an e-mail asking if they wanted
me to make them a language learning picture book when I make one for myself and
my wife. Here's a copy of my letter to them. And while I can't offer you one--it
wouldn't necessarily match your language environment anyway--I think you'll find
some helpful ideas for doing your own project.
Here's the leter I sent, with a few personal references taken out:
Hi all,
In the next week or two I'll be preparing a picture book that my wife and I
will use in our language learning. While I'm at it, it is possible for me to
make multiple copies, so I wanted to give you the opportunity to request one if
you are interested.
I'm planning to take many photographs around the city and in a village.
Ideally each picture would have someone doing something with something, for
example a man (carpenter) hitting a nail with a hammer, or a man (farmer) riding
a donkey. To the extent that I'm able to get the pictures that I desire, I would
like to get 150 pictures or so. Each picture will have multiple words that can
be learned from it, in one way or another.
Such a picture book is especially useful for beginning language students.
Using language learning consultant (and my hero) Greg Thomson's approach, a
language learner works through the book many, many times with a tutor. On the
first pass, the tutor just says, "This is a man. This is a woman. This is a
man and a boy. This is a woman. This is a man." etc., while pointing of
course. Then you can do names for clothing, colors, background objects,
foreground objects, etc., to get the nouns. Then gradually you build up to
"The man is using a hammer. The woman is reading a book." etc. and
then eventually to "The carpenter is hitting a nail into the wall with a
hammer." Of course after a short while physical response is elicited from
the language learner: "Point to the man. Point to the woman. Show me the
hammer." etc. Using this to build vocabulary, one can easily learn to
comprehend (and physically respond to) several hundred vocabulary words in a
relatively short period of time. Using the picture book and a couple other
activities--total physical response and total physical response with
objects--Greg Thomson says that the beginning full-time learner can gain a base
comprehensible vocabulary 1,000 words in four to six weeks--a vocabulary of the
basic nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions that exist in
day-to-day life in the culture. And hey, if a slow learner takes eight weeks,
1,000 words is still great. (He recommends that beginners don't try to speak
much until they've got this base.)
Not only is the picture book useful for vocabulary, it is even more useful
for acquiring grammar. The tutor can go through all the pictures in the book as
if the events happened yesterday (past tense): "The man hit the nail with a
hammer.", or in the present: "The man is hitting the nail with a
hammer.", or future: "The man will hit the nail with the
hammer.", or past progressive with two events: "When this picture was
taken, the man was hitting the nail with the hammer." and so on. Ditto for
relative clauses: "Show me the man who is hitting the nail with the hammer.
Show me the hammer that the man is hitting the nail with" etc. Language
needs to be heard and comprehended to be acquired, and there's nothing quite
like hearing 150 comprehensible object relative clauses to aid acquisition of
that grammatical form. Simply learning complicated grammar from a grammar book
or language class will never get it. And never getting it will mean never being
a good speaker of the language.
Ideally everything is tape-recorded, allowing the learner to go through the
picture book with the tape after the language session, with as much review as is
needed. There will come a time when the book is mastered, meaning that all the
tapes can be listened to with complete comprehension without having to refer to
the pictures. At that point the picture album can given to someone else to use,
e.g. a new learner. (No, you can't have ours when we're done, as we already have
plans for it!)
The above describes stage 1 of Greg Thomson's four stages of language
learning. My wife and I didn't discover his stuff until we were already at stage
two, and we never went back and got all of that basic vocabulary which we still
need. Once we get the picture book completed we plan to devote about a month to
full-time stage 1 activities; I'm sure we can add comprehensible recognition of
1,000 new vocabulary items during that month, with spoken production soon to
follow.
Unless you've been a subscriber to my language learning newsletter, this
material and this method will most likely be new to you. It was for me until
three months ago, and I have an M.A. in linguistics and have been teaching
language for six years. Although this method is in some ways novel, it is
strongly supported by second language acquisition theory, much more so than the
methods of any language schools around here do. In a short amount of time Greg's
stuff has greatly benefited my wife and I and also some others here as well.
Just to clarify, Greg's approach is different than using the daily learning
cycle promoted by some, in which you learn to say a bit and then go out and
practice it with a lot of people. Greg's approach is comprehension-driven
instead of speech-driven, although he makes a very linguistically-sound case
that it produces better speakers as well as vastly superior comprehenders.
However, Greg's stuff is definitely community-based, especially once one gets
past stage 1. No relationships = no language. It assumes the use of a tutor--he
believes that language schools alone don't equip a learner with everything one
needs to thrive in the real world.
Even if you've been here a while, some time devoted to such a book could give
your language ability a nice boost! My wife and I are looking forward to
"going back to the beginning" and picking up some stuff we missed.
(Just this week, my wife--who is making weekly five-hour visits to non-English
speaking friends and who has had some fairly deep conversations--had to refer to
a "foot" as "the thing that you put your shoe on." It
communicated, but we'd rather draw smiles when we're actually trying to be
funny...
Hope this helps,
Your linguist friend
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