On the art of hunting language

Pondering our first forays into language "pulling" or "hunting", as opposed to me just "pushing" the language onto the learners, it appears that getting the person you're hunting language from to understand what word you're looking for is something of an art. At least it's something you have to have a knack for. Although last week didn't really go badly, it didn't go as well as I'd hoped and I'm not sure if that was because it was a new concept and they were nervous, or if it isn't actually so intuitive after all.

If my learners continue to stall, how am I going to help them get the knack of language hunting? Could I come up with an approach that I could replicate for any other group of learners in the future?

I thought it might be useful to try and dissect what's going on when you're in the position of pulling language from a native speaker without any other common language. I remember the Advanced WAYK: Spanish Push/Pull video showcased a process of "Getting Hungry, Setting the Trap, Springing the Trap, Cooking It Up, Serving It Up" which must relate to this somewhat. Unfortunately I have yet to see a proper write-up.

Still, I have tried to identify the techniques (with a small "t") that I tend to use and I see others using when pulling language from a fluent speaker:

First: The Hunt

1. Use a Question Phrase
Question phrases that help you ask about specific words and expressions are probably what anyone should learn first when embarking on learning a new language "in the field".

What is that? (nouns)
How is that? What kind of __ is that? (adjectives)
What is it doing? What does it do? (verbs)

The following are universal:

How do we/should I say that?
Is that right?

2. Mime

Of course one has to assume that one's fluent speaker is not conversant with sign language, and will only understand obvious, not abstract, signs. Obvious Setups are also very important. This technique can be used in combination with incomplete sentences and question phrases.

Hunter: I say "boo" [acts out somebody trying to take someone else by surprise and frighten them] and he says "Aaa!" [switches to the other role]. What did I do?
Speaker: You... scared him?
Hunter: Yes! I scared him!

3. Draw a Blank (TQ)/Attempt the Sentence

This also requires an Setup to make the intended meaning Obvious. This works best when the Hunter has the rest of the sentence down pat.

Hunter: I give this money to you and you give this pen to me. You are ... [Draws a Blank with his hands] -ing this to me.
Speaker: Selling this to you?
Hunter: Yes! Selling this to me.

4. Break the concept down into simpler parts

This is like explaining complex concepts to a small child. In both situations, the concept must first be conveyed and then the word for that concept is provided. The difference is that with a child, the adult both conveys the concept and provides the word; in language hunting the learner conveys the concept so the fluent speaker will provide the word.

Hunter: Every four, five years everybody chooses who they want to be President.
Speaker: You mean an election?
Hunter: Yes, an election. During the election everybody writes down who they want to be President and puts this piece of paper in a box.
Speaker: Yes.
Hunter: What is this piece of paper?
Speaker: A vote?
Hunter: Yes! A vote.

Any or all of the above methods may be used to help the fluent speaker understand what we're trying to say, and then say it for us, helping us to "spot" what we are trying to hunt.

Next: The Chase

When hunting, it’s not enough to just spot your quarry. Now the chase is on! It’s the same with hunting language. Hopefully a combination of techniques will prompt our fluent speaker to give us the word we are looking for. But it’s not ours yet! We have to chase it down, in other words make sure we understand it correctly and know how to use it.

Hunter: Where is your house?
Speaker: It's in the city.
Hunter: How should I say this, "Where is your house?"
Speaker: "Where do you live?"

Spotted! Now the chase is on!

1. Prove it!

Hunter: OK, where do you live?
Speaker: I live in the city.
Hunter: OK, so your house is in the city?
Speaker: Yes.
Hunter: You are always in the city?
Speaker: Yes, I am always in the city.

2. Practise it (circling).

Hunter: Where does he live?
Speaker: He also lives in the city.
Hunter: Does he live near to you?
Speaker: No, he lives on the other side of the city.
Hunter: Where do I live?
Speaker: You live in the country.
Hunter: How long are you living in the city?
Speaker: "Have you lived".
Hunter: Ah OK. How long have you lived in the city?
Speaker: About 4 years. ...

So that's where I'm at so far. I look forward to any observations, especially if there's anything I've missed.

Perhaps I won't need to go through all this with my group. I expect the best method is probably just to tell them to Start at the Beginning and keep going until they get to something they don't know, and then let them work it out. Still, these notes may be useful for coaching as and when we get stuck. The more I think about it, the more I anticipate that "free hunts" will be the best way to go in the beginning, so they work as much of this out by themselves as possible, before then moving on to planned hunts.

In planned hunts, like Tea with Grandma, we will first establish our role-playing scenario, then discuss what language they can hunt from me using it. I hope this will make for a nice balance between systematically covering a syllabus and adapting the sessions to the needs and preferences of the learners.

Turkish Session Diary 7: How do we say that?

Just back from this week's session (last week's was postponed to Friday, which is why the next session came around so quickly).

This week we went straight in with the buying-selling role-play, but at first we just had a review round. I had the learner to my right start by asking me how much for a pen. She declared my price "çok pahalı!" (too expensive), and haggled me down a bit before buying it. This yielded a "ride" of sorts, which we repeated three times and then passed around the table.

Then we came back to the idea of "pulling" language in day-to-day conversation with Turkish speakers, although in the context of our session they would be pulling the language from me. First I asked what else we might want to ask about a product besides its being expensive or cheap. We decided we were going to find out how to ask about "quality", "life" in the case of batteries and so on, and whether or not it has a "guarantee".

For "quality" we talked about how we might make it clear to someone that we were talking about quality so they would know to give us the word. We discussed that we might ask if it was "good", and also make gestures such as flicking and "trying" to bend the pen. I had the learner to the left of me try this, and I gave her the word kalite. As it turned out, we ended up learning two words: kalite, the noun "quality", and kaliteli, the adjective meaning "of good quality".

For "life" or "lifetime", we tried to practise saying something as best we could with incomplete Turkish, so the other person knows what we are trying to say, and then saying Nasıl deriz? (How do we say that?). I wasn't very good at getting the idea across, so the learner to the left of me would start the conversation, ask me "How long can I use this for?" and so on, but then forget to say Nasıl deriz? at the critical moment. But still, they got the idea so I'm hoping this will work better next time. (The Turkish for "guarantee", garanti, came out all by itself as this particular learner already knew it.)

We worked Craig's Lists into the session for the first time yet with this group. Off-the-cuff I set one up to simultaneously cover vocabulary and Turkish's dual genitive-possessive construction: uzunluk (length), genişlik (width), bunun uzunluğu (this [thing]'s length), bunun genişliği (this [thing]'s width).

To next time!

Turkish Session Diary 6: A breakthrough!

In my last Turkish Session Diary post I said that I believed I had made probably the most important innovation yet with my group by introducing role-playing games to help my learners get used to using what they had learned by repeating set conversations.

Now on Week 13 I think I have really started to tap into the WAYK magic like never before, by teaching them how to pull (hunt) language from me instead of relying on me to push it to them.

Ever since I played with Arne I realised that this is what I had been missing all along. Using nothing more than a Setup and sign-language, and no English, to pull language from someone was a very different experience. While learning something by rote and then being forced to use it is undoubtedly effective, going out and getting what you need as you need it is even more so. But how would I get my group to do it? And how would I rein the process in and ensure we learn language systematically?

After watching a number of videos (such as Tea with Grandma in Latin and ASL from back in 2010 and the Advanced WAYK: Mandarin Push/Pull and Advanced WAYK: Spanish Push/Pull demonstration videos) to make sure I understood the concept, I hit upon the idea of first demonstrating how to pull by pretending to be an English student and hunting English from one of them. This proved to be quite effective.

I also realised that language hunts can be random, but they can also be planned. This is something I'm going to be working on a bit more. For next time, I'm going to come up with a goal conversation to function as my lesson plan, and then talk with the group about how exactly they're going to pull it from me. So before we start we will have decided what kind of Obvious Setups to use and what kind of questions to pose. I expect we will be Drawing a Blank a lot.

All things considered I think this introduction went as well as could be. Check it out!

Playing and discussing WAYK with Arne Sostack

The other day I Skyped with experienced WAYK practitioner Arne Sostack, who runs the innovative WAYK site inthehat.dk. I learnt some Danish, but more importantly I experienced WAYK for the first time as a language learner and I finally understood some of the key concepts of WAYK.

00:00 Arne starts pushing Danish to Joel
06:13 Joel starts pulling Danish from Arne
15:00 Joel starts pushing Turkish to Arne
17:23 Why it's important to use the Technique hand signs
20:38 Arne starts pulling Turkish from Joel
37:09 A chat about pulling, how to teach pulling, and the connection with TQ Setup
40:25 The wisdom of Tea with Grandma
46:35 Turning paying students into teachers?
54:53 The question of structure in a seemingly random process

Here is my take-home: The real magic happens when the learner is self-motivated, self-confident, and knows what they want to learn. In other words, proactive. So the question is, how do you take a group of learners who have never known anything except passive learning and engender that proactive mentality?

Earlier this week I posted about the song-and-game approach I currently have going. I can see now that this is still not quite WAYK, and as I discussed with Arne, teaching them how to pull language is probably the most valuable skill I could teach them, even more than actual words and grammar I teach them.

Realistically, I think it would have been an uphill struggle to get my current group to both decide for themselves what they need to learn next and then to pull it. My role-playing games could well make this process easier, because what they need to pull is already abundantly obvious. So now I'm thinking of a way to teach them how to pull in the context of a role-playing game.

Tea with Grandma is definitely something I want to try. Perhaps I could start by pushing some of the phrases they'll need and then move on to the group role-play.

As for lending structure to the process and covering an even range of language, I think it could well work for me to push what I want to push, set up a role-playing scenario, and then let them pull whatever else they want to. Then you get the best of both worlds.

These are just my current musings, stay tuned for what I do with them. This week's lesson has been moved to Friday 8 August, so I should be posting after then...

Turkish Session Diary 5: Songs and games

Regular readers of this blog (assuming there are more than one) will remember that last time I had set an objective of having some sort of "free practice" to provide what I think the "session patterns" are missing. In this week's lesson I have implemented this to some effect, and I think it's perhaps the single most important innovation yet in my current course.

Learning vs. acquisition

Serendipitously, a day or two ago I happened upon the Wikipedia page on TPR Storytelling (TPRS). Insofar as it draws on TPR, you could say it is a sort of "cousin methodology" to WAYK, and it certainly seems to have the same sort of down-to-earth, common sense guiding principles. Specifically, I would point to the following observation in that page:

[Language acquisition theorist Stephen] Krashen asserts that there are two distinct ways of learning language: language "learning" and language "acquisition". Language "learning" is learning that takes conscious effort on the part of the learner. It is characterized by learning grammar rules, memorizing vocabulary lists, and performing speaking drills. Language "acquisition" is learning that is subconscious and takes little or no effort on the part of the learner. It is characterized by listening and understanding to (sic) messages, reading interesting books and articles, and other enjoyable activities that take place in the language being learned. According to Krashen's theory, the only thing that can lead to fluency in the language is language "acquisition". Language "learning" can only be used as a way to consciously edit speech or writing, and it is never the cause of spontaneous, unrehearsed speech or writing.

I contrast it with the following under Input Hypothesis (Comprehensible Input redirect):

Krashen's hypotheses have been influential in language education, particularly in the United States, but have received criticism from some academics. Two of the main criticisms are that the hypotheses are untestable, and that they assume a degree of separation between acquisition and learning that has not been proven to exist.

Assuming this is a fair assessment of their criticisms, one wonders if these particular academics with the second claim have ever actually learnt a foreign language to any level of fluency. If they had they would surely have shared the experience of first learning a word or construction by rote, then having to consciously access the memory of those drills the first time said word or construction is required, and then after a certain number of attempts feeling it "click" as conscious thought no longer becomes necessary.

My own interpretation is that language is essentially a set of reflexes, each triggered by a unique set of "stimuli", the circumstances in which any given word or construction is necessary. Therefore the process of acquisition is the process of establishing that reflex, consisting of trigger and response. I humbly beg to differ with Krashen's view as interpreted by Wikipedia that the process is predominantly passive; conscious effort is certainly required, but focused on the goal and not the process. In other words, acquisition happens when the subconscious is stimulated by immediate necessity to take language that has already been learnt and prime it for automatic recall.

Now, returning to my "session patterns", it had become clear to me that I had been using WAYK as a glorified mnemonic. Not that the glory is undeserved; as mnemonics go the unique combination of comprehensible input (TQ Obvious etc.) and sign language is extremely effective, and accurate. Still, mine had been a process of language learning, not actual acquisition. No reflexes, just crutches of conscious memory.

Fun and games

So this week instead of going through prescribed chunks of language, I set up role-playing scenarios where those reflexes stood a better chance of being created. Throughout, instead of thinking, "Now what was the next line?", they were thinking, "Now I need this" or "I need to do that", in other words the actual triggers for the fluency reflex.

We played two games specifically engineered to create situations in which the learners would "need" the words and constructions they had already learnt.

The first was a bluffing game we simply called Liar. There were three objects on the table (a coin, a phone and a pen) but four players, as well as me, the "host". Each of the players had a card. There were four cards in play, one for each of the objects plus one with "Liar" written on it. If a player had an object card they owned that object, but if they had the Liar card they were supposed to lie by claiming they owned someone else's object.

The conversation would go something like this:
P1: Bu kalem kimin? (Whose pen is this?)
P2: Bu kalem benim. (This pen is mine.)
P1: Bu para kimin? (Whose is this coin?)
P3: Bu para benim. (This coin is mine.)
P4: Hayır! Bu para benim! (No! This coin is mine.)
P1: Aha! Yalancı var! Sence kim yalancı? (Aha! There is a liar! Who do you think is the liar?)
P2: Bence o yalancı. (I think s/he is the liar.)
P1: Sence kim yalancı? (Who do you think is the liar?)
P5: Bence o yalancı. (I think s/he is the liar.)
P1: Bence o yalancı. Bakalım! (I think s/he is the liar. Let's see!)

Of course you have to explain the rules carefully in the source language, otherwise no end of hilarity ensues when, say, a player with an object card claims someone else's object. Then the group has to choose between two players neither of whom are the liar while the real liar just watches smugly...

The second game was a Boss, Employee, Shopkeeper scenario. Something like this:

Emp.: Merhaba patron! (Hello boss!)
Boss: Merhaba. (Hello.)
Emp.: Ne istiyorsun? (What do you want?)
Boss: Kalem istiyorum. (I want a pen.)
Emp.: Tamam... Merhaba! (OK... Hello!)
S.K.: Merhaba. Patron ne istiyor? (Hello. What does the boss want?)
Emp.: Patron kalem istiyor. (The boss wants a pen.)
S.K.: Kalem var. Nasıl bir kalem istiyor? Siyah mı, kırmızı mı? (There are pens. What kind of pen does he want? Red or black?)
Emp.: Bir saniye... Merhaba patron! (One second... Hello boss!)
Boss: Merhaba. (Hello.)
Emp.: Hangi kalemi istiyorsun, siyah kalemi mi, kırmızı kalemi mi istiyorsun? (Which pen do you want, the red pen or the black pen?)...

And so on.

Everybody had a great time, which was reason enough in itself to do it, but the point was that there were no pre-set lines. Just situations in which everybody had a goal. Because they had already learnt the language to achieve their goal, they managed to recall it as they need it. After a few rounds the trigger-reflex was established and the language was now acquired.

The missing link

Essentially this approach reflects the the learning/acquisition observation inherent in TPRS and indeed in WAYK. The session patterns I have been using up until now, rather like teaching a song, have been extremely successful in the learning stage. Now with the role-playing games they are truly acquiring the language.

One of the group invited a veteran EFL teacher to sit in on one of our sessions a few weeks ago. She was impressed with WAYK and remarked that she had never seen Turkish taught using the kinds of methods she had used in the past to teach English, with lots of involvement and repetition, and "obviousness". Because she's a newcomer I'm starting her from the beginning, and she's steaming through because she knows what I am trying to do even before I do it. In a way she is acquiring what I give her on-the-fly because she automatically starts freestyling with whatever I give her.

For some like her, the line between learning and acquisition is a non-issue, because they automatically start making the language their own. But with crowds who expect all the creativity to come from the teacher and lack the self-confidence to let their hair down and make mistakes, I think the games will be an important element in bridging the gap between learning and acquiring the language.

Suffixes and sign language revisited

Since my last post on the subject I have studiously avoided signing any suffixes at all, both on the basis of advice from other WAYK'ers and invaluable training at the school of hard knocks. So far so good, although I have been getting a bit of dissent in the ranks insisting that istiyorsun (you want) should be signed WANT YOU and not just WANT, because -sun is the second person. Still, no biggie.

Nevertheless, a robust system for signing grammar is an attractive idea, and it just so happens that one Anna Andresian has come up with such a system for signing Latin cases and tenses. It's certainly very elegant, and wouldn't need much tweaking for Turkish.

Mind you I'd want to see a demonstration of how it's used in practice before putting it to extensive use, but if nothing else it's another tool to go in the box for when it'll come in handy. Thanks Anna!

Turkish Session Diary 4: Time flies...

So, here we are 11 weeks in and they're still coming back for more.

While no session ever goes exactly the way I planned it, I have been able to cover some key grammatical concepts that some foreigners take years to master, if they ever do, such as the definite accusative (thinking of it as "the" as some do creates more problems than it solves) and descriptive adjectives ("Is your money existent?" instead of "Have you got any money?").

An innovation that seems to be working well so far is clock cards. At the moment I'm using 12 cards, one for each hour on the clock. So far I've only really used it to teach "How many hours later?" and so on, but it's going to be my springboard into tenses, "When will you...", "When did you..." and so on. Only problem is, if I forget to put something on them when I'm not using them they're liable to blow away! Time flies, as they say...

My session pattern is working well, providing a structure for me to introduce new information at a balanced rate. What I want to work on now is freer and more personalised practice sections. I'll look for the TQ's that describe what I'm talking about more eloquently, but there are two ideas I'm working on: Firstly having a "free practice" bit just before a break or the end of the session where I start them off with a combination of material we've already worked on and tell them to play with it (I've already done this with some success), and secondly use some constructions from the session to talk about things in day-to-day life.

As always, a work in progress. Enjoy this clip from today:

Admittedly, this is not the best video I could have gotten but it gives you an idea of what's going on. They had a bit of trouble with "In 3 hours" (üç saat sonra) and "At 3 o'clock" (saat üçte), but that was because we had been working on üç saat sonra in previous sessions. Still, it wasn't long before they were back into the groove. You can also see the clock cards in action here.