Why It's Fair That A 4-Year-Old Speaks Better French Than You

When you go to a country where everyone speaks the language you studied for years, why can a small child speak way better than you? Or maybe you thought that fairy tales and other books that are written for children should be easy to understand. Well, they are easy for native speaker children. Why are they so surprisingly hard for people learning a foreign language?

When a baby is born, it doesn’t know how to speak. Despite that, its parents and caretakers talk to it constantly, in a conversation-like manner, expecting the baby to respond eventually. The baby gets a lot of input, and starts understanding a little. The input that people provide is supportive, at the right level, used in the context of what’s happening, and directed toward the infant. After about a year, the baby starts to speak. By the time a child is 3 or 4, they become fluent.

So, if you had 4 years of French (or whatever foreign language) in school, why is that not comparable? Let’s do the math.

Let’s say you get 45 minutes of the target language a day, 180 school days a year. I won’t bother to remove days for standardized testing, assemblies, field trips, etc. 

180 x 45 = 8,100 minutes/year 4 years = 32,400 minutes.

Now, about that small child. A six-month-old and a 2-year-old get about 14 hours a sleep out of the 24 hours in a day, and a 4-year old needs closer to 12. So that leaves about 10 hours a day awake; let’s say they’re getting 8 hours of linguistic input a day. But they get it 365 days a year.

8 hours/day x 60 minutes = 480 minutes/day

365 x 480 = 175,200 minutes/year - so even in the first year, an infant got 5.4 times more minutes of input than you did in 4 years

175,200 x 4 years = 700,800 minutes

700,800 / 32,400 = 21.6 times as many minutes of input in 4 years.

A student who takes French 4 Honors, or even French AP at the end of high school and even a college student taking French can find materials written for native speaker children (fairy tales, comic books, etc.) difficult. You need a lot more input. Also, school tends to concentrate on vocabulary for the classroom and literature, rather than fairy tales or real life.

But don't get discouraged! The best thing to do, of course, is to go to a target-language country for months, especially if you can stay in a supportive environment, such as a family. But there are other things you can do:

• do your homework (not included in the estimate; hopefully that’s a motivating factor, especially if it’s listening)

• use online language applications

• read, sing songs, watch films and online videos in the target language: try to find things just a little above your current level

• find a club, store, or other environment in which to get more input (not the same as “practicing”)

• look for a language exchange partner - in real life, or online (see the post You Need a Sympathetic Listener)

Bonne chance !

It's About Time! Literally.

Daylight Saving Time just began here in the Eastern Time Zone. We’re all tired from losing an hour of sleep, and just adjusting to the change. But...

1. Do you know when Daylight Saving Time starts in France?
2. Do you know how many hours India is ahead of Eastern Time?
Scroll down for answers.

So, what if you want to call home while you're in France or India on vacation or for business? Or when you’re in the office here, maybe you want to schedule a phone meeting with your colleagues or customers there. How would you know what time would work? Some people just look in their colleague’s calendar and schedule for a time that’s not marked as busy, but is that really a good time for the person?

I worked in international business for years, and came to rely on timeanddate.com to help me schedule even the most complex meetings, across multiple time zones. Go to the International Meeting Planner in the Time Zones menu. Enter the date of the meeting, and the cities. The timetable displays the best times in green, bad times in red, and “maybe" times in yellow. Then contact your colleague.

Keep in mind that some times may be in tomorrow’s date. For example, when I had phone meetings with a colleague in Tokyo, it was 9PM here, and 10AM there, the next day.

When you work in an organization that deals with colleagues, customers, or suppliers across time zones every day, you should internalize what time it is there, so you can plan what to do when during the day. My editing team in Oregon was 3 hours behind my day. So I could spend the morning replying to email from their previous afternoon, and sending them files they’d start working on later (my afternoon/their morning). In a French company, you have to make any phone calls during our morning, especially if you need to order supplies, because the French office is 6 hours ahead…most of the time!

1. March 31, 2019.
2. Nine and a half hours, during Eastern Daylight Saving Time; DST is not used in India. 

You Need a Sympathetic Listener

I work in a French gourmet store. When I tell people they can practice their French, and that there are no tests, they laugh, and are SO relieved! Why? Because we’re so conditioned to the idea that learning a language is stressful or difficult, or that you’ll be judged. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

How do you think babies learn a language? I want you to think about that. Go ahead, take a couple of days. After you have your answer, read the rest of this.

…

OK, what’s your answer?

There has been significant research about how babies acquire their first language. Babies learn to speak by listening to their parents and caregivers. In most cultures, there is a sort of a conversation between the fluent speaker and the baby, where the fluent speaker talks as if the baby understands, or will learn to understand. Maybe using cute words and a soothing voice helps the baby feel comfortable. The fluent speaker leaves time for the baby to reply, and eventually, the baby replies with sounds, such as cooing or laughing. Before you know it, there are words in this conversation.

I’m just talking about listening and speaking, not reading and writing. 

So, a sympathetic listener is a little like the parent of a young child, and if possible, a native or near-native speaker of the target language (the one you want to learn). Look for someone who supports your learning a language, talks to you nicely (though of course not as mushily as the parent of a newborn :), and perhaps most importantly, listens to you. Listening helps them figure out your current level, and from that, to use words and structures you can understand, which ideally would be just a step above the ones you already know. Yes, above, because the way to increase knowledge is often through guessing and trying things out.

Listening also helps your speaking partner understand what you’re trying to say. They could help you say it perfectly, but it’s better to focus on the communication (having a conversation about something that interests you both) than to correct every single error: that’s frustrating and counter-productive. You have to accept that there will be some mistakes; it’s completely normal, and to be expected. By focusing on what you and the other person are trying to say to each other, you will feel more supported and you will learn more words, grammar, and pronunciation without focusing expressly on that. 

Make new friends, and have fun! Enjoy this blog, too:

https://www.iwillteachyoualanguage.com/blog/interacting-with-native-speakers

[If you’re interested in the research supporting these ideas, see Noam Chomsky’s LAD (language acquisition device) and generative grammar, Catherine Snow’s research on parent-child interaction, various researchers’ work on child-directed language (also called baby talk or motherese), Lev Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, and Stephen Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and Affective Filter theories.] 

How I raised bilingual kids (though I'm a native speaker of English)

Since literally the minute my kids were born, I speak only French to them. I have my reasons; feel free to ask!

Here’s how I did it:

• I’m fluent because I majored in French, and spent a year of study in Paris. And I knew about language acquisition through my graduate studies.

• We use the One Person, One Language method: I speak French when I speak to each or both kids. My husband speaks English to them; I speak English with him. (The By Place method also works: for example, English at school, Chinese at home; or English at home, Hebrew at temple.)

  • That’s the basics of it: consistently use the same method. Below are extras that helped.

  • Note: I had to take a guess, and decided to let my kids respond in the language of their choice. That’s usually English, unless they’re trying to butter me up. They don’t have French-speaking grandparents, so I felt it best for our situation. I’ve seen families force kids to reply in French, and sometimes they develop a resistance to the language; my kids never did. But when they are with French-speaking people, they speak French, of their own choosing.

• We had French-speaking au pairs for a few years. We still visit each other.

• The kids went to a French preschool for a couple of years. Then they had a weekly French lesson, so they could learn to read and write in French.

• We traveled to French-speaking places for vacation, when we could. We purchased films, books, and music in French, so we could use those materials at home.

• When they were in third grade, they could start taking French or Spanish in school. So, we chose Spanish, since they had already had 8 years of French at home. Spanish was easy for them, since they already knew French.

• When each kid was 16, they spent a month in a French-speaking family, without me. In high school, they took A.P. French.

Unless one or both parents are native speakers of another language, almost no one in the U.S. is doing this. I had to be a pioneer. But my education prepared me, so I was confident it’d work. And it did!

Errare humanum est: It's OK to make mistakes!

It’s actually NORMAL to make mistakes when you’re learning a language.

Even your FIRST language! For example, when children are learning the past tense in English, they make mistakes like “I falled down,” because that’s how the general rule works, and later they acquire the irregular form, “fell.” Don’t believe me? Try listening to kids for a while. Then try listening to adults!

How can you be expected to speak perfectly all the time, especially when you’re learning, and don’t know a lot of stuff yet? This can scare people into not talking. Let’s not blame your teacher; in my opinion, requirements from schools and states often create unnecessarily stressful environments.

If the editor in your head is on all the time, and you’re spending all your time trying to fix your sentence in your brain before speaking, the other person will move on and talk about something else, and you’ll have lost your opportunity to get a word in. It also makes it harder for you to listen to the other person.

It’s much better to focus on the conversation—what you and the other person want to communicate to each other. Now, I’m not saying you should completely turn off the editor in your head: express yourself as correctly you can. Just don’t let it get in the way too much. Have fun!

[In case you feel like reading scholarly papers, these ideas are based on linguistic research on error analysis (linguistics) by Noam Chomsky and others, and Stephen Krashen’s theories including The Monitor Hypothesis and The Affective Filter Hypothesis.]