are languages difficult to learn

7/27/2019 Are Languages Difficult to Learn

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Are languages difficult to learn?

Language instruction in schools should encompass all the components and aspects

of language development. Apart from memorising a list of words and meanings

which may promote only the vocabulary, students have to be given activities where

they work on constructing sentences.

GIVEN THE fact that India is a polyglot nation, it is surprising that so many children

find learning a language in school so difficult. Even after receiving 10 years of

instruction in a second or third language, many students are barely able to speak a

single grammatical sentence in it. Children in the metropolitan cities speak, read andwrite in English fluently, and can also speak their mother tongue, be it Tamil,

Kannada or Gujarati, fairly proficiently. However, most of these children cannot read

the script of their mother tongue as they opt for Hindi as the "second-language" inschool. While they learn to read and write in Hindi, these children are unable to

converse in it. Likewise, there are a number of first-generation learners in English

who attend "English-medium" schools, but cannot construct grammatical sentencesin English even after receiving education in the language for six or seven years.

These children are more comfortable speaking in the vernacular, but do not achieve

the same level of fluency in English.

This, regardless of the language in question, many children in schools fail to becomeproficient in a non-dominant language. Yet, many people in India speak more than

one language fairly fluently if they learn the languages in a "natural" environment.

We need to examine the process by which a language is learnt in the natural context,and see how classroom instruction can be improved to mimic an immersion

environment. Children, by virtue of their ages, are at an advantage when it comes to

learning a language compared to adults, as there are critical periods of acquisition ofsyntax and pronunciation of a language. A critical period refers to a window in anorganism's development when nature favours the acquisition of certain skills,

provided the person receives the necessary stimulation from the environment. While

it has been established that the critical period for language acquisition, especiallysyntax, extends to about 12 years, why are so many children failing to speak fluently

in a second-language? Of course, a person over 12 years can learn a new language

proficiently but it takes a lot more effort, and an adult learning a new languageusually imposes the accent of his/her dominant language on the new language.

How does one acquire a second-language? A very simplified view would involve

associating words in the second-language (L-2) with words in the first-language (L-1), which are, in turn, associated with corresponding concepts. However, accordingto the revised hierarchical model proposed by Kroll and Stewart (1994), words in the

second-language may be directly linked to corresponding concepts. In fact, L-2

words are remembered better if they are directly linked to concepts as opposed tousing the first language to explain concepts. While using L-1 to teach, L-2, may aid

understanding in the initial stages when a person has sparse vocabulary in L-2, the

long-term gains are greater when words in L-2 have independent associations with


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concepts.

One reason why people pick up a language in an immersion environment is that they

are exposed to the language all the time. In addition to high frequency of exposure,

another possible reason why people pick up a language better in a foreign country asopposed to learning it in a classroom is that the person is also exposed to culture-

specific cues, which may aid the acquisition of second-language vocabulary. These

culture-specific cues help people learn words in their non-dominant language fasterand better. The second tenet of L-2 instruction is that it should take advantage of

culture-specific cues to enable the learner to form direct links between L-2 words

and concepts.

Another reason why children do not succeed in speaking L-2 fluently is that,instruction in schools is largely vocabulary-driven. In a typical classroom, the

teacher reads the lesson aloud or asks students to read parts of it in turn. She then

asks students to make a list of words and meanings and usually gives themeanings in L-1. Finally, the students are asked to answer a set of questions at the

end of the lesson; the answers to most of these questions can usually "be lifted

straight from the text." When it comes to preparing for the test, students memorisethe words and meanings and learn the question and answers by rote. This method of

language instruction is more of a memory drill than an exercise in language learning.

Knowledge of the various components of language can help teachers lay an emphasis

on different aspects of language that are crucial for its mastery. Phonemes, thesmallest units of language, refer to single sounds within a language that help

differentiate meaning. For example, while k & kh constitute two phonemes in Hindi,

they are not considered as two separate phonemes in English as the two sounds canbe interchanged without changing the meaning of a word. Thus the word `cat,'

whether it is pronounced as kat or khat does not alter its meaning. . The phonics

approach to reading instruction teaches the phonemes of a language explicitly. The

next linguistic unit is the morpheme, which refers to the smallest sound units thatrepresent meaning. A single word, prefix or suffix can constitute a morpheme. .

For oral language development, we are concerned with the larger units of language.

A language's lexicon consists of all the names of words in the language, while

semantics of a language refers to all possible meanings of the words of the language.Syntax refers to the rules by which words can be strung together to form

grammatical sentences in a language. Every language has syntax or a set of rules thatdelineates how words can be used to form sentences. Syntax does not refer to formalgrammar, which is taught in many schools. A child may not be able to tell the

difference between a noun and verb; but, at the same time, may be adept at speaking

fluently in a language. In this case, the child has acquired the syntax of the language,but has not learnt formal grammar. Furthermore, lessons in formal grammar do not

necessarily promote syntactical development. Language instruction in schools should

encompass all the components and aspects of language development. Memorising a


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list of words and meanings may promote students' vocabulary, but this activity does

not help them build their syntactical skills. The student has to be given activities

where they work on constructing sentences, and not merely learning a set of preparedanswers by rote. Students should be given many opportunities to speak and use the

second-language in multiple contexts. Activities like role-play, skits and dramasemphasise prosody and help students gain a command over the second-language.Language acquisition involves the active participation of the learner. Unlike

acquiring knowledge in any field, which can be attained by listening to a lecturer or

reading a book, language learning requires the learner to "use" the language. The

closer the usage is to a real-life situation, the greater the likelihood that the personwill master it. The purpose of acquiring a language is to communicate language

teachers should design instruction such that children learn to communicate

effectively in both, oral and written forms.

ARUNA SANKARANARAYANAN

Copyright 2000 - 2008 The Hindu


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South Asia Language Pedagogy and Technology, Vol 1 (2008)

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Home>Vol 1 (2008)>Gambhir

The Rich TapestryofHeritage Learners ofHindi

Vijay Gambhir

UniversityofPennsylvania

1. Introduction

During the last three decades, there has been a paradigm shift in the learner population ofHindi in the

secondlanguage classrooms ofAmerican universities. Until the early 1980s, there were only

traditional learners ofHindi with little or no prior exposure to Hindi orIndian culture.A typical Hindi

learner used to be a graduate student who learned Hindi for research purposes. Today, however, the

majority ofthe Hindi learners are undergraduates who come from Indian families with a prior exposure

to Hindi or anotherIndianlanguage. Their reasons forlearningHindi, which are very different from thetraditional learners, include language requirement, travel to India, Hindi films, family, business, and

gaining literacy skills.1

The traditional learners ofHindi form a homogeneous group because they are mostly true beginners

and do not have any prior exposure to Hindi. The heritage learner group, on the other hand, is quite

complex because ofthe significant diversity among their home language backgrounds and degrees of

prior exposure to Hindi and its culture. In order to make effective pedagogic decisions, such as

articulating multi-year program goals, setting course objectives, choosing methodology, materials &

assessment modes, it is imperative for us to understand who our learners are.

In this article, first we will define the term heritage learnerofHindi in section 2 because the current

definitions ofthe term are too narrow for our purpose. In section 3, we will take a closer look at the

various types and sub-types ofHindi learners based on theirlanguage backgrounds. Section 4 will

categorize the heritage learners based on their prior proficiency levels in Hindi. Section 5 covers some

key curricular issues and curricular models that are being practiced at different American universities

to accommodate mixed-ability learners ofHindi. Some effective strategies reported by experienced

teachers for handling mixed-ability classes are reported in section 6. The last section points out
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important implications ofthis paper on heritage language theory in general and Hindi pedagogy in

particular.

2.ADefinition ofHeritage Learner ofHindi

Before discussing various types and sub-types ofHindi learners we must define who is a heritage

learnerofHindi.2 The popular and widely used definition ofa heritage learner by Valds, given below,

is too narrow forHindi. It does not allow us to differentiate between the rate and route oflearning

between traditional learners and those students who come from Indian families where an Indian

language other than Hindi is spoken at home.

A heritage learner is a student who is raised in a home where a non-English language is spoken,

who speaks or merely understands the language, and who is to some degree bilingual in English

and the heritage language. (Valds, 2001:38)

According to the above definition, Hindi learners from Gujarati or Punjabi families are not heritage

learners because they are not raised in Hindi speaking homes. However, we know that as compared

to the non-South Asian learners, students from Gujarati, Punjabi or otherIndian families have a

definite advantage in acquiring Hindi because Hindilanguage and its culture is familiar to non-Hindi

speaking Indian-American students. Their home languages share many structures, sounds,

vocabularies and discourse features with Hindi. The research on the topic ofIndia asa linguistic

area3has shown that there are many similarities between all Indian languages, including Indo-Aryan

(Hindi, Gujarati, etc.) and Dravidian (Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada) languages because oftheir

long co-existence in the same geographic area. My classroom experience also supports that students

who come from non-Hindi speaking Indian families (both from Indo-Aryan and Dravidian) develop their

listening and oral communicative skills in Hindi much faster than the traditional learners because of

their prior knowledge about Indian thought pattern, culture, areal linguistic features (e.g., word-order,

dative subjects, retroflex sounds) and shared vocabularies borrowed from Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic

and English.

Moreover, all learners ofHindi from Indian families have some prior exposure to Hindi through films

and their local communities. Hindi film songs are popular among most Indianimmigrants; they sing

and dance to their tunes at weddings and desi cultural events, even at college cultural shows.

Although Hindi is never spoken to non-Hindi learners at home, it is certainly spoken around them in the

community. Their parents may use Hindi with Hindi-speaking friends or with those who do not speak

theirlanguage or much English. Please note that most immigrant parents from India (even those who

are from non-Hindi regions) know some Hindi either through their schools, TV, movies, or travel within

India. Hindi is the official languageofIndia, and it is the lingua franca used on the streets ofmost

urban centers in India today.

Hindi and non-Hindi learners from Indian families living in the US have a strong sense ofshared Indian

ethnicity because ofthe common religious and cultural activities intheir localIndian communities.

Hindi films, commonly known as Bollywood films, are watched in many Indian homes in America.
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Furthermore, many second generation Indian-Americans have a strong Indian identity, as opposed to

the regional identities that their parents had.4Second-generation children ofIndianimmigrants mostly

identify themselves asIndian-Americans and not as Punjabi-Americans or South-Indian Americans.

For them, India is their heritage-land, and Hindi is the dominant national languageofthat land.

So, in order to include the non-Hindi speaking Indian-American students in our pedagogic definition of

a heritage learnerofHindi, we need to broaden the definition ofa heritage learner. Our definition must

go beyond home connection or family connectionas the defining factors; it must include cultural5

and heritage-land factors also. Below is the proposed definition ofa heritage learnerofHindi that

should allow teachers and administrators to distinguish between the Hindi learners based on their prior

exposure to the target language, culture and country, irrespective ofthe home factor. Once we

determine who is a heritage learnerofHindi, it will be easier to predict their needs and socio-linguistic

strengths & weaknesses.6

Pedagogic Definition ofa Heritage-LearnerofHindi

A heritage learnerofHindi is a student whose family may speak Hindi or anotherIndianlanguageat home. The student may or may not be able to speak or understand Hindi but is familiar with

Hindilanguage and its culture through his or her connection with the heritage land.

3. TypologyofHindi Learners

This section discusses the ratio ofdifferent types and sub-types ofHindi learners based on the data I

collected from five American universities in 1998. The statistics are based on 126 responses to a

survey questionnaire. The respondents were enrolled in the beginning level Hindi classes at Columbia

University, New York University, the University ofTexas at Austin, the University ofIllinois at Urbana-

Champaign, and the University ofPennsylvania. Even though the data is about nine years old, its still

valuable because the ratio & types ofstudents have not changed much since the late 90s.

3.1. The ratio ofHeritage7 and Non-heritage Learners

There are two main categories ofHindi learners: heritage and non-heritage. According to my 1988

data, the ratio ofheritage and non-heritage learners was and is still approximately 4 to 1. To be exact,

there were 81% heritage learners and only 19%non-heritage learners as can be seen in its visual

representation in Figure 1 below.
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Figure 1

The wide gap between the heritage and non-heritage populations is generally an accurate

representation ofmost Hindi programs in the country today. In some urban institutions, located in

areas where there is a heavy concentration ofSouth Asians, there are even up to 90 percent heritage

students. The big shift in Hindi enrollments between the 70s and 90s was quite significant, especially

when there were practically no heritage students during the 70s. This paradigmatic shift has had

important implications forHindi pedagogy.

3.2. The ratio between Ancestral and Associate Heritage

Learners

The category ofheritage learners ofHindi can be further subdivided into two Ancestral and

Associate - on the basis ofstudents home languageas shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Ancestral heritage learners are those who come from Hindi speaking families where at least one or

both parents and grandparents speak Hindi. Associate learners are those whose parent(s) or


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grandparent(s) speak an Indianlanguageotherthan Hindi at home; perhaps Gujarati, Bengali or

Tamil. Instead ofusing the terms Ancestral and Associate here, we could use the terms Hindi and non-

Hindi for our purpose. However, we will use the generic labels, Ancestral and Associate, so that other

heritage languages such as Chinese (with Mandarin and Cantonese) may also benefit from this

framework ofclassification.

Figure 3

Figure 3 shows that Associate-heritage is a significant group as their ratio to Ancestral is 2:1. In my

data, Associate learners constitute 54 percent ofthe total population ofall Hindi learners (including

heritage and non-heritage), and there are only 27 percent ancestral heritage learners. These numbers

are important for making pedagogic decisions because the amount ofexposure and the conditions of

learningHindi are different for Ancestral and Associate learners.As compared to Ancestral learners,

Associate learners get a limited opportunity to listen to and speak Hindi at home or in the community.

Most oftheir exposure to Hindi is through family friends and Hindi movies. They rarely get a chance to

speak Hindi actively at home. This means that teachers must create ample appropriate activities to

provide output opportunities for Associate learners in particular.

The 2:1 ratio between Associate and Ancestral learners is also noteworthy because it dispels the

common notion ofmany educators who think the primary reason ofheritage learners forlearningHindi

is to communicate with their monolingual grandparents. The grandparent factor certainly doesnt exist

in the case ofAssociate learners. From my conversations with Associate-learners, I learned that they

are primarily interested in Hindi for reasons oftravel, movies, business, and for nurturing theirIndian

identity.


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3.3 Ratio between Cognate and Non-cognate Associate Learners

The category ofAssociate-learners is further subdivided into Cognate and Non-cognate learners

based on the genetic relationship oftheir home language with the target language, as shown in Figure

4 below.

Figure 4

Cognate learners are those whose home language is genetically related to Hindi, and Non-cognate

learners are the ones whose home language is genetically unrelated to Hindi. In our data, the following

cognate languages were reported: Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Bengali, and Kashmiri, which are

Indo-Aryan languages. The non-cognate languages reported in the data were Tamil, Telugu, and

Malayalam, which are from the Dravidian language family. Because ofthe common origin ofHindi and

other Indic languages, as pointed out before, there are numerous cognates and structural similarities

between them. The numberofcognates and structural similarities in Hindi and the Dravidian

languages, however, are relatively limited, as they belong to different language families.

The ratio between Cognate and Non-cognate Associate-heritage learners is 4:1, as shown in Figure 5

below. There are 81% cognate learners and only 19% non-cognate learners in the entire Associate

category.


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Figure 5

The awareness about the ratio between Cognate and Non-cognate categories is important for making

pedagogic choices in terms ofmaterials and exercises.As compared to the non-cognate learners,

cognate learners are able to transfera lot more structures and words from their home languages.

There may be some false friends between Hindi and their home languages (e.g., the use ofthe

postposition ne is different in Hindi, Gujarati and Punjabi), but overall features ofnegative transfer are

limited in the case ofCognate learners.

3.3. All Types ofHeritage Learners

Figure 6 below shows the distribution ofall types ofheritage learners Ancestral, Associate, Cognate

and Non-cognate.

Figure 6


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As shown above, ofthe total numberofheritage learners ofHindi, there are 54% cognate learners,

34% ancestral orHindi learners, and only 12% non-cognate learners.These percentages show that

the Cognate learners are in majority in the heritage group.

We can find out more about the Cognate category by looking at the following list that shows a

breakdown ofthe home languages ofall Hindi learners, heritage plus non-heritage, reported in the

survey:

Learners' Home Languages

Gujarati 37

Hindi 29

English 21

Punjabi 7

Urdu 6

Tamil 4

Telugu 4

Marathi 4

Malayalam 4

Bengali 3

Sindhi 2

Konkani 2

Persian 1

Hebrew 1

Korean 1

Total: 126

In the above list, we see that the maximum numberofheritage students ofHindi came from Gujarati

(37 students) speaking families. The Gujarati learners outnumber even Hindi-speaking learners (29

students)! After Gujarati, the next highest group in the Cognate category is Punjabi (only 7 students).

The numbers ofPunjabi students turned out to be quite small in the data, which is contrary to my

expectations. The reason for this could be that Punjabi students might have reported Hindias their

home language. This is, in fact, quite plausible because many Punjabi families settled outside Punjab

speak Hindi with their children, and have a split mother-tongue identity


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3.4. All Learners ofHindi Heritage & Non-heritage

The distribution ofall types and sub-types ofHindi learners can be seen in Figures 7 and 8 below:

Figure 7

Figure 8

3.5. Summary

Based on the data presented in section 3, we can make the following summary statements about the

language background profiles ofHindi learners in the secondlanguage classrooms ofAmerican

universities:


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Approximately 80% ofall Hindi learners are heritage learners.

Only about one-third ofthe heritage learners come from Hindi-speaking families.

The Majority ofheritage learners come from families where another Indo-Aryan language is

spoken.

The highest numberofheritage learners from the Indo-Aryan group comes from Gujarati

families.

The numberofheritage learners who come from families where a Dravidian language is

spoken is very small (about 10%).

4. Major Proficiency Profiles ofHeritage Learners ofHindi

We can divide the heritage learners ofHindi who enroll for entry-level Hindi classes into 4 major

categories based on their prior proficiency profiles in Hindi.

1. Zero-beginners (ZB)

2. Advanced-beginners (AB)

3. Near-Natives (NN)

4. Natives (N)

Here are the level descriptions for each ofthe proficiency profiles:

Zero-Beginners (ZB): They have little prior exposure to Hindi and have almost no functional ability

in oral or literacy skills. They may be able to understand a few high frequency phrases or words but

cannot maintain any meaningful conversation.

Advanced-Beginner (AB): They have some prior exposure to Hindi at home or in the community.

They can understand everyday simple conversations and a film plot when strongly supported by

context. They may speak some conversational Hindi but their speech is often ungrammatical and

has skeletal sentences.

Near-Natives (NN): They can understand and speak Hindi fluently in informal domains. However,

they lack consistent control oflow frequency structures (e.g., passive, causative) and grammar

features that have a low functional load (e.g., oblique forms ofnouns, ergative marker ne ). They

may recognize some letters ofHindi script but cannot read Hindi texts for meaning.

Natives (N): They can understand conversational Hindi and speak it fluently and accurately, but

only in informal domains. They do not have formal (High Hindi) vocabulary so they have trouble in

understanding and speaking Hindi used in formal contexts, such as interviews, lectures and news.

They may recognize some characters ofDevanagari but often cannot read any text for meaning.

5. Curricular Issues & Curricular Models


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5.1. Curricular issues

The majority ofthe heritage learners who enroll in entry level Hindi courses in American universities

are either ZBs or ABs. However, there are some NNs, and occasionally some Ns who want to acquire

literacy skills and knowledge ofHindi grammar. It is a huge pedagogic challenge to have ZBs, ABS,

NNs and Ns in the same class, whose oral and listening proficiencies range from zero to advanced

levels. This challenge grows even bigger when there are beginner non-heritage learners in the same

class as well.8

This vast diversity in the language profiles ofHindi learners raises the following important curricular

questions:

1. Should there be separate tracks for HLs (heritage learners) and NHLs (non-heritage

learners)?

2. Should there be separate tracks for ZBs and ABs?

In order to find out answers to the above questions, I interviewed ten experienced Hindi instructors of

American universities in 2005. In the summary oftheir responses below we find two major points of

views. Some teachers voiced strongly in favorofseparate tracks, whereas others either didnt want it

or didnt think it was an important issue.

SummaryofTeachers Responses

Responses to question #1 - Separate tracks for HLs and NHLs?

1. We dont need two tracks because they [heritage and non-heritage learners] learn from each

other. Moreover, they are not very different when it comes to grammar and literacy skills.

2. I wish we had two separate tracks, but Im not unhappy. Ive adjusted my curriculum and the

way I teach and assess them. Occasionally some students grumble, but overall everyone is

happy.

3. We certainly need two separate tracks. My non-heritage students are intimidated by heritage

students who speak very fast in Hindi. On the other hand my heritage students get bored and

drop out if my pace is slow. Mostly, I end up teaching another class outside the class during

my office hours.

Responses to question #2 - Separate tracks for ZBs and ABs?

1. We dont need separate tracks because ABs really dont know the real language. All they

know is some kitchen language.

2. We need separate tracks because ABs can progress at twice the rate ofZBs because oftheir

prior knowledge ofthe target language & culture. Also, because the linguistic needs and
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learning styles ofABs and ZBs are different, it prevents both groups from achieving their full

potential.

5.2 Curricular Models

Now we explore the curricular models being practiced at various institutions to see if there are

separate tracks based on heritage or proficiency factors. In my 2005 survey, I gathered from the

responses often different universities in the country that there are three main curricular models in

practice. These are:

Model-1: Separate Curriculum and Separate Classes

Under this model, true beginners (ZBs & non-heritage learners [NHLs]) and other students with a

prior exposure to Hindi (ABs & NNs)9 are placed in separate classes, and they have separate

curriculum also.A visual representation ofthis model can be seen in Figure 9 below.

Figure 9

Model-2: Shared Curriculum and a Separate Section

In this model, true beginners (ZBs & NHLs) and others (ABs & NNs) enroll for the same course and

they have a shared curriculum. The two groups are together for movies and theirlanguage projects,

but they are in different sections for all other activities.A visual representation ofthis can be seen in

Figure 10 below.


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Figure 10

Model-3: Same Curriculum and Same Classroom

Under this model, true beginners and all other learners are placed in the same classroom, and they

also have the same curriculum. In other words, ZBs, NHLs, ABs, and NNs, whose proficiencies may

range from Novice through Advanced-Low, are in the same course. See Figure 11 below fora visual

representation ofthis model.


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Figure 11

5.2 What curricular model is being practiced where?

Now, lets see the frequency ofeach ofthese models in the ten universities that I surveyed. According

to the Table 1 below, Model-1 is being practiced only at the University ofPennsylvania and Model-2 is

being practiced only at New York University. Model-3 is the most popular one as 8 out ofthe 10

universities in the survey are practicing it.10


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Table 1

The question is: Why Model-3 is so popular, especially when there is so much awareness about

learner-centeredness and heritage language education?11Also, why should true beginners and near-

natives be placed in the same classroom when they are so far apart in theirlanguage development

stages and language needs?12Below are some ofthe reasons that were offered by the teachers who

do not have separate tracks for true beginners (ZBs & NHLs) and others.

5.3. Reasons for not having separate tracks:

Lack offaculty resources

Insufficient enrollments

Uneven enrollments at different proficiency levels

Focus on shared language needs - grammar and literacy

Extra work for the coordinator

The above reasons may be valid, but are hard to justify if the focus is on the learner and learning. This

raises the question regarding what strategies are being used by teachers to manage vastly mixed-

ability classes under Model-3? In other words, how is this model working? Before we get into the

strategies, I would like to present how the University ofPennsylvanias Hindi program has articulated

its two-track curriculum for accommodating the learning needs and styles oftrue beginners and

others.
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5.4. The UniversityofPennsylvanias four-year curriculum

Figure 12

The University ofPennsylvania is the only institution in the country to my knowledge which created two

tracks for separating true beginners form others in the early 90s. True beginners were placed in the

regular or traditional track, and others were placed in the Accelerated track. The accelerated track is a

year-long sequence; in one year students learn the equivalent oftwo years at the regular track. The

class can move at a fast pace because most ofthe students already have a passive knowledge ofthe

basic language and its culture. After completing one yearofAccelerated Hindi successfully, students

then join the regular track at the 3 rd year level. This model has been quite successful at Penn. ABs are

particularly happy with this model because their prior knowledge ofthe language & culture is not

ignored, but rather it is nurtured through appropriate content and methodology.

6. Effective Strategies for Teaching Mixed-Ability Classes

6.1. Strategies for Model 3 teaching

Returning to the question raised in section 5.3, why is the curricular Model 3 working well for so many

teachers? Its surprising that the teachers have figured out strategies to manage classes that have

students who have no knowledge ofthe target language and those who can even tell stories and

understand some humor. What are these successful strategies? In order to discover some effective

strategies, I talked to the instructors who were/are using this curricular model.


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Here is a summary ofthe effective strategies that were reported to me by the teachers who use Model-

3:

1. Open-ended tasks Teachers create open-ended tasks so that students can respond

according to their own language ability. Examples: Tell me something about your last

vacation; what are your plans for the upcoming holidays?

2. Small group activities Teachers create small group activities involving 2 or 3 students in

role-plays, interviews, etc. Grouping non-heritage and heritage students or students with lower

proficiency with higher proficiency promotes peerlearning.

3. Experiential learningtasks Students do language projects that involve interaction with

Hindi speakers at home, in the school, or community. Example: Find out about the cross

cultural experiencesofthe international students who have come from India on your college

campus.

4. Adaptable assessment Students are assessed on their individual progress based on their

own performance.13

5. Student portfolios Students are asked to maintain portfolios oftheir work to keep track of

their own language development.

6. Common course goals Course goals are articulated around shared linguistic needs ofall

learners, such as literacy skills, formal language, and explicit knowledge ofthe Hindi

grammar.

7. Equitable top-down and bottom-up approaches Both, top-down and bottom-up

approaches are used in order to cater to the learning styles ofboth heritage and non-heritage

learners.

8. Supplementary materials Supplementary reading or listening materials are assigned to

challenge the students who have a higher level oflanguage competence.

9. Individualized assignments In order to help students individualize theirlearning, different

assignments are given to different students depending on their interest and the skill levels.

10. Computer-mediated tasks Computer-mediated exercises and tasks work as smart tutorials

for remedial and advanced language training purposes. Examples: online grammar exercises,

chats, and threaded discussions.

The strategies listed above should be useful for all language teachers following any curricular model of

instruction. There are individual learner differences, and students have different strengths and

weaknesses in terms oftheir prior exposure to Hindilanguage and its culture.

6.2. Important caveats based on SLA research

Although the above listed strategies are effective, I would like to point out that there are some

important caveats based on SLA research that we need to pay attention to. These are:

The language input provided by peers during small group activities should be

comprehensible (Krashen 1985).


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All learners must get plenty ofopportunities for comprehensible output, not just

comprehensible input (Swain 1985).

Class activities should be set up in a manner that helps generate real information-gap

between conversation partners for promoting communication and negotiation ofmeaning (Doughty &

Pica 1986, Pica 1991).

Portfolios should be regularly assessed for tracking interlanguage and preventing

fossilization (Selinker 1972, Long 1988, Washburn 1992).

Class activities and projects should be organized in a manner that keep affective filter

down and promote acquisition. (Krashen 1985)

Meta-cognitive development ofall learners, including native speakers, is important for

making them independent and life-long learners (Lever 2000).

7. Theoretical & Practical Implications

The study ofheritage learners ofHindi furthers the research on heritage learner education. It

demonstrates that there can be different levels ofdiversity among heritage learners. There may be

differences in terms oftheir prior proficiency profiles ofthe target language or their home languages.

Thus far, the heritage literature (at least that Im familiar with) points out that heritage learners may

have a family (parents, grandparents or ancestors) or cultural connection with the target language.

The case ofHindi, however, brings out another connection that may define a heritage learner. It is the

heritage-land connection. In the case ofHindi, the heritage-land link nurtures the Indian identity of

non-Hindi speaking heritage students in particular. Non-Hindi heritage learners visit their home-land

(i.e., India), not just their hometowns, and they want to learn the official languageofIndia (i.e., Hindi)

which is also the lingua franca.

On the practical side, awareness about the ratios ofdifferent types ofHindi learners discussed in

sections 2 & 3 serve asa useful guide for the teachers and program directors who grapple with

placement, curriculum and assessment related issues. The categorization and descriptions ofmajor

proficiency profiles ofheritage learners, discussed in section 4, should be helpful in identifying the

strengths, weaknesses and needs ofthe various learners. The curricular issues and models of

curriculum, discussed in section 5, are important in articulating the focus ofinstruction and selection of

methodology & materials. The effective strategies for teaching mixed-ability learners, discussed in

section 6, are ofhigh value to all language teachers for promoting peer-learning, active community

connections, alternative ways ofassessment, individualized learning and technology based tutorials.

Works Cited

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Cardona, G. & D. Jain, eds. (2007). Indo-Aryan languages . New York: Taylor & Francis, Inc.


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Carreira, Mara. (2004). Seeking explanatory adequacy:A dual approach to understanding the term

heritage language learner. Heritage language journal.

Cho, Grace, Kyung-Sook Cho, and Lucy Tse. (1997). Why ethnic minorities want to develop their

heritage language: The case ofKorean Americans. Language, culture, and curriculum , 10(2),

106-12.

Draper, James B., and June H. Hicks. (2000). Where weve been: What weve learned. In John B.

Webb and Barbara L. Miller (Eds.), Teaching heritage language learners: Voices from the

classroom (pp. 15-37). Yonkers, N.Y.: American Council for the Teaching ofForeign Languages.

Ekbatani, G. and H. Pierson (Eds.). (2000). Learner directed assessment in ESL . Mahwah, NJ:

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Emeneau M. B. (1956). India asa linguistic area. Language , 32(1), 3-16.

Emeneau M. B., (1974). The linguistic area revisited. International journalofDravidian linguistics ,

3(1), 92-134.

Fishman, JoshuaA. (2001). 300-plus years ofheritage language education in the United States. In Joy

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Gambhir, Surendra. (2001) Truly less commonly taught languages and heritage language learner in

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languages in America: Preservinga national resource (pp. 207-28). McHenry, Il: CAL.

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Jhungare, Indira Y. (1985). Topic prominence in Indo-Aryan and Dravidian. International Journalof

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issues, and needs. In Joy K. Peyton, DonaldA. Ranard, and Scott McGinnis (Eds.), Heritage

languages in America: Preservinga national resource (pp. 197-06). McHenry, IL: CAL.

Krashen, Stephen D. (1985). The input hypothesis . London: Longman.


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Krishnamurti, Bh. (Ed.), (1986). Structure, convergence and diglossia . Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

Kunz, Patricia (1993). Languages at the K-12 level. ERIC Digest ED402787.

Lee, Jin Sook (2002). The Korean language in America: The role ofcultural identity and heritage

language. Language, culture, and curriculum , 15(2), 117-33.

Lever, Betty (2000). Cognitive and affective issues on the learning and teaching ofSlavic languages:A

response. In Kagan, O. & B. Rifkin with S. Bauckus (Eds.) The learningand teachingofSlavic

languages and cultures (pp. 215-28). Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica.

Long, M. (1988). Instructed interlanguage development. In Beebe (Ed.), Issues in secondlanguage

acquisition: Multiple perspectives . New York: Newbury House.

Masica C. P. (1976). Defininga linguistic area: South Asia . Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Masica C. P. (1991). The Indo-Aryan languages . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mazzocco, Elizabeth H. D. (1996). The heritage versus the non-heritage language learner: The Five

College Self-instructional Language Programs solutions to the problem ofseparation or

unification.ADFL Bulletin 28(1), 20-23.

Moag, Rodney F. (1995). Semi-native speakers: How to hold and mold them. In Vijay Gambhir (Ed.),

The teaching and acquisition ofSouth Asian languages (pp. 168-181). Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press.

Pica, T. and C. Doughty. (1985). The role ofgroup work in classroom secondlanguage acquisition.

Studies in secondlanguage acquisition , 7, 233-48.

Pica, T. (1991). Classroom interaction, participation and comprehension: Redefining relationships.

System , 19, 437-52.

Selinker, L. (1972). Interlanguage. International reviewofapplied linguistics , 10, 209-31.

Subbarao, K.V. (1984).A studyoflinguistic typology, language universals and convergence in the

Indian Subcontinent. Delhi: University ofDelhi.

Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence: Some roles ofcomprehensible input and

comprehensible output in its development. In Gass and Madden (Eds), Input in secondlanguage

acquisition . Rowley, Mass: Newbury House.


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Tse, L. (1998). Ethnic identity formation and its implications for heritage language development. In

Krashen, S., Tse, L. & McQuillan, J. (Eds.), Heritage language development(pp. 15-29). Culver

City: Language Education Associates.

Valds, G. (2001). Heritage language students: Profiles and possibilities. In Joy Kreeft Peyton, Donald

A. Ranard, and Scott McGinnis (Eds.), Heritage languages in America. Preservinga national

resource (pp. 37-77). McHenry, IL: CAL.

Van Deusen-Scholl, N. (2003) Toward a definition ofheritage language: Sociopolitical and pedagogical

considerations. Journaloflanguage, identity, and education , 2(3), 211-30.

Verma, M. K. & K.P. Mohanan (Eds.). (1990) Experiencer subjects in South Asian languages .

Stanford: CSLI.

Washburn, Gay (1992). Fossilization in secondlanguage acquisition . Ph.D. Dissertation, University of

Pennsylvania.

Wiley, T. G. (2001). On defining heritage languages and their speakers. In Joy K. Peyton, DonaldA.

Ranard, and Scott McGinnis (Eds.), Heritage languages in America: Preservinga national

resource (pp. 29-36). McHenry, IL: CAL.

1 For more on what motivates heritage learners to study their heritage languages, see Cho et al

(1997); Kuntz (1993); Van Deusen-Scholl (2003).

2 According to Wiley (2001), the definition ofa heritage learner is important because it helps to

shape the status ofthe learners.

3 Emeneau (1956) was the first one who wrote on the subject ofareal features among Indian

languages, but a lot has been published on this subject since then. For information on various

shared features among Indian languages, please see Emeneau (1956, 1974); Masica (1976,

1991); Subbaro (1984); Jhungare (1985); Krishnamurti (1986); Verma and Mohanan (1990); Abbi

(1992); Cardona & Jain (2007).

4 See Tse (1998) for more on ethnic identity and its implications for heritage language development.

5 For more on cultural identity ofheritage learners, see Lee (2000).

6 For more on pedagogic and non-pedagogic definitions ofheritage learners, see Draper & Hicks

(2000), Fishman (2001), Wiley (2001), Carreira (2004), and Kagan (2005).

7 From now on whenever we use the term heritage learners ofHindi, it will include all Hindi and non-

Hindi learners who come from families where Hindi or anotherIndianlanguage is spoken at home.
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8 See Gambhir, V. 1995 fora discussion on learning routes oftrue beginners and false beginners

ofHindi.

9 We are going to exclude the NS category from our discussion here because oftheir small numbers.

10 Mazzocco (1996) reports that in their Five College Self Instructional Language Programs, heritageand non-heritage learners are separated in terms ofthe order in which material is covered, but in

the exam everyone is tested over the same material.

11 According to the University ofCalifornias Guidelines on Heritage Language Instruction, there

should be separate classes for heritage and non-heritage learners. See

http://uccllt.ucdavis.edu/Heritage_Language_Guidelines.pdf.

12 See Moag (1995), Gambhir, S. (2001) and Kono & McGinnis (2001) on challenges faced by the

educators and administrators ofheritage learners in higher education.

13 See Ekbatani & Pierson (2000) on the subject ofrelationship between the language learner and

language assessment processes.

South Asia Language Pedagogy and Technology (ISSN #1933-9046) is published by theSouth Asia Language Resource Centerat the

University ofChicago. Articles are copyrighted by their respective authors. Requests for republication ofarticles should be addressed to the

author(s). South Asian Language Pedagogy and Technology should be acknowledged as the original publisher. 2008 University of

Chicago.
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What? Me Worry About Language Learning?

by Greg Thomson

Used by permission of the author.

You are hoping to learn a language. What sort of expectations do you have? I still have

some scrawlings which I made in the margin of a page in Nida (1957) in the spring of1967. They were my language learning goals for the summer. I expected to become a

Blackfoot speaker during the five months available to me. Ignorance was bliss. If I had

known what I was doing, I could probably have gained functional communication abilityduring five months. As it was, there was no chance I would get very far at all. I was

overconfident. Over the years since, I have met people who were under-confident about

their language learning prospects. Perhaps they were perfectly normal people going to

live in a Spanish speaking country, and doubted their ability to learn Spanish at all. Thattoo is unrealistic. Any normal person can learn any language, given enough contact with

speakers of that language.

But it does help to be realistic. A simplistic view of a language learning challenge canlead to disappointment and discouragement. An unrealistically pessimistic view can lead

to giving up before getting started. Some languages are much harder to learn than others.

It is harder to learn languages in some situations than in other situations. Some people are

better at it than others. If you face a colossally difficult challenge, you can still succeed,provided you have an effective strategy. If you face a relatively easy situation, you will

probably succeed without worrying all that much about your strategy. Even in a relatively

easy situation, you will get further faster with an effective strategy, but it probably wontmean the difference between success and failure. In the most difficult situations, success

or failure will almost certainly depend on the effectiveness of your strategy. Most

situations fall somewhere in between the two extremes.

The factors which determine where a given situation falls on the scale are of three types:

1) Factors related to the social context in which you must learn the language.

2) Factors related to the language itself.

3) Factors related to the individual language learner.

What I want to do here is to help you reflect on the relative difficulty of different

varieties of language learning situations, and to try to locate your own somewhere alongthe scale between "less difficult" and "colossally difficult". The farther you are toward

the "colossally difficult" end of the scale, the more you had better worry about your

strategy. Since my main point is that the more difficult your situation, the more important


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it is that you have an effective strategy, I will conclude by briefly considering some of the

components of an effective language learning strategy.

Just any old thing I might try might not work.

"Id like to learn Blackfoot, eh?" says the enthusiastic school teacher. "Ill be here a

couple years, anyway. So I figure it would come in handy, eh? Do ya think ya can help

me?"

Such requests for help used to make me uncomfortable. Far be it from me to squelchenthusiasm for language learning. But what can I say? First of all, what does she mean by

"learn Blackfoot"? She probably thinks she knows what she means. She has heard groups

of Blackfoot people standing around conversing animatedly in the Blackfoot language.

That is what she means. She wants to be able to join in such conversations and do

whatever it is they are doing, just like they do it. Thats simple. What else could she meanby "learn Blackfoot"?

However, I am wondering what sort ofaction she contemplates taking to learn Blackfoot.Is she thinking of something like the nine months I devoted to memorizing, drilling, and

reviewing? Or is she thinking of something like those painful first few months when I

discontinued using any English with Blackfoot speakers? Or is she thinking of the years

that have followed, years in which I always felt that I was still learning, and had more tolearn than I had yet learned?

Perhaps what she really has in mind is sitting down with a book of language lessons and

completing the lessons, and then subsequently being able to speak the language by virtueof having completed the lessons. Or perhaps she envisions herself getting a Blackfootperson to tell her "how to say things", until she can say enough "things" that she knows

the language. Or perhaps she feels that if she hears the language spoken around her

enough she will start to "pick it up".

If you have not guessed, I am not overly optimistic about this teacher learning Blackfoot.

If you are reading this because you want to learn Blackfoot, or Chukchee, or French, or

some other specific language, then your mind may be racing with ideas as to what you

mean by "learn the language" and the actions you expect to take to achieve that goal. If

you have already learned Spanish fluently, and are planning to learn French, then youprobably know how you will go about it, and what I have to say here may not be all that

helpful.

My experience suggests that many people who face the need to learn a language willbenefit from having a clearer idea of what is involved. Almost anyone should be able to

develop conversational ability in almost any language, in almost any situation in which

there is access to speakers of that language. Yet it is common for would-be language


28/55

learners to experience frustration and to achieve only limited success. If you understand

yourself, your social context, and the nature of language learning, and if you have access

to speakers of the language you wish to learn, and if you are willing to devote the timerequired, and perhaps to bear a certain amount of frustration and embarrassment, then

you can confidently and steadily move ahead until you are a speaker of the new language.

Billions of people have learned a second language. None of them did it without a

strategy. That is, a second language did not simply drop into their brains full blown. Theyhad to engage in activities which enabled them to hear the language with understanding

and to participate in its use. However, even though everyone who has ever learned a

language has had a strategy, or rather, a set of strategies, most language learners did nothave explicit, consciously designed strategies.

When people have failed at second language learning, it was because their strategy was

not appropriate, at least for that particular person, learning that particular language, in

that particular situation.

It has been common for linguists and other language learners to learn languages without

giving a lot of thought to their language learning strategies. The linguist would live in or

near a monolingual speech community and concentrate on doing linguistic analysis, that

is, identifying the sounds, identifying words and their parts, and discovering the ways thatsounds and words and their parts pattern in the language to form a system. One can do

linguistic analysis of this sort without learning the language under investigation. Indeed,

many field linguists have little interest in learning the languages they investigate. Otherlinguists, on the other hand, tend to learn to speak the languages they investigate,

although often giving little thought to an explicit language learning strategy.

Much of my own experience has been in North America, where linguists primarilyinvestigate North American Indian languages. When I began fieldwork with Blackfoot in1972, there was widespread discouragement in the linguists in that area over the business

of language learning. People could analyze the languages until they were blue in the face,

but it did not seem to result in their being able to speak them in most cases.

I had actually begun trying to learn Blackfoot five years earlier at the age of nineteen,when I roamed around the reserves with a bedroll and a Coleman stove for five months. I

had learned fifty or a hundred useful expressions, such as "Where do you live?", and a lot

of nouns and verbs and adjectives, and I had learned the intransitive verb paradigms ("Isleep, you sleep, he sleeps, we sleep, yall sleep, they sleep" etc.).

Five years later, I was back at it again, but I felt stuck at about the same place. I went on

and learned more verb paradigms. There were scores of verb forms to learn. But after a

few months I still found that I could understand next to nothing when I listened in on aBlackfoot conversation. I began to feel that I would never learn Blackfoot. I had

essentially given up when a colleague, Randy Speirs, gave a stirring talk on language

learning at a conference. He said that the most important thing was to keep learning. As


29/55

long as you were always learning more, you were on your way and would eventually

arrive.

I took heart, and decided that I could learn Blackfoot after all. Remembering the style ofmy high school French textbook (it followed the well-known audiolingual method), I

began to construct dialogues which I felt reflected everyday situations, and to have themtranslated into Blackfoot:

John: Why are you standing out here when it is so cold?

Bill: Because the storekeeper chased me out and told me not to come back in.

John: Whatd he do that for?

Bill: He said I was trying to steal the safe. But I was only leaning on it.

Etc.

Etc.

O.K., they were not entirely realistic, since the humorous element seemed to make them

less boring. But I always used sentences that went beyond the Blackfoot I already knewand which I felt would help me in every day communication situations. Each Saturday

morning a Blackfoot friend would come and he would orally translate one or more of

these dialogues. In addition to these dialogues we also made up language drills similar tothe ones I remembered from high school French.

That was Saturday mornings. All the rest of the week I worked at memorizing thedialogues. I was in a basement. There were no windows. I worked hour after hour, month

after month, for about nine months. I did what Randy Speirs had suggested. I keptlearning more and more. But I still could not understand an ordinary conversation in

Blackfoot. And I could speak only with the greatest effort.

After those nine months in the windowless basement, a year and a half passed during

which there was little improvement in my speaking ability. Then I happened to meetanother colleague, Frank Robbins, in the Commodore Hotel in New York City. He

invited me to his room and showed a deep interest in my life and work. I told him of my

dismay over language learning, pointing out that if I were walking down the sidewalk and

saw someone coming with whom I might have to speak Blackfoot I would sometimescross thc street to avoid the awkward, embarrassing encounter. Frank had a simple

challenge for me. He told me to make a commitment that I would never again speak to aBlackfoot person in English. I told him that I felt that would be impossible. He told me

that it would be difficult at first, but fairly soon it would start getting easier.

When I returned to Alberta, I took the plunge. Frank was right. The first few weeks were

extraordinarily difficult, but then it started getting easier, and the Blackfoot started to


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flow more and more. For the next several years I spoke only Blackfoot to Blackfoot

people. I was always able to get my point across to them, and they to me, so I felt

justified in calling myself a speaker of the language.

I learned Blackfoot. I did it by means of strategies. Some of the strategies were not too

successful. My first strategy, when I was nineteen, was to memorize useful expressionsand say them to everyone I could. I hate to think how many times I said "Will you marry

me?" to girls, just for the sake of practicing. That strategy, however, did not get me veryfar. Then Randy Speirs inspired my next strategy: nine months of memorizing dialogues.

This was better. Memorizing isolated expressions had its limits. How many useful

expressions are there? After you have learned them all, what do you learn? Dialogues, bycontrast, were open ended.

In designing dialogues, I began by constructing them in English. I would deliberately put

things into the dialogues that I had no clue how to say in Blackfoot. These memorized

dialogues gave me lots of resources for later use. I was doing what Stevick (1989) has

calledstockpiling. Learning all of those dialogues hardly improved my speaking ability,because I was not really engaging in communication in Blackfoot. But the dialogues gave

me a huge stockpile of vocabulary and sentence patterns that I was able to take advantageof later when I took the plunge and refused to speak English with Blackfoot people.

Communication was a horrendous struggle for me at that point, but as I kept at it,

drawing on my huge stockpile, it got easier. This is not a strategy I recommend. Ninemonths of stockpiling, before seriously using the stockpile! (Yet it is the sort of strategy I

have recently observed in use by language school students in an overseas situation.)

I have already mentioned my third major strategy: insist on speaking only Blackfoot. This

was the key strategy. However, had I done this without the stockpile to draw on, it would

not have worked. Pretty hard to speak when you dont know how to say anything.

As I persisted in refusing to speak English, most people would eventually begin speaking

to me in Blackfoot. The first person was my main language helper. I spoke Blackfoot to

him for two or three hours per day for about a week before he began speaking Blackfootto me. In later years it was always fascinating to watch a new relationship and see how

long it took for people to begin speaking to me in Blackfoot. For some it would be an

hour. For others several hours. Occasionally someone would start speaking Blackfoot tome right off.

This third strategy accomplished two things. It gave me a large amount of practice

speaking. And it gave me exposure to Blackfoot that I could understand, as people spoke

back to me. Overall, my strategies were not too effective. From the beginning of our timewith the Blackfoot in 1972 it was about three and a half or four years before I was much

of a Blackfoot speaker. And it was several years more before I found a role in the

community that gave me the sort of language exposure and practice that I really needed.Since then I have helped a number of people learn languages, and learned another myself.

I no longer stumble onto the strategies I use, or move ahead by trial and error. I wish I

could go back to 1967 and have a go at those five months knowing what I know now.


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The three strategies I employed could be called macro-strategies. Within my three macro-

strategies were many micro-strategies. It is the micro-strategies that most authors have in

mind when they talk about language learning strategies (e.g. Bialystok, 1990; Oxford,1990; Wenden & Rubin, 1987). My main point here is that I didnt sit around waiting for

language learning to happen. I did things that I hoped would make it happen. Eventually

it happened, though I am quite sure it would not have, had Frank Robbins not steered meto a viable strategy.

Yet there are cases where language learning has been successful when the learner gave

little thought to an explicit strategy. Those are the easy situations (relatively speaking).

The Blackfoot language learning situation was a difficult one. In most of what follows, Iwill help you to understand the three groups of factors mentioned above which tend to

determine how difficult language learning will be in a given ease. Then you can decide

for your own case how urgent it is that you approach the task with a sound strategy inhand. My main concern is to help those facing the more difficult situations. The more

difficult your situation, the more I am concerned to help you. However, "difficult" is a

relative term, when it comes to language learning. It is never easy. Only more or lessdifficult.

The social situation for learning

The Blackfoot situation was an exceptionally difficult language learning situation. The

biggest difficulty stemmed from the nearly universal bilingualism of the community. I

never did learn to speak Blackfoot as well as most Blackfoot people could speak English.This made it awkward for me to use the language in extended communication, since there

was always the feeling that communication would go a lot more smoothly in English. The

second biggest problem was that I was generally unable to live among the people. Thus I

tended to get only limited exposure to people speaking the language, and the amount oflife experience I shared with the Blackfoot community members was somewhat limited.

Now you may be thinking that the situation you face will be a snap compared to that.

Language learning is never a snap. But some situations are less challenging than others.You may be a native speaker of Punjabi and have acquired native-like proficiency in

Urdu as well. The language you arc going to learn is the closely related Siraiki language.

Most of the life experience of members of the Siraiki speaking community is very similarto your own life experience, since you grew up in a very similar culture. You are an

unmarried person, going to live in a rural village where many of the people cannot speak

Urdu or Punjabi, and you will be having extensive interaction with such people. In all

probability, you will learn Siraiki, whether or not you have a conscious strategy.Certainly, you could do better with a conscious strategy than without one, but it is not a

matter of life or death that you have an explicit strategy.

Or perhaps you are a Canadian linguist going to one of the remaining language groups inthe world which has had little outside contact, where almost no one is bilingual. You are

going to live in one of the villages of that group, and you are going to do linguistic

analysis while relating extensively to people in the course of everyday lifeyour


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everyday life and their everyday lives will intermesh. You are going to have extensive

social life in your new language, both when you want it and when you dont. Village life

is like that. In all probability, you will learn the language, whether you have a consciousstrategy or not. Again, you would no doubt do better with a conscious strategy than

without one, but it may not be not a matter of life or death that you give a lot of thought

to your language learning per se.

On the other hand, you may want to learn the language of a group to which you havelittle direct access. As a mater of fact, you have access to only one speaker, a political

refugee from a far away land. She speaks English and is willing to help you learn her

language. In such a situation, is it possible for you to learn to speak a language? Theanswer is yes (within certain limits). However, in this case, having a viable strategy is a

matter of life or death.

These first two situations are at the "less difficult" end of the scale, while the third is

probably at the "colossally difficult" end of the scale. In my experience, the overall social

context provides the most important set of factors in determining where on the scale ofrelative difficulty a given language learning situation lies. Within the social context,

bilingualism and access to the community are major factors. If most of the speakers withwhom you have contact can speak fair English (or some other language that you already

know), then you have a problem. To become fluent, you need to use the language in

extensive, extemporaneous conversation. It is easy to have extensive spontaneousconversation with these people in English, but it may feel terribly unnatural, if not silly,

or even weird, to struggle to communicate with them in their language. Using the new

language will appear to interfere with communication and thus to interfere with

relationships.

Limited access can be the result of geographical distance from the many body of speakersof the language you wish to learn. Or it can result from the fact that the community is not

very open to outsiders. In either case, it is a challenge to get enough conversationalpractice to become fluent in the language.

The importance of the social context is illustrated in the case of people who are

successful language learners in one context, but not another. I can think of three cases

where an individual had done well at learning a language as an adult, but went on toexperience long-term discouragement in the efforts to learn a subsequent one. All three

were Americans. One learned German in a German-speaking environment, and another

learned French in a French-speaking environment. Both of these people subsequently

began learning American Indian languages, thinking of themselves as capable languagelearners. The third person had a very positive experience for several weeks making rapid

progress in a Central American Indian language while living in a village there, but was

subsequently unable to get off the ground in learning a North American Language ofcomparable complexity.

In the cases involving German and French, the learners had two things in their favour:

similarities to their mother tongue (English) and a social context which provided constant


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exposure to the language and constant opportunities for interaction. In the third case, the

Central American Indian community had been monolingual and the North American

community was extremely bilingual. The language learner was outgoing and expressed aneed for frequent social interaction. In the monolingual Central American situation, he

felt that his social nature pushed him to use the new language, since without it, there was

little social life. In the bilingual North American situation, he felt that the same socialnature pushed him to use English, since using the Indian language interfered seriously

with his ability to socialize. Same person. Different social contexts.

Bilingualism is the most important contextual factor that can negatively influence your

language learning. You may face this challenge in any part of the world if you arelearning a minority language and already know the major national or regional language. It

may also be the case if you are learning a refugee language or are otherwise learning a

language at a distance from its normal geographical setting. In such bilingual situations,having an effective, conscious strategy will often mean the difference between success

and failure.

After bilingualism, probably the most challenging social-contextual factor is limited

access to the language community. I assume that you have contact with at least onespeaker. You can only develop conversational ability if you have someone to converse

with. Provided you have an effective strategy, you can indeed develop basic

conversational ability when you only have access to only one or two speakers. But inaddition, you will want to aim to spend some time in the homeland of the language you

are learning. If you only have occasional opportunities to spend time in the homeland, it

is urgent that you have a strategy for getting the most mileage possible out of your forays

into speech communities.

Accessibility of a group of people is not just a matter of physical distance. Perhaps moreimportant is the attitude of the community toward outsiders, which may range from warm

enthusiasm, to suspicion, to hostility, to various mixes of enthusiasm, suspicion andhostility. The community members may be excited at the prospect of the outsider learning

the language, or they may be largely opposed to the idea, or indifferent. They may feel

that it is more important for them to learn English or another major language from you,

rather than for you to learn from them. People may have positive or negative attitudestoward their language which may influence how they feel about you learning it, and how

they feel about speaking it with you. The point to bear in mind once again is that insofar

as any aspect of the social context makes language learning more difficult, it becomesproportionately more important that you approach the job with a well-thought-out, viable

strategy.

By way of summary, the following nine scenarios illustrate a range of social contexts,

arranged on a scale front the least challenging to the most challenging. Your exactsituation is probably not in the list, but where would you place it on the scale which the

list represents?


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1. You live in a monolingual community with no other foreigners (except, say, your

husband, John, and your four-year-old son, Eric), and the people are enthusiastic

about you being there and want you to learn their language. There are a couple ofbilinguals, who speak a language you already know in addition to their own, and

they have agreed to help you learn for the first few weeks.

2. You live in a monolingual community with no other foreigners (except John andEric), and the people are enthusiastic about you and want you to learn their

language. There are no bilinguals whatsoever.

3. You live in a monolingual community with no other foreigners (except John andEric), and the people are unfriendly toward you and indifferent toward you

learning their language.

4. You live fifteen miles from a monolingual community in an English speaking

town. A few bilingual people are willing to help you if you pay them enough.5. You live in a largely bilingual community (the second language being one you

know well, such as English), and the people are enthusiastic about you learning

the local language.

6. You live fifteen miles from a largely bilingual community, and the people areenthusiastic about you learning their language.

7. You live fifteen miles from a largely bilingual community, and the people areunfriendly toward you and do not really want you to learn their language. Some

people are vocally opposed to your learning the language, and some are willing to

help you if you pay them.8. You live thousands of miles from any community that uses the language you want

to learn, but there are scattered (mostly bilingual) speakers around your city, and

one speaker has agreed to help you.

9. You live thousands of miles from any community that uses the language you wantto learn, and you can only find a single speaker, who, it turns out, is willing to

help you.

In situation 1 you are likely to succeed, especially if you have linguistic training, or are

taking a course in the language, or at least have course materials that you are following.In situation 9 you are unlikely to develop much conversational ability unless you have an

explicit, effective strategy. In situation 1, you will benefit from having a conscious

strategy, but you may learn the language without one, since you will be forced to use thelanguage extensively and will receive frequent meaningful exposure to it. As you move

from situation 1 to situation 9 it becomes increasingly important that you have a

conscious, viable strategy.

If you are thinking that the social situation you face for language learning is a piece ofcake, a word of warning is in order. Have you heard of being lonely in a crowd? The fact

that you will be living in a city with a million speakers of the language you wish to learn

does not mean you will automatically have extensive interaction with people. In a smallrural village situation the language may indeed force itself on you. In a large city

situation there is every possibility of having a rich social life with fellow-foreigners,

speaking English, and having amazingly little contact with host nationals, speaking theirlanguage. For many people, the path of least resistance will be to avoid using the


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language, even when surrounded by millions of densely clustered speakers. For that

matter, even if you are in a village situation, you may find ways to keep busy working at

your computer and quietly convince people to largely leave you alone.

Another social factor in language learning has to do with the culture and its degree of

difference from your own culture. Language communities differ in the kinds of content ormeaning which thc community members express verbally. I once tape-recorded a

conversation between a Pakistani teenager and a Canadian teenager in which thePakistani attempted to communicate with the Canadian using his limited English ability.

When he tried to explain the political system of Pakistan it was hopeless, because he

simply lacked the English expressions he needed. By contrast, when he was explainingthe game of cricket his English appeared to become more fluent. However, I was still

unable to understand him. Some British friends of mine who listened to the tape said that

they could understand him easily. The difference? They knew what he was talking about,because it involved a bit of life experience which Pakistanis share with the British, but

not with Canadians.

Cultural knowledge and language knowledge interact to make communication successful

or unsuccessful. I had difficulty understanding discussions in Urdu about things thathappened at the mosque. I could easily understand discussions about things that happened

in church. Church services in Pakistan had a lot in common with the church services in

my previous experience. Mosque services had considerably less in common withanything in my previous experience. If much of the life experience of your new

community has little in common with your previous experience, then you will have

difficulty understanding what people are talking about, and this will be a barrier to

language learning. Language learning will be severely limited unless you are able toacquire the local cultural knowledge as well. This can require a large time commitment

on your part.

Why some languages are harder than others

After the social factors, I suspect the next important factor in determining how difficult itwill be for you to learn a language is the language itself. In this connection, no doubt the

most important consideration is whether or not the language is closely related to one you

already know. Languages can be related because of common ancestry, or beca

are languages difficult to learn

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