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Language Learning; a Lesson about Learning: – 2009 October 1

One of our training documents describes a method for learning a language that is unwritten. The method also works for learning a written language . . . without resorting to writing (or to books, to note taking, or to learning rules).

◊ The method is based on the idea that how we learned our first language, at ages 1-3, served us well, but the way a second language is taught in school is far different. True, we lose some of our language learning abilities as we get older, especially if we do not exercise them, but it is our methods, not our natural abilities, that are in focus here.

◊ When we learned our first language, we did not use text books or notebooks, we did not memorize vocabulary; we did not memories grammatical rules. Oh we did learn grammar, but we did so by learning what felt right, not what the regulations were.

◊ The method was designed so I could learn a language in Africa to do anthropological studies there. I later used it for training community workers to learn a language if they were assigned to a community where they spoke a different language. The method is to pretend that you are a three year old, select only words and phrases that are useful in your daily life (Please pass the salt) and train your friends and colleagues (as informants) to repeat the term after you (you must not repeat it after them). Without telling them what you are thinking, you pretend that your informants are your older brothers and sisters, correcting your pronunciation. You choose 1-5 words only each day, no more, no less. You vary the way a word is used (I want water. He has water). Within three months, you aim for fluency, which means the ability to operate in the language, with a limited vocabulary, about a hundred words only (what we tend to use in daily life).

◊ Although your ability to learn a new language has decreased, you have burned learning pathways in your brain, and this method takes advantage of them. While you train your informants to not think of themselves as correcting you, just repeating after you, you pretend you are three years old getting corrected.

◊ You might think at first a certain fruit is a napple, which can be easily corrected later when you learn how to read and write.

◊ I think this method can be adapted to teaching a language to a group of students, even though it was designed for self teaching. I see hints of it in the most up to date methods of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and language immersion programs.

◊ What is important here is the degree to which the method can be adapted to teaching other subjects and topics. Using text books and notebooks is efficient and convenient, and encouraged by schools and colleges that are becoming more and more like corporations. unlike an environment that encourages teachers to explore and create new and unorthodox methods. Text books and notebooks encourage conformity, monotony and homogeneity (like McDonald's hamburgers).

◊ It may be that the new challenge of not using text books and notes, may not only make it better to learn introductory levels of each topic, but also preparing the learner to learn the more advanced elements better. I would like to hear from collaborators on WikiEducator their thoughts and experiences with unorthodox methods of learning. --Phil Bartle 01:38 1 oct 2009 (UTC)

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