Learning languages the smart way
April 24, 2011 8:02 AM   Subscribe

What's the best way to apply the "deliberate practice" philosophy to language learning?

For those who have been living under a Malcolm Gladwell-proof rock for the past few years, a recap: deliberate practice is a term introduced (I believe) in this paper for a type of practice which leads to long-term expertise. Here are the characteristics of deliberate practice, as I understand it:
  1. It should be designed specifically to improve performance on a specific task.
  2. It should involve immediate feedback.
  3. It must be repeated.
The key idea is that this type of practice leads to progress much faster than "dumb" practice, where you just do the same thing over and over again.

This article about a man trying to become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of deliberate practice has a few examples of the kind of thing I'm interested in. For instance, his coach wouldn't let him putt from 3 feet away from the hole until he could putt from 1 foot away from the whole, and he's been moving steadily further away from the green ever since.

There are more details about the contrast between regular practice and deliberate practice in the "Secrets of a Mind Gamer" article which ran in the New York Times in February. The article introduces the idea of the "O.K. Plateau", which is when the brain runs on autopilot and stops trying to become better at a new skill. The article has this to say about how to get over the O.K. plateau in the realm of touch typing:
Psychologists have discovered that the most efficient method is to force yourself to type 10 to 20 percent faster than your comfort pace and to allow yourself to make mistakes. Only by watching yourself mistype at that faster speed can you figure out the obstacles that are slowing you down and overcome them.
I'd like to apply these insights to the language learning process.

I've been learning a language (Chinese, if it matters) for six years. I'm pretty good at it, but I fear that most of my practice is of the dumb variety: I read articles in Chinese, have lots of conversations in Chinese (I live in China, so this part is easy), and study flashcards of vocabulary I'm trying to memorize. (Yes, I already use spaced repetition, and I love it lots and lots and lots.)

These are standard methods, and they work (there's a reason that they're the cornerstone of most language learning methods), but they don't match any of the criteria for deliberate practice. I'm looking for a better way. So, metafilter, give it to me: what are the best ways to apply "deliberate practice" to language learning?

(There are a ton of websites out there proposing novel ways to improve your language skills. I've read a lot of them, so I'm not really looking for general links to web content about language learning (unless you think it's really a) revolutionary and b) not that well known). I'm interested more in practical suggestions/studies/ideas about focused deliberate practice strategies for language learning. Thanks!)
posted by jweed to Education (9 answers total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
I don't know if this is exactly what you are thinking of, but years ago I was living in Tokyo, and planned to visit China for a summer. I found a Chinese woman who was interested in trading Chinese for English classes, but the only language we had in common was fair-to-middling Japanese. It was challenging and incredibly amusing, and might be another way for you to practice.
posted by grizzled at 10:13 AM on April 24, 2011


Find a job that requires you to use Chinese, and preferably one where your coworkers barely speak any English. I was at the OK plateau, but when I had a job where I had to do things such as participate in or even worse, lead business meetings in Chinese, or was randomly called to translate for other coworkers, or the scariest thing of all, give a PPT presentation, it really forced my language skills to improve quickly. This pushed me way out of my comfort level in a way that isn't possible in a classroom setting, and even beyond the kind of general living situations that expats in China run into. You'll get immediate feedback--for instance, if your coworkers don't understand you, or if you haven't done something because you didn't understand the request, and you'll have to do it over and over again.
posted by so much modern time at 10:43 AM on April 24, 2011


Not specifically adding to your skillset since you are already doing this, but I do think that using Flashcards counts as deliberate practice. e.g. if you use not just spaced repetition but something like the cram mode on Flashcard Exchange where you repeat with feedback until you have learned each card 6 times meets the criteria you listed.
posted by inbetweener at 3:32 PM on April 24, 2011


I once read this book which talks about the roughly 10000 hour requirement to become an expert (at pretty much anything). It also has a number of other tidbits and suggestions but perhaps not as much practical 'do-this' suggestions.

http://www.amazon.com/Genius-Explained-Canto-Michael-Howe/dp/0521008492/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303690324&sr=1-3

This is an interesting topic for sure...
posted by simpleton at 5:15 PM on April 24, 2011


Response by poster: Thanks for the answers so far. To clarify, I'm not really looking for advice on general language situations to put myself in -- I spend most of my free time with Chinese people who speak no English, so my day-to-day life is already pretty immersive.

As I mentioned above, studies on deliberate practice emphasize the need for specific, repeatable tasks which involve immediate feedback. I'm looking for examples of way to build learning exercises for myself which will fit this model. (To return to the golf example: the guy is a year into his golf program and still hasn't played a round of golf. He practices focused skills with specific goals in mind. I want to find stuff like that.)
posted by jweed at 7:14 PM on April 24, 2011


You say you read articles in Chinese; do you deliberately seek out and read things that are above your current level? Because that is a good way to get immediate feedback: don't know this word, don't know that construction, can't read that character, etc.
posted by No-sword at 8:51 PM on April 24, 2011


Best answer: I know you're not really asking for this, but as a Ph.d. candidate in applied linguistics, I think there are a few more theoretical issues that need to be taken into account when looking for "deliberate practice opportunities."

I think the problem that you're going to run into is that language learning is not a linear process. As a famous paper by Larsen-Freeman puts it "“learning linguistic items is not a linear process – learners do not master one item and then move on to another. In fact, the learning curve for a single item is not linear either. The curve is filled with peaks and valleys, progress and backslidings” (p. 18)."

Larsen-Freeman, D. 1997. Chaos/Complexity science and second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics 18.

In other words, while deliberate practice might well work for mechanical actions, learning a language is far from being a simple mechanical action and it's entirely possible that, even in a perfectly designed activity where the feedback is immediate and focused, the learner in question will get stuck and never fully master the item in question until he or she is cognitively ready.

This brings me to my next point about focused and unfocused feedback. Forgive me if you are familiar with these terms already, but unfocused feedback is for example when a teacher corrects every mistake a student makes. Focused feedback is when a teacher chooses to correct only one type of mistake: e.g. only corrects mistakes with the past tense. Guess which one is more effective? There is a wealth of literature on how much more effective focused feedback is.

For you, I would try to keep this in mind. Instead of trying to get feedback on simply pronunciation, it would be far more effective and likely to achieve the desired results if the feedback was focused on one particular aspect of pronunciation (e.g. when you use a rising tone instead of a rise-fall).

I wish you the best of luck with this, but the fact that this article from 1993 hasn't made an impact, or even really been mentioned in the relevant literature suggests that my initial reaction was correct: it doesn't really apply to language learning.
posted by FunGus at 10:18 PM on April 24, 2011 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thanks a ton, FunGus. Great info.

Maybe the "deliberate practice" thing was a bit of a red herring. Even if focused feedback isn't actually part of the deliberate practice school of learning, it's exactly the type of tip that I'm looking for. If you (or anyone else) has specific suggestions for the most effective way to spend my language practice time, I'd love to hear them.
posted by jweed at 11:40 PM on April 24, 2011


You've given examples such as touch typing and golf. I can give you an example about learning English. English isn't my mother-tongue, but I get better at it by :
level 1) reading stuff written in "plateau" (well, my plateau) English, ie Metafilter, Arts & Letters Daily, blogs, etc. I don't need too much concentration to understand what I am reading. I even sometimes end up wondering if what I just finished reading was written in French or English.
level 2) reading a bit more challenging English ie Virginia Woolf, Henry James. Because of the quality of their writing I don't want to give up, I'm ready to read and reread some parts to make sure I understood the text the right way.
level 3) reading old English or poetry. ie Shakespeare or poems from 15, 16 and 17th centuries. I only understand half of what is written, but it doesn't matter that much, because poetry isn't about rational understanding. I regulary have to open the Oxford French-English dictionnary though.

It seems to me that my everyday English gets better because I'm reading some harder stuff at the same time.
I see this as an iterative activity : every day I read a bit of each "level". But I do this because I love reading the classics and poetry, not because I have to learn English by all means. Maybe if I didn't love words that much this method wouldn't work on me. YMMV.
posted by OrangeCat at 9:02 AM on May 12, 2011


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