The written way to review vocabulary.

When I was in secondary school from 1993 to 1999, I was learning three modern foreign languages at the same time: English, French and German. Each of the teachers encouraged us to assign a notebook, fold the page in two, and copy the vocabulary on the folded page: Dutch word on one side, English / French / German on the other. And to make it a habit to regularly review this vocabulary (one way to “encourage” us was to test us on a weekly basis).

Fast forward to 2012, and if you’re anything like me, you have all but banned paper from your life and carry a smartphone. Reviewing vocab has gone digital as well. Often, language learning software has a “spaced repetition” feature, which really is the digital equivalent of the exercise book I was using in the 90s.

With spaced repetition, you review vocabulary on virtual flash cards. You see either the vocab item or the translation only and have to try to recall what the other side. You then check whether you were right, and let the software know how easy or difficult it was to recall this particular item. Depending on what you indicate, the vocab item will appear again for you to review at a certain interval: sooner if you indicated it was difficult, later if you indicated it was easy.

Now, many of you may opt not to go for online language learning, but take real-life language classes instead. I recommend that you still review your vocab using spaced repetition. It will drastically speed up your learning.

Screenshot from my Anki account

A useful, free, and open-source tool to do this is Anki. Create an Anki account and you can enter the vocab on your PC, and access it anywhere on your phone using the app.

Enter all your new vocabulary and set aside 5-15 minutes every day to review it. Since it can be on your phone, it’s really pretty easy. You can do it on the way to work or during your lunch break. You’ll notice that you’ll get comfortable with new vocabulary faster. And since mastering the vocabulary is such an important part of learning any language, it will drastically speed up your learning process.

Have you had experience with spaced repetition software like Anki, or with using spaced repetition the ‘old fashioned way’?

Even on Changi Airport, Singlish gets you places

“I can hear from your English you live here for a while”, remarked the taxi driver. I was on my way to do some video recordings at French Toast Language Center. Stunningly, while doing the recordings, one of the students made a similar remark.

I was glad to hear from their tone that they meant it as a compliment. Singlish is Singapore’s own, and if my English has changed to adapt to my surroundings in the 6+ years that I’ve been here now, it’s a good thing. I know Singlish is somewhat controversial, but I enjoy it when people speak it proudly.

It’s not that I try very hard. I think it’s unnatural for me to use a lot of the ‘advanced Singlish vocab’, like words that originate in dialects. The only time I do that is when ordering coffee. Can you imagine having to translate “kopi-gao-siu-dai” in plain English? It’s fun though, as an ang moh, to order kopi-gao-siu-dai. I remember one particular time at the Plaza Singapura foodcourt, where the coffee auntie looked so incredibly surprised.

My English tends to assume the color of its surroundings. It just doesn’t feel right to stick rigidly to the British style that I learned in secondary school. When I cut my sentences short, it feels like I’m part of this city. If I impose long sentences or hyper correct grammar on people, it feels like creating a distance. It’s like saying “I am better than you. My English more powderful”. 

It’s largely a subconscious process. You hear certain things so often that they make their way into your own speech. At the same time, we all fight against this kind of localization up to a certain degree. It has to do with identity. If I were a native English speaker, I would have fought a lot harder, because how I speak English would be more significant to my identity.

When you hear me speak English now, Singaporeans will probably be able to hear the Singlish influence. People who can distinguish a Dutch accent, will be able to hear that in my speech as well. I am sure that I also codeswitch subconsciously, based on who I am speaking with. That’s just how I want it to be, because it reflects my identity at this point in time.

Chinese for fortune cookie: 幸运饼干. But don't expect to see it in restaurants in China

Is it possible to learn the language without knowing anything about the culture?

Many words and regular expressions in any language stem directly from the culture in which the language evolved. For example, in Korean language, the honorific is a way to express respect for hierarchy and seniors.

On the other extreme, UK / US culture is much more informal, and as we can see, there is no formal way to address someone, only the word “you”. Language learning crosses into cultural learning when you learn in which situations it’s appropriate to use the honorific form. So, just to use a new language correctly in a grammatical sense, you need to be aware of the culture.

The next step would be using the language appropriately in real life. That requires a great deal more cultural knowledge. Just being able to make a grammatically correct sentence isn’t going to get you anywhere if it’s considered rude.

For example, it’s perfectly possible to ask “how much did you pay for your house?” in Dutch, but unless you are VERY close, I mean parent-and-child close, it’s considered a very rude question to ask. I learned this when I was perhaps 10 years old, and we visited an uncle who had just bought a new house. I kept asking my aunt “how much did you pay for it?”. I repeated my question several times but didn’t get an answer. Then my mother told me “Guus, it’s impolite to ask that kind of question”. My aunt, trying to soften my mum’s blow, said: “This is the kind of question you ask, but don’t get a reply to”. (Note for Dutch readers: it’s a perfectly normal question in Singapore, even among people you know only vaguely).

Beyond not offending anyone, you need to know even more about a country’s culture to use a language effectively. If you speak English, but know little about sports in the USA (baseball, you name it), it may be tough to keep a conversation going with an American. Similarly, if you’re going to eat in a restaurant in China, you’ll enjoy it a lot more if you actually know what the dishes would taste like (cultural knowledge), rather than just their names. And if you ask for a 幸运饼干 (fortune cookie), you will get blank stares, no matter how good the pronunciation of your Mandarin is.

So language and culture go hand in hand. Many language schools in Singapore create an environment where you don’t get to just learn the mechanics of the language, but also get a taste of the culture. You see it most clearly with schools that specialise in one language, such as French Toast, Daehan Korean, Las Lilas School and Han Hai Chinese.

Even if you are a spy and work for the enemy, you will need to understand the culture you are spying on really well to be effective. Cultural understanding often leads to empathy. No wonder there are so many stories about double spies: you can only be successful as a spy if you know the country you are spying on really, really well. And knowing so much about their subjects, I imagine it’s hard for a spy not to identify with them.

If we all were to learn one more language, and the culture that comes with it, we’d grow empathic with one more people. Which will make the world a better place.

Try to improve all at once and you will achieve little. While the post I’m reblogging is about learning Chinese, it can be applied to learning any other language, and way beyond that, e.g. learning to drive a car, or learning to swim.

In fact even beyond just learning. I get a lot more stuff done in a day if I make a list of narrowly defined goals first thing in the morning.

I suggest that we should focus on one or two things at a time. For instance, if we have language exchange planned for this afternoon, we could decide (and tell our partner) that tones should be the focus of today’s practice. If you focus exclusively on getting the tones right, it’s likely that you’ll start making other mistakes. This is okay, indeed it’s to be expected and a sign that you’re doing things the right way.

The post also talks about how some teachers / instructors unknowingly can stand in the way of your progress by not abiding to this philosophy. Find the entire text on  Hacking Chinese

“It is not stealing, which is good Karma”

In the world of learning, it’s now 2003.

Anno 2012, we are still hoarding students through degree factories, aiming to let them pass tests, so they can be given a standard seal of approval. We are using a system that was based on scarcity of information and hierarchy in a that has become flatter and more abundant with information through the Internet. The technology to radically change the way we learn is there, but we’re using only a fraction of its potential.

Habits and attitudes of both institutions (schools, universities, MOE) and society (students, parents, employers) haven’t caught up. Schools use software for administration, and Internet is used as a resource and to facilitate collaboration. It’s like buying a CD in a record store and then ripping it to your laptop / MP3 player, like we used to do in 2003.

So how will we learn in 2021?

We can’t know for sure, but based on developments that are already in motion, here are a number of changes I’m expecting:

#1 Teachers will coach, rather than explain

In the pre-Internet age, knowledge was scarce. We had books, and teachers were the ones to explain them to us. Nowadays, no matter what you want to learn, students have access, usually for free, to blogs and publications from experts. Want to replace the motherboard of your iPhone? YouTube has loads of videos showing you exactly how to do it.

Students will only have a teacher as long as they’re in school. With all the resources available, why not have teachers focus on coaching students in their learning process? With so much information around, teachers can coach students things like:

1. Finding the information you need
2. Drawing conclusions from contradicting information
3. Evaluating the reliability of sources
4. Distinguish opinion from fact
5. Translating knowledge into action
6. Using resources (books, e-courses, videos, lessons, personal mentors etc.) to acquire a new skill

Society is changing rapidly, and we can’t continue to rely on the knowledge we once learned in school. When I graduated, Twitter wasn’t even around. Now it’s part of my professional life. The most important thing to learn is how to acquire new knowledge and skills. As far as Twitter is concerned, I’m still grappling with it.

#2 Classes based on skill and interest, not age

Schools divide their students in cohorts based on the year in which they were born. But that’s pretty random. Everyone has different talents, and will learn faster in one subject than another, or learn faster over the whole. The fast ones get bored, the slower students demotivated. Besides, every person has a different learning style.

Singapore has streaming, but it’s extremely rigid. While it may make students into neatly standardized packages, it hardly takes full advantage of each student’s particular talents. Companies are not so much looking for generalists as for people with deep expertise or experience in a certain field, or combination of fields.

Why do we need to put students together by age when they are studying, say, English literature? When people of varying age, ability and background get together, it often brings better insights. The older, more experienced students can teach the younger ones. And by teaching, they’ll deepen their own knowledge.

Of course, we all need a basic foundation, but beyond that, by giving students the freedom to pursue what they love, we will give them a head start in their future career. They can explore, and start becoming an expert in what they love.

Giving students this much freedom would be messy, yes. And I think the main reason it hasn’t happened before, is that the resources to support self directed study weren’t there: if there is one teacher to thirty students, they will have to supervise a group of 30 students, a.k.a. a class. Keeping track of accomplishments of students following their own path would be a nightmare.

But now we can, and that’s my next point:

#3 Portfolios will replace exams.

Mass exam in 2012

We’re already seeing a shift to more project work at all levels of education. But curiously, when it comes to assessment, most of us, students, teachers and parents alike, still feel more comfortable with a standard test at the end. It’s neat: you pass the path of tests and get awarded a paper certification. Now you’re ready to enter the real world.

Tests are convenient when you are leading a cohort of students that have to digest a standardized set of information. As a teacher, you write the test, put the students in one room to administer it, then grade it. After that, we can do the math and know where everyone stands.

But this system breaks down when students are following a highly personalized learning path. Technically, it’s now possible to have students put together their own learning portfolio online, blog about their achievements and insights and upload their projects and presentations. But just like we had no Facebook in 2003, no site or service has really emerged as an accepted leader in this field.

Those that exist, let the school administer the student accounts. I think, like Facebook, that ownership of the portfolio should lie with the student, and he/she can add projects from all kind of sources, and build up a real repository through different stages of education, and life.

Then how about Diplomas and Degrees? I think they will continue to exist in some form or other, but they will become less important.

Simply having a Diploma or Degree is now insufficient for landing a job. With the advance of Linkedin, recruiters are zooming in on people with a very special combination of skills, who have demonstrated by their previous achievements that they are the exact right fit for a particular job.

For example, when hiring a recent graduate, a recruiter may think: “OK, this candidate has graduated from Victoria JC and then went on to get a Business degree at SMU. Looks like she’s capable enough to do that. But does she have business sense? Does she have affinity with what we do as a company? Will she be able to liaise between accounting and marketing?”.

A certificate or grade transcript can’t answer those questions. A portfolio can. If the student can showcase the project she did over her lifetime, it will help her make a case of why she is the best candidate for a particular job opening.

In my first job, I organized cultural trainings for expatriates. To get hired, my business degree was a mere qualifier. My life experiences, of having lived in different countries (Netherlands, Ghana, Singapore, Belgium, Italy) and the passion displayed for the combination of business and culture in my thesis and extracurricular activities made all the difference.

So, exciting times are ahead!

I must admit that I haven’t been a schooling student for a while, nor do I teach in the traditional sense of the word. If you’re a teacher or a student, do you recognize the contours of the above already? In short, what do you think will change in the way we learn in the next 9 years?

Image via goodcents.pocketsmith.com

If you really want to learn a new language, rather than just getting a taste, Groupon is a waste of time and money. Before you pull out your credit card to buy the next Groupon language class deal, consider the following 3 reasons not to buy:

Reason # 1. Groupon inflates the “normal” price

A recent Groupon for Korean lessons at Agape states:

For $118, you get Twelve 90 minute Korean Lessons with Examination and Certification Upon Completion (worth $570).

Sounds like a good deal, huh? It’s true that if you sign up for a normal 12-lesson course at Agape, you will be charged S$ 570 for that. But guess what? In reality, people would sign up for this option, available under the name of ASE Singapore: 10 lessons for S$ 325.

Groupon knows that they can compel their subscribers to sign up if they offer upwards of 70% off. So they’ll do everything to make the “original” price as high as possible. If you do a bit of research, you’ll often find that you won’t have to pay that “original” price.

Reason #2. Groupon classes are often larger

Not only is the ‘original’ often not as expensive as Groupon makes you believe. The Groupon deal is often of lesser quality than what the school would normally offer.

To stay with the same example, the class size of the “original” S$ 325 course is 6-10 people. If you buy the Groupon deal, you’ll end up with a class size of 20.

Small classes are expensive to the school, because no matter how many or how few students, they still have to pay for a classroom and a teacher. But as a student, it’s obvious that you’ll learn more in a class of 6-10. If you’re on a budget, I could imagine that you still opt for the Groupon deal, as otherwise you might not be able to afford the course in the first place. Just know that the Groupon deal, in most cases, is not the same thing: the savings are less than portrayed, and the value in terms of class size, is less.

Reason #3. Unmotivated Classmates

The third reason is a less tangible. The quality of a language class is determined by (1) the teacher (2) the school / materials and (3) the group of participants.

A class can be hugely energizing and inspiring if everyone in it is passionate about the subject at hand. You get infected by the enthusiasm of your classmates, and you’ll take that enthusiasm and feed it right back into the group. Leading to an upward spiral of growing commitment, great results and increased motivation.

But if everyone in the class got in on a S$ 29 Groupon deal, it’s unlikely that you’ll end up in a determined, motivated group. Even you yourself will probably feel less determined to make the best out of the class, since you only paid a small amount for it.

But even if you have every intention to give it your best, you’re likely to find fellow students sit with their arms crossed or not show up after the first lesson. It’s hugely draining on the teacher, too. Not a great way to start off your language learning journey, in my eyes.

In summary

Everyone has a different reason to attend a class, and not everyone has the same budget to work with it. But if you are really intending to start learning a language, think twice before taking up a Groupon deal.

As implied in my earlier post, learning a language is always a journey, if not an Odyssey, and the same goes for my learning timeline.

Here is a timeline of my Chinese learning so far:

• 2005 – Bought and used the book and CD “Teach Yourself Chinese“. Managed to learn hanyu pinyin and some basic greetings. Taught all of my Dutch housemates one sentence: 你太太好吗？(Ni taitai hao ma – how is your wife), which is a running joke among us up to date.
• 1 Jan 2006 Was the day of the big move! Still not entirely sober from the night before, I took the Amsterdam to Singapore flight on SIA on the morning of New Year’s Day and arrived in Singapore on the morning of the 2nd. I was to sign the lease for the 3-room HDB flat at Dover that we had managed to find online (S$ 750 / month, can you imagine that now?). I got the keys, bought a few essentials and fell asleep, only to awake at 5am on 3rd January, the day I was going to join the Intensive Mandarin Program at NUS Extension. Still jet lagged, I did some spring cleaning of the house, and took the MRT to Dhoby Ghaut at 8am, feeling strangely awake among the other, still sleepy commuters.
• I took full-time Mandarin lessons until May 2006.  At that time, I had managed to find a job and I continued learning Chinese for 2 evenings a week. Much of the time, classes were taught by Mrs. Wang, who I consider my best teacher ever. All the way until 2008, the group we were learning in was pretty stable: a diverse group of individuals from all ages and all across the world – Japanese, an Indian, Europeans, English-educated Singaporeans. And we had much fun, twice a week for 2.5 hours. The “boardroom setup” of the classroom helped greatly, too.
• June 2007. Strangely, a breakthrough feeling came while I was on a family visit to my (then) fiancée’s aunts, uncles and cousins in the USA. Being the only non-Chinese in the bunch, I was speaking Chinese most of the time with them. At times, this led to great confusion, such as when we going to restaurants as a group, and the waiters could not imagine me being able to communicate with them.
• Early 2008. I dropped out of part-time Mandarin lessons. Mrs. Wang had stopped teaching to focus on her Ph. D., and we had moved to another classroom. Slowly, the old group fell apart and energy levels dropped. Moreover, I was about to start Yago, and that would take up pretty much all my time after work hours.
• On 26th February 2010, I resumed part-time lessons with the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce Institute of Business when I found out that Singapore PRs and citizens can make use of government subsidized Chinese courses. To qualify for the subsidy, I had to take the Business Chinese Test before and after the course. I went in with BCT 3 for speaking and BCT 2 for reading and writing, and after the course I scored BCT 3 for everything. I found it notable, though, that my speaking score dropped significantly after the course (made up by slightly better listening performance). While the teacher was good, the materials were outdated, and the class size of around 25 was too large to get the maximum out of the time spent. My speaking confidence was hurt by too many obscure business related words that were useful in the seventies, but not for me or my classmates, many of whom were designers, architects, and Internet people. So while I could go on to the subsidized advanced course, I decided not to.
• Now it’s March 2012  and I’ve signed up with Speak Mandarin. Working with an experienced Beijing based teacher twice a week should be way more intense than taking class lessons. And besides, I now get to focus on what I’m interested in, which should make for a drastically better result. I had my first lesson yesterday. We went through a news article. Which was tough. I obviously still have a lot to learn.

I’ll post updates on my own learning process every now and then.

Reblogged from Literacy, Languages and Leadership:

I often get the question: "if I complete this course, will I be fluent in the language?". If you only rely on part-time adult evening lessons, theoretically, you'd be fluent after 207 years, i.e. never! The only way to reach fluency is immersion: using the language you are learning in everyday life as much as possible. This post by Dr. Sarah Elaine Eaton quotes scientific sources. I wrote an earlier post on this same subject myself, based on my language learning experience, and the conclusions match pretty closely!

More important than erasing failure: learn from your mistakes.

When you try to become fluent in a new language, it’s inevitable that you’ll make many mistakes along the way. If you’re not making them, it means that you’re not exercising enough, or not challenging yourself enough to go into new, unfamiliar territory. But that doesn’t mean that just making lots of mistakes is going to help you become fluent. It all depends on what you do after you discover a mistake.

So how to deal with mistakes? Olle Linge from Hacking Chinese made a useful categorization of mistakes into 4 categories. This post is inspired by Olle’s, but I simplified the categories.

When you catch a mistake, the first step should be to determine what type of mistake it is:

1. An careless mistake
2. An isolated mistake
3. A systemic mistake

Based on the type of mistake, you can then learn from it in specific ways.

Below, I’m giving 2 examples for each type of mistake: one related to language learning, one related to life in general. And then how to deal with them.

1. Careless mistakes: You know what’s right, but still made a mistake

Example: You called the wrong number. Instead of keying 8345 9645, you keyed 8344 9645.

Specific to language: Many English speakers with Mandarin as their first language may say ‘he’ when they are referring to a woman. It’s not that they don’t know the meaning of ‘she’ or that it should in fact be ‘she’, they may just not be as sensitive to the distinction, because they haven’t grown up with it.

What to do about it: Don’t punish yourself too harshly for careless mistakes! Everyone makes mistakes, and if you don’t make mistakes you are probably not doing very much at all. Take note of what went wrong, though, and try to be alert to it. Just knowing how things are supposed to be done is not enough. Over time, you should try to acquire the skill to using “he” and “she” appropriately every time!

2. An isolated mistake: You simply didn’t know what’s right.

Example: I once showed up for a canoe trip wearing jeans. Not recommendable, because they get heavy and cold when wet. I had to make the trip in my undies. No one told me this in advance, but I wouldn’t make the mistake more than once for sure!

Language example: When Dutch people refer to ‘industry’ in English, they often refer to ‘the manufacturing sector’. Because that’s what ‘industrie’, which almost sounds the same, means in Dutch.

What to do about it: Take note, literally! When learning a language, there is so much to learn. So once you spot or are pointed to this kind of mistake, take a note wherever appropriate, with your grammar or vocabulary notes. Also, make your native speaking friends comfortable to point out this kind of mistake. If you’re not being pointed to this kind of mistake, chances are you (1) don’t speak often enough and/or (2) people don’t correct you.

Olle also rightly points out that some of these mistakes may be so much beyond your existing level that you just want to forget about it until you have tackled the basics.

3. A systemic mistake: a structural cause that makes you make mistakes again and again

Example: The bank card fraud that recently hit POSB/DBS may seem like an isolated incident. But there is a structural cause: DBS is still using the magnetic strip as the only safety method for their bank cards – a technology that was invented by IBM in 1960. Had they switched to EMV chips, a technology available since 1998, then this skimming fraud could not have happened. And until DBS finally forks out the needed funds to upgrade its outdated technology, the skimming fraud can happen again.

Language example: If you don’t know that the French word “aller” (‘to go’) is an irregular verb, you’re going to use it incorrectly each time you inflect it.

What to do about it: A systemic mistake doesn’t always look like one. It could seem like an incident. This is where the help of an experienced language teacher or otherwise highly literate person in the language you are learning comes in handy. You don’t always need to have a teacher present to learn something, but this is where a good teacher can save you tons of time and frustration. They would be able to spot what bit of knowledge you are missing, so that you can fix the process and avoid making the mistake again.

The worst thing you can do about a systemic mistake, is pretending it’s an isolated mistake, or not a mistake at all. Take note, DBS!