How Could I Explain This
I was making a steady progress in my spoken English while in college, thanks to the English Corner. If talking my fellow Chinese could help me this much, I reasoned, I would do much better when talking to native English speakers.
If I wasn’t completely wrong, I was off by at least two years of timing.
I came to the U.S. soon after graduating from college. In my first year, I noticed my spoke English worsened. It took me about year or so just to get back to the level where I was when I left China. Two years after I arrived in the U.S, ironically, my spoken English stood almost still.
That puzzled me. If I had been living in a Chinatown, eating Chow Mein, and reading Sing Tao Daily all the time, then I wouldn’t expect my spoken English rival Bill Clinton’s. But studying in a graduate school, where even the janitor I met spoke native English, all I got with my spoken English was no better than talking to fellow Chinese back home, none of whom spoke English better than the janitor?
Something wasn’t right.
I only made a sense out of this paradox after I read a theory by Dr. Stephen Krashen, a retired professor of linguistics in the University of Southern California. Based on his research on language acquisition, Dr. Krashen came up with a theory called “Input Hypothesis”.
You need to read his paper to get a full flavor. Here, I’ll spare you academic jargons and simply put it this way: to best improve your spoken English, find someone whose skill is slightly better than yours; talk to him often on the real topics that interests you. Do it consistently, and learning would take care of itself naturally; it’s more effective than any other method.
The insight behind the theory is simple: because you two are in about the same skill level, you understand each other most of the time. You enjoy it most of the time rather than feel frustrated otherwise. That gratification drives you to do it more and often. No one needs to push you. The more you do it, the better you get. Bingo, over time, you’ll be amazed by how much you learn.
Or the opposite: you talk to someone well above your level, either you get frustrated because you don’t understand much in discussion, or he gets impatient because you can’t keep conversation going in a meaningful way. As a result, you won’t get much joy out of it. Pretty soon, you avoid it, or may stop doing it altogether.
Those were exactly happened to me; English Corner in college positively, and the life in graduate school negatively. Native speaker or not was a much minor factor.
I wished I had understood this when I first arrived in the U.S.
If I wasn’t completely wrong, I was off by at least two years of timing.
I came to the U.S. soon after graduating from college. In my first year, I noticed my spoke English worsened. It took me about year or so just to get back to the level where I was when I left China. Two years after I arrived in the U.S, ironically, my spoken English stood almost still.
That puzzled me. If I had been living in a Chinatown, eating Chow Mein, and reading Sing Tao Daily all the time, then I wouldn’t expect my spoken English rival Bill Clinton’s. But studying in a graduate school, where even the janitor I met spoke native English, all I got with my spoken English was no better than talking to fellow Chinese back home, none of whom spoke English better than the janitor?
Something wasn’t right.
I only made a sense out of this paradox after I read a theory by Dr. Stephen Krashen, a retired professor of linguistics in the University of Southern California. Based on his research on language acquisition, Dr. Krashen came up with a theory called “Input Hypothesis”.
You need to read his paper to get a full flavor. Here, I’ll spare you academic jargons and simply put it this way: to best improve your spoken English, find someone whose skill is slightly better than yours; talk to him often on the real topics that interests you. Do it consistently, and learning would take care of itself naturally; it’s more effective than any other method.
The insight behind the theory is simple: because you two are in about the same skill level, you understand each other most of the time. You enjoy it most of the time rather than feel frustrated otherwise. That gratification drives you to do it more and often. No one needs to push you. The more you do it, the better you get. Bingo, over time, you’ll be amazed by how much you learn.
Or the opposite: you talk to someone well above your level, either you get frustrated because you don’t understand much in discussion, or he gets impatient because you can’t keep conversation going in a meaningful way. As a result, you won’t get much joy out of it. Pretty soon, you avoid it, or may stop doing it altogether.
Those were exactly happened to me; English Corner in college positively, and the life in graduate school negatively. Native speaker or not was a much minor factor.
I wished I had understood this when I first arrived in the U.S.
posted by Lingual Bee at 11:24 AM
3 Comments:
Maybe you had difficulty at first in the USA because you'd really acquired a non-native form of English, i.e. 'Chinese English'? This would be a little like trying to get by in a Dutch-speaking community after you'd learned German. You struggled because you were looking at native English through a 'fog' of non-native English.
I think that if you speak with non-native speakers you will pick up their form of the language, rather than approximate to the native language. Thus it's better to have interesting conversations with sympathetic native speakers.
You are right. I think that explains it partially.
Another key factor, I believe, is that my spoken English wasn't proficient enough to carry a normal conversation with natives, which made me very uncomfortable to speaking with them, even with those sympathetic ones.
Fear of losing face is always a big deal for those who grew up in Chinese culture, me included. What I did learn gradually was to do it anyway despite of it.
Frankly I thought your original blog entry was right on the money, and the later comment by the anonymous poster added nothing to the conversation.
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