Learning More Foreign Languages

Learning more foreign languages

The process of learning more foreign languages is extremely demanding. As Crystal (2007, p. 430) says: “A few gifted language learners do exist, but most people arrive at their fluency only as a result of hard work, expended over a considerable period of time.”

However, language learning skills belong to those kinds of skills which are transferrable. Moreover, when learners are well trained and conveniently instructed by their teachers, they can become autonomous learners who are able to become aware of the phenomena which make their learning process easier. The well trained learners can also find the ways how to profit from the already acquired language skills and abilities, and how to eliminate the factors which have negative impacts on performances in foreign languages.

A sufficient level of linguistic competence can definitely make the learning process easier: “Learning more about language and about how language works is a useful, productive and interesting activity: increasing one’s awareness – being more ´alive´ to language - can bring considerable benefit, both personal and professional.” (Arndt, Harvey & Nutall, 2000, p. 11).

The history of all the learning process is also quite important. As Harmer (1994, p. 4) says: “Another factor affecting the attitude of students is their previous experiences as language learners. If they were successful, then they may be pre-disposed to success now. Failure then may mean that they expect failure now.”

Project of specific research

In 2016 a two-year project of so called specific research was started at the Faculty of Education of the University of Hradec Kralove (Czech Republic). It focuses mainly on the impacts of the already acquired knowledge of foreign language/s on the process of learning another language / other languages later. The project is called “The impact of English on other foreign languages studied”. The spheres in the centre of interest are language interference, potentially positive transfers and foreign language learners´ awareness of and opinions on these two phenomena. The main objectives of the project are to find out how much influenced university students are by English (their first foreign language studied) in the process of studying other foreign languages and how they themselves perceive the process of their learning more foreign languages. These findings will be then used for making the process of teaching foreign languages improved. Through participating in this project, all the respondents are being trained in making self-reflections and in becoming self-aware of the learning process, which will make their life-long process of learning foreign languages more effective.

The Faculty of Education of the University of Hradec Kralove encourages its students to apply their research abilities as soon as possible. The students can become, together with their teachers, members of various research teams involved in specific projects. Then the students´ research abilities and skills are developed, the researching students can learn how to practically apply their theoretical knowledge. The involvement of students into research projects is linked with one of the educational aims which should be essential for all universities and which is mentioned by Penny Ur, who calls for educating and supporting of “autonomous and creative professionals, with responsibility for their wider development of professional theory and practice” (Ur, 2009, p. 8).

Four students enrolled in Master Degree´s studies majoring in teaching foreign languages are involved in the above mentioned specific research as members of the research team. Three of them are under-graduate students of German and English, one student majors in English, French and Czech (this selection is quite intentional – the perspective of both the mother tongue and two foreign languages will be applied). These students are currently in a kind of a “double position” - they are studying foreign languages and, simultaneously, they have already started their teaching career. This learner – teacher´s “double position” will hopefully bring a broader perspective to the research realized.

Questionnaire created by under-graduate students majoring in teaching foreign languages

As it was mentioned above, the task given to the students majoring in teaching English and another foreign language was to create a universal anonymous questionnaire focusing on the respondents´ self-reflections on their experience with and awareness of the process of learning foreign languages. The questionnaire was supposed to be distributed to the following groups of students of the Faculty of Education of the University of Hradec Kralove: (a) students majoring in teaching foreign languages, (b) students majoring in philology, (c) students majoring in other subjects than foreign languages, (d) students of the University of the Third Age who are enrolled in courses in English, (e) in-service teachers who are studying for improving their qualifications as English teachers.

The types of questions included in the questionnaire were already mentioned in connection with the research methods used. The main interest of this sub-chapter is to reveal which sub-groups of questions were designed by the researchers. The student – learner “double position” of the designers of the questionnaire has been already mentioned. Applying their theoretical knowledge and reflecting their own experience of being both a learner and a teacher, the authors of the questionnaire decided to use the following sub-groups of questions:

(a) the respondent’s age and sex, his / her list of the languages ever studied

(b) questions concerning the age issues and the length of the learning process (the age of starting with learning the first and other foreign languages, the choice of the order of the languages being studied, the feelings about the right age for starting the learning process, etc.)

(c) relations of the respondents to individual foreign languages and the causes of these relations (the favourite language, the most important language, reasons for starting with learning particular languages, etc.)

(d) the respondents´ evaluation of their own knowledge and skills of individual foreign languages and the causes of success / failure in learning them

(e) the respondents´ evaluation of the teaching process (favourite / disliked ways of teaching; favourite / disliked methods of teaching; teaching / learning activities; the teachers´ personalities and their approach to teaching and to the learners)

(f) language interference (types and frequency of mistakes caused by the impact of other foreign languages)

(g) positive transfer (giving examples of fruitful applications of the already acquired language skills)

The quantitative and qualitative analyses of the answers have not been finished yet. However, the designers of the questionnaire are already rather disappointed. There are two main causes of this disappointment. The first one results from a rather ignorant approach of the respondents. Relatively a lot out of the total number of 250 respondents did not make proper self-reflections when answering the open questions. For example, the question “Which foreign language were you taught in the best way, and why do you consider that way to be the best?” was frequently not actually answered (there were answers like “I do not know.”, “It is difficult to say.”, “I actually do not remember.”). The second kind of disappointment comes from the questionnaire itself. The designers are now not very happy about structuring and formulating of some questions. They themselves admit that some “ignoring” answers can result from incomplete understanding of the questions. Some kinds of follow-up semi-structured interviews would be welcomed.

A positive factor about the researching students´ disappointment is that they are able of self-reflections and self-assessment, thanks to which they can improve their future research activities.

Elderly learners of more foreign languages

Different kinds of courses are offered to seniors by so called Universities of the Third Age which have been established also in the Czech Republic. Courses in foreign languages run by the University of the Third Age which is guaranteed by the University of Hradec Kralove belong to the most popular and most demanded ones.

As it was mentioned above, the objective of the project is to find out how university students themselves perceive their own learning of more foreign languages. Since all the attendants of the foreign language courses run by the University of the Third Age have learnt at least three foreign languages in their life, they have also been made involved in the research. The questionnaire was distributed to forty senior respondents in total. Twenty out of these forty respondents were, in the academic year 2016/17, attending the courses in English offered to beginners, the other twenty students were attending the classes offered to upper-intermediate students of English. This research sample is not balanced from the gender point of view – only 2 respondents are males, 38 respondents are females. This misbalance, however, reflects the reality – most of the senior attendants of the courses in foreign languages are women. The respondents´ average age was 69.6 (the age range was from 63 to 79). It is important to mention that the first foreign language learnt by all the respondents was Russian, and as it has been already mentioned, all the respondents had learnt at least two foreign languages before started their foreign language studies at the University of the Third Age. Quite interesting is the fact that all of our respondents learnt German as their second language. Latin, English, French, Italian and Spanish appeared on the list as the third foreign language. French was given as the fourth foreign language in case of two respondents, one respondent learnt Spanish as the fourth foreign language.

It is obvious that such vast experience with learning foreign languages is linked with quite a high level of the linguistic competence of these senior students. We were really wondering whether these learners are aware of their pre-dispositions to use the potential of the positive transfer, and whether they are able to transfer their already acquired language skills and learning strategies into the process of learning other foreign languages. There were 8 negative reactions to the open question “In which sphere/s of learning English (i.e. the spheres of vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, reading, writing, speaking) are your skills and experience gained during your earlier language studies helpful?” It seems important to mention that all the eight negative responses were given by the respondents from the group of beginners, and they were formulated in the following sense: “Certain knowledge of other languages makes my learning process more difficult.” “I am not able to profit from my previous studies. I think that they make me even more confused.” We were quite pleased, however, that our research can really result in a growing self-awareness of the respondents - one woman (again from the beginners´ group) answered the above given question in the following neutral way: “This question is quite interesting. I have never thought about this issue. But I will start doing that.” The other 31 reactions were positive; in all the cases the sphere of vocabulary was chosen as that one in which the previously gained knowledge can be used. Here are two illustrative examples of these positive answers: “I think that I can learn some words more easily because of knowing German and French.” “I can guess the meaning of some words which sound similar in German.”).

Unfortunately, elderly learners are not sufficiently trained in making the most of their high linguistic competence but they are rather frustrated about language interference. A majority of the respondents chose the answer “often” or “very often” when answering the question “If you speak your second / third language, do you recall in your mind expressions or phrases existing in your first foreign language studied?”

Better reactions of the respondents were expected, for example, to the following open question asking for comparisons: “Which language were you, in your opinion, taught in the best way? Give the reasons for your answer.” Surprisingly, there was absolutely no answer in 8 cases, in 5 cases a language was / languages were mentioned without any reasoning. The comparisons were quite varied and interesting. These are some examples of the answers: “English – the basic grammar is easier; it is accessible at the Internet.” “English – at the time being, I am quite happy with my present teacher.” “English – grammar is practiced in a good way.” “German – a pro-active way of teaching, exchange stays.” “Russian – our teachers were good; their ways of teaching were interesting; I achieved excellent results in the secondary school leaving examination.” “English – after the political changes I got very interested in this language.” “English – I mean my previous private lessons of English with a lot of conversation.” “Italian – I live in Italy; I was exposed to the language.” “German – journeys to Germany, but the way of teaching was really tough.” “Russian – books, films, exchanging of letters; there were no other possibilities.” “German – I attended an intensive course.” “English – I have more time, it is learning for pleasure, I am happy when I can find that I have learnt something.” From these examples it is clear that not all of the answers actually referred to the way of teaching and some answers were rather inappropriate. At this point we can refer back to the issues mentioned in connection with the questionnaire.

When recalling positive aspects of previous studies of foreign languages, three respondents mentioned singing of German songs. Positive aspects of using music are mentioned also in literature – there is a close relation between music and language structures in lyrics of songs. Moreover, according to Badstübner-Kizik (2014), involvement of music supports development of a subjective creativity. Using of music in foreign language classes is recommended also by Besedova (2016): “Music can be widely used in foreign language teaching because music and language share certain features. The most important one is that both of them are distinctive means of communication which use listening materials and simultaneously try to analyse and reproduce them.”

Our research has revealed that elderly students tend to compare their previous achievements in studying foreign languages with their present experience and that they need to be trained in using of potentials of positive transfers.