Natural Approach

Kia ora koutou,

The direct approach discussed last week leads on to the Natural Approach which was developed by Stephen Krashen and others in the 1970s. The nature of the approach was still communicative, ie the learning was based on the premise that language is the communication of messages which can be understood, but includes some underlying hypotheses about language learning derived from more recent thinking.

The first of these hypotheses is that language acquisition is different from the learning of language. Krashen holds that the acquisition of language is unconscious and is developed through using language meaningfully. This is believed to be the only way to gain competence in a language. (The Acquisition hypothesis) This concept follows work by Stephen Pinker, and also Noam Chomsky who have made a case for language being genetically programmed in humans.

The deliberate learning of language is what Krashen refers to as the monitor, which is seen as the way in which language is checked or fixed. We can see this in operation when we realise that what we have just said could have been said better, usually too late but helping us to improve next time. (The Monitor hypothesis)

Language structures are believed to be acquired in a natural order and any efforts to change this order will be unsuccessful. (The Natural Order hypothesis) Best learning takes place when the language being heard or read is slightly harder than the learner’s present ability, sometimes expressed as Input plus 1. (The Input hypothesis)

The learner’s ability to learn is affected by their emotional situation. So too much pressure, social influences, overly formal learning environments etc make it more difficult to learn the language . (The Affective Filter hypothesis)

The concept of comprehensible input is critical to the approach, so learners are exposed to language which they can make meaning of with the help of teaching aids, pictures, body language etc. This is one of the many elements of the Natural Approach seen in our classrooms, especially those where the target language is used as the language of instruction.

Areas of debate include whether directing student’s learning can aid the acquisition of language, and whether or not the order of grammatical structures can be predicted and perhaps planned.

All in all the Natural Approach has had wide influence in NZ language learning with its emphasis on the importance of using the language for meaningful communication.

Noho ora mai ra,

Chris

The direct or natural method of language learning

Bonjour,

In the early 1900s the direct or natural method of language learning became of interest to second language teachers. It originated with the work of Berlitz and Sauzé who developed earlier theories that second languages were better learned in the same way as the first. The direct method sets out to replicate the way babies learn their first language. It was noted that babies did not rely on another language to acquire their first, they made direct connections between experiences and the language used to communicate those experiences…perception to communication. Within this method there is focus on pronunciation and oral usage rather than learning grammar rules, and immersion of the learner in the target language. It also discourages exposure to reading and writing.

However in classroom use the method differs from the normal process of learning one’s first language in that the content is structured into lessons, whereas a babies learning is focused on the experiences of the day which are much broader, richer, and far more random.

A great many aspects of this approach are seen in our daily school programmes.

Immersion education attempts to create language learning where the first language is not used, and learning of the target language is expected to occur in the same way as the student’s first language. The Ataarangi method eschews the use of English, writing and reading except for the recording of correct patterns.

The need for teaching oral skills is perhaps an area where we might usefully include some of the direct method thinking in our practice.

Au revoir,

Chris

The basics of bilingual education

Talofa lava.

By now I guess we will have quite a few parents who have joined the school community since this column began, so perhaps it is a good time to return to some of the basics of bilingual education. To enable us to better understand the issues faced in bilingual education it might be a good move to review the different models and approaches that have been developed over the years and the influence they have had.

Possibly one of the earliest approaches to language learning and teaching is the one known as the Grammar Translation approach. Wikipedia explains it as, “ …a foreign language teaching method derived from the classical (sometimes called traditional) method of teaching Greek and Latin. The method requires students to translate whole texts word for word and memorize numerous grammatical rules and exceptions as well as enormous vocabulary lists. The goal of this method is to be able to read and translate literary masterpieces and classics.”

Notable in this approach is that the teaching is all conducted in the learner’s first language. The programme depends on texts and the place of grammar in setting the rules by which sentences are put together. This results in student having to learn long lists of words, and grammar rules covering all possible situations. The content of the programme is structured in the syllabus by setting which grammatical structures are taught and ordering them from easy to difficult. Thus the language learned is not based on a need to communicate something. Communication in the target language is not a primary objective.

So we can see that this approach is not effective in producing native-like speakers of the language except perhaps in small numbers. It does not teach us to use language in real situations for real purposes. Additionally success depends on a high level of intellectual sophistication on the part of the learner.

However there is still a place for some elements of the approach particularly in developing metacognition, that is having the language and understanding of structure to be able to discuss what is going on by using words like noun, verb etc to talk about the target language. And there is always a place for learning lists of vocabulary items provided they are based on real situations and experiences.

I believe that one of the interesting effects of this approach has been the well embedded belief that grammar is the rule by which correct language is created. We hear this attitude expressed when someone says we need to know grammar to speak our language. It is often used as a way of establishing a sense of superiority in the critic who believes that their language is “correct.”

Grammar is more profitably seen as a set of descriptions of how a language is constructed, and this changes as the language evolves. Grammar in the first sense would demand that we say, “The man to whom the money was given.” Native speakers of English defy the “rule” nowadays by saying, “The man (who) the money was given to.” The person who says, “ to whom…” just sounds pompous. Whom is a word on the endangered list in English!

Ia manuia lou aso,

Chris

Inference in second language learning

Tēnā tātou,

Today I am going to look at the place of inference in second language learning. Inference is the practice of making meaning from what we are shown rather that what we are told explicitly. For example if I were to say that I put on my gumboots, raincoat and hat and went outside, we could reasonably predict what the weather conditions were at that time.

It was raining of course, but I did not explicitly say that. The conclusion is arrived at by combining the key words gumboots, raincoat, and hat with our knowledge that those

are the clothes we generally wear in the rain. This process of making meaning by thinking about what lies behind the words is critical for language learners trying to make meaning of a second language.

When faced with a phrase or chunk of language which is unfamiliar to the learner they have to think beyond the words to try and find what the speaker was trying to communicate. The reason for this is that very often words do not mean what they actually express. For example in Māori “ tino kino” if taken at face value means very bad, but used in idiomatic speech often expresses quite the opposite, “fantastic!” Only by using inferential clues does the listener understand the actual meaning.

Being able to make these decisions about meaning is a continuous and ever-important element in second language learning because it is one of the few tools we have in our toolbox that can make up for the lack of years of highly comprehensible input in that language.

By improving our children’s skills in drawing inferences in we can help them develop strategies for making meaning in the second language. We can do this by inviting them from time to time to explain what they think something means and why?

“ Jimmy, why do you think mum said take you should take your raincoat to school today?”

“She is worried it is going to rain and I might get wet.”

“How did you work that out?

“Well, raincoats are usually for rainy days.”

Some typical questions for this might be:

How did you know that?

How could you tell?

What words showed/told you…?

What other reasons/meaning could there be?

Does that make sense?

Noho ora mai ra,

Chris

how we learn vocabulary implicitly and explicitly

Bonjour

There was a second interesting point from Natalie Kirton’s presentation, following on from last week’s comments on vocabulary. She asked how we learn vocabulary implicitly and explicitly. In other words in what ways do we learn new vocabulary by soaking it up, and what in what ways do we deliberately direct our attention to learning vocabulary?

Natalie gave the following as some examples of implicit learning:

· When we read meaningful print

· Talking time

· ‘Talking’ print

· Fun print

· Real experiences

· Listening to text

· Listening to music, news items, TV…

Examples of explicit learning included:

· Explicit teaching

· Reading to children

· Print-rich environment

· Deliberately applying strategies

· Visualising

· Focussed talking

· Language experiences

· Discussion about books

· Focussed listening to music, news items, TV…

Amongst these are some indicators for us as parents. To help our children learn vocabulary we need to read with them and to them, we need to give them a wide and deep range of experiences and talk with the children about them. If this is not in the language they are learning at school, so what! The richer their first language is, and the richer their experiences are the more they have to transfer to their second language.

Chris

What we mean by knowing a word

Talofa lava.

Last week I went to a presentation on teaching and learning vocabulary. The presenter, Natalie Kirton, (TEAM Solutions, University of Auckland) has made a study of the subject as part of her Masters degree. She had some points which are of great interest to us as teachers and learners of languages. The first of these was on the topic of what we mean by knowing a word.

Natalie quoted Dale and Rourke (1985) who give these four levels.

• L1 I have never seen or heard the word before
• L2 I’ve seen or heard it, but I don’t know what it means
• L3 I recognise it in context, I can tell you what it is related to
• L4 I know the word well

Scott Thornbury in “How to Teach Vocabulary” (2002) explains that complete knowledge of a word includes knowing its written and spoken form, its meanings and the words it most commonly associated with, its derivation, how it is used in different situations its frequency, we usually choose not to use uncommon words with listeners who are unlikely to know them its grammatical behaviour, how it can be used as a verb, noun, adverb etc its connotations (the meanings native speakers associate with it, eg in English street walker is taken to mean something other than a person who walks on streets.

It can be seen that knowing a word is a complex concept. For learners of other languages there is a tremendous amount of work to be done in building up word knowledge to cover all these criteria. As parents and teachers we need to keep in mind that our students need on-going exposure to all these possibilities so that the knowledge is built up. Each time a word is encountered in a new way it should result in an increase of the knowledge of the word. We can help by using lots of words in lots of situations and by drawing children’s attention to the features mentioned above. We can also share the levels with them so that they can say at which level they know the word. This makes them aware of what they need to do about that word.

I believe that we can often use the term “chunk” in the place of “word” with the outcome that the learner gives attention to the word groups which make up the basic building blocks of language.

Ia manuia lou aso,

Chris

Will my child’s schooling be affected by being bilingual?

This is a question I regularly hear in one form or another. For a speaker of a minority language learning in majority language school the situation is different from that of a speaker of the majority language who is learning a minority language. In the first instance it might be a first language speaker of Urdu learning English in a mainstream NZ school. The second instance might be a speaker of English learning Mandarin in a Mandarin language NZ school.

For minority language speakers learning in majority language schools (eg.ESOL students) it is essential that the school recognises, builds on and uses the child’s first language skills if academic potential is to be reached. Not doing so creates potential problems where the child is having to deal with complex learning in their weaker language and failure results in more failure with the effect on morale and self confidence that ensues. These children often experience difficulty in bringing their intellectual powers to bear unless they can be shown how to transfer those first language skills to the new language situation.

International research suggests however that a majority language learner of a minority language is benefitted by the addition of a language. It appears that being a majority language speaker means their self confidence and morale is boosted, and their intellectual abilities enhanced by the learning of the second language.

The key indicator would seem to be whether the language being learned has the effect of replacing the first language, (a subtractive bilingual programme), or of adding to the first language, (an additive bilingual programme).

Chris.

Advice on raising children in two languages from birth

Kia ora ano.

In one of the recent contributions a parent expresses her intention to bring up her child in two languages from birth. Colin Baker in his book “A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingual Education” has some advice on the issue. He contends that in suitable home circumstances it is highly desirable to begin early.

The reasons I can see for this are numerous. In the first instance children are avid learners of language from a very early age. Having few if any responsibilities a lot of time can be dedicated to communication. Of course this is not a conscious act for the baby but the way they are hardwired. They result is that they don’t need lessons. Every interaction they have is an opportunity to learn, so parents need only do what parents do, no need for in-depth planning. Learning two languages like this is pain free.

Early bilingualism also brings about beneficial development of the child’s cognitive and social skills. They learn early on how to adapt their language use to the person to whom they are talking and this brings about a need within the child to find ways of transferring what they can do in one language to the other language. These transfer skills are invaluable in later learning.

Finally I see the ability of the child to interact with close relatives with one language or the other as the opportunity to build a rich literacy background. If say the child learns English from the Pākehā mother and French from the French father then that child can communicate freely with the grandparents on both sides. The language which is best able to convey the culture is inevitable the language of that culture. In this ideal situation the child grows up with a deep and rich knowledge of their cultures learned through the languages of those cultures. Identity is strongly affirmed.

Ka kite ano,
Chris Lowman.

A book I strongly recommend to all parents of students in bilingual programmes

Talofa lava,

I have recently been rereading “A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism” by Colin Baker. This is a book I strongly recommend to all parents of students in bilingual programmes. Over the next weeks I intend to comment on some the major issues that he deals with in the book. Perhaps if readers have queries about bilingualism we could deal with those also, so if you have questions please e-mail them to me.

Today the question is about the influence of bilingualism on progress in reading. Baker makes the point that in almost all cases where bilingual children are slow in learning to read their bilingualism is not the reason.

To tease this out and look at some of the underlying principles we might ask why this should be so? Baker states that a child’s readiness to read is the critical issue and an encouraging atmosphere towards language learning and reading at home and at school is a most important element in this.

When learning to read there are a number of interacting processes going on. For the beginning reader there is the primary challenge of decoding the text, in other words linking the letter combinations to make recognisable words. Although spelling systems may be different in different languages this task remains the same.

Readers come to understand that text is intended to convey meaning and so their task is to work out what the text is saying to them. The reader brings to this task strategies such as:
making connections to their own knowledge and experience, forming and testing ideas about the meaning by using clues such as key words, word order and illustrations, and drawing inferences about the writer’s intent.

Bilinguals, because they typically exercise these strategies when moving from one language to another, have a good basis for getting meaning from their reading provided they are shown how to use those strategies.
Manuia lou aso, Chris

Reference: Baker, C. (2000) A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism, 2nd Edition. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, USA.

Benefits of learning another language

Kia ora tātou

I recently received an e-mail from a Samoan relative who is teaching English to Japanese students in a French speaking part of Switzerland, and it was all in Māori. This demonstrates the degree to which we are users of more than one language in the wider world. Historically New Zealanders have typically taken the view that the only language that counts is English. Their reasoning being that without it one cannot get a good job.

The concept that language only has economic value has been carried forward to the present where people express the idea that if one was to learn a second language then it should be Mandarin, Korean or Japanese as these are the languages of our major international business connections. Again the language is valued only in economic terms. We still regularly get letters to the newspaper saying that learning Māori is a waste of time because it won’t get you a job, even though that is totally incorrect. (I got mine through speaking Māori!)

Obviously there are numerous really good reasons for learning another language. After all the principal purpose of language is communication and we communicate a lot more every day than stuff that earns us money. So what other reasons can we think of?

• Being able to talk to grandma and find out what happened in her life.
• Being able to talk to relatives in our home country
• Being able to identify with our heritage be it Māori, Samoan, French, Indian or whatever.
• Being able to participate in events of cultural significance to us such as church, weddings, birthdays, funerals, meetings, fiafia days, poukai, Polyfest…
• Being able to express thinking in ways unique to our culture and language.
• Be able to do the things our ancestors did and valued.
• Being able to participate in many worlds, in many languages
• Being able to connect with people from other cultures
• Being able to send an email half way around the world in a language significant to the receiver while still speaking French and Japanese at work, talking to the wife in English, phoning Mum at home in Samoan, and, in Māori, saying thank-you for the birthday present.

Amazing isn’t it that there are so many other reasons for having another language.

Noho ora mai rā,

Chris

What vocabulary items are easy to learn and which are harder?

Bonjour,

I would like to conclude for now our discussion on vocabulary learning with the question, “ What vocabulary items are easy to learn and which are harder?”

Starting with the easy vocabulary items we can all agree that the high frequency words are the easiest. This is most likely because we encounter them often and they are essential to any spoken or written message so we fulfill two of the main requirements for being able to keep them in our long term memories. They are also usually short. High frequency words are typically members of a list of some 1000-2000 words or lexical chunks making up 80% of everyday language. So if we analysed a typical conversation or book 80% of the words would be in the high frequency list. One would think that this is going to be a very large number of words but in English in fact 25 words make up a third of all written material, 100 make up about half. (www.janbrett.com/games/high_frequency_word_list_main.htm)

Under the easy to learn category also come words that have strong associations for us as learners or which can be linked to things we already know a lot about. This fulfills the requirement of imaging that we mentioned in the fourth newsletter.
How about words that are hard to learn? For starters words which don’t get much use, or which are hard to connect to something we know about are hard to learn.

Other hard to learn words are those which are easily confused with similar words eg. source and sauce, words which are opposites such as left and right, (we know the words but we confuse the meanings!) and words which are hard to pronounce. Very long words may also be considered hard to learn.

Words which we can make little sense of, the ones where we don’t understand how they may be used or how they are made from other words are particularly hard to learn. Eg. If we were to come across a word such as juxtapose and not see a connection to position (juxtaposition, placed side by side, especially for comparison or contrast) then we have no idea of what the word is about, where it comes from or how to use it. This is a case against learning wordlists which are unconnected to real experiences, or lacking supporting schema.

Learners are thought to generally increase their vocabularies by 1000 new words a year without even thinking about how they do it, imagine if we could become really expert and increase that to 1500! How much faster could we then learn a language.

Chris

Why we forget words

Talofa lava,

To continue the topic of vocabulary learning it is probably right and proper if we ask why we forget words.

I am beginning to appreciate as I get older that forgetting is part of the human condition, and this is as true for young people as for the older person. So what do we know about the forgetting of words and chunks?

Beginning learners of another language apparently forget quite a lot at first, probably because they have limited webs of meaning to hang the new words on, but as their language webs increase forgetting new material is reduced considerably.

Estimates are that for beginners about 80% of new material is forgotten within a day. Research has shown though that when a learner stops using their second language the initial loss of language is rapid over the first 3 or 4 years but after that there is little further deterioration even up to 50 years later. (reported in Thornbury, S. 2002. p 26) My guess is that the language which remains is that which was highly usable and well connected to the learner’s web of words and meanings.

We tend to forget the words which were harder to learn and connect to our web, and also those which we tried to learn in short intense bursts without revisiting them afterwards. Hard to learn words may be those that are really different from what we already know in either language. Perversely some words may be displaced in memory by words which are almost the same.

The other factor is learning load, in other words trying to learn too many words at a time without being able to revisit and recycle them sufficiently.

It seems that the solution is to learn vocabulary in manageable amounts, spread the learning out over days and weeks, and make every opportunity to re-encounter them and use them in new contexts at different levels of depth.

Ia manuia lou aso,

Chris

Reference: How To Teach Vocabulary. Scott Thornbury,
2002, Published by Pearson Longman.

Modelling and Metacognition.

Kia ora tatou,

To continue the subject of learning vocabulary two elements of last week’s column deserve further exploration., modelling and metacognition.

How would one model the sorts of learning we have been talking about?

This is problematical because the processes take place in the brain and are not observable. The challenge is to make them observable. One way is the “think aloud” strategy. Let’s say we are presented with the task of adding cognitive depth to a chunk or word we are learning. (This where we try to use the word in new sentences, of think deeply about how that word works.)
If we were learning the word amber, the situation might look like this:
“Can I say, ‘… going to amber…’?”
“No because amber looks like a noun, it’s a thing not an action.”
“Ah but you could say it if Amber was a name!”
“But this word doesn’t have a capital A so it’s not a name.”
“ Well what about switching from green to amber and then to red like traffic lights.”
By doing it this way we can show how we are thinking about the word, its schema, and how it works.

Metacognition is the practice of thinking about thinking, in other words to have reflect on and be able to say how your brain works, how you approached a problem. This has been shown to be a very successful strategy for effective learning. By using metacognition learners can shortcircuit the learning process because they understand how they are learning, reflect on how successful the process is and can deliberately employ the strategy. The conversation above shows metacognition at work and models patterns of thinking for the student.

Metacognition is one of the reasons why bilinguals reach higher levels of achievement than monolinguals, because they are having to make conscious decisions about how language works on a daily basis.

We can help our students learn vocabulary more effectively by having conversations about words/chunks with them and in our conversations show by “thinking aloud” how we come to particular decisions about how that word/chunk can be used.

Noho ora mai na,

Chris

Memory and vocabulary

G’day,

To continue our exploration of vocabulary learning today I will look at memory and vocabulary. Obviously the memory is the place where vocabulary is lodged, but the challenge is to get it into what is called the long term memory. Most students are good at keeping new vocabulary chunks in the short term memory but this is not the most desirable thing if you are a language learner and need them three months later.

There are a number of strategies which can help our children and students to put vocabulary into the long term memory.

• Repetition is the most obvious. However it needs to be a repetition of the hearing and use of the word in context. In other words just repeating the word means only that we remember how to spell it. We need to use it repeatedly for a purpose.

• Spacing. This means going back to the vocabulary item over a period of days. Doing this is much more effective than twenty repetitions in the first ten minutes and then no more for the next ten days. We need to revisit the item again from time to time also. One might write the word in a sentence with a little picture to illustrate it straight away andthen over the next few days do the same but in a different sentence each time.

• Use. Using the new chunk in some interesting way is one of the best strategies. Use it or lose it!

• Cognitive depth. When we have to think about our choice of a word, and think hard about our decision to use it the word is remembered more successfully. We need to use the chunk in new and creative ways.

• Imaging. Connecting the new vocabulary with mental pictures or an emotional response is a powerful memory tool, especially when the student creates their own mental “hook”. This may be why swear words are so easily learnt!

• Attention. When we make a conscious effort to learn vocabulary we improve the ability to recall that vocabulary. Accidental learning is less successful.

• Metacognition. (thinking about thinking!) When we deliberately combine the last three and also think deeply about how the new item works, how it is similar in meaning to other words we know, how it is different, its various forms, (passive, past tense, noun, verb etc)where it fits in our web of words and so on, we are working at top efficiency.

`To combine all these strategies one might write the new item in a sentence with a little picture to illustrate it straight away and then over the next few days do the same but in different sentences, using the chunk in different ways, with different tenses etc each time. All the time consciously looking for opportunities to use the chunk in conversation. Strangely enough my experience is that when one does this one then hears the new word/chunk all over the place even though it was apparently never heard before.

All of these are learning skills that can be taught to our children through modelling, getting them to do them and discussion about how learn vocabulary works.

Reference: How to Teach Vocabulary. Thornbury, S.(2002). Pearson Longman, UK.

Good luck!

Chris

Ways in which we store and retrieve vocabulary

Ngā mihi nui

Recently I was asked about learning and teaching vocabulary which led to a discussion about the ways in which we store and retrieve vocabulary. For the purpose of this discussion we accept that vocabulary is taken to mean both single words and chunks of words which combine to communicate a meaning. For example, a single word might be something like bicycle, and a chunk might be something like raining cats and dogs, or falling rain.

The difficulty in thinking about vocabulary is that words only rarely have a single meaning. A bicycle is always a bicycle, but a dog is not always a four legs and a tail dog.

Consider these phrases:

• Raining cats and dogs
• My car is a real dog
• She keeps on dogging my footsteps
• She is a dogged competitor
• Dirty Dogs (sunglasses)

All of these have some idea which links the different uses of dog but the meaning communicated is dependent on the context and the surrounding words.

When we store the word dog we create a schema, a web of interrelated meanings and experiences related to dog. The schema diagram might look like this:

Recent research is indicating that these sorts of webs of meaning
are the way in which we store vocabulary, and when we come
across a new item we will plug it in to the appropriate web.
However these webs do not exist independently of each other
but are linked to other webs. The web for dog is linked to webs
for cars, other animals, weather etc.

And so on

As parents and teachers we need to keep in mind the way in which we store vocabulary and help our students to create the webs for themselves, remembering also that for our bilingual students the webs will contain words from both languages.

Kia ora ra,

Chris.

The different purposes of language

Talofa lava.

To continue the discussion of the cultural component of language and the way this impacts on the learner I would like to take a quick look at the different purposes of language, what we might call genre. Genre here refers to text purposes such as narration (story telling), recount (telling a personal experience), giving directions etc, rather than the “science fiction”, “historical novel,” “chick flick” meaning of genre.

Every culture has its own concept of the purpose of a particular genre, and how it should be done. For example in New Zealand we would most likely think that a report should be written in the third person, giving the impression of objectivity by not using the words I, me, you, we, us. It should have an opening paragraph outlining the report, and a closing section in summary. Some cultures however expect to find the summary first, and others give reports in a story form. All of these are valid and require our language student to gain an understanding of how the language being learnt performs that task.

Another example is the purpose behind telling a story. Western cultures tend to tell stories as single stand - alone items. In my experience the stories we hear nowadays are primarily intended to entertain. In earlier times in the Western world stories were used to teach lessons about behaviour, remember the moral stories from Victorian times.

It seems to me that the Maori stories I know are commonly intended to transmit information about genealogy, tribal history and proper behaviour and are part of a longer narrative. In this way the story of how Motutapu got its name is connected to the Tainui canoe, the grave that the tree from which Tainui was carved grew, and Maui’s sister’s stillborn baby, after her first husband was turned into a dog. These are characteristics found less today often in English language stories, except perhaps for the Harry Potter books and similar series.

The implications of this for our programmes is that firstly we need to teach our students authentic genre not just a version of the English genre translated into the target language. We also need to be aware that when we put a text in front of a student, they may not understand the deeper meaning because they have the wrong expectation about that genre. If they expect that the story is meant to entertain, and are given a story intended to explain a historical relationship between two tribes, they will struggle to maintain interest and gather deeper meanings.

Ia manuia lou aso.

Chris

The backstory behind bilingualism

Ngā mihi nui ki a tatou i tēnei tauhou, Greetings to all and a happy New Year.

To start off this year’s contributions, I would like to share with you some thoughts about the backstory behind bilingualism.

It is common to hear that gaining a second language gives insights into other ways of thinking, and that culture and language are inextricably linked. In New Zealand there is prevalent view that we can learn Māori culture without learning the language. It is probable that this is an idea shaped by the misconception that culture is only song and dance.

For the purpose of this discussion though I would like us to consider culture as the system of customs, beliefs and values held by a people.

Learning the haka Ka Mate Ka Mate implies more than just knowing the words. A full understanding of the haka requires knowledge of the literal meaning of the words and the message it intends to convey. To do this one would need to understand the value system and customs of the author and the significance to him of the circumstances which instigated the haka.

To demonstrate the vastly different ways in which people interpret the world, consider the concept of time. “…going forward” is a commonly heard phrase, as is, “don’t dwell on the past.”

A Martian visiting us would think that looking forward into the unknown (the future) is an important feature of Western thinking, and the past is less important and relegated to some place on the back shelf.

In Māori the word for past in time is “mua” which is also means in front of and “muri” means future and behind. Clearly Māori have a different perspective. You might say that figuratively one faces the past and the future is behind us where we can’t see it.

Interestingly in Māori, time seems to travel in a vertical direction. ‘Te ra kei te heke mai’ is a way of expressing “next day”, heke meaning descending. Yesterday is expressed as, “te ra kua taha ake”, ake indicates an upward movement away from the speaker. So in this view tomorrow drops in on us and when it becomes yesterday, it returns to the heavens. I feel as if English considers time as something which moves horizontally but I can’t presently put my finger on how I get that idea. Any ideas?

To finish this little discussion I will leave you with a brainteaser. In Māori numbers take the form of verbs. So the number rua can be preceded by any one of a number of tense markers, eg, “Ka tahi, ka rua, ka toru, ka wha.” So in Māori a number is a verb.

What would that look like in English or French?

Because the concept is so foreign to most of us it is almost impossible to conceive of numbers being verbs and how they would work.

Through learning another language one gains deep insights into the culture which is expressed by that language.

Noho ora mai ra,

Chris Lowman