A3 2 Meta

Phew, I finally get the chance to sneak away to pour my thoughts out onto the page. Er, screen. I have been thinking about this for days and days. Or at least, for days. It is one of my favorite things to think about: language learning.

So I'm taking this Linguistics MOOC and I have found it to be really enjoyable. The purpose is to see just exactly *how* enjoyable it really is before I decide to do something really crazy like jump into some master's degree program. Also, it would be nice to pinpoint with some degree of precision what precisely I find interesting. Linguistics is a huge field.

Last week was all about phonology, this week was all about morphology. And I really dislike both of these aspects of linguistics. I kind of see them as necessary evils that I would never want to actually study in any kind of depth, at least if it were not closely related to some other more interesting aspect of linguistics. Which would probably be almost anything else.

My impression of phonology is, "Is it an alveolar fricative or a labeal glottal stop?" Neither of which probably exist, I'm just pulling words out of the air. To me, this part of linguistics feels like I'm in an intro level biology class: it's literally all about memorizing facts and definitions. Snoooooooooooze. I can just look those up in a dictionary.

My impression of morphology is, "Is this language SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, VSO..." and I automatically only want to shout, "The language is an SOB." I do find it to be mildly interesting that languages have evolved in such a way that 90% of the world's languages are either SVO or SOV, and that almost all the world's languages that we know about have the subject preceding the object. But is it that interesting? Not...really. One of the lectures had one of the students ask the prof something like, "but is linguistics really a science, then, since it doesn't seem to follow any rules? I mean, it seems like there are only endless exceptions..." Yeah, I feel ya there, my Dutch friend Martin. The other problem is that it feels like endless theorizing with only a really small, limited amount of actual data to back up any of these theories. The very, very best part of this entire course was probably in this module, though: a nice, long interview with Noam Chomsky, which was a triple thumbs up. Very interesting man, one of the smartest men in the world, with ideas that kind of make my head hurt. His work has implications for language learning and computer science, and he's been mentioned in so many of my university textbooks (along with B. F. Skinner), it was kind of surprising to learn that he is still living.

Anyway, yes, I still like linguistics a lot. But I guess I'm more into semantics and especially pragmatics than phonology and morphology.

***

On a different note, I finally found a tool that addresses some of the problems I have with Czech declensions!

Here is the problem:

For an English speaker, in order to open your mouth and not sound like a complete idiot, you have to have a strong understanding of pády. This concept does not really exist much in English, though I did find a pretty good example the other day:

My son Dan, saying a prayer over dinner: "And thanks ye for the food."

Thou, thee, ye <-- same meaning, used in a totally different place. And thou sound like a royal moron when thee misuse it.

Which means this is how I sound in Czech all. the. time.

Let's break down the problem a little bit further:

In Czech, there are 7 cases. That means that most nouns can end up taking 7 (really only 6, 'cuz vocative case is...special) different forms, depending on what role they play in the sentence. These are pády.

Okay, so that would be hard enough. But every (well, most...) words in Czech follow one of 14 (well, again...ish...this depends on precisely how strict you want to be) patterns. These are vzory. And by the way, I always mix up this word with tvory, which means "creatures." And it does not help that it is pretty much how I feel about vzory - that they are wild creatures scampering about that I can never seem to catch.

So, if you want to be able to say something in Czech, and we are just talking nouns here - haven't even broached on the subject of verb aspect - you have to have 7 * 14 forms memorized perfectly, oh yeah, times that by 2 because everything is completely different as plurals.

This is kind of an oversimplification because vocative case doesn't really have all 14 forms. But guess what, it has a few different, extra ones. So let's just forget about it for now and pretend it's the same as the others.

Straight out of the door you have to already have 196 forms memorized.

But how can you memorize ANYTHING when there is a severe cognate deficiency? It would be one thing to focus on memorizing forms if there were lots of borrowed and shared words, or if the words even looked like words, which so often they don't because along with a cognate deficiency, there's a major vowel deficiency. In the CS course lectures about UI design that I've been watching with Danny, they pointed out some aspects of human memory. Basically, we do a lot better at memorizing chunks of things. They proved it by showing a series of nonsense words that an L1 English speaker would automatically think look like words. Stuff like: DERGA, MORPHN, DEEMO, WYOTT. They showed these words for only a few brief seconds, then went to the next slide and asked you to recall what the words were. They also did the same thing with words like: DXYLN, BGYTW, KYTKY, ZMRKNU. It was much more difficult to remember these words in chunks because they simply do not look like words.

Okay, yeah, I cheated a little bit; those last two actually are words in Czech. The point is that I hypothesize that an L1 Czech speaker will remember different chunks of letters than an L1 English speaker.

***

Back to the main issue at hand:

Skills you definitely need in order to create a valid Czech sentence are:
- know the word
- know which case you need it to be in
- know how to form that word in that case

All of these are very different skills. You can have the last two, but still be mute because of a severe vocabulary deficiency. Acquiring some kind of a vocabulary has to be the first step in language acquisition, in my opinion. Without words, you can know tons of grammar constructs, but you'll have zero comprehension and zero ability to communicate. You must know words. I have opinions about effective ways to learn and drill new words. More on that in a bit.

You can have the first two skills (vocabulary and knowing which case to use), but fail in your communication because you make a mistake in execution. You can have the first and the last skill - both vocabulary and knowing how to form the word, but failure to know which case to use in that context will always (well, unless you're lucky, since there are actually quite a few overlaps. But don't think about them as overlaps or you'll never be able to memorize them! Ha!) make you sound stupid or worse, drastically change the meaning of your sentence in an unintended way. You can see that there is a huge difference between to the bathroom, from the bathroom, about the bathroom, the bathroom's... Very, very significant, and you really don't want to mess up. 

Maybe messing up occasionally could cause you to be endearing. But nobody, and I mean nobody, likes feeling like they are constantly misunderstood. It is quite fortunate that most Czech speakers are sympathetic to the plight of L1 English speakers trying to learn Czech. But even then, making mistakes on this basic meaning level is so frustrating.

When you look at words in a context, you don't have to worry about the last two skills (context of the case, and how to form the case). You are consciously focused just on learning new words, and the stress of creation is removed. 

Another thing that UI class pointed out about memory is this: total recall is a lot harder for humans than finding something from a list. They demonstrated this with those funny lists of non-words by having you first type out what was written and then pick out which ones were on the screen from a list of options. It is far easier to pick from a list than it is to just remember. 

By the way, I had an interesting conversation about words with my friend today. As I've been turning towards the context of Harry Potter (more on that later, I'm sure), I've been asking people to write sentences using a specific word that I didn't understand. I give it to them in a sentence, because that's where words occur. He asked, "How close do you want the words in my example sentences to be?" At first I thought he meant, "How close to the meaning do you want the words to be?" Turns out, he meant the form. Like:

to flower

a flower

flowered

flowery

enflowered

beflowered

flowering

All of these encapsulate a pretty similar concept, even though they are different words. I would be fine with any of these words. By the way, Czech does this much, much, much more than English, it seems. 

What I didn't want was something like, "He set his cup down on the table before he took a bite." and "He set his dogs on somebody else." These are totally different meanings, very confusing to try to figure out from the context alone what a word means with such different meanings. But on the other hand, some words have lots and lots of different meanings. In the end, I think I tried to say, "Just do what makes sense to you." 

Exploring words within a context, uncovering and deciphering the meaning - not only is this a terrific amount of fun, but it definitely is an effective way to get the words into my long term memory. Especially using different forms of words with the same meaning, actually. That seems to also be beneficial for me to see bigger patterns, like how to verb words. Or noun 'em. Or if that's even possible. 

But this still leaves me needing to find a way to practice the other two skills: recognizing the context of the case, and knowing how to form the word in that case. I suppose you get a little bit of the recognizing the case from the context exercises, but it's all been subconscious. There has to be some amount of conscious drilling involved.  

When you speak or write - any kind of language creation, you're practicing all three.

There are two subtasks to the third skill of knowing how to form a word in a specific case:

• Recognizing which pattern it follows (which vzor is it?)
• Knowing what that pattern looks like in that case (how does this vzor change in x case?)

All Czech textbooks discuss pády. Most include something about vzory. But very few of them separate these two subtasks from each other. To be fair, the onus has to be on the learner, not the textbook. Also, there's the issue that "good" foreign language textbooks might not actually be capable of existing.

But we can do so much better than what currently exists, or at least than what I know exists - which is about 12-15 Czech textbooks. I guess instead of collecting glass figurines or fancy jewelry, I collect Czech textbooks. Hahahaha

Every Czech textbook I've dealt with doesn't recognize these as distinctly different tasks; they group them together as one bigger task and rush straight into drilling both of these skills at the same time. I've been doing it this way for about a year and it simply is not that effective for me.

I know it's not because I stepped away from studying Czech for nine months and came back to discover that only a little of that second subtask skill had really persisted in my long term memory.

I think it's going to be key for me to drill these two skills separately and purposefully until I can master them. I also have pretty much given up on using tables as a memorization device: I desperately need context. The tables are great as a lookup tool, but I don't really have an implicit understanding of the difference between kdo?/co? koho/čeho? komu/čemu? etc... in order to really do that, at least yet.

I found a tool which I'm very hopeful will help me to do this. It is called "pády" and it is simply a list of a table with all the vzory in all the different cases, and then you can quiz yourself for whichever combination of singular/plural, one or some or all pády. The app then gives you a sentence with a fill in the blank and a list of possibilities to choose from. It has been really interesting to me. 

Here is how that app can address these needs: 

- know the word 

You are presented with words in a context. There are only a limited number of sentences, but it seems like that number is quite high. I am putting a lot of faith in the creator of this app, that he (presumably he) is writing correct sentences.

- know which case you need it to be in 

If you quiz yourself on multiple cases, you are testing your ability to recognize which case the context requires. It seems like you can isolate the cases for which you already have mastered the third skill of knowing how to form the case, and in that way drill in a conscious, purposeful way. 

- know how to form that word in that case 

• Recognizing which pattern it follows (which vzor is it?)

This app tells you which vzor the word is in instantly. Not only does this help you to figure out your mistake, but it also helps to drill a concept into your memory when you get questions correct as well. 

• Knowing what that pattern looks like in that case (how does this vzor change in x case?)

It also helps you to be able to locate the problem: "Oh, I keep messing up masculine animate 2nd case singulars. I should pay attention to those." By working through these drills quickly - as quickly as possible without it becoming random - you can see the pattern more clearly. "Oh, words that look like this must be this form." It is much, much easier to do this through fast exposure to context than it is to sit there and try to think about a table. At least for me. 

There are a few ways this app could be better, the simplest being some kind of stopwatch. That way, you are measuring reaction time to recognize the correct answer. That can be really motivating and also mimic real life, which requires a superfast, almost instantaneous, invisible computation in your mind.

Because I like data, it would also be cool and interesting to see exactly which vzory are causing problems, maybe in some kind of visual way like a graph.

But those are kind of just extras.

Over the last few days, I've devised a plan to drill like this:

- drill each case and singular/plural separately. I always do the 50 questions option (maximum amount at a time). 

- when I consistently get to 100% for all the options for a case, I will start drilling them together. Maybe two at a time. Then I will gradually add more. 

Here are my "scores" over the past few days, in chronological order. You can see the trend towards improvement, which is great. And very motivating.

Singular cases

1. (you don't drill first case singular words; they are always given to you this way)

2. 84% 90% 98% 94% 92% 94%

3. 54% 80% 86% 88% 86%

4. 50% 64% 76% 82%

5. 72% 86% 100%

6. 68% 70% 76%

7. 90%

I am running out of time, and haven't even broached on the topic of vocabulary in a context being easier to remember. Like, far easier to remember. But that will have to be a different day.

I'll end by mentioning that my friend and I were talking about Czech textbooks. Rather, I was ranting about it one day because it is just so...well, it's very personally frustrating, for one. But on a non-emotional level, it's also fascinating. Who is writing these Czech textbooks that basically fail the L1 English speaker? And why do they fail? And could it be done better? My friend mentioned the Czech textbook by Lida Holá called "Czech Step by Step" or "Česky krok za krokem" depending on the version you get (no major changes). I discussed a few of my issues with that book; actually it would be an awesome idea to create some kind of table someday comparing and contrasting all the various Czech textbooks and their efficacy for the L1 English speaker, but that will also have to be a different day. After this conversation, I wondered what other people thought, so I delved into the Amazon reviews, and I laughed out loud reading them. 

Among several good reviews, which praised the book as a good intro for beginners (either because they had just received the book and were still ecstatic about the idea of learning Czech - I know what this is like, I experienced it first hand, this was my first textbook in Czech - it's really exciting to get that first textbook and think, "YESS! This language IS learnable!), were several more critical reviews. I happen to agree with all of the points these critics make. Here is the most articulate one:

This book is terrible. It emphasizes memorization and repetition over explanation and clarification (for example, locative is introduced in set phrases like "v hotelu" early on, but the grammatical rationale behind "-u" ending is not explained until chapter 14). The exercises do not correspond to the grammar taught (for example, the author introduces charts with pronouns, but then does not follow these charts with exercises practicing those pronouns). Important grammatical points are included as passing footnotes. There are also problems with grammatical terminology in Czech (for example, author uses "prepozice" when Czech would use "předložka"). Lastly, it is clear that this book is intended for *all* non-Czech speakers learning Czech, rather than for any specific language group learning Czech (as a result, the logic of presentation is very warped and there are many missed opportunities for clarification of differences between languages). It is also apparent that the book assumes readers have never studied any foreign languages before (and let's be honest, no one tackles Czech as a first foreign language....). For anyone who *has* any background in foreign languages -- Slavic, or otherwise -- the book will simply frustrate.

That concept, right there, in bold, made me laugh and laugh and laugh. It is so true. I guess whoever writes the ideal textbook for L1 English speakers should keep this fact in mind and capitalize on the reader's background knowledge. 

I can feel myself itching to be the author of such a textbook. But wow, talk about scope creep. That will have to wait. I guess one purpose for meticulously and faithfully cataloging my thoughts about language learning and my progress is to have a record of what it was like so that someday down the road, I won't have forgotten what it was like to be that reader, and will thus be able to more effectively write for them. 

But seriously, that project will be in a decade or so :-)