Download - How Do We Know What It Means to Know
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Knowing a Language: how do we know what it means to know
K. Stein
If you browse the position postings for English teachers put out by Japanese
universities, you are bound, as often as not, to come across the line, "Must
have native-like ability in English." From the perspective of a university
hiring committee, being able to teach a language requires "native-like
ability." Which, one might think, required a rather high level of 'knowing'
English. But, one would imagine that, just as important as native-like
fluency, a university level English instructor should also have a fair
command of grammatical forms and be able to explicate them in a way that
would be understandable by students faced with the task of producing
research papers in English. And yet, a native speaker of English might very
well never reach a level of conscious awareness of English forms (or essay
structure for that matter) which would allow them to teach a course at a
university. And here we hit on the first thorny issue of what 'knowing a
language' actually means.
One could say that knowing grammatical forms is 'knowing about a
language' and not actually 'knowing a language'. Having information about
a language is very different from being able to use it. Let's imagine a
student who has fallen in love with the present perfect tense and takes
every chance he can get to explain how it is formed and in what types of
situations it should be used. This is still no guarantee that said student will,
when called to do so, accurately use present perfect tense for
communicative purposes such as in the sentence, "I haven't received an
invitation to a party since I started talking about the present perfect tense
all the time."
In fact, according to Krashen's Input Hypothesis, there is no need to
explicitly teach form. Acquiring a language means having an implicit
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understanding without the need for explicit knowledge. Where would that
put our hypothetical present perfect loving student if, with a little bit of
conscious thought and a few seconds of reflection, he does accurately use
the present perfect tense? Has the student really somehow learned the
language without actually acquiring it? And does it matter in light of the
fact that the appropriate form needed to convey meaning has been
produced?
As a more (or perhaps less) extreme example, would someone who can read
and write at a high level but can barely produce intelligible conversation at
a beginner level 'know' English? In fact, these English speakers can be
found in academia throughout Japan. They can read and produce scientific
journal articles in English, but might have difficulty following basic
conversational English. And yet they do 'know' English, when knowing is
measured by the medium in which the language will be used and the
specific message which is to be conveyed. In fact, these users of English (as
opposed to speakers of English) merely reflect the common sense idea
expounded by Nation that, "there is something about each of the language
skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing that makes them different
from the others." And concurrently the, "more time you spend doing
something, the better you are likely to be at doing it." So while these UOEs
know English in one sense, they do not have the skills to utilize all four
communication skills.
Perhaps we could use a Chomskian idea of generative grammar as a base
and say that knowing a language involves having command of enough finite
rules and vocabulary to create an infinite number of sentences. But how
would we measure when this tipping point took place? Wouldn't every
learner have to input a detailed sample of language for analysis to
determine if they had reached the threshold for infinite variable sentence
production? Still, there is something to the idea that 'knowing a language'
does require some ability to use it in a creative manner, that it requires a
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user of the language to be able to adapt the language they have to
situations which are unforeseen. That being said, even the snubbed "set
phrase" has gotten a rethink in recent years, with the idea that chunking
might account for much more of language than current theories take into
account (Lightbown). So the easy back and forth that comes with
commenting on the weather, while not meeting the requirements of having
acquired a language, still might be considered a kind of 'knowing a
language'. Which should result in a collective sigh of relief from the people
of my hometown Farmington Hills where people rarely speak publicly about
anything else.
So, if we are in Farmington Hills, and we know that the person talking to us
is probably talking about the weather, we can catch the drift of what is
being said even if we don't pay much attention. Which is good as we
probably won't. The skill of contextualizing allows us to understand more
than we would in a decontextualized setting. And this is also true for
someone using a second language as well (Lightbown). Even when a
feature of the language is incomprehensible, the meaning or content can be
understood. And this ability to contextualize is based not only on an
interlocutors linguistic ability, but on previous experience and knowledge in
general. So what a person 'knows' has a profound effect on how much of
verbal and written communication they will be able to understand. Seen in
this light, the general idea of 'knowing' and the idea of 'knowing a language'
are like the cultural and natural features of a topographical map, both of
which are necessary for understanding where you standing.
In the end, perhaps a fairer question than, "What does it mean to 'know a
language?'" might be, "What do we expect a student of a language to learn
and eventually know?" And perhaps here I might be able to come up with a
more concrete set of criterion. I want my students to use spoken English in
an accurate enough fashion that what they want to say can be
communicated without the negotiation for meaning overwhelming the
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content. I would like my students to be able to read and write at a level
which would allow them to function in an English speaking environment so
that they will get their needs met and not pose a hazard to themselves or
others. And I expect my students to understand enough spoken English to
recognize when they didn't know something, so that they can direct the
conversation in such a way as to be able to once again follow what is being
said. Because in the end, 'knowing a language' is not a static condition, but
a reflection of an individual's ever changing linguistic abilities and how those
abilities convey and make sense of messages, whether those messages be a
weather forecast, an ode to the present perfect tense, or a serious
discussion about knowing what it means to know something.
Sources:
Ellis, R (1997) Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Krashen, S.D. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language
Acquisition. Retrieved 1 October, 2011 from
http://sdkrashen.com/Principles_and_Practice/Principles_and_Practice.pdf
Nation, P. (2007) "The Four Strands." Innovation in Language Learning and
Teaching 1 (1), 1-11
Lightbown, P. M. (2003), "SLA research in the classroom/SLA research for the
classroom." Language Learning Journal, 28 pp. 4-13
Kevin Stein [email protected]"Knowing a Language"