The dominance of English (or is it Globish?)

By John Biesnecker | August 28, 2008

International travel always reminds me of the dominance of English (and how lucky I am to speak it as my native language). Traveling through Seoul, despite knowing nothing but the most basic Korean, there was no language barrier at all. Everyone spoke English at least well enough to operate in their contexts. In Shanghai, though I speak the local language quite well, I was almost never able to use it as interactions with anyone not Chinese always defaults to English.

In a comment on my previous post (sorry, no link, I’m typing this on my phone, I’ll add it in later), Bill Chapman advocates greater use of Esperanto as an exchange language. While I’ve always thought the idea of a single, constructed, universal language was an interesting one, I just don’t see it’s relevance in the face of so-called “Globish” (global English).

Globish has two huge advantages. First, a massive population of native and non-native English speakers already speak it, and a huge volume of instructional material for it already exists. Second, learning Globish well enough to do your job is a step toward learning full-fledged English, whereas learning Esperanto affords only indirect benefits to those who go on to learn the European languages upon which it is based.

A lot of the people coming to this site are coming from EnglishPod.com, and are probably already Globish speakers aiming to learn English. Any of you care to share your experiences?

Posted in Trends | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Learning through a language

By John Biesnecker | August 27, 2008

I’m heading out of the country for a few days, so posting is going to be light (or non-existent, depending on the connection available at my hotel) until early next week, but before I leave I wanted to jot down a little something about the importance of learning through a language, rather than just learning a language.

Lots of people talk about wanting to learn Spanish, or French, or Swahili, but what they really mean is that they want to be able to communicate in the language so as to talk to people, or read books, or explore the culture, or what have you (see Francisco’s excellent comment on my previous post). There are very few people that want to learn a language because of its vocabulary and grammatical structures. Since the goal is to use the language you’re learning to do something else, that doing something else should be a prominent part of your learning process as early as possible.

In Chinese, I started doing something else around the elementary level. As soon as I could start reading illustrated kids books, with the pinyin flanking the characters, I started learning about Chinese history through those books. Granted, its a rather shallow look at history, but it primed my brain with names and dates and places that then made it easier to absorb more academic material as my Chinese improved. I talked to as many people as I could, on whatever topics I could manage. I watched good movies and funny TV shows. You get the idea. These days I do very little “Chinese study,” but I read a lot about topics that interest me, in Chinese — blogs, books (not textbooks), magazines, etc.

Why is this important? One word: burnout (or, perhaps more correctly, the avoidance of burnout). It’s hard to maintain interest in studying for the years on end that it will take you to learn a language to real proficiency. But I’ve loved airplanes since I was a little kid, and 20+ years later I still love airplanes. It’s a good bet that my fascination for airplanes is not going away. If I’m reading about airplanes in Chinese, then I’m not studying Chinese — which gets boring sometimes — but rather I’m reading about airplanes — which never gets boring (I’m a nerd, yo). I’m co-opting my love for airplanes and using it to study Chinese.

It works. Give it a try.

Posted in Methods | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

UK language degrees fall by 25% in 10 years

By John Biesnecker | August 25, 2008

This came out last week, but I missed it in the flood of stories in my RSS reader until now: University language degrees drop by a quarter (in the United Kingdom):

Researchers found that German was the worst hit subject with only 610 students accepted onto a degree course last year compared with 2,288 10 years ago, while French students have plummeted by a third from 5,655 to 3,700.

Overall, language degrees fell by 20 per cent, researchers from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London and the University of Stirling found.

The first question that pops into my head is, so? My eldest cousin majored in French at the University of Florida. She speaks French very well, and now works in a veterinary clinic (she says she practices her French with the animals, which, while probably a good way to keep her speaking up to par, is a little tragic). By contrast, of my coworkers at Praxis Language — who are by far the most linguistically-talented group of people I’ve ever met — by and large majored in something else and acquired their language skills on the side. Who’s more valuable, a fresh graduate with a business degree who also speaks French, or a fresh graduate who majored in French?

That’s not to say that majoring in a language is a waste of time. Absolutely not. However, just looking at the number of language program graduates emerging from universities doesn’t tell the whole story. As more and more learning moves out of the classroom and onto the network, we’ll be seeing more very qualified people that lack “proper” qualifications entering the workforce — and that should be celebrated.

Posted in Trends | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Learner Interview: Catherine Mathes

By John Biesnecker | August 22, 2008

Our first Learner Interview is with Catherine Mathes, a Chicago native and the manager and English-language host of ItalianPod, the newest member of the Praxis Language family of products. We talk about her experiences learning Italian, German, and Chinese; the things she would go back and do differently if she was learning again; and, her advice for language learners.

Once you’re done listening, give Catherine and her partner in crime, Marco, a little love over at ItalianPod. Even if you’re not planning to study Italian any time soon, their lessons are hilarious. You won’t be disappointed.

[MP3 download link]

Posted in Interviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Languages important for journalists, too

By John Biesnecker |

From the Los Angeles Times: Speaking the language

Tsissana Djandjoulia got through to relatives in Tbilisi on Monday afternoon, Aug. 11, and readers the next day learned in a story in the California section what Djandjoulia later told reporter Ann Simmons: “Everyone was crying. They don’t know what to do. Everyone is in shock.”

Readers might not have realized, though, that what Djandjoulia actually uttered was, “Vsye plakali. Ani nye znaiyet sto dyelat. Vsye v schokye.” She and others were speaking Russian to a reporter who can glide just as easily into conversational Norwegian.

While more and more jobs require foreign language skills, employees who speak foreign languages are assets to their employers even when filling non-language related positions, and immediately more valuable than a monolingual employee. So learning Spanish (or French, or Italian, or Chinese) today may well help you be prepared for the job you’ll be doing in the future.

Question of the day: Does your job require a foreign language? If not, has your ability to speak another language ever come in handy anyway?

Posted in Trends | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Practicing characters with your iPhone

By John Biesnecker | August 21, 2008

In my last two posts I talked about learning Chinese characters and putting in study time. I’ve often found that the best way to put in time is to wedge study into the nooks and crannies of my life (some of the most rapid progress I made with reading Chinese was when I had nothing but the morning and evening newspaper to keep me company during a 45-minute light rail commute). Unfortunately I never found a good way to work writing practice into my life — I don’t even handwrite English very much anymore, let alone Chinese. As a result, the number of characters I can write has always lagged far, far behind the number of characters I can read.

Last Saturday I finally bought an iPhone, and was happily surprised to find that the iPhone 2.0 firmware update includes Chinese handwriting recognition (see the above embedded video). It’s quite good (it recognizes my chicken scratch, even during bumpy cab rides), and not much slower than the pinyin input method that is also available.

I’ve decided to use the handwriting recognition as my only Chinese IME. Why? I write dozens of Chinese short messages per day, and all of that handwriting practice is going to add up. It’s learning that melts into my life, rather than taking time away from it. That is, to me, the very essence of learning on your terms.

Posted in Methods, Products | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Phelps, Mandarin, and putting in the time

By John Biesnecker | August 20, 2008

Watching Michael Phelps crush the field on his way to eight gold medals has been for me the highpoint of the Beijing Olympics. Not only is he one of the best swimmers to ever live, but he seems like a genuinely nice guy. What I didn’t realize was that he’s also something of a language learner, having taken on German and French at school, and even trying his hand at Chinese.

His verdict: “Learning Mandarin is even harder than winning eight gold medals in the pool.”

Well, if that’s true, sign me up for London 2012!

Of course, winning eight gold medals is a lot harder than learning Mandarin. A billion-plus people speak Chinese, whereas exactly one person has ever one eight golds at a single Olympics. I’m sure, too, he was being self-effacing (he was being interviewed by a China Daily reporter, after all). But there is a pretty common misconception about how long it takes to learn languages.

So, how long does it take to learn Chinese? According to this table from the National Virtual Translation Center, native English speakers at the Foreign Service Institute require 2200 hours of classroom time to achieve “general proficiency.” For students at the FSI that means two years of intensive work. For the average college student taking a one-hour class five days a week, sixteen weeks per semester, its 27.5 semesters. That’s a long damn time.

Of course, Michael Phelps has spent more than 2200 hours in the pool. If you want to achieve Michael Phelps-esque achievements in your language studies, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time in the pool, as it were — listening, reading, writing, and speaking.

If you’re feeling frustrated with your progress, look at your recent studies, and ask yourself if you’ve really spent enough time in the pool.

By the way, Michael, if you need help with Mandarin, drop me a line and I’ll set you up with a lifetime ChinesePod membership. Seriously.

Posted in Methods | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Remembering the Hanzi

By John Biesnecker |

Chinese holds a special place in my heart. It’s the third language I tried seriously to learn — German and a very half-hearted attempt at French preceded my Chinese studies — and is the only language save for my native English in which I consider myself proficient. Though the US government considers Mandarin Chinese a “superhard” language, it’s not really that bad once you get the hang of it (though “getting the hang of it is easier said than done”).

One aspect of learning Chinese that is without qualification difficult, however, is learning the thousands of characters (汉字, hanzi) that make up the language’s written form. Some teachers try to sooth students by saying that the 1500 most frequent characters make up about 95% of modern written Chinese. While this is technically true — for reference, see the work of Dr. Jun Da at Middle Tennessee State University — it’s not very helpful in reality, as the remaining 5% come in handy — or block comprehension — more often than their frequency would suggest. Even one of the characters in my wife’s name — 霞, a not terribly uncommon character — is #2021 on Dr. Jun’s frequency lists.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you’ll need about 3500 characters for serious adult fluency (forget for a moment that those characters make up tens of thousands of compounds that you’ll also need to know — that whole “Chinese is a monosyllabic language” thing is bunk). 3500 is a lot of characters, but not insurmountable. 10 a day for 350 days, if you stick to it (I never could, but you’re more motivated than I was, right?), and a while longer if you take breaks and slack off every once in a while like I did.

How should you tackle learning the characters, then? Whip out a pen and paper and start Lisa Simpson-like tenacity? Well, maybe, but there are some other approaches that can get you more bang for your studying buck:

  1. Immersion: This is much easier to do if you’re in a Chinese-speaking country. Characters are all around you. After you’ve in China (or Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc.) for a few weeks you’ll start to notice you’re seeing a lot of the same characters over and over. Pay attention! These are characters you should be learning. My first few years in China I kept a PDA running PlecoDict in my pocket at all times and would write, lookup, and store characters I encountered (for the less technically inclined, a pad of paper and a good character dictionary is probably sufficient). The nice part about learning characters this way is they’re naturally frequency sorted for you — learn characters on signs in places you frequent and you’ll be sure that you’re learning things you’ll actually use.
  2. Learn similar characters together: Though at the beginning the characters all look like crazy scribbles, they’re actually constructed using a finite number of components. There’s an official list of base components, called radicals (部首). Generally, though, I’ve ignored these components and focused instead on whatever part of the character was the most memorable/familiar. A good example of how this works is the character 青 [qīng], which means “blue” (and “green,” strangely enough). It’s part of eight of the 2000 most common characters — 情 [qíng], 请 [qǐng], 清 [qīng], 精 [jīng], 静 [jìng], 睛 [jīng], 猜 [cāi], and 晴 [qíng]. Learn one component and get eight more for (almost) free!
  3. Flashcards: However you decide to learn the characters, exposure is key. If you’re unable to totally immerse yourself in characters, at least you can increase your exposure artificially through flashcards. I greatly prefer electronic flashcards like Anki, but again index cards and a pen will suffice. If you put the character on one side and the pronunciation and meaning on the other, you can test yourself both ways — recognition of the character and the ability to write the character given its pronunciation and meaning.
  4. Read: Read. Read as much as you can. Read everything you can. Every day. Anything will help.

However you tackle it, learning the characters is going to take some time and persistence. But, if you put in the time and persist, you’ll finish. Of course then there’s all the words, and the idioms, and lots of grammar… but that’s all material for future posts.

Posted in Methods | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Welcome to Learning on Your Terms

By John Biesnecker | August 13, 2008

Welcome to Learning on Your Terms, a new blog by Praxis Language, the makers of ChinesePod, SpanishPod, FrenchPod, and ItalianPod. My name is John Biesnecker, and on this blog I’m going to talk about learning, technology, trends, and the places where the three come together.

So what is learning on your terms?

It is Praxis Language’s corporate philosophy, and it boils down to choice. Learn what you want, when you want, where you want, using whatever tools you want. It relies on new efficiencies created by technology, and is pushing learning out of the classroom and into endless niches (we have users in 188 countries, so it’s a safe bet to say that our lessons are listened to on every possible device and in basically every possible situation).

We’re on the cusp of a sea change in the way that knowledge is transferred, and it will change the world, just like mass education changed the world in the last century.

What does learning on your terms mean to you?

Posted in Definitions | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments