Learning for Reading

Most students need reading proficiency

I recently stumbled across a very interesting article on language learning by Robbins Burling, published in 1968.

This paper, “Some outlandish proposals for the teaching of foreign languages” seems to me to be not so outlandish at all in it's basic premise.

This basic premise of language learning is: reading comes first.

Most students learning a second language seriously, want to be able to read in that language. For ancient languages like Latin, Akkadian and Aramaic, that no longer have populations of speakers, that is really the only goal.

But even most learners of English primarily want passive knowledge, to understand text, and access the vast written body of knowledge and literature written in English, to understand movie dialogue and song lyrics and YouTube videos - all of these needing only passive language comprehension skills.

Burling also notes the well known observation that language students’ passive knowledge far outstrips their active (productive) knowledge. By a country mile.

We all have experienced this gap when learning a foreign language - you can understand what people around you are saying, but it takes much longer to be able to actually speak. And even longer to write. This is commonplace knowledge.

Language teaching in the past used to adapt itself to this reality.

Somewhere along the line, without strong evidence based testing, new orthodoxies took hold that teaching to speak and write, to be able to produce language, must be the goal of language teaching.

The end result of this is millions of students who study for years, cannot really speak, but who struggle with reading. These modern all singing all dancing courses, in an attempt to teach everything all at once, end up teaching nothing, or next to nothing.

I had an uncle who was taught the old way. He could read Balzac and Zola, but only when he visited France did he begin to speak.

It is quite legitimate - if not actually the correct course of action - to leave oral skill out of a language learning course entirely, if that course is primarily a reading course.

This is the old fashioned method I am following here at Latinum. It worked for my uncle, and it worked for me. Why? Because it follows human nature.

Passive knowledge progresses far in advance of ability to generate language. This can and should be taken advantage of in language teaching, allowing the student to make rapid progress.

Teaching to read without demanding any writing makes a lot of sense when seen from the natural progression of how we learn languages. Modern methods that focus on production, that is, speaking, and writing, actually impede progress.

Also, Burling notes, there is no need to teach grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation all at the same time. They can be approached by the student as and when needed.

From my own experience with French, the focus should be on reading. I first learned to read French, taught at school in the old fashioned way. Listening skills came much later, through hours of listening to Radio France Internationale, and finally, when I visited a country where French was spoken, my passive abilities very rapidly activated, and I found myself speaking quite well. But until I was surrounded by French speakers, I could not speak French, although I was able to read novels in French.

After you can read well, the huge oral resources now available online through films, podcasts and YouTube videos mean learning how the language sounds is easily accessible. It does not require classroom teaching. Speaking, if you need to learn how to speak, will take care of itself if you later are in an environment where speaking is needed. This too, does not require classroom teaching

The first step must be extensive reading. The sounds and active production of the language should be not emphasised in the beginning stages. Students should not be tested on vocabulary, nor asked to speak or write. Some grammar is needed to make the process efficient. But the student needs to read.

Burling notes that ‘techniques by which this could be accomplished would have the added advantage of avoiding the childish level of materials with which even adult students must usually contend when beginning a foreign language.’

This is exactly what I am trying to achieve here with the course structure I have designed. Because of the use of dual language interlinear type texts, the use of which Burling discusses at length, interesting material can be taught right from the very first lesson.

Burling addresses the dislike and disparagement of interlinear texts by language teachers, and dismisses their aesthetic objections - it does not matter that the construed interlinear makes the language contorted and perhaps even unnatural - all that matters is practical outcome. Utility. The system works and has worked, and has been used in countries and time periods across history for efficiently teaching reading in a foreign language.

This system has the advantage of exposing the student to a wide range of natural language genres that are rendered comprehensible by the intralinear text.

In the Latinum lessons grammar notes are added, and some passive self testing of sorts is built into the course through the progression from intralinear construed text, to standard bilingual text, and finally monolingual text for self assessment of comprehension.

At present this constitutes the methodology at Latinum, in the hope I will be able to help many thousands of students learn how to read well in a foreign language.

(Burling proposed specialised intralinear texts which I will study more closely, to see if elements can be incorporated into my system. I am not aware of Burling’s scheme being implemented in any complete language course, although he seems to have used it in his private language teaching.)