Isaiah 56:10 construct question

[Kenneth Greifer]

Dewayne,
How much time did you spend each day studying and practicing a language that you were learning?
It has been my experience that it might be better to learn a language wrong and then learn it right than to try to learn it right from the beginning. You can't say anything in a language for months to years your way because you don't know all of the words for even a simple sentence and you don't know how to correctly conjugate every kind of verb, etc. You can only repeat sentences other people said in books because whatever you say will be wrong. Or you can just speak a language partially in another language or even wrong in some ways, but you can say whatever you want to right away and not worry about all of the correct words and grammar rules.

I bet that if you looked at your A students, you will find that very few learned the language, and the rest of them did not. I have taken classes where I tried to learn the words and the grammar rules correctly and I never was able to memorize all of the rules and words, so that after a year or two I could finally say even a simple sentence about anything that I wanted to say. If I had thought to mix English and those languages, maybe I would have learned more words and rules over time from actually using them right or wrong.

I think your approach works for people who love languages, want to spend many hours a day studying them, and then become teachers because that is their inborn talent probably. Other people can't do that. In my opinion, Joe Shmo is better off learning a language wrong and practicing really using it right away. Speaking a language wrong from day one is better than not speaking a language until you can do it right after a few years of memorizing all of the many details of a language's grammar rules.
I know I am wrong. The teacher knows better than the students who sit there and pretend to be learning.

[Jason Hare]

How much time did you spend each day studying and practicing a language that you were learning?

Do you mean to ask how much time he spends learning a language that he is learning, or how much time did he spend each day (in the past) learning a language that he was learning? You've mixed up the tenses (present with past), which makes the question unclear, and the answer to this might change depending on what exactly you're asking.

It has been my experience that it might be better to learn a language wrong and then learn it right than to try to learn it right from the beginning.

You think it's better to learn a language incorrectly from the beginning rather than learning it correctly? Why would you think such a thing?

You can't say anything in a language for months to years your way because you don't know all of the words for even a simple sentence and you don't know how to correctly conjugate every kind of verb, etc.

Are you now talking about the natural method of language acquisition? It seems like you're mixing up topics. Most people don't use the natural method for learning biblical languages, though it is becoming more popular to do so today. I used the natural method for learning modern Hebrew, meaning that I gave myself plenty of space to make mistakes and to use the language for communication for daily needs. This has little relevance to the idea of learning a language without learning to pronounce it or to read it fluently.

You can only repeat sentences other people said in books because whatever you say will be wrong. Or you can just speak a language partially in another language or even wrong in some ways, but you can say whatever you want to right away and not worry about all of the correct words and grammar rules.

What you're describing of your own process, though, is neither of these. I don't understand where you're going with this.

I bet that if you looked at your A students, you will find that very few learned the language, and the rest of them did not. I have taken classes where I tried to learn the words and the grammar rules correctly and I never was able to memorize all of the rules and words, so that after a year or two I could finally say even a simple sentence about anything that I wanted to say. If I had thought to mix English and those languages, maybe I would have learned more words and rules over time from actually using them right or wrong.

So, since you didn't use natural language acquisition methods, you think it's better to learn nothing and use no speaking or reading when approaching a language? How is this reasonable?

I think your approach works for people who love languages, want to spend many hours a day studying them, and then become teachers because that is their inborn talent probably. Other people can't do that. In my opinion, Joe Shmo is better off learning a language wrong and practicing really using it right away. Speaking a language wrong from day one is better than not speaking a language until you can do it right after a few years of memorizing all of the many details of a language's grammar rules.
I know I am wrong. The teacher knows better than the students who sit there and pretend to be learning.

The only way to learn a language that you are not surrounding yourself with is to read. It's the ONLY way. Even Stephen Krashen, the leader of Second Language Acquisition theory today, advocates one thing above all others for improved vocabulary expansion and retention, for fluency and clarity of expression, for comprehension of both reading and speech... and that is FREE VOLUNTARY READING (FVR). Looking at words and not pronouncing them gets you nowhere fast.

[Kenneth Greifer]

Jason,
I meant how much time did he spend in the past when he studied a language?
I went to American public schools and they did not teach natural learning, but they made you memorize rules and words and you could not use partial sentences with some English and some words from another language. You had to use full sentences in that other language, but you could not because you didn't know enough words or how to conjugate the verbs right. It was very frustrating and a waste of time to try to memorize words and verb patterns, so that someday you would know enough words to actually make a complete sentence that you wanted to say for the teacher to be satisfied.

That was my experience in school. I am assuming that this approach is still used today. Maybe I am wrong, but I found it to be a waste of time and effort to try to learn a language. Maybe learning the language was not the goal. Maybe the goal was to learn the grammar rules and words, so you could take tests and the school could say they taught you a language. I am not sure if the goal of language classes in America is for you to actually learn the language or the rules of the language. Maybe I misunderstood the goal of the classes.

I no longer have the energy or desire to try to learn a language. When I was younger, I did, but teachers got in my way because I thought they knew how to teach. Now I think that they were just getting paid to teach grammar rules. None of them could teach a dog to bark. If they did teach a dog to bark, it would probably end up meowing.

[Jason Hare]

Jason,
I meant how much time did he spend in the past when he studied a language?
I went to American public schools and they did not teach natural learning, but they made you memorize rules and words and you could not use partial sentences with some English and some words from another language. You had to use full sentences in that other language, but you could not because you didn't know enough words or how to conjugate the verbs right. It was very frustrating and a waste of time to try to memorize words and verb patterns, so that someday you would know enough words to actually make a complete sentence that you wanted to say for the teacher to be satisfied.

I completely understand your frustration here. I took one semester of French in college, and it was just like that. The teacher expected us to use French without knowing French and without having any basic literature to read and practice with. Just basic sentences were covered in the grammar book (things like "I live in the United States. I study French and Spanish. My brother is a doctor."), and she expected us to be able to generalize to use all kinds of words that we had never encountered. I understand the frustration. She should have kept it simpler and challenged us only to understand at a level a bit beyond what we had already learned (Krashen calls this i + 1), but she took it too far. I was completely lost—and I have a knack for languages.

That was my experience in school. I am assuming that this approach is still used today. Maybe I am wrong, but I found it to be a waste of time and effort to try to learn a language. Maybe learning the language was not the goal. Maybe the goal was to learn the grammar rules and words, so you could take tests and the school could say they taught you a language. I am not sure if the goal of language classes in America is for you to actually learn the language or the rules of the language. Maybe I misunderstood the goal of the classes.

This has little to do with what you're telling us that you're doing with Hebrew, though. It is one thing to criticize how a system implements its goals. The US language instruction system certainly needs to be criticized and improved. Then again, I learned Spanish in that system. I took two years of Spanish in high school, covered all of the major points of grammar and all basic vocabulary, and then I went on to study Spanish for three years in college. The basis provided by my high school learning enabled me to really engage my learning in college so that I took courses in literature (Peninsular and Latin American), film (specifically, Mexican), phonology, and linguistics all taught and led in Spanish by highly educated native Spanish speakers from different parts of the world.

Your experience with high school language instruction (which was probably shared by a lot of people all over the country) does not invalidate sound language acquisition methods of pedagogy. We have very good ideas about how to teach languages today, stronger than what was known in the past about how people acquire new languages. The two most important factors are interest (what motivates someone to learn and how he tackles the challenge) and exposure (which is, for non-native speakers of a language, achieved most rapidly and completely in reading).

I no longer have the energy or desire to try to learn a language. When I was younger, I did, but teachers got in my way because I thought they knew how to teach. Now I think that they were just getting paid to teach grammar rules. None of them could teach a dog to bark. If they did teach a dog to bark, it would probably end up meowing.

I'm certainly not trying to throw grammar rules at you. I'm telling you what I know to be true: that you will acquire any language (even your native language) most readily through copious amounts of reading. Whatever kind of reading. It can be technical manuals, doctoral dissertations, comic books, novels, newspapers, magazines, internet forums... but it must be real examples of the language and it must be A LOT of material. Read whatever you want, but you must read.

And if your goal is to learn the biblical tongue, your materials are a bit more limited, but you must read the text of the Bible. Read it as a story, not as a set of individual words without connection to one another. You should read it aloud. You should it in your mind's ear. You should listen to others read it. And if you have the chance to learn modern Hebrew, take that chance. It only brings the language more to life and helps it to settle in your heart.

No one is beyond language acquisition, but (sadly) the experiences that unqualified teachers often convey put people off or make them think they aren't capable. You are certainly capable.

[talmid56]

Well, Kenneth, Jason made most of the points I was going to make in my reply (Thanks, Jason. Good job!). But I’ll add a few things.

As for my own language study experience in the past, the modern languages I studied were all with the natural method, combined with study of grammar as needed. In high school, I studied French and Spanish. In college, I took French, Spanish, and German. I majored in Spanish with a minor in French and took two years of German. Because my high school courses stressed using the language conversationally, by the time I got to college, I was fluent enough to be able to serve as a volunteer interpreter when I went on my first trip to Mexico with a college church group. This also helped me with reading comprehension. I studied Hispanic literature in college in the target language and we discussed our reading in the target language. We also wrote papers in the target language. There was no translation done, or any need felt for it to interact with the literature. I did take an advanced Spanish grammar course that included some translation exercises, but this was after 4 years of learning to use the language for communication. We studied poetry, novels, short stories, and drama from both Spain and Latin American countries. I also studied and discussed French literature in college in the target language. In grad school, I studied Spanish, French, and Portuguese (Brazilian). The Spanish literature included some from the earliest period of Spanish literature (11th century and 14th century). This helped prepare me for reading Don Quijote in the original Spanish on my own later (comparable to reading Shakespeare in difficulty; the two authors were close contemporaries).

So not all American schools do or did things the way you describe. The approach to French you describe would not have been done by any of my fellow teachers. I don’t know why yours did, but you were short-changed, and I regret that.

As for the ancient languages, the two I’ve had formal work on under a teacher were Koine Greek and Biblical Hebrew. My Latin and Aramaic have been self-taught. I’ve spent less time so far with the Aramaic than Hebrew. But I want to get back to it. I’ll probably start with Syriac. The approach with all of these was grammar-translation. All the communicative approaches to them I’ve done on my own without a teacher, although interaction with forum members and reading various blogs have given me some helpful ideas and much encouragement.

I did not mean to imply that you must spend several hours a day, every day, to make progress in Hebrew. I currently usually only get to spend 15 minutes to an hour, usually every other day on my Hebrew study.

Nor do I say that it is impossible to learn Biblical Hebrew well without interactive or natural language methods. I do say that you will have an easier time of it when it comes to reading the Hebrew Bible if you have the opportunity to learn using such methods. The main thing is to ditch the “dead language” view and treat it as a real language, and use any and all methods that keep it real for you. You must choose first whether you really want to learn BH, or just dabble in it. If you do actually want to learn, we are here to help you in any way we can.

[Kenneth Greifer]

Dewayne and Jason,

Just out of curiosity, when you both were in high school or college and you took modern languages like Spanish, how much time each day did you study and practice each language? Also, I never heard of the natural language methods that you two say you used to learn modern languages, except from you two. This is the first I ever heard of it that I know of.
I read a little bit about it on that great highly trusted fountain of knowledge, Wikipedia.

[Jason Hare]

Dewayne and Jason,

Just out of curiosity, when you both were in high school or college and you took modern languages like Spanish, how much time each day did you study and practice each language? Also, I never heard of the natural language methods that you two say you used to learn modern languages, except from you two. This is the first I ever heard of it that I know of.
I read a little bit about it on that great highly trusted fountain of knowledge, Wikipedia.

There's a book called The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom by Stephen Krashen, which he published with Tracy Terrell back in 1983. The great thing about Dr. Krashen is that he self-publishes everything he writes and puts it on his website, sdkrashen.com. In this case, his book is published here, and it's a good read. You should watch videos of him on YouTube talking about Free Voluntary Reading. His research is fascinating and challenging.

[Kenneth Greifer]

Jason,
Maybe I am asking you a personal question that you don't want to discuss, but I am really curious how much time you and Dewayne spent studying a language each day during high school or college. If you don't want to discuss that I understand. I think it would be interesting to know what worked for you two and any other people who are reading this discussion. I will try to look at the link you gave later.

[talmid56]

If you include class time, I would guess about 3 hours a day for me. Part of the class time included language lab, where we listened to native speakers and repeated the dialogues. Besides that, I also had the opportunity to practice some live speaking with two boys from Nicaragua who were taking other classes. Their school in Managua was destroyed by an earthquake, and so they moved to Louisiana, where their aunt and uncle lived, to finish their high school work.

While some time every day is probably better than cramming it into one day a week, there is no ideal amount of time for language work. Many adults take classes while working full time or other ways of studying and succeed. It may take longer for some than others, depending on aptitude and motivation.

I may be mistaken, but I get the feeling you think that unless you can devote vast amounts of time to the project it is doomed to failure. I never meant to imply this, and did not say so. I think the main thing is to devote time to it each week if you can. How much time will depend on your degree of interest and your circumstances. With the use of audio and digital aids, you can do it away from home some also, which may provide some additional time.

[talmid56]

I believe the preferred term back when I was in high school was "audio-lingual method", although I didn't know that then. "Natural method" and "direct method" are also basically the same thing. It was also a semi-immersion method. Jason is right about the value of Krashen's work. I've read some of it and find it fits the reality of how people acquire language. You won't go wrong reading him.