Engrish Tuesday Special! National Grammar Day
![Hiro’s Dinner [sic]](http://thereiners.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/hiros.jpg)
This little gem, comes from a groovy little ’50s style american diner we found this weekend in Nagoya. I don’t know how long it is that women’s hearts wait. But this guy, he waits longer.
Also, apparently today is National Grammar Day. I found this out by way of Jill, who oddly seems to have posted about it in the wee hours of the morning on March the 3, not March the 4. I won’t give her too much of a hard time, however, as this is National Grammar Day, not National Calendar Day.
I am not even sure if I can officially celebrate this day, as I am not in the USA. I suppose there are also those who would rather I not participate, because I am becoming an anti-“grammar nazi”. I will, however, say a few things about grammar, and the world of english grammar here in japan. (As an english teacher, perhaps I am entitled?)
First off let me say that english grammar is totally f*#&ed. Seriously. I get a lot of grammar questions all the time. I am the de-facto expert when students write things the grammar books don’t directly address. They are especially heavy at this time of the year. There are entrance exams, final exams, and final essays all coming to a head all at once. So I continually am being asked if you can say, such and such. “Oh really? How about this…? or this?” The more I look at our rules and semantics, the more screwy it seems.
The sad part of it all is that I really don’t feel that, in most of these questions, it matters one way or the other. If I am approached by someone, and they say. “Tom is the tallest of the two.” I am going to understand. Even if the rules says that “Tom is the taller of the two.” is more correct. I am sure I have heard this mistake from more than a few native english speakers. It is silly really, to look at these things so closely and dissect them to this level. However, this is what the japanese education system does with a lot of their classes. I am just not sure that it is worth it.
The truth of the matter is this, everyone makes grammar mistakes, and I would say that the vast majority of the time it does not matter one bit. I am becoming pretty opposed to those who say that we should teach our children more grammar in american schools. I really think that, for the most part, it is a waste of time and resources. Most of the people who get all bent out of shape about grammar do so for the stupidest reasons.
We all know those people. They are the people who go a little crazy when someone uses effect instead of affect. They are the people who taunt you saying “I don’t know, CAN you?” when you ask, “Can I go to the bathroom?”. Even though they clearly know what the person is talking about. “It is destroying our language!” they say, “If we don’t drill these rules into the children, we soon will never be able to understand anything! DOOM DOOM GLOOM! GRAAAAGH!” (at least this is how they sound in my head…) Its quite nutty really.
I would say that English education in Japan is a perfect example of what happens if you push a this grammar heavy approach. In the Japanese schools grammar is king. This all boils down to one thing. Grammar is really easy to test, and easy to grade. Unlike with communication, with grammar you can easily decide if it is right or wrong answer. Mark them down when they break the rules, mark them up when they don’t. It is an unfortunate practice I see all the time.
I was given several stacks of essays to correct from third year students practicing for their entrance exams. Some of the topics were pretty interesting, and many of the responses were very interesting. In the end I was conflicted. The essays were handed to me so that I could correct the grammar. However, some of the best essays in terms of meaning and ideas, were also those that were not so great when it came to grammar. Usually it was because the student ideas surpassed their ability to use english. Thus my corrections could discourage these students from writing genuinely interesting essays. Also disturbing were those essays with simple trite ideas, but perfect grammar. Often I felt the student was taking the easy way, writing what they knew they could write correctly. While I recognize that this will pull the top score from a university, I also feel that it is not a good essay. As a result this grammar heavy education prevents the students from really communicating.
So, if we don’t drill them with grammar lessons, what is the alternative?
I grew up during the whole language movement. This was a big movement in the ’80s and early ’90s where literacy educators taught reading and writing by focusing on developing meaning. It attempted to be a more holistic approach to teaching people how to read and write. The idea was to expose students to more literature, and have them spend more time writing. For your native language this is all you really need. Constant exposure. All the while focusing on what things mean, not how they are constructed, but what they are trying to communicate.
This is what all language boils down to, communication. What we really want to do when we start speaking, listening, writing, or reading it to understand and be understood. In the end this has very little to do with grammar, and everything to do with exposure to, and practice using, language. You have to learn to “sense” when a sentence is right. Not how to diagram it, chop it apart, and use that to figure out what is right or wrong. Things need to just sound, or look right. In this style of learning you try making sentences yourself, then you look at them through another’s eyes. Can I be misunderstood? From this frame of mind is where we should look at grammar. We should not be drilling rules, but correcting misunderstandings. What do I need to do when writing, so that I will not be misunderstood. What do i need to do while speaking, so I cannot be misunderstood. Then you can learn to make good sentences, without thinking about rules.
If someone can speak and be understood, they are communicating. If they are using what you perceive to be incorrect grammar. Then I would say your grammar is not important.
This is the foundation of my attitude in teaching oral communication here in japan. I try to appeal to the students and get them to take risks when speaking or writing in my classes. I want them to make mistakes, discover when the ways they are using the language is causing them to be misunderstood. However, I am more likely to get short simple answers, or silence. Their endless hammering of grammar rules has made it so they have difficulty in getting out a sentence for fear of messing it up.
So, you grammar nazis out there, I am begging you. Give it a rest. It is not that important. The effects of your badgering is killing our ability and desire to use the language, as surely as the mistakes you hate so much are killing it.
Side notes.
While I lived in the heyday of whole language, I also saw the movement die, before it ever got a chance to thrive. Various people bitched and moaned about how this “new” way of teaching was leading to a decline in student achievement. In reality, the observed decline was on the standardized tests. Not on the actual communicative ability of students. Which is really quite difficult to test. I believe that in the long run this system would have been better. As it can yield students who focused on being understood, and approach grammar from this frame of mind. It is hard to see its stance on grammar because whole language also was combined with a movement away from phonics, which I believe was disastrous.
One of the big problems with english, in my mind, is that it has a tremendous talent for being ambiguous. It can have all sorts of different meanings depending on little things, like the position of a comma. It not really English’s fault I guess. What can it do? It is the bastard child of the speech of Anglicans, Saxons, Jutes, and Celts. Then it was spread all over the world, so that all sorts of people decided to bend its rules and twist them into their own dialects. The rules have now all mixed and merged until you got a language so flexible so mixed about that even we can’t understand it half the time, even if we follow the grammar. I am not saying this is unique to English. But, English seems to have an inordinate amount of trouble with it.
My other big beef with english is the great amount of idioms we seem to use. I have to work so hard not to throw this stuff out there, and to speak literally. Nothing confuses my students more than an idiom. Think how difficult it is when you are trying to understand another language, and suddenly they verbs make no sense and that person is talking about something that clearly has no relation to what you are talking about.
Lastly, I have made, I suspect, an inordinate number of grammatical errors in this post. Please, if any of them are preventing you from understanding, Let me know.
Iz feele lik u bee tryin two git mez speekin bout dees topicks. Iz be bein this topiks reeserchin and git bak to yu.
Sorry if that above comment comes across with a shitty attitude. I do need to work on not taking everything personally, but I did feel poked at. I was raised learning how to read by phonics, not whole language. I’m working on asking a couple of people about the two–all I remember is hearing my mother complain about whole language (she’s taught both), but I haven’t had the chance to talk to her about this yet. From a little quick web research, whole language critics complain that students don’t learn to spell as well.
One point is that you were asked to correct for grammar, right? Not comprehension? So why did the content of these essays bother you so much?
An editor friend of mine who didn’t learn parts of speech and diagramming pointed out to me that rules of grammar have indeed changed over the years, usually to a more lax system that you advocate. However, she also mentioned that if you don’t have grammar rules, you have chaos (the comment I wrote is a bad attempt to illustrate that). She used “affect/effect” in her e-mail to me. If you misuse them, you totally change the meaning of the sentence. So, it is useful to have grammar rules so that we’re all on the same page and can understand each other.
I personally think that diagramming is a good visual way to learn parts of speech and how they connect to each other. If a student is a more visual learner, it can be a tool to help them understand parts of speech.
ESL is difficult for the learners. English is a difficult language. But it’s important to learn the basic rules of grammar so that you can better communicate. Learning Japanese is the same–if you didn’t put the question word in the right part of the sentence, what would the reaction be? If you didn’t identify the subject or object of the sentence with the special words, what would happen? Personally, I think those grammar rules are kind of annoying and/or stupid, but that’s the way Japanese is, so if I want to learn it, I should learn it well. I shouldn’t be afraid to make mistakes, but I should respect their language enough to try to use it properly.
Hopefully this isn’t super-snarky and mean. Now I’m totally second-guessing myself on the concepts of arguing and discussion.
Jill,
First off, the only poke at you in this post was the dig on getting the date wrong. The rest of this post has more to do with my frustration with the japanese grammar-heavy teaching method. I have been intending to write a post on this for a long time, however just haven’t made time for it. My problem with this method is that it is not producing users of the language. It is producing people who can answer on tests.
So here comes my big problem with the essays. While correcting for grammar, many students who were heavy on content were discouraged by the corrections all over their page. Even though they were doing a very good job of communicating complicated ideas utilizing their limited knowledge of the language. I was super impressed by this, but the corrections made it look bad. I was afraid that my encouraging comments on the bottom could not overcome the red all over the page. However, those students who chose not to examine complex ideas, did not get a lot of corrections. Simply because they were not communicating.
Let me be clear in saying that I don’t want to abandon teaching grammar period. I just don’t think it should be grammar for grammars sake. It should be grammar when grammar is needed. This is when students need to correct their work in order to make things understandable. This was whole languages purported approach to grammar.
The biggest problem with whole language, as it was taught, is that it tried also to wholesale abandon phonics. I, on the other hand, actually had a base in phonics before the whole language movement really took hold in my school system. So I feel I did really well. The first I heard of diagraming sentences was in my junior or senior year of high school during german class. Yet I don’t really feel I missed anything and I believe I still have a good sense for organizing my sentences. I can sort of diagram a sentence now, but it is difficult. I don’t think it affects the way I form my sentences.
Now, as for japanese. The truth of the matter is that it is not chaos if you put the question word in the wrong part of the sentence, or if you use the wrong particles. In fact, I have quickly found that in most day to day circumstances if you just throw a subject, a verb and an object out, most people understand based on context.
I would rather my students act this way. First get out the words they need, in whatever order or arrangement comes to them. If they are not able to be understood I, or they, will ask questions. Let these questions handle ordering the words and showing where they need to be. Most of the time context and practice will do a lot more for training their minds and ears. It seems it would make students who didn’t want to stop all conversation until they mentally or literally (yes, I have seen this) wrote out and self corrected their sentences. Which is really quite silly.
The best case in point I can think of is the email I have been trading with one of the girls I met at the deaf school. She, because of her hearing loss, did not receive a standard education in english. In fact their english education is done, it seems, mostly for show, because it is required. Thus, it ends up being very basic. However, this girl spent a lot of her own time studying english. Out of a love of language, not obligation. Her grammar is pretty difficult at times to understand. However, she really genuinely seems to enjoy emailing back and forth. Since middle school she has kept an english diary, which her english teachers have helped her with. Ironically, though I only officially taught her for two lessons, she is something of my star pupil. She actually uses english to communicate. We write emails every week, and slowly she is beginning to realize her own mistakes. Not from rote memorization of a rule, but from learning to feel them.
Incidentally, phonics are completely useless to her, but for some reason, they still teach them. Weird huh.
I blame the French. The Norman conquest had a more calamitous effect on the “English” language than the Celts or Jutes ever did. (As a side note: Anglicans didn’t appear in England until after Henry VIII split from the Catholic church, and as such didn’t affect English that much.)
In all seriousness, Aaron, you raise some good points. You want students to know grammar based on a sense of what seems right. You are absolutely right, and this sense comes from having been drilled on grammar in elementary school, which most students end up internalizing. They may not be able to regurgitate these rules on a test any longer, but those rules linger there, just beneath the surface. Probably your wife could give me a lecture on the finer points of pedagogy, but I am not ready to toss out strict grammar instruction.
Don’t hate on the grammar-nazis too much. Their hearts are in the right place, they just lack social skills.
Yes, Nate, you are right. I could lecture you, and all the other readers, on the finer points of pedagogy. I agree, mostly, with Aaron and I could back it up with research and such, but I don’t see much point. Educational research is constantly changing with the times, and chances are it will flow back towards strict grammar instruction just as quickly as it has abandoned it, and at that point there will be even more research published to support the move.
That being said, I think it is important to make a few points. First, no one is arguing that grammar is not important. It is. Grammar helps us to understand what is being said (or written) and make sense of it. It is one, of many, tools that we have to make communicating easy and efficient. A wholesale abandonment of grammar, spelling, etc. would make communication difficult, if not impossible (as is evident in Jill’s first comment).
When I was teaching my students at home, and when I teach my Japanese students here, I have always tried to emphasize the importance of communication. After all, the entire purpose of writting, reading, speaking and listening (those four, glorious, elements of literacy) is to communicate. It makes more sense to attempt to communicate, rather than being paralyzed by the inability to do so perfectly. If we never communicated except when we could do so without making errors, our communications would be needlessly limited.
That being said, it is also important to teach students when communication can be more relaxed and when it is necessary to focus on grammar and correctness. With my students in Chicago, they learned very quickly the difference between formal communication, which required a certain level of perfection, and informal communication. Informal communication, this blog, my grocery list, a quick letter to my family for example, do not require the level of perfection and formality that a cover letter to a future employer might. As grown adults we know this, and when we work on those more formal pieces we put considerable effort into making them polished pieces of writing. This amount of effort, if used for everyday communications, would be so prohibitive that we simply would not communicate at all. My students in Chicago were able to make these distinctions, even as fourth graders. They knew that their informal day-to-day writing (journals, written responses, etc) and speaking (answering questions, sharing stories, etc.) need not be perfect, but on a formal essay or presentation, it did matter.
Actually, I think that is the most important thing. Giving students the freedom to communicate informally and imperfectly, but also giving them the tools to construct more formal communications if, and when, they need to. Now, how we go about giving them those tools is a whole different matter – whole language, rote memorization, etc. – and largely dependent on personal preference and learning style.
So is there some way that the JET program can help change the system? Find a better way to encourage your students who are stretching and finding a way to force the others who aren’t? Like have a portion of the essay grade be on content alone? Figure out a better way to teach the deaf? You’re right, phonics would be a weird way to learn if you couldn’t hear.
From what I understand (and my understanding is limited, mind you), the Japanese are big on rote memorization and drilling the rules. I get this idea from Nakamura-sensei’s simple instruction to “please memorize.” I was also out shopping for some math workbooks for a child and was told by a parent that the ones that were Japanese-style were boring for children. On the flipside, American schools don’t perform as well as Japanese schools (grade schools/high schools). Maybe that has nothing to do with the style of teaching, so that’s something I should learn more about.
I have a hard time finding the happy medium. On one level, I think you just have to memorize stuff. On the other hand, if it’s all memorization, it’s difficult to motivate students to do more than the bare minimum. I don’t think we started getting grammar until 4th or 5th grade, long after we’d learned to read (the phonics method of reading), but when you’re learning a second language, you tend to throw in the grammar right away.
I think diagramming helps in showing how things modify each other. It’s easy to say that an adjective modifies a noun, but when you see it underneath, it’s a different way to show it. It’s like putting together pieces of a puzzle in a different way. I know there are people who don’t like it, but I think it’s a useful tool to use as part of grammar learning.
I took French 101 and 102 in college. In 101, the teacher spent the first three weeks just saying things and having us do and repeat them (raise your hand, stand up, etc.). While it got us talking a little bit, it became incredibly frustrating for me because I wanted to see the words in my head, and as spoken, I couldn’t figure that out. Who knows–perhaps that’s the drawback of phonics. I constantly want to spell things out.
Friends, you are all wrong. Although none of you are likely to read this, I will add it to the discussion for future generations of web archaeologists to discover and use to declare that I was a misunderstood genius in my time.
Language is not about communication. Language is about thought, and the quality of language reflects the quality of thought. Communication can happen without language. Animals which live in social structures provide ample evidence of this. While humans often refer to animal communication as language, it truly isn’t. Animal communication is mostly basic feedback systems.
Consider it from the experience of being abroad. I was able to communicate in Japanese, but I was unable to think in Japanese. While I could communicate, I was unable to discuss any topic requiring true thought. I could not talk about the meanings of cultural difference, philosophy, art, or science.
Grammar is about logic and reason. Grammar rules are not there for their own sake, or even for clarity’s sake alone. Grammatical constructions exist as units and operators of thought. The rules help the elements of any piece of language work together to ask and resolve questions.
An example is the popular media. Journalists commit gross abuses of language everyday, and the results show up when you talk to people who only have hazy ideas about the world around them from the news they consume.
It is also evident when people ask hazy questions. Have you ever heard someone ask a question, and it is clear they want to know something, and the vocabulary they use is relatively simple, but you have no idea what they are getting at? Its the grammar.
I had the good fortune to room with a logic major, and we, his roommates, used to take great delight in confusing him with ambiguous requests, demands, and statements. What we discovered is that there are two kinds of ambiguity: lexical and syntactical.
A lexically ambiguous statement is one that is unclear because of the words used. The problem is that you just aren’t sure what the speaker means by that. This is easier to resolve because you can just ask for a definition or another word.
A syntactically ambiguous statement is one that is unclear because of the way it is structured. In other words, the grammar confuses the heck out of you. As with the question above, you think you should understand it, because the words are clear, but you just can’t get the meaning.
We used the second kind a lot more.
“But, Ben, wait,” you say, “you’re back to communication again.”
I am, but only as an illustration. The issue here is still thought. While we delighted in confusing our roommate, it was because we knew what we were doing and that it would confuse him. It was a triumph of reason over pure logic (more on this in another screed). We knew the rules, so we knew how to break them. But imagine the thought process of those who don’t.
Being able to construct complex grammatical sentences is evidence of education. We call it eloquence. Being able to dissect complex grammatical sentences also is evidence of education. We call it critical thinking.
Ultimately, though, these things happen before communication. The grammatical process exists to construct, order, and relate thoughts and their elements.
We think this kind of training in thinking happens in the sciences and mathematics, but it also happens in language and grammar classes. That is the whole basis of studying humanities.
Grammar provides the functions of the thoughts that make us human.
Ben,
Interesting idea! However, I am sorry, but allow me to start a small fire in your Internet dead sea cave.
You are in fact the one that is wrong. I believe, you make one large, but incorrect, assumption. It is this, “all people think in words.” Your argument is then, “Since all people think in words, advanced human thought can not exist without words and grammar. QED”
In reality, general consensus is that most people work somewhere on a plane of different ways of thinking. These forms of thought vary from, verbal, to visual, to any number of other non-verbal forms of thought (Mathematical-logical, emotional, kinesthetic, etc.). However, if one exercises an ability to think in multiple forms there is no need for an internal language. Language requires abstraction. Nowadays the majority of English speakers tend to live and think on the verbal corner of the plane, thus abstraction is required. However, as someone whose thinking process mostly does not revolve around words, I can tell you with certainty that this assumption is incorrect.
Ideas and thoughts are formed in many ways depending on the strength of various parts of a persons brain. Thus, as my argument pushes, language only universally comes into the mind at the communication stage. (Although I want to state that I never once said that grammar exists for grammars sake. Or that grammar education should not exist. Only that grammar education should exist, not for grammars sake, but for communications.)
The trouble is the people who work really far on any side of the plane often have a lot of difficulty understanding how someone could think in a system very differently than their own. I will do my best to try and explain how thinking works for me, with the absence of language.
For example, I may have an idea about how somethings feels, or how something works. Lets say a water wheel. As a visual-spacial thinker, I can re-experience this, I am reflecting reality. I picture the water wheel in my mind (shape, form, substance…). I have a sense, a feeling of how the water unbalances the wheel forcing it to turn. I understand that this turning can have a great amount of power and can be used to do something. I can even use imagination to utilize this in many ways and explore consequences. This was the elegance of Einstein’s thought experiments. Thought that reflects reality.
Until I need to communicate these concepts however, I do not need grammar or words or abstraction to complete this thought. Many of these concepts may correspond to words, but in all likelihood I can think about them without any grammar or rules at all. Grammar is not an operator in this thought.
Now I will attempt to refute your arguments directly.
Lets say I consent that communication can exist without “language”. I don’t see how this is any reason to believe that language is not but a system of communication. I see it as the opposite. Animals can think, and solve problems. Thus animals by your argument have thought without language or operators. Thus “language” is not tied directly to thought. QED
I would argue that you can have eloquence and critical thinking expressed though mediums that are not “language”. Maps, graphs, diagrams, etc. As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” If one was to construct the thought behind these forms of communication, it would be impossibly long. Yet good maps and diagrams are created. Thus eloquent-critical thought must exist outside of “language”. QED
The quotation marks on “language” exist in an attempt to limit my definition of language to what you seem to be defining it as. Perhaps they can be removed if one expands the definition past verbal language. Re-including animal communication and visual communication as having an ability to express abstractions of reality, and thus the ability to be defined as language. Each of these “languages” (quote now referring to my definition) have rules analogous to grammar. A “grammar” which of course refers to the way in which symbols express the idea. The communicating parties must share an understanding of these rules if they are to communicate. Any “language” has its analog to grammar. A maps “grammar”, for example, includes paradigms for abstracting reality. Rivers to blue lines, etc. Animal’s grammar includes paradigms for abstracting emotion. I am growling, this means I am angry. Thus this “grammar” is needed in order for communication to be understood. (You should note that this is an argument for grammar. But not for rules based education of grammar. or the fact that grammar should be attacked when understanding is not obscured.)
Now, I would argue that verbal language, and perhaps all “language”, are least well equipped to give an understanding of philosophy, art, cultural differences, etc. Once again, as the saying goes, “To hear is to know, to experience is to understand.” While I can try and explain the meaning of a work of art, unless someone sees and experiences that art, they can not understand it. Since thoughts can reflect exactly reality. Grammar is not needed, they exist as is. (Side idea, the “grammar” of reality, is physics?)
In this way “language” is used to abstract reality to make it easier to communicate. Sometimes to others, but perhaps most times to ourselves. By attempting to abstract these concepts we may firm up our thoughts and probe them for inaccuracies that do not reflect reality. But I would say that the critical thinking does not come from the language but from the analysis that it pushes us to do. A kind of pretend communication to ourselves.
Thus language is used for communication. Thought exists on its own. Perhaps my thesis is this. “Grammar allows for communication. Communication allows us to express complex thinking. Expression allows for advanced interaction. Advanced interaction makes us human.”
Finally and perhaps slightly unrelated to the rest of this essay. I would also like to add another kind of ambiguity to your list. Not to complete the list, but to expand it, as I believe it could be expanded further. 2D Visual ambiguity. My Case in point is the illusion works of M.C. Escher. His illusion drawings follow all rules of 2 dimensional visual communication and seem logical, while also being impossible. The problem is that even though his two dimensional representations are cohesive, they break the rules of 3 dimensional spatial thinking.
(I have a few more forms of ambiguity I thought of that I could list but I will leave it at one, thus showing only that more can exist.)
Unfortunately, my argument has been misread, so now I must go to even greater lengths to demonstrate my latent genius — lest I become the Thrasymachus of these scrolls.
First, I never said that lthat people think solely in words. I said two things — language was about thought and the quality of language reflects the quality of thought. based on that, then grammar is essential for more than communication. In fact, grammar is not even restricted, as you point out, to languages based upon words.
‘Language is a medium’ of thought is perhaps a better way to say it, or maybe, ‘language is a tool of thought.’ But the tools must be used correctly. The rules for that use are grammar.
Nothing about thinking visually or mathematically obviates this. In fact, you example of thinking of a water wheel is an excellent example of the importance of grammar.
But first, before going too much farther, let’s take another quick look at what grammar is. Note above I said that grammar was the structural units of thought. While this conversation began about spoken and written language, it is important to realize that mathematics is also a language. In fact, after talking with several mathematicians, I realize that it is a language with several dialects that are not always understandable.
The point is, when you begin thinking visually about the world, a waterwheel, a map, a graph, what you soon find is that these things are merely representational. Even though you begin thinking about what can be done with a water wheel, you soon find that it is necessary to come up with some other way to understand it than merely picturing it in your mind.
In the waterwheel example, you will find the limits are rapidly reached as begin to really think about what is happening. The essence of the event is more than just water turning a wheel. As you begin to truly understand the forces and what they are capable of, or try to, you find that a language must be created in order to think about it. That is where mathematics, geometry, and physics begin to be invented. These things are language, however, and they have their own grammar. A map, a chart, any visual representaiton of concepts is that, a representation, the same way that the written word is a representation of language.
The elegance of Einstein’s thought experiments did not occur as visual conceptions. There is nothing to visualize in the realm in which his important work took place. Good maps were only created after the abstraction of mathematics were applied to them. It is only once you move past the gross representations of the physical world that true thought begins to occur. This is why science is fundamentally mathematical.
Abstraction is thought; abstraction is analysis. Everything else is description. For every form of abstraction, there exist operators for that thought. Those operators are the grammar of the thinking.
The argument that animals can solve problems is an interesting one, but it should be kept in context of what kind of problems and what kinds of solutions are involved. Most animal problem solving is a feedback method. They want something to satisfy an appetite, so they try something and if it works, they keep doing it. But they are unable to come up with higher order solutions to problems, or principles of behavior. This is evidenced by Pavlov’s famous experiments whereby he could make a dog salivate by ringing a bell. Sure, the dog creates an association, but it always salivated once the conditioning occurred. It never got it through its head again that there may or may not be food, so it should look before getting exciting. It is also evidenced by studies with rats that show rats that have electrodes to stimulate pleasure centers in their brains will, when given the option figure out how to stimulate that center and continue to do so despite the need to eat. They can’t take a higher order look at themselves and think that maybe they have a problem. It never occurs to a rat in a maze to ask “who built this and why am I here?”
These arguments about the nature of grammar perhaps ought to have preceded my earlier post. Regardless, I stand by my earlier assertion, grammar, in all its forms, provides the functions of thought that allow for abstraction and thus make us human.
Hmmm, well it would seem, if I understand what you are saying, that our thesis are may be closer than I had thought. Basically, that in order to have higher thought, we need semantics, and pragmatics, perhaps we also need syntax. (Which are three elements of grammar in linguistics.) However, these these are not necessarily tied to verbal or written language.
This discussion which started out as a discussion of language, has become a discussion about thought. I will restate one thing before I delve into the discussion of thought more. The “languages” of thought need not require the hard line instruction of verbal grammar rules in order to yield high level thinkers. Grammar, as used in my original post, and first following comment, is solely defined as the grammar of verbal language.
From this came my initial great trouble with your argument Ben. It seemed, perhaps from context, that your were saying that this grammar was needed to yield high level thinkers. It is not. I may need those verbal grammar rules to communicate accurately and understandably in English, but I do not need them to have higher thought. If you disagree with this statement, please let me know. I will continue to argue with you but not on this point. However, from the way you are displaying your arguments, it still seems to me that you and I disagree.
Now, it would seem that my difficulty is with your supporting evidence. Despite your assertion that you do not limit your thesis to word based thought, you really only expand it to include mathematics. Which (I am reading a bit into your statements here), is a view of math as just another “word” based language. “Words” now just being meaning numbers, letters, and mathematical symbols being used as opposed to proper words. This does not really change that arguement at all. Perhaps I am wrong about your statements here as well, but your treatment of visual representations suggests I am not. Either way, my following arguements do not need this statement to be true or false.
My big problem comes in with your view that visual communication (maps, diagrams, etc.) and as a result visual language is tied solely to representation, not to higher level thought. You, by distinguishing it from written language in the argument, do not make this assertion about verbal language. The inherent argument here being that visual language cannot lead to an understanding of advanced ideas. This is patently false. This viewpoint either demonstrates a lack of exposure to good visual communication, the inability to adequately understand this language, or a stubborn lack of willingness to accept this language.
To that I say this, visual language is often the most effective, or sometimes only, means of understanding. Case is point is that many parts of verbal communication depend on the advanced power of visual language to express complex ideas. This is called a visual metaphor. Visual metaphor is the utilization of visual language, described by words insufficient to actually represent the language but drawing on shared past experience of visual imagery. It relies on the ability of the reader/listener to call up abstracted visual thought. (Important point here being that an abstracted visual thought, and thus visual language, can exist without word.) It requires that the listener utilizes this visual language in order to communicate a concept, feeling, or understanding of a topic too complex to communicate in words.
This is what I attempted to call upon when I talked about Einstein’s thought experiments. I have to admit your statement that “The elegance of Einstein’s thought experiments did not occur as visual conceptions.” confuses me. What does this mean? It seem completely opposite to my understanding. In my understanding visual conceptions are what these thought experiments ARE.
Einstein had the language of math, however in order to develop and communicate the concepts of general relativity it was required to use visual language. This is where his thought experiments came in. When you can “look” at traveling along with a light beam, you begin to understand how general relativity works. He was even able to help other physicists understand this idea by giving this visualizations to others using verbal communication. It is important here that verbal language is not the medium of this thought exchange. He may have represented visual language in words in order to force the other person to visualize, however, the words them self do not communicate the concept. These thought experiments can also be communicated using diagrams, see most good general physics texts for examples.
It took years, decades in fact, for him and others to express the concepts mathematically. The visual imagery was able to communicate them very eloquently, and what is notable about this is that after understanding this visual thought, he also was able to understand how it affected other things. See the related twin paradox thought experiment. The visual communication worked on its own for understanding the universe, it was the translation to math that took time.
You may have heard Einsteins famous quote “I cannot tell you how to teach ‘relativity’ simply, but if you would drop by my house, I’ll play it for you on my violin.” [emphasis added, i wasn’t actually there to know how he said it.] I don’t think this is just Einstein being weird. This is because the mathematical, even the verbal explanations of relativity do not work at communicating the concept. No mater how eloquent, no matter how grammatically correct, they do not allow the average person to critically think about this topic. To eloquently, and critically understand this concept one must think it in another way.
The original example I chose, the waterwheel, was bit too simple for this point. My point from this example is that one can think about something without abstracting it, thought can be a match to reality, not requiring a mental language. This is important to show simple thought, thought without abstraction.
I can work directly from this model, abstracting it, in order to answer all the how it works, why it works, what it can do, and so on. This is where the visual language comes in with its grammar and rules. Visual language can be used here to critically think about this system. I can SHOW myself the answers to these questions. I do not need to SAY them. The abstractions need not be words. Abstractions only take a visualization from reality simplifies and generalizes it. For example, looking at this waterwheel so that it does not reflect one waterwheel but all waterwheels, and an understanding of how they work in a general sense. You can continue chopping it up visually to look at the elemental parts.
Now all this being said. I still acknowledge the usefulness of other languages besides visual language. In our example of Einstein’s thought experiments, for example, the change in perspective, that the mathematical way of communicating allowed several new theories about how various other things react to these equations. However, it should be noted that these theories are put to much more stringent tests than those that can be analyzed with visual language.
Visual thought is a visual language, and like verbal and mathematical languages, it allows for high level critical thinking.
Side notes.
Good maps did not only become available once mathematics were applied. Were this true we would not find the T and O maps in the number we do all over the old world, You could not draw a map of abstract thought (a mind map), and people would never freehand a map for a friend. In fact, my guess is that most people do not understand the mathematics that go into mapping. Finally, I would say that, for the vast majority of maps produced today, this mathematics is not important. It seems only to be important for navigational maps and, as in our freehand example, only loosely so. The rest of the maps, we call them thematic maps in the biz, rely on mathematics only so people recognize the shapes. The meaning they communicate comes from the visual depiction. I invite you to look at a good book on design or informational graphics for how this works. Tufte can be an arrogant prick, but he does a decent job of looking into this.
Now, to the side arguments which I see as being unrelated: Can animals critically think and do they have a language. I believe that they can, perhaps not all animals, but at least a few. I believe that they are able to generalize their problem solving and apply one set of learning to many situations. If we take this to be true, the argument then becomes can they communicate it and, by your strict rules, have a language. I am not sure I have the experience to talk about these questions. So I will approach only the your arguments.
I will start by reminding you that Pavlov’s experiment only started in dogs. This kind of conditioning was later also shown to work on people as well. It merely shows that we can develop subconscious reactions to things that do not require active thought. These things are a valuable part of our minds. It causes us to react to situation more quickly. In fact with out this kind of conditioning we would likely not be able to get through daily life, because without them all of our interactions would have to be conscious.
Also, you should realize that we have had some limited success in teaching at least chimpanzees our language. They can use it, at least in a limited fashion.
I don’t know about you, but I am really enjoying this debate! It is the first time I really have had to express these ideas in writing and visual language and thought is a subject near and dear to my heart. I never meant to make a straw man argument out of your initial comment. (I must admit it took me a while to realize what you meant by your Thrasymachus reference. Guess I ought to brush up on my plato.) As I said before, English is very difficult to use clearly and cleanly, I did not understand from your communication. The only way to get there is through discussion. I look forward to your reply.
Hey Aaron, this is an interesting debate you are having. Thanks for pointing me to it. A quick question: Do you think that ‘visual communication’ has grammar to it?
I wrote about a page and a half of text to follow this question, but at that point I realized that there wasn’t really much of a point to what I was saying, so I’ve omitted it.
Yes, Visual communication has a “grammar”. In fact, in different situations you will see all sorts of different kinds of grammar. i.e. the grammar if a comic, is different than the grammar of a map, and so on. Similar to how we use grammar differently when we are writing a journal article to when we are talking with our friends. We typically think of “grammar” in visual communication as “design” when we put it down onto paper. Essentially, these are the rules to guide us to make effective communicative graphics.
There are three discussions going on here: epistemology, linguistics, and pedagogy.
First, the epistemological argument I want to make about grammar is that some form of grammar is necessary for analytic thought. This we don’t seem to be in disagreement about. The other epistemological argument that we have inadvertently run into is what kinds of thought require grammar and do those thoughts require a kind of language to achieve.
I think the answer to this is yes. To take your example, Einstein’s theory of relativity was not created based on visual representation. That would be impossible. His theory of relatively hinges on two things: time and rate of change. There is no way to visualize time. There is nothing you can point to that is time. Likewise, rate of change is not something that you can point to.
Alan Watts, a philosopher, once pointed out, when trying to talk about time, you must resort to a convention of stills. This means that there has to be something beyond visual representation to link them together. Even film and animation is nothing more than a collection of stills that are rapidly replaced in sequence. There is something beyond the stills that occurs in our thoughts that allows us to make sense of the stills.
I would argue that one cannot think critically about relativity using visualization. It is possible to visualize relative reference frames — for example the rate of motion of a man walking up an escalator from his point of view and from the point of view of a man standing on the ground watching him. But to say anything meaningful about those observations, you need to enter a realm of abstraction that is not accessible to purely visual thought. In Fact, I believe visual thinking is what leads to the common error that someone can move faster than the speed of light. If a man at the back of a train moving at the speed of light walks to the front, is he moving faster than the speed of light? The answer is no. Someone with better physics training that I have would need to explain this more, but my point remains the same. There are limits to all kinds of thinking.
That includes the fact that sometimes these abstractions need to be applied to real world examples in order to have any practical application.
This brings me to the linguistic argument about grammar.
I am still working on the idea that grammar is the toolbox of thought that goes beyond description. I stand by what I said in my original post about the quality of language reflecting the quality of thought. In a linguistics sense, it is easy to demonstrate that more advanced societies have more advanced languages, in part because the users of that language need to create the ability to communicate about things.
Let’s take Kanji, for example. Originally, many kanji were pictographs. They were visual representations of things, but as the language developed, mere pictures weren’t enough. The symbols had to change in response to the idea that there was more going on than just a picture of a person.
Remember now, this is all linguistic at this point, it is about communication. Nonetheless, the need to think about these things creates a need for new language and structures. Simple sentences and structure cannot convey metaphysics. Here I am using metaphysics in the sense of Kant, when he talks about metaphysics being purified of everything empirical in order to test the limits of pure logic.
But, let’s not get too far away from our discussion of the importance of grammar to language. You aren’t arguing that language should be stripped of grammar, but you have argued that it should be de-emphasized in the teaching of language in favor of ensuring communication.
The problem that I see with that approach is that the limits of a student’s ability to manage grammar will be the limits of the student’s ability to convey thoughts and to think in the language that student is learning.
This brings me, then, to my pedagogy argument. Students need to learn grammar as part of their language instruction. You say in your original post that you are worried that your students are not expressing themselves because they are afraid they will make mistakes. You also say that you think your students are making mistakes, but expressing themselves clearly. But if they don’t know the grammar, are you sure that you understand what they are truly trying to say? I seem to recall something about a cuttlefish coin that suggests it is not always clear. You are at a particular disadvantage, it seems to me because you are not fluent in the native language of your pupils. Lack of fluency on either side makes it difficult. Complete fluency may not be necessary, but that is another argument. My point is, given the limited abilities on both sides, it makes it difficult to always suss out what is being communicated.
This doesn’t mean that you aren’t doing a good job, or can’t do a good job. But it does leave limits. But I think, those limits can be overcome to some degree.
First, let me say that my thoughts on this are coming from the point of view of a student. I have been both a student trying to learn to communicate and one trying to fully understand a language. If you look at my comments on an earlier post in your blog about learning Japanese, you can see that I am not opposed to strategies for learning how to communicate.
In some ways, that is the primary question you need to address for your teaching. What is your role in these classes. Are you there to teach them how to communicate so they can come to the U.S. and get around, are you there to teach mastery of the language, or is it some combination of the two?
Regardless, I think grammar should be introduced in stages and steps. If you can explain the grammatical concepts behind constructions as they come up, then I think you will see students being to come up with more new things on their own. (I don’t know what it is like in your classroom, so the daily ‘how’ on this may be easier said than done.) When they learn how parts fit together, then they can begin putting them together on their own.
On top of that, most educational research that I have seen says that the way to encourage skill development is to give students challenges that lie just beyond their current skill level. So, introducing new grammatical concepts is not a bad thing, even if they are difficult. Another problem you likely face is that all the students, despite being the same class, are not at the same level. That makes figuring out what is just beyond much more tricky.
My practical thought in all of this (because I do want to be helpful), is perhaps you could devise an exercise where you ask students to produce a unique sentence using whatever concept you are teaching. In other words, ask them to create using the rules, rather than just learning to apply the rules to a set of “problems” or exercises. Make them come to you and speak a grammtical English sentence of their own devising.
One other thought I have is that there is a difference in correcting someone in a discouraging and in an encouraging way. Given the cultural differences and the fact that you are working with teenagers, I don’t have great advice on how to do this, but as you get to know the kids, I imagine you will be pretty good at figuring this out.
Laissez bon temps rouler!
It seems that we are boiling down on these arguments. If anyone else has managed or will every manage to dig through this all, I commend them. I will make a few more comments, unfortunately, I feel we are starting to run around in circles a bit, and the practicality of the arguments gets more and more obscure. You attempted in your last post to move in a more practical direction, I will attempt keep making it more concrete. While still touching on the three or so arguments we have going
Visual thought
I will continue to disagree with you in this realm it seems. My argument ends up coming down to this. I think visually and emotionally. I do not think verbally. I can construct verbal communication, but it comes from translating these visual/emotional thoughts to verbal ones. I assume you acknowledge that I can think critically. Therefore, if you accept that I am telling the truth, and that I do not think verbally or mathematically, then visual thought must be capable of critical thinking. I implore you to try to look at my arguments with this possibility in mind. I am sure they will make much more sense this way.
Starting with Thought Experiment line of reasoning. I am saddened by the way this argument went. Every time I read your responses I find them very confusing. I have even questioned if you knew what these experiments were! Ultimately, however, I feel we have gotten burdened by semantics. Neither of us communicating well enough, or able to understand what the other means. This has been made all the more difficult as neither of us is qualified to discuss relativity.
I had intended to pick an example of a visual critical analysis tool. One that forces people to use visual thinking. Thought experiments are used extensively in physics to prove or disprove ideas. When they are described using words, the words used almost always point to visual thinking. They say things like “PICTURE yourself moving alongside a light beam.” However, just because I think about them visually does not mean that others, like you, approach the experiments this way. I can’t see how you CAN approach them differently, their existence makes no sense to me in any way but visually. So, it seems I am just as incapable of understanding how you could look at these experiments non-visually, as you are at understanding them my way.
In the end, I am sure I have proven anything with this argument. I only know that your arguments don’t respond directly to what I believe mine are. So additionally, I am not sure of what your point is. Are you are trying to disprove the existence of visual thinking with this argument? If so, you make some interesting points, but I believe you are missing the mark. Your points are all based on representation. I think it is safe to say that thought, and representation are separate things. Your argument, that visual representation is incapable of of expressing time, is true. This is one of the great difficulties with every representation of time in all languages, as Watts points out. However, while representations are necessarily limited, thought is necessarily unlimited. In visual thought we experience time much the same way we experience it in life. Through continuous change. Visual thought is temporal, spacial, and abstract. I see Einstein’s thought experiments as pushing the abilities of this type of thinking to its limits. I don’t see it as breaking it.
In terms of your arguments about linguistics, I don’t really disagree, but let me apply my view to it. The written languages using kanji have inevitably fallen to the same weaknesses as all visual representation. It takes a long time to express things visually. Static images are incapable of accurately showing time, space, and, most importantly, they draw on past knowledge and emotional association to express feeling, and connections. These past experiences are something that people don’t necessarily share. This is the greatest weakness of visual representations. (This is also the big problem with idioms in spoken and written language.) Conversely there are problems with verbal communication which tries to abstract even farther. When you abstract anything you inevitably lose some of the meaning, the feeling and the relationships. This is where the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” comes from. I would say that while a complex picture may be “enough”, given certain circumstances, to express complex meaning. However, a simple picture cannot be enough in most circumstances. So kanji fights the battle between abstracting for simplicity’s sake (ease of writing), and abstracting even further for meanings sake (ease of expressing). This is a communication argument, and an interesting one but I will leave it here.
Pedagogy. This is the most interesting, important, and the most difficult part of this argument to resolve. Ultimately this is what pushed us into the argument of thought. Each of us trying to back up our arguments by showing the foundations. Perhaps you would like it better if I approached the different forms of thought here using the term “Learning Styles”, which is used in the modern educational literature. Here is my learning style. I am told it is called a visual/experiential learning style. I do not think verbally, thus I do not learn well verbally. As a result, when I am learning to speak in a different language I have a lot of difficulty with learning it though the lens my first language. For example, drilling Japanese words from a list of English words is not very useful for me, because then when I try to communicate I must work like this; I first visually think something, then I translate it into English, then from English I must translate it into Japanese. This is highly inefficient. Perhaps for verbal thinkers they can translate more quickly, or actually start thinking in this other language. I don’t know. I don’t work this way.
It is more elegant for me, and at the very least useful for others, to build understanding of this new language based on experiences. Thus when trying to abstract reality, or thought into communication, one is drawing on the meaning of the word, not another abstraction of a meaning. In this case drilling words from a list of pictures is much more compelling to me. Even better is drilling words through actually putting myself into the situation where these words are used.
Students must be allowed to have a experiential lesson like this, inside the school system. If they are given these opportunities, the can construct their own understanding, their own way. By drawing from a situation more like how they will be actually using the language. By sharing this kind of experience and seeing how one uses a language as a result, one learns both grammar and language. Grammar is important, it can also be (basically) taught in this way. Drilling of grammar rules is not a good way to encourage this kind of experiential learning. It may work well for verbal learners, but not for the rest of us. It requires one to first think something, then try to remember the rule, then force the thought into the rules. This leads to problems. (The cuttlefish coin was likely the result of an automatic translation program, which has completely different issues.)
Now lets look at this in the terms of my classes. When I say that my students are communicating thing clearly, but not grammatically, it is often because of the situation. I understand them because we are sharing many other methods of communication, in addition to verbal. I have built an experience, so I have context, which allows me to guess what they are likely to try to say. I have facial and bodily expression, which tells me what they may be feeling. (In fact when communicating verbally as native speakers we use this all the time. This is why we need not answer questions with full sentences all the time. What did Aaron lose? a Pen.) Most importantly I have the ability to ask questions, and to push them to clarify. In this situation, as they would be in real life, they are able to communicate clearly, but ungrammatically. I am hoping this will frustrate them and push them to refine in order to communicate more quickly.
You are right, of course that, without refining their grammar, by looking at it directly, they will not be able to communicate very complex ideas in English. Nor will they be able to apply rules in an experiential vacuum, where they will have not contextual clues, such as on a test. My argument is against the system that forces drilling grammar rules without giving students a chance to put language in context and experience it. My argument is that without showing them the language as it is used in the real world, and making them use that language themselves, the grammar rules are meaningless. I feel you first have to show them why the rules are needed, then what the rules are. First experience using the language, then develop an experiential connection to the why of the grammar and how it is used.
Here we seem to agree once again, you also argue for experiential learning of a sort. With your sentence generation example. Although, while I would say the students should experience the need first, then get the grammar. You seem to suggest that they should learn the rule first, then apply it. In the end perhaps there is not a huge difference either way. I think yours would be easier to administor. Ultimately, I am most concerned that the students are not getting the experiences they need to be comfortable with the grammar they have “learned”. All this grammar drilling is robbing them of the time to have these experiences. Without them I doubt they can understand what grammar means and why they need it.
Three short thoughts, just to be clear, then I’ll let it go.
1. Visual Thinking: I think you are not giving yourself enough credit for abstract thought. To me, visualizing is only part of the equation when it comes to problem-solving. The rest is abstraction. You see something in your mind, you do some abstract thinking, and then you see the solution.
2. Rote drills have their place, but I get what you are saying about not making them the foundation of study.
3. Sometimes learning the rule first is helpful because it opens up new capacities and spares students frustrations that might cause them to quit trying. Anticipating the need sometimes leads to better luxuries.