2011-05-20, 04:49 AM
Im currently taking a class about language, though specifically about the English language, from the perspective of ESL, or EAL (English as Additional Language, the more politically correct term for ESL).
While it might not be completely akin to your interests, I'll leave these few points here that I found interesting from the class (all related to language):
1. Children are able to distinguish between different dialects and languages as early as 3 months old, and if children are exposed to different languages at a young age (between 3 months and 5 years old), they will have an easier time learning something. If a child grows up in an environment in which they are exposed to both English and Chinese, when they are older and speak one fluently (say Chinese) and need to learn the other (English), they will have an easier time picking it up, because they have heard the inflections of the words when they were young.
2. It is easier to learn from your first language. Simply put, because you have more experience and more understanding of your first language, you learn better in it. Say you're a Chinese student in an ESL class learning say Social Studies. You'll have a hard time, because you have to translate twice (social studies language into English, then into Chinese), and thus lose parts of its meaning in the translations (as nothing is able to be completely translated to hold the same context, meaning, and usage). In such a situation, the best way to understand would be to translate it into the home language (in this case, Chinese) and then think about it from that language.
3. The study of vocabulary is overrated because words have different meanings in different contexts (The one we used in class was "respect", where every group had a different definition of it, encompassing a wide range of characteristics, some even conflicting). The importance is not in the amount of vocabulary, but the correct choice and usage of whatever vocabulary you have a grip on.
As for myself, I speak 2 languages fluently (Cantonese, English), understand a third (Mandarin), and speak to some extent 2-3 others (French from high school, Spanish from living in Costa Rica, and whatever Japanese I picked up when I went there for exchange a few years ago). I'd have to say the fastest and most efficient way of learning a language is to go to a place that uses it, and to be engrossed in it. Things tend to stay better when they are put into use, even for a short period of time.
While it might not be completely akin to your interests, I'll leave these few points here that I found interesting from the class (all related to language):
1. Children are able to distinguish between different dialects and languages as early as 3 months old, and if children are exposed to different languages at a young age (between 3 months and 5 years old), they will have an easier time learning something. If a child grows up in an environment in which they are exposed to both English and Chinese, when they are older and speak one fluently (say Chinese) and need to learn the other (English), they will have an easier time picking it up, because they have heard the inflections of the words when they were young.
2. It is easier to learn from your first language. Simply put, because you have more experience and more understanding of your first language, you learn better in it. Say you're a Chinese student in an ESL class learning say Social Studies. You'll have a hard time, because you have to translate twice (social studies language into English, then into Chinese), and thus lose parts of its meaning in the translations (as nothing is able to be completely translated to hold the same context, meaning, and usage). In such a situation, the best way to understand would be to translate it into the home language (in this case, Chinese) and then think about it from that language.
3. The study of vocabulary is overrated because words have different meanings in different contexts (The one we used in class was "respect", where every group had a different definition of it, encompassing a wide range of characteristics, some even conflicting). The importance is not in the amount of vocabulary, but the correct choice and usage of whatever vocabulary you have a grip on.
As for myself, I speak 2 languages fluently (Cantonese, English), understand a third (Mandarin), and speak to some extent 2-3 others (French from high school, Spanish from living in Costa Rica, and whatever Japanese I picked up when I went there for exchange a few years ago). I'd have to say the fastest and most efficient way of learning a language is to go to a place that uses it, and to be engrossed in it. Things tend to stay better when they are put into use, even for a short period of time.