My process for creating a Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Dialogue in three to four different languages involved about a week of thinking and only a few days of actual physical work. To begin with I needed to find a way to sidestep CLT’s biggest issue: Language is only an agreed upon set of arbitrary symbols.
The issue of language being arbitrary seems to threaten human beings on a daily basis, to the point where some people are even afraid of speaking. When learning a second language, the arbitrariness of words becomes even more perilous (see An Ineffable Paper, Nick Lowe, 2010) In the mind of the student it seems easiest to relate the new set of arbitrary symbols back to the just as arbitrary symbols they originally learned. No matter the word or symbol being used, it is only there to be translated into something more tangible in the mind of the listener or interpreter, even if that more tangible thing is only a concept, and not a physical reality. The symbol only exists in order to alchemically recreate a past reality, as language can only honestly express what has already happened, by the time it is being used to describe any situation. In the case of describing the present or the future, language is making predictions based on the past. This is inherently reflective of the human experience with communication in general.
So, how do I sidestep symbols in order to relate new symbols to the same concepts? At first, my thought was to attempt to relate new symbols to old sounds but not old symbols. This proved incredibly challenging, and my test subject eventually just ended up relating the new symbols back to the old ones. I was going to use songs everyone knew, perhaps nursery rhymes, and translate and sing them, but even though this allowed my test subject to understand the meaning, she understood through hearing the same song in English before making the transition to French.
Having been attached to this idea it was difficult to let go of it, but eventually I came to another one. One of the languages I am working with is American Sign Language, which is most likely the easiest language to work in and to translate. This does not lessen its usefulness though when trying to use CLT. Even though ASL is a set of movements, it’s still connected to the language center of the brain. This is because it is still a set of symbols, but many of these symbols are much less arbitrary. Sign language is about the same as if pictures of what we were talking about appeared in front of our bodies as we spoke, which is exactly the kind of context one needs to teach communicatively. This is made especially interesting in that, different sign languages are not even broken up by different languages but instead by countries or even cultures. The most prevalent are American Sign Language and French Sign Language, but even these are broken up into dialects, as East Coast ASL can look quite different from West Coast ASL.
Do you realize what this means?! If one were to compare sign languages, one could technically come to fully understand what is untranslatable between languages, as sign language will ultimately be able to literally describe using visuals (almost like perfect moving pictures) of the concepts that are integral to the culture using the signed language. If there is a language out there that comes close to a one to one translation between languages, it is sign language.
As the following example may be hard to follow, please note the distinction between concepts, symbols, and signs. Concepts are literally the way we conceive of reality. They are reality being translated into thoughts. Symbols are the words we use in language (written or spoken) to represent concepts. Signs refer to the gestures in sign language that I am using as symbols that create a close parallel to concepts. Think of them more like pictures of the concepts in question, more than anything else. Imagine with me this scenario. We have an American student, speaking English, and who also signs ASL. This student’s objective is to learn Brazilian Portuguese. So he finds a Brazilian student, who speaks Portuguese and most importantly Brazilian Sign Language. Because Sign Language in any of its forms is a language of understanding concepts, not of following strict grammatical structures, even though both signers sign and speak in completely different symbols, they can teach each other sign languages, and find agreed upon signs and “cognates” between both sign languages. This will be easier than finding commonalities in spoken language, because when I show you a picture of a tree, you will recognize its physical reality before you recognize its symbol within language. From here the two students activate their voices in such a way that the Brazilian sign for tree, which specifically describes the Brazilian tree, can connect to the symbol within Brazilian Portuguese that will describe the Brazilian tree, without the American student, connecting the Portuguese word for tree, back to the English word for tree, and therefore the American tree. In this way the American Student learns the sign, which is a close representation of the concept, at the same time as the Portuguese symbol, thus allowing him to learn Portuguese like it is his first language.
Now I will take this idea and apply it to my project. This means, that before I begin any dialogues in Russian, French, or Italian, I am going to begin a signing dialogue. This also necessitates a less linear dialogue, and more of a flow chart with tangents, that hopefully lead back into the flow until finally, everyone learns the vocabulary I want them to learn, which is of course the most important phrase in any language: “Where’s the bathroom?” or “I need to go to the bathroom.” The only constraints on this dialogue are “No English” and I have to practice not mouthing words as I sign them. I will also have to eliminate finger spelling from the equation, otherwise the sign gestures will be connected back to English words, rather than remaining just gestures in the mind of the student. Once the “No English” period has started, I will introduce myself and ask the students to repeat after me. I will continue by introducing “yes” and “no.” This will be followed by the question of whether the students understand. In tests, this always proved to be a challenging word, and the temptation for the student to break out into English and ask questions is intense. In order to get this concept across I may require the use of a fellow signer in order to have a quick exchange of: “You understand ‘yes’ and ‘no?’” “Yes.” Once understanding is achieved, I will pronounce affirmative with a “good” and continue asking if students understand after each piece of vocabulary is introduced. After the utter basics are established, questions will become the focus, because no one can learn without asking questions. “What?” is the first pronoun the dialogue will encounter. If students understand right away, we will move on. If further explanation is required, I will have planted a pen/pencil in the room, so I may use context to create understanding. “What’s that? That’s a pencil.” Next, we will have “Where?” and most likely (as test subjects had difficulty identifying this pronoun) “Where is the pencil? It’s over there.” The final question, “How?” will then be introduced, along with the phrase “How are you?” and “Well (good).” Which students should recognize from earlier. Finally we have almost all the components we need for our final construction. Seeing as that context should fill the blanks, the signs for “help” and “need” will become available, as well as the noun “toilet,” which will be introduced while I am emphatically gesturing about. I may even have the class stand, and walk with me over to the bathroom so I may provide a contextual answer to the question “Where’s the bathroom?” “It’s over there.”
Here, we enter round two. Hopefully most of everything was understood, but if it wasn’t, the repetition in another language should solidify the understanding gained from the Sign Language round. The second will be in Russian, and will follow the same format, and include the signs from the first round. The third round, Italian will follow the same format, as well as the fourth round in French. By the end, all students should be able to 1) ask the hearing impaired where the bathroom is, 2) ask Russians where the bathroom is, 3) Just don’t even bother with the Italians, they’ll most likely just insult the students, and 4) pretend that they don’t have to go to the bathroom in French.
Bibliography
Gatbonton, Elizabeth, and Norman Segalowitz. “Rethinking Communicative Language Teaching: A Focus on Access to Fluency.” The Canadian Modern Language Review 61.3 (March.2005): 325-353.
Gatbonton, Elizabeth, and Norman Segalowitz. “Creative Automatization: Principles for Promoting Fluency within a Communicative Framework.” TESOL Quarterly 22.3 (Sept.1988): 473-492.
Savignon, Sandra J. “Communicative Language Teaching: State of the Art.” TESOL Quarterly 25.2 (Summer.1991): 261-277.
Van Compernolle, Rémi A. “Towards a Sociolinguistically Responsive Pedagogy: Teaching Second-Person Address Forms in French.” The Canadian Modern Language Review 66.3 (March.2010): 445-463.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Story called the Translator
In my fiction 2 class we read this story called the Translator. I thought it related so well to this class but of course I forgot to blog about it till right now
The story is about a man who has to go to Pakistan I believe and when he gets there he meets his translator. His translator is a young man who takes him to where the man will need to make his speech. When the man gets to the place where he needs to make his speech he sees a woman and she asks a question. Through the translator he hears the woman's question and answers it. He is at once more in love with the woman than he has ever been in love with anyone in his entire life.
He asks the boy to set up a meeting between them alone so he can be with her and talk with her. The boy does this and the woman and man and translator boy meet up at a bar and spend a most magical night laughing and drinking and eating all through translations from the boy. The man is more in love with the woman than ever at the end of the night. He sets up another date with her.
The next morning he wakes up to find that some of his money has been taken and the translator boy has disappeared. In his place is an old man who speaks broken english. He is extremely sad, more sad than he should be perhaps, but isn't really sure why. Later on he meets up with the woman again, this time with the old man translator with broken english.
They sit down to drink and eat and talk again but, as he sits and talks with her through the translator, he finds that he does not think her beautiful anymore. Instead he thinks she is plain and boring and her words are crude instead of delightful.
I thought that this was such a good story in relation to our class because the woman hadn't changed at all. It was the translator who had changed and the man had been in love with the words rather than the woman herself. She could have been saying the same thing, but the choices the old man translator used could not compare to the eloquence with which the young boy had spoken.
It's a really great story. I'll try to find the exact title and author and i'll post again
The story is about a man who has to go to Pakistan I believe and when he gets there he meets his translator. His translator is a young man who takes him to where the man will need to make his speech. When the man gets to the place where he needs to make his speech he sees a woman and she asks a question. Through the translator he hears the woman's question and answers it. He is at once more in love with the woman than he has ever been in love with anyone in his entire life.
He asks the boy to set up a meeting between them alone so he can be with her and talk with her. The boy does this and the woman and man and translator boy meet up at a bar and spend a most magical night laughing and drinking and eating all through translations from the boy. The man is more in love with the woman than ever at the end of the night. He sets up another date with her.
The next morning he wakes up to find that some of his money has been taken and the translator boy has disappeared. In his place is an old man who speaks broken english. He is extremely sad, more sad than he should be perhaps, but isn't really sure why. Later on he meets up with the woman again, this time with the old man translator with broken english.
They sit down to drink and eat and talk again but, as he sits and talks with her through the translator, he finds that he does not think her beautiful anymore. Instead he thinks she is plain and boring and her words are crude instead of delightful.
I thought that this was such a good story in relation to our class because the woman hadn't changed at all. It was the translator who had changed and the man had been in love with the words rather than the woman herself. She could have been saying the same thing, but the choices the old man translator used could not compare to the eloquence with which the young boy had spoken.
It's a really great story. I'll try to find the exact title and author and i'll post again
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
An Ineffable Paper
“Language emerges out of the unsaid, moves toward the to-be-said, and passes beyond, as well as beneath, the said and the sayable to the unsayable” (Innis 107). This quote is a good place to start, because it creates the very experience it is referring to. Like in a dream, thoughts and emotions do not occur in a timeline, but instead all at once. And in the same vein, trying to organize, or translate these thoughts and emotions into a narrative that happens over time is somewhat impossible. Just like the task of the inter-translator, the interpreter of thoughts (in this case, me), or intra-translator has to decide on the order in which to convey the simultaneous sets of thoughts that occur in one instant. This is further made challenging by the fact that every timeless second, there is a new, or evolved set of thoughts needing to be translated. To return to that original set that needs to be communicated, just like attempting to recall a dream, becomes more and more frustratingly impossible as each infinite moment passes. In this way, my language is moving towards the to-be-said, skirting past the sayable and the said, and back to the unsayable, or the further unsaid.
Now, I will attempt to break down the unsaid into what I perceive to be smaller, more sayable concepts. For this idea to function or be translated into the thoughts of others, I would like it if you would imagine (with me) that the mind is a crucible. In this crucible the elements of perception, reaction, and external stimulus are smelted together to form linguistic thoughts. The simplest formula is to take one of each element, but this is the same as being an infant. At this point in time, we are working with multiple perceptions, reactions, and stimuli at the same time. In this fashion we form the sets of thoughts in the unsaid.
Next we have the brief intermediate stage Innis calls the “to-be-said.” This is the process of lingual thinking moving through consistently changing sets of thoughts of the unsaid. Continuing forward, we should be soon hitting the sayable or said. Instead, Innis takes us beyond or beneath into the unsayable. I would think that this is the case because most new ideas begin in the unsayable. Innis says this because he would like us to consider that language may fall short of the complex sets of thoughts of the unsaid we are able to process towards the to-be-said.
I would call this a problem. If we pass beyond and beneath the sayable and the said, we’ve essentially avoided communicating with anyone else. This is where I want to introduce Gregory Rabassa. “In light of the above, then, translation is really what we might call transformation. It is a form of adaptation, making the new metaphor fit the original metaphor, and in a bad translation the results can be most procrustean” (Rabassa 2). Take the word “procrustean,” for example. I am assuming many of the people who read this would have to look up this word in a dictionary in order to comprehend it. But, before we even do that, we can begin to see its function based on the context in the quote. If we were stretching our imaginations a little further, we may even draw out the word “crust” from the center (although this doesn’t actually have a lot to do with the actual meaning), so before we even grasp the entirety of the semantics, we have preset unsaid thought sets. Then, once we look it up, we discover that it essentially means “enforcing uniformity or conformity without regard to natural variation or individuality” (from the OED), which we then can simplify, based on the context, into the word “boring.” Even stranger though, before the word “procrustean” we must consider the word that it came from: Procrustes, who is a mythical giant, who was known as a thief and a murderer (also from the OED). “We are what we are called, to such a degree that ever so many adjectives have been coined from proper names” (Rabassa 4). The point of this long tangent is twofold: Firstly, it offers us an opportunity to see semiosis in action, and secondly despite the ridiculous ideas above, I have said something sayable, using a “new metaphor [to] fit the original metaphor.”
As improbable as it seems, I sense I am close to making that stop at the said and the sayable, before pushing through from the to-be-said to the unsayable. Ultimately, it seems that the quote that Innis refers to from Truth and Method by Gadamer contains the solution to the unsayable:
“Every word breaks forth as if from a center and is related to a whole, through which alone it is a word. Every word causes the whole of language to which it belongs to resonate and the whole view of the world which lies behind it to appear. Thus every word, in its momentariness, carries with it the unsaid, to which it is related by responding and indicating….All human speaking is finite in such a way that there is within it an infinity of meaning to be elaborated and interpreted” (Innis 112, Gadamer 425-26).
My new metaphor to fit the original in Innis is essentially the harmonics in the Music of the Spheres. With one note, the musician can produce a large variety of secondary notes or overtones, which don’t exist in the normal range of the instrument. In language, the harmonics become the said, and the overtones represent the transformation of the unsayable into the (barely) sayable. Now, hopefully, “language emerges out of the unsaid, moves toward the to-be-said, and passes” (Innis 107) through the said before transforming the unsayable into the sayable.
Ultimately, the goal here is to say, that I can say something to you. I did it in the most indirect way possible. Just as in music, where the instrument and the performer, each on their own, don’t inherently contain music, language isn’t inherently communicable by itself. It is the resonance between the instruments that is the human being, and the unsaid (perceptions, reactions, stimuli) that create communication.
Works Cited
Innis, Robert E. “Language and the Thresholds of Sense: Some Aspects of the Failure of Words.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 22·2 (2008): 106-117.
Gregory Rabassa, John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte, ed. The Craft of Translation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
“Procrustean.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2010. http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50189241?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=procrustean&first=1&max_to_show=10
Now, I will attempt to break down the unsaid into what I perceive to be smaller, more sayable concepts. For this idea to function or be translated into the thoughts of others, I would like it if you would imagine (with me) that the mind is a crucible. In this crucible the elements of perception, reaction, and external stimulus are smelted together to form linguistic thoughts. The simplest formula is to take one of each element, but this is the same as being an infant. At this point in time, we are working with multiple perceptions, reactions, and stimuli at the same time. In this fashion we form the sets of thoughts in the unsaid.
Next we have the brief intermediate stage Innis calls the “to-be-said.” This is the process of lingual thinking moving through consistently changing sets of thoughts of the unsaid. Continuing forward, we should be soon hitting the sayable or said. Instead, Innis takes us beyond or beneath into the unsayable. I would think that this is the case because most new ideas begin in the unsayable. Innis says this because he would like us to consider that language may fall short of the complex sets of thoughts of the unsaid we are able to process towards the to-be-said.
I would call this a problem. If we pass beyond and beneath the sayable and the said, we’ve essentially avoided communicating with anyone else. This is where I want to introduce Gregory Rabassa. “In light of the above, then, translation is really what we might call transformation. It is a form of adaptation, making the new metaphor fit the original metaphor, and in a bad translation the results can be most procrustean” (Rabassa 2). Take the word “procrustean,” for example. I am assuming many of the people who read this would have to look up this word in a dictionary in order to comprehend it. But, before we even do that, we can begin to see its function based on the context in the quote. If we were stretching our imaginations a little further, we may even draw out the word “crust” from the center (although this doesn’t actually have a lot to do with the actual meaning), so before we even grasp the entirety of the semantics, we have preset unsaid thought sets. Then, once we look it up, we discover that it essentially means “enforcing uniformity or conformity without regard to natural variation or individuality” (from the OED), which we then can simplify, based on the context, into the word “boring.” Even stranger though, before the word “procrustean” we must consider the word that it came from: Procrustes, who is a mythical giant, who was known as a thief and a murderer (also from the OED). “We are what we are called, to such a degree that ever so many adjectives have been coined from proper names” (Rabassa 4). The point of this long tangent is twofold: Firstly, it offers us an opportunity to see semiosis in action, and secondly despite the ridiculous ideas above, I have said something sayable, using a “new metaphor [to] fit the original metaphor.”
As improbable as it seems, I sense I am close to making that stop at the said and the sayable, before pushing through from the to-be-said to the unsayable. Ultimately, it seems that the quote that Innis refers to from Truth and Method by Gadamer contains the solution to the unsayable:
“Every word breaks forth as if from a center and is related to a whole, through which alone it is a word. Every word causes the whole of language to which it belongs to resonate and the whole view of the world which lies behind it to appear. Thus every word, in its momentariness, carries with it the unsaid, to which it is related by responding and indicating….All human speaking is finite in such a way that there is within it an infinity of meaning to be elaborated and interpreted” (Innis 112, Gadamer 425-26).
My new metaphor to fit the original in Innis is essentially the harmonics in the Music of the Spheres. With one note, the musician can produce a large variety of secondary notes or overtones, which don’t exist in the normal range of the instrument. In language, the harmonics become the said, and the overtones represent the transformation of the unsayable into the (barely) sayable. Now, hopefully, “language emerges out of the unsaid, moves toward the to-be-said, and passes” (Innis 107) through the said before transforming the unsayable into the sayable.
Ultimately, the goal here is to say, that I can say something to you. I did it in the most indirect way possible. Just as in music, where the instrument and the performer, each on their own, don’t inherently contain music, language isn’t inherently communicable by itself. It is the resonance between the instruments that is the human being, and the unsaid (perceptions, reactions, stimuli) that create communication.
Works Cited
Innis, Robert E. “Language and the Thresholds of Sense: Some Aspects of the Failure of Words.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 22·2 (2008): 106-117.
Gregory Rabassa, John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte, ed. The Craft of Translation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
“Procrustean.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2010. http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50189241?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=procrustean&first=1&max_to_show=10
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