Hi,
I have spent many years struggling with this question of what is the
language you think in if you are multilingual?. I think that Vygotsky's
notion of inner speech is helpful here (and see my postword in The Road to
Competence in an Alien Land in Wertsch's (ed) Culture, Cognition and
Communication where I describe how the interpreter at the conference used a
form of inner speech shorthand which captures meanings. In the paper I
identify two very different processes--a unified semantic system across
languages which emerges slowly over time and a differentiated production
system specific to each language.) In brief, I do not think we think in a
foreign language quite the way in which that phrase suggests. We think in
meanings, including images. we draw upon these meanings and realize them in
a specific language with its particular syntax and phonology in a particular
context. Students who have little opportunity to realize their meaning in
conversation with native speakers continue to lean on their first language
for a very long time--and thus they produce many interference errors.How to
help them? Expose them to films, tv, find native speakers who want to learn
their language, enact short scripts; diversify as much as possible the
teaching/learning situation. (See also Holbrook Mahn's work on dialogue
journals with the isntructor.)
Perhaps we shoulkd plan a special issue of MCA on this topic, it is of very
broad concern,
Vera John -Steiner
----- Original Message -----
From: Huong Le <lehuon@student.vuw.ac.nz>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2003 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: Thinking in a foreign language
> Dear Mike,
> Thank you for your vivid examples. I learned a lot from them. I think
> I had similar experiences like yours when learning English. Can I ask
> you another question? Your examples of mediated learning happened in
> real activities and real rich L2 environment. How about the students
> learning a foreign language out of environment or in their home
> countries and the activities are usually from textbook? I think some
> authors suggest 'authentic materials" and "authentic contexts", still
> they are through the medium of a textbook of some kind. Students
> learning a foreign language in their home country in this sense seem
> to lack the multifacted mediated activities...Does this mean that it
> is impossible for them to try to build up their thinking process in a
> foreign language?
> Huong
>
> ---- Original Message ----
> From: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu (Mike Cole)
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: Thinking in a foreign language
> Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 08:07:47 -0700 (PDT)
>
> >Huong-- The term "mental activity" in the quotation fromm AAL is
> >ambiguous
> >to me because the term, "mental activity" is ambiguous. But lets
> >suppose
> >that one takes a distributed cognition view of "mental activity" so
> >that
> >it is distributed across the people, artifacts, and institutions with
> >which
> >and within in which a person engages the world. Then, multifaceted
> >would
> >refer to the range of interactions mediated by L2. And then the
> >statement
> >has some implementable implications.
> >
> >Let me give an example of my own (partial!) acquisition of Russian. I
> >began
> >with a narrow range of activities: an intro language class and
> >painfully
> >slow reading of a Luria text with dictionary in hand. Slowly I
> >becamse able
> >to engage in a narrow range of halting conversations with teachers
> >and to
> >make some interpretation of what I was reading.
> >
> >In an intensive summer school, with many students, and a ban on
> >speaking
> >English, the range of interactions mediated by Russian increased, but
> >there
> >was an awful lot of "Renglish" being spoken, a sort of pidgen Russian
> >with
> >a lot of English interpolated because the things we wish to
> >communicate about
> >were well beyond my capacities.
> >
> >In Russia I worked in a research lab with co-workers who could
> >understand
> >English when Luria spoke it, but not when I did, and hospital
> >patients who
> >could not speak it at all. And quickly my Russian became better than
> >the
> >English of Russian acquaintances at the University. Luria would speak
> >to me
> >only in Russian.
> >
> >But it was exhausting and terribly incomplete. In serious
> >conversations wtih
> >adults I always felt hugely incapable of expressing any nuance of
> >what I
> >wanted to say. A few Russian friends became adept at interpreting my
> >lame attempts, but I was almost a total loss when speaking to little
> >kids,
> >who had their own, totally non-academic vocabulary and interests of
> >which
> >I was ignorant and an imability to scaffold my bumbling talk.
> >
> >Had I spent more time in Russia working, say, in a preschool, the
> >range of
> >activities which would come to be mediated by Russian would increase,
> >and
> >with it my fluency.
> >
> >To this day I speak and understand oral Russian better than I can
> >read it
> >and far better than I can write it. By contrast, I have historian
> >friends
> >for whom exactly the opposite is true.
> >
> >Does this fit AAL's idea?
> >mike
> >
>
>
> Visit the student portal who-is-at http://www.studentvuw.vuw.ac.nz
>
>
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