Memory is the Residue of Thought - Why Don’t Students Like School? (#8)

Memory is the Residue of Thought - Why Don’t Students Like School? (#8)

“Thus your memory is not a product of what you want to remember or what you try to remember; it’s a product of what you think about. (p. 53) ”

You remember what you think about.

I have always cursed my memory, blaming drugs or genetics, but my thoughts are the problem. I like to think about other things. Girls and pizza still make me smile. Sports and friends bring back faint images, like the one where I reached and trapped the football with the very tips of my fingers, stumbled, turned, and landed square on my feet, the ball still locked in my grip, right before Mike wrapped his burly arms around my waist, and twisted me to the ground, laughing in disbelief, “No fucking way.”

Living life was always more interesting than reading about it in a textbook. And the life in a Japanese textbook sucked, filled with wooden characters having static conversations, “Nice to meet you” (初めまして　道蔵よろしくお願いします). Thinking back on these pages still twists my stomach up in knots. It felt like such a waste of time, but I still put in my hour each day, every day, for months. All I needed to do was slog through the dreaded subject for one hour and then spend the rest of my day occupied with people, food, and movies.

On multiple occasions, I quit studying Japanese after a few months.

I still remember Mike tackling me to the ground that day and the slice of pepperoni we had afterward that filled my mouth with the sweet salt of victory, but the only Japanese that still rocks around my thick head is “Nice to meet you.”

Japanese never stole away my focus. It was more like a prison sentence, requiring my attention when I was chained to a desk. My brain would not go willingly either, often drifting away and outside the window to the trees, the people, the buildings, the opportunities that awaited.

If you don’t want to think about something, it will be very hard to learn about it. As Willingham points out in Why Don’t Students Like School, “…for material to be learned (that is, to end up in long-term memory) it must reside for some period in working memory — that is, a student must pay attention to it. Further, how the student thinks about the experience completely determines what will end up in long-term memory,” (p.63).

So, Josh, there are two questions you have to answer, one as a teacher and the other as a language learner.

Teacher Josh:	Q: How can I create lesson plans where students want to think about the material? A: Remember that questions are far more compelling than answers.
Student Josh:	Q: How can I create a study plan where I want to think about Japanese? A: Merge your studies with your interests.

1. Questions are far more compelling than answers

Questions are far more compelling than answers… nothing earth-shattering. The mystery genre wouldn’t exist if we all wanted to be spoon-fed. George RR Martin, the writer of the Game of Thrones series, once said that his mantra while crafting a story is, “Ask the next question.” And how long has Game of Thrones occupied your mind? The characters flitting about while you ride on the subway, the carnage of last week’s episode squinching up your countenance while fellow commuters dart sideways glances and scooch away from the weirdo.

High school English isn’t Game of Thrones. Tits and ass and blood and guts are prohibited, but don’t fall into that trap. It is foolish to think entertainment and education can not meet. Martin crafts one hell of a story based around a simple question, Who will be the next king? You can do the same, you are just in the wrong environment, Josh.

You suffer from the Google mindset. You think people want quick and easy answers. Sometimes, they do. The job you have right now, teaching TOEFL on Youtube, has forced you into this way of thinking. Students want you to get to the point so they can move on with their life. And if you don’t do it, someone else will. In this context, you want to be direct and to the point. A classroom is different. Students are forced to listen to you. You have them for 40 golden minutes. Big companies kill for that kind of attention. Identify the question, pose it to the class, and create interesting activities that lead students towards the answer, enjoying the journey along the way.

And everyone agrees your answers suck anyway. You are just some middle-aged white guy. So stick to making the lives of others more entertaining and interesting by asking better questions. You are starting a new Youtube channel. Don’t fall into the teacher-answer trap. Pose questions, tell stories, and share a few insights along the way so life is a little less difficult for those who gift you their attention.

“The material I want students to learn is actually the answer to a question. On its own, the answer is almost never interesting. But if you know the question, the answer may be quite interesting. That’s why making the question clear is so important. But I sometimes feel that we, as teachers, are so focused on getting to the answer, we spend insufficient time making sure that students understand the question and appreciate its significance.” (p. 75, Willingham)

2. Merge your studies with your interests

I’m an old man now. 38. The images rattling around my head have changed. Pizza has turned into a low-carb diet, friends to kids, girls to my old lady, and sports to required physical activity, but I have always liked stories (who doesn’t). I can recall my six-year-old self cradling The Look-It-Up Book of Presidents and bringing it into show-and-tell. John Quincy Adams’ dour portrait, Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin, and the dramatic tales of 40 other historical figures through time still enthralls. History stole my attention in high school and anthropology in college, the ladder containing more stories, more history, more ways of looking at the world. Other cultures have a way of revealing how silly you are. Everyone, myself included, melted into caricatures of people who have already existed, with just a few tweaks to fit our time and space. I liked that idea.

All right Josh, where are you going with this?

The point is that you have certain interests and you must merge them with Japanese. Willingham writes, “How can we get students to remember something? The answer from cognitive science is straightforward: get them to think about what it means” (pg. 75). Some people may want to think about grammar and how the pieces of the language fit into one another like a puzzle, but you do not. Rubik’s cubes piss you off. And a foreign language 101 class is all about precision. Vocabulary is squeezed into neat definitions and verbs must be conjugated based on textbook directions. You are terrible at these tasks. Understanding the gist and looking at the big picture is where you shine.

Learning Preferences
AVOID	EMBRACE
Grammar translation	Reading books
Textbooks	Watching TV shows
Mind mapping (drawing)	Sentence flashcards
Lists and definitions	History and culture

You will have to take tests where precision is crucial. Prepare for them, but minimize these tasks because they will kill your spirit. Make flashcards based on stories whenever possible and let your natural tendency to occupy characters seep into the language learning process. Surround yourself with stories that steal your attention and enter your subconscious. Here are some stories to look forward to: Hayao Miyazaki’s films, Kursosawa’s films, Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer, Japan during the Warring States period, and all the Japanese people who are waiting to meet you.

Josh, if you are reading this, you probably feel lost. If you were content, you would be drinking wine or watching something far more entertaining than this chicken scratch, but here you are, lost. Perhaps feeling lost is not all that bad. It has brought you to these words, to these thoughts. Drinking and watching is vapid, writing and exploring is where you can find something real interesting. You like to explore, it reminds you of how little you know about the world. Through your exploration, the language will trickle down and in. And to feel inspired to search you must be looking for the answer to a question. Japan brings up more questions, and the questions you ask are far more interesting than whatever answers you think you have.

The Natural Approach - The Missing Piece of the Input Hypothesis (#7)

The Natural Approach - The Missing Piece of the Input Hypothesis (#7)

Josh, you have created a bubble where Japanese is not necessary, so you don’t think about it, just like millions of immigrants before you. A spaced repetition system is your best defense against forgetting, it forces you to think about the input again, and again, and again.

Introduction

Education brings back sour memories of kind adults shoving shit down my throat. When I was young, it was teachers telling me to follow the rules. Now I have influencers on screens clamoring to sell shortcuts for faster results. When it comes to language learning - I eventually discovered - the rules do not help you communicate. Shortcuts are even worse, they lead to baby talk. In this context, Krashen’s The Natural Approach has been a refreshing read, especially considering my goal to understand messages and communicate ideas at a near-native level of Japanese. Focusing on extensive exposure to acquire the language over time was exactly what I needed to hear. It has inspired me to push forward with a study routine that is easy and enjoyable. Krashen does miss a few things though. The rules and shortcuts still have a place. Josh, you must not ignore the cemetery of intelligent individuals who moved abroad, surrounded by a foreign tongue, and went to their grave without speaking a lick of the language they were exposed to. You will soon be one of them. Time to remind yourself that extensive exposure requires fine-tuning, and mastery in any skill demands deliberate practice.

Krashen’s Five Hypotheses
1. Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis: People acquire a language rather than directly learn it
2. The Natural Order Hypothesis: Language is acquired in a predictable order, from simple to more complex. Error correction should be minimized.
3. The Monitor Hypothesis: Conscious knowledge of vocabulary and grammar should not be used in daily conversations, but where there is time to reflect.
4. The Input Hypothesis: The language the individual is exposed to should be easy. The learner should understand over 90% of whatever he or she is consuming.
5. The Affective Filter Hypothesis: Anxiety levels should be minimized so students have a good attitude about their language studies.

Extensive Exposure and Spaced Repetition: A Deadly Combination

If I had read The Natural Approach two years ago, I would have considered it a bunch of bullshit. Krashen puts forth five different hypotheses, but the most popular one is the Input Hypothesis, “This hypothesis (Input Hypothesis) states simply that we acquire (not learn) language by understanding input that is a little beyond our current level of (acquired) competence…listening comprehension and reading are of primary importance in the language program, and that the ability to speak (or write) fluently in a second language will come on its own in time” (p. 32). I spent two years in Japan and my Japanese sucked. And I wasn't watching Kurosawa films either. Programs aimed at toddlers stilll flew over my head. I know a host of immigrants who come to the States and never learn the language they are surrounded by. And we shitty language learners try. We join classes. We buy textbooks. We make promises. We set goals. We give the language a real fucking go. And we are exposed to comprehensible input… but the output never comes.

Perhaps we give up too soon, or fail to try hard enough. It is certainly easy to lose hope when you spend hours at your desk pouring over textbooks with characters like Jane and Bob exclaiming, “Nice to meet you,” the only comprehensible input in your target language. Even after immersing in these humiliating tasks, you finish your studies feeling good about your accomplishments, until you step outside and into reality, like the other day when you went with Naomi to buy a car. After nearly four months of spending at least two hours a day, every day, studying with comprehensible input, the used car salesman’s might as well have been speaking Jivenese. While you were busy trying to wrap your head around their words you noticed their eyes fixed on you. They could have been admiring your haircut or asking why you smell like McDonald’s and you would have wore that same stupid grin. It is easy to lose hope when your work does not translate to communication in the real world.

The weird thing now is that you still have much to learn, but you are confident. These situations don’t bother you as much as they once did. You know you will reach near-native level Japanese, but how? What has changed from all your past failures?

Flashcards and the commitment to review them for at least an hour, every day…. for fucking years. Spaced repetition systems with pre-programmed review times add the element missing in the Input Hypothesis, it forces you to think about the language. Your brain likes to forget things, it makes living tolerable. Losing your virginity feels like an important memory, but the word virgin hardly ever comes up in casual conversation, so it is easier to forget. Memory is the residue of thought. Most of us have better things to think about than preschool level vocabulary in a foreign tongue, even when we live abroad. Just like you did, Josh. You found some friends who speak English. You speak English with your wife and family. You work on the computer at a job that requires you to speak English. You have created a bubble where Japanese is not necessary, so you don’t think about it, just like millions of immigrants before you. A spaced repetition system is your best defense against forgetting, it forces you to think about the input again, and again, and again.

From Intermediate to Advanced Fluency

If I had a nickel for every student who complained about their English even though they watch American sitcoms every day, I would have about $1.65. English is the world’s lingua franca, and if you speak it as a second language, you are bound to hit a wall after reaching the intermediate level. Strategies that had worked when you started feel like a waste of time. You still cannot express what you want to say when you want to say it. Certain sounds feel awkward. You make the same grammar mistakes when you speak. And you continue to surround yourself with English, but these stubborn problems persist. A Youtuber, Matt v. Japan, brought up this issue with Krashen in an interview, and he stuck to his guns, emphasizing the need to rely on comprehensible input, relax, and eventually you will get it. He might be right, but I have some experience with advanced English language learners who required deliberate practice in specific skills to improve their English test scores. I own the site TST Prep. We specialize in preparing students for the TOEFL® test. When I first started, I thought most of our students would be high school graduates with dreams of studying in the States. Our most popular demographic turned out to be middle-aged immigrants living in the US who need a 26 in the TOEFL Speaking section to become a licensed pharmacist. I have never encountered a more motivated group of students, and it probably has something to do with the six-figure salary. There is a prevailing wisdom amongst pharmacists that they have to practice a lot and take the test over and over again. Eventually, they will get the score they need. If this were true, we would not be in business. Thousands of students every year hit this wall. They need deliberate practice on specific skills.

The point is that comprehensible input does not appear to be enough for many. I already touched on the first part, the importance of review, which can be solved with a spaced repetition system. I often meet students who practice a lot and never review previous tests. This is one of my first recommendations for struggling TOEFL students. The second part is identifying specific weaknesses in their speech and crafting a study plan with practice designed to address these issues. Some students struggle with intonation, their voice rises and falls at awkward moments. This is something you hope the Input Hypothesis would solve, but sometimes it does not. The student is given a single sentence to listen to and identify the points where the voice rises and falls. They focus solely on intonation, not pronunciation, comprehension or anything else. They will do a series of practice like this for no more than ten minutes a day. The idea is that this deliberate practice leads to a heightened awareness of the speech music the student needs to adapt to do well on the TOEFL. For some, these language features reveal themselves in the process of acquiring the target language through time, so they never have to bother with deliberate practice. However, the English language is vast and complicated and, in my experience, nearly every student suffers from a blind spot. All it takes is a teacher to point out the weakness, and provide short, deliberate practice with spaced repetition that, over time, will increase awareness and improve overall English fluency.

Josh, you love Krashen’s Input Hypothesis. It has freed you from textbooks and worrying over memorizing lists of vocabulary words. You no longer fret over your lack of progress, and instead focus on consistency, receiving comprehensible and enjoyable input every day for hours a day while using a spaced repetition flashcard system. This forces you to repeat what you learn, boost your comprehension, and introduce an incremental amount of new vocabulary. Still, the time will come when you need to do some deliberate practice with pronunciation and grammar. Yes, even grammar, the thing you shat all over in your last rejournal entry. Keep the deliberate practice short, less than 15 minutes a day, which will reduce the likelihood of you punching holes through the walls. Apply what you have learned through Krashen, plug the content into a spaced repetition system, and let the algorithm do the rest. All you have to do is show up.

The Natural Approach - The Problem with Grammar (#6)

The Natural Approach - The Problem with Grammar (#6)

“Our “formal knowledge” of a second language, the rules learned in class and from texts, is not responsible for fluency, but only has the function of checking and making repairs on the output of the acquired system” (p. 30).

The Fallacy: Grammar as a Shortcut to Fluency

This was a while ago now; eight years maybe. When I think back on anything more than five years past I just make up a number and hope. I was in New York, somewhere around 34th and 7th, listening to Tim Ferris on a crude electronic device my children already see as an artifact fit for the Museum of Ancient History.

Mr. Ferris had received acclaim for his 4-hour book series, which emphasizes learning new skills in less time with clever hacks. I bought a course that promised he would do the same for language learning. The lecture was entitled, “Learn Any Language in 3 Months!”

Who says teachers aren’t suckers?

It was a depressing time career-wise. I felt like a fraud teaching English without fluency in another language. You would think that my university degree in Teaching English as a Second Language would shield me from this type of nonsense, but I had to try. Like most New Yorkers, I was short on time. His approach was indeed eloquent. He encouraged listeners to translate eight sentences into their target language.

• The apple is red.
• It is John’s apple.
• I give John the apple.
• We give him the apple.
• He gives it to John.
• She gives it to him.
• I must give it to him.
• I want to give it to her.

Your mind has a funny way of believing what it wants, Josh. You returned home and settled into your desk. The room black. The lamp casting gold light on these eight sacred sentences. You translated and asked your Japanese wife to double check. You even created flashcards with spaced repetition algorithms to maximize retention. And here you are, eight years later, and you have the comprehension of a preschooler. This is your fault, Josh, not Tim Ferris. His idea does reveal interesting characteristics of your target language, but somewhere in your warped mind you thought you would actually be able to achieve Japanese fluency in three months. When you found out how little this approach helped you communicate you gave up, and the past eight years has been a series of starts and stops, always looking for the shortest possible route to fluency.

You can still read about this approach on Ferris’ blog, “How to learn but not master any language in 1 hour plus a favor”, a much less persuasive title than the lecture I had bought. Here are a few of the benefits he claims, “They help me to see how the verbs are conjugated…placement of indirect objects…is it subject-verb object like English,” and a few other language features. What I learned the hard way was something established nearly 40 years ago by Stephen Krashen in The Natural Approach, “The mistake the innovators have made is to assume that a conscious understanding of grammar is a prerequisite to acquiring communicative competence… thus, any grammar-based method which purports to develop communication skills will fail with the majority of students,” (p. 16).

Remember Josh, shortcuts are for guys looking for another notch in their belt, an anecdote for dinner parties, a bullet point on their resume for a job that never existed. You are not interested in bucket lists. You are interested in mastery. Never forget the goal: You want to understand messages and communicate ideas at a near-native level in Japanese.

Now, ignore the bullshit shortcuts and look for ways to live with the language.

Caretaker Speech: A Window into Language Acquisition
Characteristic #1 - Parents use language to communicate (not teach).
Characteristic #2 - Grammar and vocabulary are simplified to ensure understanding.
Characteristic #3 - The most important tense is the simple present; past and future tenses are hardly ever employed.

Reality: Grammar will be acquired over time

Learning the grammar of a language feels like a shortcut. It has an irresistible pull for a brain wired to find connections. If you know about relative clauses and how to use them, you come to believe you can include these constructions in your next conversation. While you might be able to regurgitate the information on a test in class, you will probably find your tongue twisted in knots at your best friend’s next dinner party. Even worse, you might have memorized some lines from your textbook, “The man who is hosting this party is my friend;” grammatically correct and a complete conversation killer. Most avoid conversations with people who speak like an elementary school grammar textbook.

And I don’t think any Japanese person wants to hear my babble, grammatically correct or not, which is why I focus on comprehensible input for at least six months. I read and listen to easy and enjoyable content in Japanese and trust that over time the grammatical forms will seep into my unconscious, so when it does come time to speak, I do it naturally. “…our claim is that in the long run students will speak with more grammatical accuracy if the initial emphasis is on communication skills,” (p.58).

Josh, you are in the midst of this now, about three months into your Japanese studies and you have your doubts. You like the idea. Reading and listening to a lot of easy and enjoyable content suits your character. You plug in words and phrases you want to remember into a flashcard app and spend a few hours a day remembering the input. Your vocabulary has crept up to 1800, according to the app. You still feel like you can’t converse. You took a Japanese proficiency test last week and failed miserably in the grammar section. That is to be expected. Take heart. Be patient. Trust the process.

You want a shortcut. Grammar feels like a shortcut; it’s not. Grammar is an ad hoc explanation for something you learned through extensive experience.

Future: Some deliberate grammar practice will be necessary

Joaquin never did well in freshman Spanish. I teased him about it since he spoke Spanish everyday with his family. He always had the same excuse, “I can speak it. I don’t need to explain it.” Most of the time he would be right, but in the classroom he did need to explain it. The problem is that educators conflate explanation with execution. This is something people often forget when they buy a $500 course. Information is cheap, execution is what pays the bills. The same holds true for language learning. If your goal is to understand messages and communicate ideas at a near-native level, it is best achieved through extensive comprehensible input.

Still, relying solely on reading and listening to acquire grammatical forms may not be enough. You will need to do some deliberate practice, especially if you are taking a language proficiency exam.

Josh, you have decided to take an exam every six months to measure your progress in Japanese. Continue to focus on reading and listening to easy and enjoyable content most of the time. However, you can not explain what you understand and you are still poor at constructing grammatically accurate output. You will have to spend some of your time studying grammar, but do not let it demotivate you. Download prepackaged flashcards and minimize your review time to less than 20 minutes a day. Small but frequent exercises on certain grammatical concepts in conjunction with your extensive exposure to comprehensible input should be enough to pass these exams.

Conclusion: Lecturing birds how to fly

The Natural Approach was published nearly 40 years ago and yet grammar instruction remains a staple of the foreign language classroom. Why? Well, Josh, you don’t know, but you can see the appeal. Just look at how you hunger for anything that includes the word optimization. Everyone knows that life is short and god is dead so you best not waste a breath. You want a shortcut. Grammar feels like a shortcut; it’s not. Grammar is an ad hoc explanation for something you learned through extensive experience. English teachers like you, Josh, are too busy teaching out of a textbook when you should be bringing your mother into class for show-and-tell. She saved you from worrying over terminology like relative clauses. Consider your mom when you crack open your flashcard app to study Japanese. Even better, the next time you think you are teaching English, remember you are just a blind bird, and the best you can do is empower your students to learn how to see.

The Natural Approach - Putting the Natural Approach into Practice (#5)

The Natural Approach - Putting the Natural Approach into Practice (#5)

“This could be referred to as the “Great Paradox of Language Teaching”: Language is best taught when it is being used to transmit messages, not when it is explicitly taught for conscious learning.” (p. 55)

Introduction

Thinking back, I don’t remember Mr. Farrell’s lesson on the past perfect tense, but I do remember rushing from world history to English class, slanting and squirming through the shuffling masses so I could get a seat next to Alison Valentine. It was important to take the western hall, down the lime-green granite stairs and edge pass Mr. Simpleton's freshman Biology class before they filled the hall and blocked my path. Rodney Milman would get there before me if that had happened. You see, our 9th grade English teacher, fresh off a college-education, resisted the chalk-and-talk style and often put us into pairs with the person seated next to us. God bless him.

I can’t remember a lick of the actual content of that English class, but I remember the skinny hands of the clock creeping towards the 12 in world history, the way I vaulted down the stairs from the third to second floor, the look on Rodney’s face when he came heaving into Mr. Farrell's classroom and Ali, the slow smile and soft warmth of her tone when it was time for us to work together, “Hey, Josh.”

Mr. Farrell would be ecstatic if now, 20 years later, I remembered any of his lesson plans with the same level of detail as I do my route from world history to English. Is there any way to bring that experience into the classroom? Into my own Japanese studies? Probably not, but keeping this memory in mind will help me do a much better job than most other teachers.

You are lucky Josh, you no longer work in a school system. There are no mandates. You are in control of how you study Japanese, how you teach your children English, and how you organize your online lessons for private students. Remember, conscious learning of language rules and patterns is not what you or your students want. What’s the goal when learning a foreign language? Let’s keep it simple: you want to be able to understand messages and communicate ideas at a near-native level. This leaves out the past perfect tense, the passive voice, and a horde of esoteric terminology no high school student should be forced to regurgitate.

Create interesting lessons that solves problems and engages students. Keep the following in mind when teaching and learning:

The Natural Approach in Practice
1. The Lesson - Do not teach lessons, solve problems
2. The Atmosphere - Do not demand obedience, reduce anxiety
3. The Feedback - Do not fix mistakes, model and repeat
4. The Wild Card - Interest trumps everything

1. The Lesson: Do not teach lessons, solve problems

“Is this going to be on the test?”

No question pisses off teachers more than this one. It certainly pissed me off. I would be in the midst of a lesson, the introduction carefully crafted to maximize engagement, shifting to the target vocabulary and grammar, setting clear objectives, modeling real-world applications for the students to relate to, breaking up the class into pre-planned groups designed for individual personalities to feed and grow off each other, and then, just as all of the pieces of the lesson would come together to form a coherent chunk of producible knowledge, some dick would ask if this would be on the test.

Remember Josh, you are the dick, not the student. Students are people, and people pay attention to information that helps them solve a problem. They are practical. The problem for students in class is that they need to get a good grade, and, to a large extent, grades are determined by test scores. They are not in class to be awed by your lesson planning prowess.

A painful lesson to learn for a teacher trying to sell their knowledge in the real world is that people pay money to solve problems. A lesson on the present perfect is far less compelling than one on how to talk about your past experience during a job interview. You can imagine the situation, relate to it, and want to know more about it.Remember this Josh, in your personal practice, test yourself and your students based on situations rather than on specific lexical items. You are studying a foreign language to communicate, and so are your students. Serve their needs before relying on a textbook to tell you what their needs are. Solve problems. Look at the table at the end of the article for a list of situations Krashen suggests in The Natural Approach.

When it comes to language acquisition, forget the textbook.

2. The Atmosphere: Do not demand obedience, reduce anxiety

This isn’t some wussy plea for teachers to coddle each student like a newborn babe. Besides the fact that obedience should be a byproduct of an engaging lesson and down-to-earth instructor, an obsession with the rules is boring. Remember the goal:

You want to understand messages and communicate ideas at a near-native level.

That goal takes time, a lot of time. And I tend to spend my time doing things I enjoy (when I can help it). The same holds true for my students. I didn’t quit every single Japanese class I ever took because I was having a blast. I felt stupid. I felt stressed. This is to be expected when you deliver pre-packaged content from a sterile textbook to a class of 20+ students while imposing artificial goals that fail to take into account individual motivation.

Reducing anxiety is not about being nice, but thinking instead about student-centered goals. One of the five hypotheses Krashen puts forth is the Affective Filter Hypothesis, “…the best situations for language acquisition seem to be those which encourage lower anxiety levels… people who are motivated and who have a positive self-image will seek and obtain more input” (p. 38). This is the combination you are after, Josh, you want to have a study routine (a lesson plan) that aligns with your goals and personality. Keep the sessions short. Make the content easy. Aim to understand more than 90% of the input. Use material from movies and TV shows you would watch in your free time. Single out scenes that deal with relatable situations and cherry-pick a few phrases to add to your flashcard deck. Make time to review what you have learned. Relax and have a good time. You are going to be doing this for a while. There is no reason to be obsessed with rules, unless you are a masochist.

3. The Feedback: Do not fix mistakes, model and repeat

Nothing pisses me off more than a teacher who corrects every mistake. It teaches me one thing: I should not speak. Unfortunately, I have encountered plenty of students who have been conditioned to crave pain. “Correct my mistakes, please;” this sounds like a nightmare.

Imagine interrupting a student every five seconds to tweak their speech. Here are three negative effects that come to mind:

• It focuses on form rather than the message.
• It decreases motivation to speak in the future.
• It disrupts meaningful communication.

And the so-called positive effect? The student will learn from their mistake. Test that assumption in class the day after you make a correction. I have. Students hardly remember specifics. Krashen puts it even more bluntly, “The direct correction of speech errors appears to have almost no effect on first language and child second language acquisition” (p. 177).

Caretaker speech, the way we talk to babies and toddlers, provides a few hints on how to deal with the issue. When we communicate with infants, we point out mistakes by repeating and rewording, increasing awareness while careful not to disrupt the flow of ideas or discourage the kid. I have yet to find a compelling reason to veer from this approach in adult learners. And at least when it comes to your own studies, Josh, teachers who overcorrect kill your motivation. Stay away from them.

Caretaker Speech: A Window into Language Acquisition
Characteristic #1 - Parents use language to communicate (not teach).
Characteristic #2 - Grammar and vocabulary are simplified to ensure understanding.
Characteristic #3 - The most important tense is the simple present, past and future tenses are hardly ever employed.

4. The Wild Card: Interest trumps everything

All languages are infinite. You can study one for decades and still feel ignorant. I can take a one-minute video clip of a conversation and turn it into a three-hour lesson. This is both depressing and inspiring. It is depressing to realize you will always feel something missing, and inspiring to know you can take almost any piece of life and use it to learn. So why on earth would you keep buying fucking textbooks? They don’t interest you, Josh.

Never forget the goal: You want to understand messages and communicate ideas at a near-native level. Consider the magnitude of this undertaking. You are going to commit to learning something you will never completely understand. You better enjoy it.

Take an inventory of what you enjoy in English. Find ways to do the same in Japanese. You already have a list of TV shows and movies in your head. Work to build up your fluency so you can start studying with these resources. The initial part will be rough. You will have to make memory palaces for over 2000 kanji characters. You will have to create flash cards of words, phrases, and example sentences to build up your comprehension before you can use more enjoyable resources, but that is not a problem. When you do something, you like to do it well. Optimizing your memory with a spaced repetition system, relying on frequency lists to build your vocabulary, and focusing on comprehension rather than production in these initial stages are indeed interesting for an introvert like you, Josh. Get over the initial hump and you will soon merge your studies with your hobbies.

“…our goal is to involve students so deeply in the message that they actually “forget” it is encoded in another language” (p.134).

Goals in the Natural Approach Class (Situations)
Preliminary Unit: Learning to Understand TOPICS: Names, description of students, family, numbers, clothing, colors, objects in the classroom SITUATIONS: Greetings, classroom commands
I. Students in the Classroom TOPICS: Personal identification (name, address, telephone number, age, nationality date of birth, marital status), description of school environment (identification, description and location of people and objects in the classroom, description and location of buildings), classes, telling time	II. Recreation and leisure activities TOPICS: Favorite activities, sports and games, climate and seasons, weather, seasonal activities, holiday activities, parties, abilities, cultural and artistic interests SITUATIONS: Playing games, sport
III. Family, friends and daily activities TOPICS: Family and relatives, physical states, emotional states, daily activities, holiday and vacation activities, pets SITUATIONS: Introductions, meeting people, visiting relatives	IV. Plans, obligations, and careers TOPICS: Immediate future plans, general future activities, obligations, hopes and desires, careers and professions, place of work, work activities, salary and money SITUATIONS: Job interview, talking on the job
V. Residence TOPICS: Place of residence, rooms of a house, furniture and household items, activities at home, household items, amenities SITUATIONS: Looking for a place to live, moving	VI. Narrating Past Experiences TOPICS: Immediate past events, yesterday’s activities, weekend events, holidays and parties, trips and vacations, experiences SITUATIONS: Friends recounting experiences
VII. Health, Illnesses, and Emergencies TOPICS: Parts of the body, physical states, mental states and moods, health maintenance, health professions, medicines and diseases SITUATIONS: Visits to doctor, hospitals, health interviews, buying medicines, emergencies (accidents)	VIII. Eating TOPICS: Foods, beverages SITUATIONS: Ordering a meal in a restaurant, shopping in a supermarket, preparing food from recipes
IX. Travel and Transportation TOPICS: Geography, modes of transportation, vacations, experiences on trips, languages, new experiences SITUATIONS: Buying gasoline, exchanging money, clearing customs, obtaining lodging, buying tickets, making reservations	X. Shopping and Buying TOPICS: Money and prices, fashions, gifts, products SITUATIONS: Selling and buying, shopping, bargaining
XI. Youth TOPICS: Childhood experiences, primary school experiences, teen years experiences, adult expectations and activities SITUATIONS: Reminiscing with friends, sharing photo albums, looking at school yearbooks	XII. Giving Directions and Instructions TOPICS: Giving orders at home, giving instructions at school, following maps, finding locations, following game instructions, giving an invitation, making an appointment SITUATIONS: Looking for a place to live, movin
XIII. Values TOPICS: Family, friendship, love, marriage, sex roles and stereotypes, goals, religious beliefs	XIV. Issues and current events TOPICS: Environmental problems, economic issues, education, employment and careers, ethical issues, politics, crime, sports, social events, cultural events, minority groups, science and health SITUATIONS: Discussing last night’s news broadcast, discussing a recent movie

Table 1. Goals in a Natural Approach Class. Krashen, S. D. (1996). The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom (Revised ed.). Janus Book Pub/Alemany Pr.

The Natural Approach - How Languages Are Acquired (#4)

The Natural Approach - How Languages Are Acquired (#4)

“We acquire when we focus on what is being said, rather than how it is said. We acquire when language is used for communicating real ideas” (p. 19).

Introduction

I would be hard-pressed to tell you how an adult learns a second language. This is a problem seeing that I am an English teacher. For over a decade I’ve crafted fine-tuned lessons and clever shortcuts for students without ever applying my own advice. Even more worrying is that I have failed to learn Japanese. I feel like an imposter truth be told. But Josh, you are finally starting to rectify the problem. And after spending a few months in the weeds you have come to agree with much of what Steven Krashen says about language learning or, more accurately, language acquisition.

I've read some Krashen before, but it was not until I started to focus on acquiring Japanese that his advice burrowed through my dense skull. The Natural Approach is almost 40 years old and out of print but if he’s right, which I believe he is on most accounts, it is a death blow to most language schools and teachers.

Read and listen to comprehensible input for six months, and then speak.

a. Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis: Aim for a feeling

Conscious learning was a mistake, Josh. You tried to muscle grammar rules onto your tongue and it didn’t work. When you learned new vocabulary, you would translate it into English and construct a wooden sentence that inspired head tilts from native speakers.

As a child, when you learned to speak English, you acquired it through exposure to comprehensible input, not conscious learning. “Language acquisition is the “natural” way to develop linguistic ability, and is a subconscious process; children for example are not necessarily aware that they are acquiring language, they are only aware that they are communicating” (p. 26). When you finally start to speak a foreign tongue, it is a feeling based on extensive previous experience, not a discrete memory of a passage in a grammar textbook.

The Acquisition-Learning Distinction (p. 27)

ACQUISITION	LEARNING
Similar to child first language acquisition	Formal knowledge of language
“Picking up” a language	“Knowing about” a language
Subconscious	Conscious
Implicit knowledge	Explicit knowledge
Formal teaching does not help	Formal teaching helps

b. The Natural Order Hypothesis: Take your time

My son is four-years-old. He doesn’t talk much about his future. In the middle of breakfast he will ask what we are having for lunch but that is about it. It turns out that children and adults both tend to learn the same grammatical forms around the same time. So, Josh, why did you try to learn how to conjugate every single new verb in eight different tenses? Why would you try to translate a future conditional sentence from English to Japanese in the first month of your studies?

When you start to learn a new language you can not help but make comparisons. This leads to impatience and dissatisfaction. Do not force structures down your throat. Expose yourself to comprehensible input and let your brain absorb. The structures will come in time.

c. The Monitor Hypothesis: Fuck the rules

Teaching kids English would be a great gig if it weren’t for the parents. In class we play games and solve problems. Some words and phrases come out easier than others, but we understand each other. Comprehension expands if they are patient. Once the time comes to perform memorized lines on command in front of an audience of eager adults, their abilities plummet. They had produced the same vocabulary dozens of times in class, but their minds blanked once they had to focus on the specific vocabulary and grammar rather than the gist of the message. The little voice inside their head editing their speech, which Krashen refers to as the Monitor, got in their way.

d. The Input Hypothesis: Understand over 90% of the content

Knowledge can be a curse. It was for me studying Japanese. I knew the “secrets” to learning a new language. I downloaded frequency lists and uploaded isolated words into flashcard apps with spaced repetition algorithms. I would speak Japanese with native speakers from day one. I was in a hurry to prove myself, and succeeded only in displaying my ignorance.

I should have focused on understanding simple messages. That’s it.

これは本です (kore wa hon desu) - This is a book.

I would take a simple message and make it much more complicated. I wanted to know if “book” was important enough to include in my flash cards. I wanted to know if every sentence should be constructed as subject-object-verb. I wanted to know the pitch accent of each word. I wanted to know how to read the sentence in Japanese. I wanted to know if the word 本 had any other meaning besides book. I wanted the stroke order of 本 and how to write it by hand.

Looking back, it sounds like I wanted to make Japanese unbearable.

All I should have done was read the sentence, understand the gist, and move on. Grammar, writing, pronunciation will all come later. Understanding must come first. “This hypothesis (Input Hypothesis) states simply that we acquire (not learn) language by understanding input that is a little beyond our current level of (acquired) competence…listening comprehension and reading are of primary importance in the language program, and that the ability to speak (or write) fluently in a second language will come on its own in time” (p. 32). Don’t get me wrong, I do believe there are limitations to the Input Hypothesis, particularly when you get to the intermediate level of fluency and have to work on building specific skills, but to get to the conversational level, the Input Hypothesis is dead on.

e. The Affective Filter Hypothesis: Learn and chill

Unmotivated students don’t learn. They pass tests, sure, but they only learn enough to get the grade they need. Some teachers think it’s their jobs to inspire students to get engaged in the lesson. There is probably some truth to that, but in my experience, it is really up to the learner to do the work. I have very little to do with their success. What I can control, however, is the mood of the class. I smile easy and hardly ever pressure students to do anything too uncomfortable. Some teachers disagree, but not Krashen. “Performers with certain types of motivation, usually but not always “integrative” and with good self-images do better in second language acquisition. Also, the best situations for language acquisition seem to be those which encourage lower anxiety levels… people who are motivated and who have a positive self-image will seek and obtain more input” (p. 38).

You put too much pressure on yourself, Josh. In the past, you were motivated by your ego. You wanted to find a shortcut and share it with the world. You wanted to prove that you could do it smarter, faster, better; and this hurt you. Progress was slow. Your motivation sunk like a steel anchor. You were in it to prove something, not to live with it. And it stressed you out. You begrudgingly opened your Japanese textbook. You dragged your feet on assignments. And soon after, you quit. And you repeated this cycle for almost seven years. Don’t go back to this mindset. Don’t try to prove anything. Enjoy the process. Stay motivated by your family. The way your kids grow excited when you speak. How your wife enjoys the Japanese TV you watch just a bit more than the English. The way your soul buoys whenever you are out and understand a new kanji character. Focus on those things, and you won’t stop; better still, you will actually enjoy it.

Caretaker Speech: A Window into Language Acquisition
Characteristic #1 - Parents use language to communicate (not teach).
Characteristic #2 - Grammar and vocabulary are simplified to ensure understanding.
Characteristic #3 - The most important tense is the simple present, past and future tenses are hardly ever employed.

Youtube Makes You Dumber (#3)

Youtube Makes You Dumber (#3)

“Thus, we will seek out opportunities to think, but we are selective in doing so; we choose problems that pose some challenge but that seem likely to be solvable, because these are the problems that lead to feelings of pleasure and satisfaction.” (p. 18)

Introduction

You will avoid studying, Josh, unless you give yourself the right conditions. Learning Japanese feels like a chore and Youtube is my vacation. The videos make me feel smart.

I can sit back and listen to braver souls articulate opinions I feel but cannot express. I consume, digest, and parrot their words, assuming that I am asserting my individuality, when in reality, I am only enslaving my potential.

Youtube, Japanese, and Thinking

I get caught up in people’s opinions on social issues. I watch videos, listen to arguments, take sides, and, in the end, feel like I know something about the topic, let’s say the liberal agenda for a fun example. After my fill of Youtube ideology from American political pundits, I open up my Japanese book and try to learn a new word: irasshaimase

I have to learn how to write irasshaimase in Japanese (いらしゃいませ). Next comes the part of speech. This is the imperative form of the verb irassharu (いらっしゃる), which means “to be/come/go.” My brain already hurts. Irasshaimase is often used when entering stores or restaurants and means “welcome,” so the everyday usage is quite different then the dictionary entry of the base form of the verb. I ask my friend about it and he tells me that my pronunciation is wrong. Japanese words have something called pitch accent, and this particular word has the 4th nakadaka (中高) pattern, so the pitch should be low, high, high, high, low (LHHHL), but I’m not going low at the end. We practice together. I feel confident. Later that day, I hear the door rattle shut. Naomi’s back. I shuttle downstairs, my lips tense, ready to try out the phrase I’ve been rehearsing all day. “いらしゃいませ.” A puzzled look turns to gut laughter and my own insides twist. “This isn’t a convenient store, it’s our house. When you greet someone at home you say “okaeri” (おかえり). It means ‘welcome home.’ Let me hear you say it.”

I try.

“No, your pitch accent is wrong. Go low, high, high, high.” I’ve had enough. I go back and listen to out-of-touch caucasians telling me how to feel about the radical left. That is much easier to understand than a single word in a foreign tongue.

Things that make me want to quit Japanese
1. Strict teachers - I hate being wrong and strict teachers remind me how wrong I am, constantly.
2. Vocabulary lists - Isolated words without context is like someone asking you to appreciate a painting by looking at the frame.
3. Other Youtubers - There are a lot of intelligent and gifted people who make you feel small. Keep your head down and focus on the work.
4. Information overload - Understand 95% of what you study (n + 1). Thinking about grammar, accent, and meaning at the same time is a recipe for disaster.

The Four Factors of Successful Thinking

Thinking is tough. As Willingham stresses in his book Why Don’t Students Like School?, people are curious and like to solve puzzles, but we are not equipped to be good thinkers. You are not a good thinker, Josh. You do, however, like to think about problems if they feel easy to solve. At times, Japanese feels like an endless battle that I can not win. I feel a greater sense of accomplishment summing up the problem with millions of complicated individual Americans who happen to share a vague political ideology. In other words, seeing the fault in the political stance of another feels easy, Japanese feels hard.

Willingham sums up the conundrum and outlines the conditions for successful thinking, “Thus, we will seek out opportunities to think, but we are selective in doing so; we choose problems that pose some challenge but that seem likely to be solvable, because these are the problems that lead to feelings of pleasure and satisfaction” (page 19). There are four factors that contribute to making a topic feel solvable, outlined in the table below. The Japanese language and American social issues are vast, so to make life easier Josh, I gave a specific example of each: writing my name in Japanese and identifying the problem with snowflakes policing speech.

The Four Factors of Successful Thinking: The Japanese Language v. Snowflakes
Factors	Writing Your Name in Japanese	Summing Up Millions of Snowflakes
Information from the environment	Trying to write my name in Japanese while living in Kansas with no Internet. FAIL.	Parroting the chorus of introspective middle-aged white dudes online. SUCCEED.
Facts in long-term memory	Trying to write my name in Japanese without any knowledge of the language. FAIL.	Parroting the ideological factions imposed on me by my American upbringing. SUCCEED.
Procedures in long-term memory	Trying to write my name in Japanese without ever writing in Japanese. FAIL.	Parroting the argument of free speech and individual freedom. SUCCEED.
Working memory space	Trying to write my name in Japanese while putting together an Ikea bookshelf. FAIL.	Parroting the political stance of others while ignoring my responsibility to my family and fellow man. SUCCEED.

"Work to make your Japanese studies so engaging and rewarding that you resist the urge to find bullshit American ideology to parrot."

The point? Don’t confuse information with knowledge, Josh. You are after knowledge and that takes more than listening to words on a screen and reducing complex individuals into simple herds of black sheep. Consider Willingham’s four factors of successful thinking when creating your study schedule. Work to make your Japanese studies so engaging and rewarding that you resist the urge to parrot bullshit American ideology.

Zero to One? Not in Education (#2)

Zero to One? Not in Education (#2)

“Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition.” (pg. 157-158)

Introduction

Peter Thiel's Zero to One is intended to teach people how to build a company with complete control over a given industry, like Apple for smartphones or Amazon for online shopping. Monopolies are a force for good, according to the author, and we need more innovative individuals to create these types of companies. He might be right, but I don’t see it happening in my field, education.

Students are not customers. Education is not a problem that has to be solved. Institutionalized education is riddled with problems; there is no doubt. A company could become a monopoly through code that helps bureaucracy function better. You can see this already in software for recording attendance, machines for grading tests, and Smartboards for enhancing the classroom experience. However, knowledge is not gained from quick fixes and easy solutions, but from deep thought and persistent effort.

How to Make a Monopoly
1. Proprietary Technology - You own a piece of technology at least ten times better than your competition.
2. Network Effects - A small group of influential people share your product with their colleagues and followers.
3. Economies of Scale - The business model allows for a small group of people to create value for millions (usually around some type of code).
4. Branding - Apple is the best example of a strong brand that feels irreplaceable.

Are Monopolies in Education Impossible?

Boring alert!

I just reread that last sentence and boy do I sound like a dull teacher. “However, knowledge is not gained from quick fixes and easy solutions, but from deep thought and persistent effort.” I have heard shit like that countless times. This isn’t anything new, so why bother writing it down?

It’s weird. I know meaningful learning requires thought and effort, but I still seek out shortcuts. I even market my own company as “A quicker and easier way to your TOEFL® score.” Look, much of life does not require knowledge. I do not understand the physics of the chair I’m sitting on or the mechanics of the machine I’m typing on. I don’t need to know. And most students don’t need to know about this stupid TOEFL® test, they just want to get their score and move on.

What do I need to know? I need to know how to get a fast Wifi connection and figure out what my wife wants to hear when she asks about our plans for the weekend. And I don’t have time to waste because the world is expensive and my kids are hungry. Dull teachers espousing deep thought and hard work forget that students live in a world where money and relationships come before knowledge.

There will be a time, however, when your lack of knowledge will come back and bite you in the ass, Josh. Most people feel the sting of ignorance the hardest when they can not make enough money. It happened to you after failing to learn Japanese for seven years. Nothing helped and you tried it all: adaptive learning software, flashcards, pre-packaged courses. It was the same for your students who needed more than a quick and easy solution to the TOEFL® test. We both needed to learn a second language at a deeper level and this requires nothing less than intense focus and extensive work.

In some ways, it has been a good mental exercise to adopt a zero to one lens. I have been able to build a business that serves thousands. While I have relied on my boring teacher approach to deliver information, I packaged it in a way that appeals to busy students. TST Prep would have never gained any traction otherwise. Before offering a quick and easy solution, I was telling strangers on the Internet that they should become TOEFL® athletes and train for the test as they would the Olympics. No one wants to hear that shit.

"Creating a monopoly in knowledge feels impossible."

Creating a monopoly in knowledge feels impossible. A system for better institutional organization and content delivery is possible, but there cannot be a monopoly on the individual pursuit and retention of knowledge. Flash card apps help retain vocabulary and regurgitate definitions for an exam. Interactive games break up the monotony of the classroom. Smartboards provide more options for lesson planning. And perhaps in the future there will be a virtual teacher in your pocket, ready to deliver all the information you will ever need, but don’t we have that already? Optimization and shortcuts have failed you, Josh. Information is not knowledge, and the ancient path remains the same. Devote the time required to gain knowledge and become fluent in Japanese. There is no zero to one when it comes to knowledge.

"There is no zero to one when it comes to knowledge."

Educational Philosophies
	Education	Students	Knowledge
Zero to One Approach	Education is a problem that needs to be fixed.	Students are customers who we need to make happy.	We need to find a quicker and easier way for students to learn.
Boring Teacher Approach	Institutionalized education needs to be fixed, but the path to individual knowledge has remained unchanged for thousands of years.	Students are individuals who we need to help foster self-understanding.	We need to find a way to inspire the individual to devote the time and effort required to gain knowledge.

Build an Empire or Find Your Calling: You Can't Have Both (#1)

Build an Empire or Find Your Calling: You Can't Have Both (#1)

Managers should be definite optimists. Makers should be indefinite optimists. You are a maker, Josh.

Introduction

I picked up Peter Thiel’s Zero to One to learn how to build a monopoly. I got stuck on this section on the importance of being a definite optimist, someone who has a clear vision of a brighter future.

My future has always been indefinite, which gave me options. I would have never found my calling or built a successful small business if I had tried to definitively map it out. You need an indefinite future when you are young to explore and discover your purpose.

Definite Optimist	Indefinite Optimist
Clear Vision You know what the future will look like and how to get there.	Cloudy Vision You have no idea what the future will look like.
Optimistic Outlook Tomorrow will be better than today.	Optimistic Outlook Tomorrow will be better than today.
Hires Engineers If you know how the future looks, you hire engineers to help you build it.	Hires Bankers and Lawyers If you believe the future will be brighter, but not sure how, you need to hire people who can help you protect your wealth.

Definite v. Indefinite Optimist

If my high school guidance counselor were here he’d be tugging at the few strands of hair he had left after asking me the same question for 25 years, “What do you want to do with your life?” I have never understood myself very well. My calling continues to elude me, even at 38, but I do know more than I did in high school. I know I am a teacher who hates authority, a family-man who preaches personal freedom, and a student who avoids school. Optimism suits my character, definitiveness does not.

"It must be terrible for a teenager to have a clear vision of their future. They will never know the gift of ignorance."

It must be terrible for a teenager to have a clear vision of their future. They will never know the gift of ignorance. Steve Jobs talked about it when in college he wandered into a calligraphy class for no good reason. It would later play a role in his clean and minimal aesthetic. Darwin signed up to be a naturalist for a three-year voyage around the world without ever stepping foot outside of England. He only felt the call to strike out on his own. These are the stories that connect to something in my bones. They inspire me.

But both men pivoted. Jobs built Apple and Darwin the Theory of Evolution. Jobs focused on marketing and user-experience. He had a definitive long-term plan. Darwin returned from his voyage with some ideas, but he spent eight years studying barnacles to accumulate the necessary data to propose and solidify his groundbreaking work. They were indefinite optimists in youth, definite optimists in adulthood.

The point is that you have to fluctuate between the two, Josh. You have become a definite optimist when it comes to the TOEFL® test and TST Prep. Still, now it is time to pivot back to indefinite optimism. You will learn Japanese and become a Youtuber (maybe a writer if you can get better at it). You have an idea of where you want to go, but it is far from definite, and that is okay. It is necessary to be an indefinite optimist when you are a maker. Creative endeavors require freedom.

Going back to the title, “Build an Empire or Find Your Calling: You Can’t Have Both,” if you are a manager by heart, if it feels like a calling to create and manage a large organization then you can indeed have both. I have met many managers and few have considered it a calling; I certainly do not.

You Are a Biotech Startup

Thiel illustrates my point quite nicely when he compares a biotech startup to a software startup, the former symbolizing an indefinite future and the latter a definite one. He uses these startups to exemplify the power of a definitive future. I will use the same example to remind myself that I am a human being, a biotech company. I am not a top-down engineered product but a bottom-up organism. My very nature is aligned with indefinite optimism.

"My very nature is aligned with indefinite optimism."

Biotech Startup	Software Startup
- uncontrollable organism	- perfectly determinate code
- poorly understood	- well understood
- natural	- artificial