Becoming Fluent

by Richard M Roberts

  Although, as we noted earlier, rote memorization is not a strength of the adult language learner, idiomatic expressions are well worth the effort to acquire. Because idiomatic expressions can be used in a variety of settings, taking the time to learn these expressions can really pay off. For example, the linguistic equivalent of we’re all in the same boat will be helpful in a large number of situations, making your linguistic output much more interesting than merely saying something like same same.

  In addition, knowing idiomatic expressions will give you insight into the culture. For example, in Korean the equivalent of the expression pie in the sky can be translated as “a picture of a rice cake.” This idiomatic expression is quite easy to memorize in Korean, since students of Korean learn the word for rice cake early in their studies. The word for picture is also a basic vocabulary word. It takes virtually no cognitive effort to join these two previously learned vocabulary words into the idiomatic expression, and can be done quite early in the language learning process. Waiting to learn this idiom until much later deprives the student of an easy way to increase proficiency and show cultural awareness.

  One of the frustrations of the adult foreign language learner is that it takes a long time before he or she begins speaking and sounding like an adult. All too often, adult language learners lament the fact that they sound like a three-year-old—or worse yet, envy the three-year-old her fluency. Improving the “metaphoric intelligence” of a foreign language learner not only leads to better communicative effectiveness, it also serves to reinforce pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammatical structures in a natural and sophisticated way, and highlights cultural norms that are essential to language use.10 It’s also nice to speak like a grown-up.

  Don’t Be a Language Zombie

  Although it is beyond the scope of this book to describe all of the ways in which language interacts with culture, the social use of language is more than just accomplishing goals; it also includes using the language to maintain interpersonal relationships.11 If you ignore this fact, all the esoteric vocabulary and sophisticated grammar in the world can’t save you from making some serious blunders.

  For example, Americans are uncomfortable with silence in a way that people from many other cultures are not. And because Americans don’t like silence, they talk in order to fill it. Americans talk to strangers in elevators. They talk to people in line at the grocery store. They talk to the clerk at the grocery store. They talk to their seatmates on airplanes. They even feel the need to get in the last word by saying “Have a nice day” at the end of the most mundane interactions.

  Americans have words to describe this kind of talk: “meaningless conversation,” “shooting the breeze,” “idle chitchat,” “or “passing the time.” And all this empty chatter works just fine—as long as the other person is aware of what is going on.

  But all too often, Americans fail to recognize that this empty, silence-filling banter is not always meaningless to non-Americans. At best, exchanging pleasantries with perfect strangers in another country will be seen as quaint or quintessentially American. Unfortunately, it may also lead them to think of Americans as rude, overly forward, or insincere; in many cultures, unlike the United States, any conversation—regardless of length or content—implies an attempt at establishing intimacy or closeness.

  For example, two Americans can sit next to each other on a flight from New York to San Francisco and for the next five hours share secrets they wouldn’t tell their therapists. But when they get off the plane in San Francisco, they may not know each other’s names. And because they are Americans, not seeing each other again would feel perfectly natural, and possibly even desirable.

  But if an American sits next to someone from another country, and chats pleasantly with him throughout the flight, it is possible that, by the time the plane lands, the non-American will want to figure out when they can meet again. This is because what seemed like idle conversation to the American was seen by the non-American as a sincere desire to establish a closer bond. And if the American doesn’t try to maintain the relationship, she might be viewed as superficial or phony. But of course, at the beginning of the flight, if the non-American didn’t respond to the American’s overtures at idle chitchat, he might be viewed as rude, cold, or standoffish.

  As this example shows, interpersonal abilities that are finely tuned to one culture do not necessarily translate fully to another. Some adjustment is usually required. A convenient way to think about cultural differences that influence language use is to consider whether a culture is a high-context culture or a low-context culture.12

  High-context cultures include Japan, China, and Korea. With regard to pragmatics, individuals from high-context cultures leave many things unsaid, since virtually all speakers of the language share the same cultural context.13 Put another way, since there is so much overlapping common ground among the speakers in a high-context culture, it is redundant, ridiculous, or rude to point out the obvious. Speakers from high-context cultures speak sparingly, therefore, using silence to convey meaning. Such a speech style sets up an “in group” versus an “out group” linguistic environment. For example, in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese a common term for foreigner directly translates as “outside country person.” Furthermore, Koreans so routinely refer to Korea as “our country,” that when Americans similarly try to refer to the US as “our country,” they are often misunderstood as also meaning Korea.

  On the other hand, individuals from low-context cultures, such as Germany, Norway, and the US, cannot assume much overlap in the common ground of other speakers of the same language. Therefore, background information must be made explicit. Interestingly, one reason schizophrenic language is considered incoherent is because people with schizophrenia often fail to take into consideration the common ground that is shared between themselves and their conversational partners. Schizophrenic language generally becomes more intelligible as those with schizophrenia and their conversational partners spend more time together, which presumably happens because common ground is increasing.14

  Of course, we are speaking here in broad generalities, since describing a culture as being high context or low context in no way describes all of the people in that culture. Nevertheless, adult language learners from a low-context, or relatively low-context, culture must make adjustments to their interpersonal style when they move to a higher-context culture. They must be prepared for the fact that much background information will be implicit, that their use of the language makes them an outsider, and that they may be considered rude if they ask too many questions or try to get to the bottom of an issue. Likewise, moving from one high-context culture to another high-context culture also requires adjustment, since important contextual cues that go unsaid will differ between the two high-context cultures. Perhaps only when one moves from one low-context culture to another low-context culture is there less of a requirement for any pragmatic adjustment. In this case, the two linguistic environments match in that both require substantial amounts of background information to be made explicit.

  Of course, there are bound to be personal differences in adaptation to a new culture. One way to increase adjustment may be to seek out cultural contexts that match one’s personality. Expatriates whose personal characteristics match the predominant personality type of a target culture show better adjustment than those whose personalities do not match. For example, on average, people in Turkey are more extroverted than people in Japan.15 This suggests that an introvert might adjust better to living in Japan than in Turkey.

  What does all this mean for learning a new language? It may seem odd, but as you speak your target language, you are creating a lens through which others will view you. In other words, others can’t separate “you” from “you speaking your target language.” Even the world-renowned author Mark Twain, when he went to Germany, found that he had created a separate identity for himself as a German speaker, and wrote about it to comic effect in his essay The Awful German Langu
age.

  Your goal, therefore, should be to create for yourself a linguistic competency that takes into account your own unique relationship to the target language and culture.16 The goal is not to mimic native speakers, but to express yourself as best you can while maintaining an identity apart from the target culture. If you don’t do this, then you may be viewed as attempting to pass yourself off as a native speaker, which others may find laughable at best and offensive at worst. The onus is on you, therefore, to make any needed cultural adjustments through your use of the language. In other words, foreign language learners should make pragmatic choices consistent with who they are in the cultural context rather than duplicate precisely the pragmatic choices of native speakers. It is entirely possible that mimicking native speakers’ pragmatic use of the language will lead to alienation.

  In a similar way, cognitive scientists who study artificial intelligence have noticed that people find it disquieting when a robot’s appearance matches that of humans too closely. This phenomenon is known as the uncanny valley, because graphs that plot emotional responses to a robot’s appearance show a marked dip in how comfortable people are with robots that are almost, but not completely, lifelike.17 This drop in comfort level is similar to that of people’s repulsion to corpses and zombies. The goal of pragmatic mastery, therefore, should be not to impersonate a native speaker. You don’t want to be accused of being a language zombie.

  As we hope these examples have shown, an adult language learner’s superior metapragmatic skills are more important than correctly conjugating an irregular verb or remembering an obscure vocabulary word. Don’t make the mistake of not capitalizing on the interpersonal skills you’ve honed over a lifetime in learning a new language and culture.

  5

  Language and Perception

  Speed versus Accuracy

  How would Alex Trebek, the long-time host of the quiz show Jeopardy!, fare if he were a contestant on his own program? When asked this question, Trebek, who was born in 1940, has replied that in terms of general knowledge, he would know many of the correct responses, but that he would be too slow to ring in and answer before his younger opponents.

  This observation by Trebek highlights an important way in which younger and older adults perform on various tasks. Children and adolescents tend to have superior motor responses, while adults may react more slowly, but they can bring to bear general world knowledge that younger people may lack.

  Research by cognitive scientists on this topic largely agrees with the intuitions that most of us have about speed and accuracy in adulthood. Timothy Salthouse, for example, has proposed a general slowing hypothesis, which links a decrease in reaction time in older adults with a general decline in the speed of information processing in the cognitive system.1 This decline manifests itself in a variety of ways, such as more “tip of the tongue” states in middle and older adulthood, which we will discuss in chapter 8.

  The slowing that adults experience has a variety of important implications for the adult foreign language learner, particularly in the classroom and in interacting with native speakers. In foreign language classes, instructors frequently employ a cued response technique. That is, the teacher will point to a student, and then the student is expected to quickly provide an appropriate response. This can be an effective way of keeping the students’ attention, and a rapid-paced, dynamic approach can certainly make a class feel more engaging. However, an adult who has returned to the classroom after several years away may find herself not keeping up with her younger counterparts by being able to respond as quickly as they can. She may know just as much as they do (or even more), but she may not be able to articulate a reply as swiftly.

  In a similar way, conversations between native speakers are marked by very short pauses between turns. The average length of these pauses is only a few tenths of a second. It is amazing to consider how much cognitive processing takes place over such a short period of time: the conversational partner’s statement has to be comprehended, a suitable response must be crafted, and the motor program to articulate the words has to be initiated. However, all of this is going to be slower for the nonnative, nonfluent speaker. As a result, a short pause may occur in the language student’s speech, and this may be interpreted by the native conversational partner as hesitancy or even a lack of cooperativeness.2

  So what is the relatively slower, nonnative speaker to do? The best advice is don’t pressure yourself—expect that your replies will take longer, and allow yourself the time it takes to respond. Of course, your conversational partner may not be so accommodating, and one way to deal with this is to learn a number of stock phrases in your new language that will keep your partner from jumping in or (even worse) switching to your native language. Examples in English include “Let me see,” or “Hold on,” or “Just a moment.” This can turn the awkward interval into what linguists call a “filled pause,” which prevents the exchange from being hijacked by your conversational partner.3 Once again, we see how adults, who understand the ground rules of conversation, can capitalize on this knowledge to minimize the impact of being somewhat slower comprehenders and speakers.

  Can Learning a Foreign Language Prevent Dementia?

  You may have heard that learning another language is one method for preventing or at least postponing the onset of dementia. Dementia refers to the loss of cognitive abilities, and one of its most common forms is Alzheimer’s disease (AD). At this time, the causes of AD are not well understood, and consequently, there are no proven steps that people can take to prevent it. Nonetheless, some researchers have suggested that learning a foreign language might help delay the onset of dementia.

  To explore this possibility more deeply, let’s look at some of the common misconceptions about dementia and the aging brain. First of all, dementia is not an inevitable part of the normal aging process. Most older adults do not develop AD or other forms of dementia. It is also important to remember that dementia is not the same thing as normal forgetfulness. At any age, we might experience difficulty finding the exact word we want or have trouble remembering the name of the person we just met. People with dementia have more serious problems, like feeling confused or getting lost in a familiar place. Think of it this way: if you forget where you parked your car at the mall, that’s normal; if you forget how to drive a car, that may be a signal that something more serious is going on.

  The idea that dementia can be prevented is based on the comparison of the brain to a muscle. When people talk about the brain, they sometimes say things like “It is important to exercise your brain” or “To stay mentally fit, you have to give your brain a workout.” Although these are colorful analogies, in reality the brain is not a muscle. Unlike muscles, the brain is always active and works even during periods of rest and sleep. In addition, although some muscle cells have a lifespan of only a few days, brain cells last a lifetime. Not only that, but it has been shown that new brain cells are being created throughout one’s lifespan.

  So, if the brain is not a muscle, can it still be exercised? Once again, researchers don’t know for sure. There are now many computer, online, and mobile device applications that claim to be able to “train your brain,” and they typically tap into a variety of cognitive abilities. However, research suggests that although this type of training may improve one’s abilities at the tasks themselves, they don’t seem to improve other abilities.4 In other words, practicing a letter-detection task will, over time, improve your letter-detection skills, but it will not necessarily enhance your other perceptual abilities. Basically, solving crossword puzzles will make you a better crossword puzzle solver.

  The best evidence that foreign language learning confers cognitive benefits comes from research with those who are already bilingual.5 A bilingual person is someone who is fluent in two languages. (People who know three languages could therefore be called trilingual, but the most commonly used term to describe a person with three or more languages is multilingual.) Bilingualism most
commonly occurs when children are exposed to two languages, either in the home (mom speaks Dutch, dad speaks Spanish) or more formally in early schooling. But bilingualism certainly occurs in adulthood as well.

  Bilingualism and multilingualism are actually more common than you might think. In fact, it has been estimated that there are fewer monolingual speakers in the world than bilinguals and multilinguals.6 Although in many countries most inhabitants share just one language (for example, Germany and Japan), other countries have several official languages. Switzerland, for example, has about the same population as New York City (about eight million people), and yet it has four official languages: German, French, Italian, and Romansh. Throughout large parts of Africa, Arabic, Swahili, French, and English are often known and used by individuals who speak a different, indigenous language in their home than they do in the marketplace. So bilingualism and multilingualism are pervasive worldwide. And with regard to cognitive abilities, the research on those who possess more than one language paints an encouraging picture.

  For one thing, bilinguals outperform monolinguals on tests of selective attention and multitasking. Selective attention can be measured by what is called the “Stroop Test” in which individuals look at a list of color names written in different colors. The task is to name the colors that words are printed in, rather than say the word itself. (If you search for “Stroop Test” or “Stroop Effect” online, you can take this test yourself.) Because we read automatically, it can be difficult to ignore the word “blue,” and report that it is printed in green. Bilinguals perform better on the Stroop Test, as well as other measures of selective attention.7