When 'Hello' Isn't Speaking: The Myth of Instant Language Acquisition

In my first years as a teacher in China, I worked in three different training centers. A common practice to attract new clients was to give a demo lesson. This involved kids – mostly without any prior language learning experience – being put in front of an English teacher who would try to teach them some language in about 15 to 20 minutes, usually starting with a song as a warm-up and then using flashcards. Those kids were usually kindergarten age, by the way.

That teaching approach was mostly based on the behaviorist theory (Skinner, 1957) and included drilling and memorization of three or four words. The expected outcome was that kids would start "speaking" English almost immediately. From the first minute, they were expected to say "Hello!" after a random foreign face stared at them for a few seconds and asked them to repeat it several times.

What can I say about it? I think you could guess that the outcome was obvious – almost no one could say anything. Most of the kids were crying; some were forced by their parents to at least imitate the dancing involved in the warm-up. A few kids tried to follow the teacher, but I could see how uncomfortable and forced they were. Of course, there were some kids who could say "hello" and repeat some of the introduced words, and their parents were thrilled. Those kids who didn't do anything were silently labelled as doomed by their parents, who assumed their ability to learn English was nearly zero.

I wish that at that time, someone could have explained to those parents what I now know about language acquisition: that learners often go through a silent period and require a lot of comprehensible input (Krashen, 1982); that putting them in a new environment and forcing them to follow a complete stranger and speak what probably sounds like gibberish to them is highly stressful and raises the "affective filter," which blocks acquisition (Krashen, 1982); and that output needs to be meaningful – simply repeating words without understanding is not genuine speaking (Kaufmann, 2013).

It is sad to see that, even today with all the research in language acquisition, many institutions still fail to create a healthy environment for language learners. Instead, they present a broken model that does not facilitate real language acquisition from the moment a student steps into a school.

 

References:

Kaufmann, S. (2013). The linguist: A personal guide to language learning. Lingosteve.

Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Pergamon Press.

Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. Appleton-Century-Crofts.

 

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