Monitoring Progress

 Monitoring progress

Learning language takes hundreds of hours no matter what language you are trying to teach. Hundreds. It is a physical process in the brain.  You already have the basic outline of how to teach with the four steps.  Does that mean you just grind the four steps until the end?  In a way yes, but if we are mindful of more details of the physical process that is happening in the brain we can do better. 

So what is happening in the brain?  As for what exact chemicals are doing what and what neurons are firing what, I can’t tell you.  But I can tell you what behaviors the students will exhibit and how that comes out because of what is happening in the brain. 

When a child first hears a second language that language does not sound like human speaking.  It sounds like noise. It sounds dangerous. There is an instinct in any child and really any adult also to escape from the source of the language they don’t understand.  

From a survival perspective this makes sense. In a primitive society where violence is common the one who does not speak the same language as you is a clear indicator that they very likely will be hostile. 

So stage 0 is the aversion stage.  The student does not want to hear more of the language.  They want to put a stop to it and get away.  This is natural. It is not the student being difficult. They are reacting to what the brain is telling them to do in order to survive. 

Stage 1: The silent stage.  Once the child has heard enough of the second language without anything bad happening the brain adapts.  The brain realizes that the one speaking this language is not going to hurt them. So now the child becomes silent. The child didn’t choose to become silent. The child doesn’t know why they become silent. The child could be chatting away all happy and then the teacher says a phrase in the target language and the child stops talking. Silent. They couldn’t respond even if they wanted to. If asked a question they will not be able to answer. They will not be able to vocalize at all. 

What is happening in the silent stage is that the brain is trying to take in the sound system of the target language. The brain is trying to map the sounds of the second language to the sounds of the first language if possible.  

We will cover how the brain actually maps sounds to create words later. Just know that the brain needs to program a brain cell to understand a specific sound as language.  If the brain does not have a specific cell programmed for a particular sound, the student will not be able to hear it. Sure, they can physically hear it, but they can’t process it as language. So if it is language the brain needs to program a brain cell to hear and recognize that sound. 

This is why Japanese students consistently can’t even recall hearing the “TH” sound, either voiced or unvoiced, in many English words. They don’t have those sounds in their language and so no brain cell is triggered when they hear it. 

As you might guess, creating and programming a brain cell takes energy. A lot of energy.  It is said by some that the human brain is only about 3% of the mass of the human body but eats up about 25% of the energy consumed. Whatever the real numbers are, the human brain is energy hungry and learning language is definitely energy intense. So expect your students to be physically exhausted after a productive second language class. 

Stage 2: The one word stage. At this point the child begins to respond in the target language but not in full sentences. In their head they have a full, complete thought. They have a full sentence in their mind. But that is not what comes out of their mouth. One word is spoken as the stand in for the full thought. That is not because the child is stupid or is not able to form a sentence. The brain is in the one word stage and so that is what the child can say. 

Stage 3: The two word stage will be the most time consuming stage.  At this stage the student can say two words together or to phrases that are part of a sentence together. They can’t say full sentences yet. Again, they are not stupid. They are a fully intelligent human being. The brain is going through its process.  Two words come out as the representative of a full thought in the child’s head. The two words stage is also where a lot of code switching happens. 

Stage 4: Threshold. This is what we have been aiming for. This is the point when the student begins to use full sentences without hearing it first or anything written down to guide them. They go to sleep on Monday still in the two word stage and then the last little bit of brain matter gets connected and they wake up on Tuesday able to shock everyone, even themselves, by speaking full sentences.

These full sentences will not be elaborate or articulate sentences. But they are sentences. The student has passed from learning a second language to becoming a full speaker of the second language.  After threshold the tactics of the teacher need to change from second language acquisition to language mechanics and refinement. The teacher can now start to teach grammar. No, you were not supposed to be teaching grammar before this point. 

At threshold the student now owns the language. It is theirs to say whatever they want; even things the teacher might not like. The student can now use the language to express their own wants and desires; their own thoughts and feelings; their own intentions and plans. And that is exactly what we want. That is exactly what we have been aiming for the entire time.