I have had Daniel Tammet's Embracing the Wide Sky (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2009) in my bedside reading pile for a a few months now.  I have picked it up on those those days that I prefer to read fact rather than fiction before I sleep.  It's an easy read, but has made me pause and think a lot, which explains the slow pace, and the fact that there are several fiction books competing for my attention.  Tammet is an autistic savant, a term he uses to describe himself, which, in his case, means that he has an extraordinary memory.

The book is subtitled, "A tour across the horizons of the mind".  He is largely interested in exploring memory as a way of explaining his own skills, but also of exploring what others do.  The book is full of surveys of scientific literature regarding the mind, critical assessments of the most recent research, interesting insights into the strengths and weaknesses in the research carried out on other savants, and personal anecdotes.  He is largely concerned with language acquisition, but does explore other skills, such as mathematics and visual memory, and explores the dubious history behind IQ tests.

He explains that there are three major memory systems:

• "Episodic memory refers to recollection of particular episodes in one's life connected to times and places"
• "Semantic memory describes our ability to remember more general information such as words, facts and ideas," 
• Procedural memory involves our ability to learn skills and acquire habits" (62).

He then continues to discuss how subjective memory is, changing as we gain new experiences whereby our memory of an event becomes altered by our new experiences.  Thus, our present constantly changes our past.  Given that "there may be as many ways to remember a piece of information as there are rememberers" (67) we need to find multiple ways to remember.  As a result, "the single most important part of improving your ability to remember effectively is to encode a learning experience deeply by attending to its meaning" (67).  Helpfully, he provides an example.  If you want to learn the word 'spider' considering how it's spelt isn't useful, it "induces a shallow, non-semantic encoding" (67). Whereas, if you relate it to prior knowledge or reflect on its meaning by asking questions such as, "Is spider a type of animal?", "constitutes a deeper, semantic encoding" (67).  This then "produces high levels of memory performance - an elaborative encoding that allows the person to integrate new information with pre-existing knowledge" (68), and thus improving the recall for that word.  Therefore, sitting in front of that list of vocabulary, spelling the words, rhyming them off is pointless.  What you need to do is engage with their meaning, figure out how you can create an elaborative encoding that links it what you already know and thereby build it into your memory system.

Later on he talks about second language acquisition among adults, which he recognises as more difficult than for a child.  However, he is reassuring in his assertions that there are many ways to do so and to gain fluency.  Interestingly, he cites studies which maintain that early language acquisition is different because the brain treats all languages as one, whereas later learners store the information in separate parts of the brain, and, therefore, requires "different strategies" (110).  Alongside many recent studies that can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3739690.stm and here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/18/bilingual-alzheimers-brain-power-multitasking, which discuss the long term value of learning a language, Tammet tells us that "learning a second language is good for you" (111).  He goes on to describe the benefits for adult and child learners.

Knowing the benefits, he then gives some strategies that we need to employ to get beyond our weaknesses as (adult) learners.  One of these is explaining how to master sounds.  Problems are caused when we "transfer", that is the "interference by previously learned knowledge of new information we acquire" (113), or pronouncing the new language as if it were our first.  As he is not prescriptive, but descriptive, he is telling us what he does.  That is, to make up sentences that repeat the same sound in a sequence, listen to songs, analyse the rules and work them through logically, and parsing the words and combinations for their internal logic (113-4).  His advice is to tackle learning as a task that has to be engaged in logically and using a variety of techniques, which does not mean it cannot be done quickly and efficiently.  He gives multiple examples of how he has learned languages speedily.  It is nonetheless rigorous and demands much imagination, lateral thinking and multiple approaches.

Tammet gives useful examples and explores the area from multiple angles.  This book talks about more than just language acquisition, but for those wanting to learn a language it is very useful.  Additionally, it debunks the idea that a good memory is something that we either  have or don't have, and that his ability, while remarkable, is not superhuman.

Phatic language

danah boyd in her blog discusses a report from Pear Analytics, "They concluded that 40.55% of the tweets they coded are pointless babble; 37.55% are conversational; 8.7% have “pass along value”; 5.85% are self-promotional; 3.75% are spam; and ::gasp:: only 3.6% are news". She challenges the assumption that 'pointless babble' is actually a bad thing. It is actually the stuff of most of our interactions, "

"Conversation is also more than the explicit back and forth between individuals asking questions and directly referencing one another. It’s about the more subtle back and forth that allow us to keep our connections going. It’s about the phatic communication and the gestures, the little updates and the awareness of what’s happening in space. We take the implicit nature of this for granted in physical environments yet, online, we have to perform each and every aspect of our interactions. What comes out may look valueless, but, often, it’s embedded in this broader ecology of social connectivity. What’s so wrong about that?".

For the fluent speaker of a language, these phatic utterances are fundamental to communication. To the language learner these are baffling and are an indicator of fluency. They are the puzzle which take extra effort to learn, after you learn all those simple formulaic communicative 'back and forths'.

Pulling faces

I'm over in Mexico at the moment on a research trip. My son is traveling with me and doing some volunteering. This is my fourth visit to Mexico City, so I'm familiar with the city. On arrival at the airport I bought a pre-paid taxi ride as is recommended (even by the airport authorities) and exited the building. Previously, the approved taxis were just outside the building so I approached a man who was wearing a company uniform. He told me that his was a different company and that I needed to walk up the way a little to get the taxi whose fair I had pre-paid. Tired after long hours of travel I responded with a puzzled expression. A man beside him started to translate in faltering English what the first had just said. When we walked away my son observed that it must feel strange having someone translate from one language I know to another I know. My 'interpreter' was acting out of kindness and it was a friendly gesture, reaching out to a stranger in a strange land, and I appreciate that. What it actually triggers in me is a reminder that I am very much other. It isn't my accent but my appearance that make me non-Mexican and that carries with it a whole load of cultural baggage and assumptions, which make me feel uncomfortable and an outsider.

I would not like my message to be that others should be discouraged from helping strangers to negotiate airports or other situations. This is more a reflection on my own reactions that I need to consider and own. What it does make me think about is how much performance goes into our everyday behavior and how much this can influence how others read us. I wonder whether we need to practice our reactions, pull a face that communicates what we want to say when words don't transmit our feelings/needs. I wonder, is there a face for "I don't understand" what you said, (as opposed to why do things have to change when I am tired, hungry and eager to get to my final destination)? Away from my own misgivings about otherness in Mexico this moment brings me to my thinking about learning Portuguese. Often, that trusted phrase "I don't understand, could you speak slower", that is very useful when you are starting to learn a language, and is a phrase that you may have practiced over and over at home fails you when faced with the confusion of miscomprehension in real life. When the phrase escapes you it needs to be substituted with a face, a pose that communicates a need. I think that my expressions often fail me. But, are these too complicated to determine? Can you learn a useful expression? Or, does looking foreign, the other person's assumptions irrespective of words (correctly pronounced or not) supersede whatever face you pull?

If a learnt expression is possible, what other faces should we learn to pull? Do we become actors moving inside a new language and its cultures needing to be conscious of the audience for whom we are performing? Do we need to think more about the physicality of a language and how we are read and observed? Should teachers and textbooks consider the body in language more, not just as anecdotal window dressing, but as a proper and integral part of learning a language?

Motivation from a business perspective

In my continuing figuring through I want to know how motivation works, in general and what mine is. So, I have come across this talk on drive from a business perspective. Purpose, mastery and being self-directed are the three key things that the speaker, Dan Pink, concludes are key motivators. Here he is talking about work and the how managers/companies can increase profits through better motivating staff. Money isn't what drives us once we are paid enough for it not to be a problem, unless it's tied to a mechanical task. Can these ideas be transferred to personal motivation and the acquisition of a skill that has a complicated reward.

Here's the video:

Paradigm shift

Or, what happens when you started a project with a specific end and the messiness of life intervenes?

This blog was set up to track my progress as a language learner, to reflect on how and why I learn a language, and as a project to think about motivation and language acquisition. When I started I was employed as a language lecturer in the University also teaching aspects of Latin American culture including literature, film and cyberculture. In September, it was mooted that I move from my languages' department to Media. This changed things dramatically. No longer did I need to learn Portuguese and continue this project in order to figure out how I learn to therefore better understand how students learn. So it has lapsed. For that reason, and because much of my energy was expended on adapting to my new circumstances and learning the modus operandi of my new role. The change means that I have to consider what *my* motivation is, why do I now want to learn Portuguese, and for whom is it useful. In addition, I have to think through whether I need to be pure instrumentalist about this, ie if it works for work do I do it?, or does it have a greater/wider good?, will my learning help others?, and is that good enough. This is where I return to motivation and something I need to reflect on at length, as well as simply get myself back on the wagon (so to speak), and back into the books/websites/blogs/cds/dvds/apps that have proven useful tools for my learning.

How babies learn language

Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies

Fascinating talk about language acquisition in babies. All us adults can feel better about speaking another language with a foreign accent:

Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies | Video on TED.com