David Hirsh (ed): Current Perspectives in Second Language Vocabulary Research

I'm not sure how I feel about including this much academic literature in a blog that has heretofore been a bit recreational, but I am a completist by nature.  I have written without fail about every book I have read for nigh on eight years now, and can't think of a good reason to exclude this volume, even though it will be of little interest to most people.  If, by the way, you have an interest in linguistics and literature, leave a comment and we can become pen pals :D

Which is not to say that I have a lot to offer about this book.  I had high hopes for it, simply based on the title, but the connection to my desired topic was rather tangential.  This is a good thing, though!  In developing my thesis, I have become a bit paranoid that my (in my opinion) rather insightful and potentially significant findings have already been documented elsewhere, and are therefore old hat.  What a relief that this book came nowhere near my topic, instead focusing on such things as whether frequency or manner of instruction has a bigger influence on retention, or the distinctions between productive and receptive vocabulary acquisition.  Both significant, to be sure, and I don't consider the reading a waste of time, but I have found that much more helpful material comes from the psycholinguistic perspective, rather than such a pragmatic viewpoint as this volume represents.

Philemon

I confess to a bit of prejudice before starting this book, because I kinda know how the story ends.  It's like someone spoiled the ending of The Sixth Sense for me . . .

1:4 Knowing what Paul is about to ask of Philemon, this certainly smells like buttering up.

1:8,9 A nice touch, and seemingly sincere

1:10 Wow, I didn't expect to find this so touching.

1:20 Hmm I wonder what other requests could reasonably be made under this logic.

So here's the mystery of this disappointingly brief book: who was Onesimus?  What connection did Paul feel with him, or was this a matter of principle, Paul making a point about the relationship between slaves and their masters?  Paul's sincerity pours off the page here, in a way that one seldom sees elsewhere in his writings, so I choose to believe the former: that Onesimus was indeed a remarkable fellow, and special to Paul in some way.  Is he the same Onesimus that later became bishop of Ephesus?  That seems highly dubious, but a fascinating line of inquiry.  In the dogma of the early church, would the power of love and equality as expressed by Christ and, to a lesser extent, by Paul, be strong enough to overcome social prejudices and human pride?

The Godfather Part II

I'm not quite sure what the draw of this movie is.  I know plenty of people who love it better than the first one, but as far as I can tell the only difference is that there's a lot more Italian.  What made the first movie so powerful in my mind was the beautiful study of Michael's evolution into the eponymous character.  Pacino's performance, Coppola's pacing and cinematography--a liquid, nearly musical piece of art. 

Part II? Not so much.  The people who love this movie seem to be drawn by the why and how of the family's development, and the contribution to the mythology of the Corleones, but the difference between I and II in my mind is the difference between showing and telling a story.  Sure telling us why Michael et al are the way they are is effective, but showing us the process (as in I) is affective, and, in my mind, art.

양인자: 늦게 피는 꽃

이 책은  내가 읽은 셋째의 한국 아동 책인데  공통점이 있다.  세 권 모두 부모가 없어서 고민을 겪는 아동에 대한 내용이다.  한, 두번이라면 우연이라고 생각할 있지만 세번이라면 우연의 일치 아니다.  그 아동 책외에, 내가 읽은 연어란 책도 그러한 내용이 들어간다.  한국 문학의 특징인지 모르지만, 생각해보니 한국 영화에도 많이 나오는 내용같다.  왜 그랬을까?  난 부모가 없는 한국인을 별로 안 만났다.  만약에 한국 독자와 시청자들은 그러한 극적인 주제를 좋아하기 때문일까?  아니면 한국 생활에 외떨어진 마음이 흔해서 비유로 표시하는 게 아닐까?  추신에는 작가가 그 후자를 나타낸다.  자기 성장에 대해서 짧게 이야기한다.  "'빨리 빨리'를 강요하니 얼마나 힘들었겠어요 . . . 언젠가는 자기만의 꽃을 피운다는 거, 잊지 말자"고 들려준다. 

나의 한국 친구를 생각해보니, "맞아, 생활이 얼마나 힘들겠다"는 생각이 든다.  여러분 사방에서 강요를 받고 자기 지위를 높이도록 무리해야 하고, 문제가 생기면 혼자서 풀고 . . . 고립감이 얼마나 심할 것 같다.

Stephen Krashen: The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications

I feel like a dinosaur sometimes.  Other linguists and teachers talk about the "interactive hypothesis" and "communicative competence" and other relatively modern ideas about language acquisiton, and I think to myself, "humbug".  For all the backlash, and certain undeniable limitations, I feel like Krashen was right 30 years ago in asserting there really is only one cause for authentic language acquisiton: comprehensible input.

Now it's not that simple, of course.  There are matters of monitoring, and affective filters and the like, but there really is nothing that can compare to input when it comes to explaining successful language acquisition, both from a pedagogical and a cognitive standpoint.  This is not to say that one can just throw books at a student and step back, or that as a learner I can just read and read and hope to get better.  Too often, I will read something, encounter a new word, look it up in the dictionary and promptly forget it.  That input didn't get put in for some reason--to use more standard jargon, it didn't become intake.  The question that a believer in Krashen, such as I am, must ask is: what's the hangup?

Krashen often (here and elsewhere) identifies the necessary second element as a lowering of the affective filter, an openness to new information.  Others point to the necessity of attention, that one cannot simply receive input, one must also attend to it.  Neither of these explanations satisfy me.  In the specific case of seeing a new word, looking it up in the dictionary, and even then writing it down in an original sentence, the affective filter seems to be lowered, and attention is certainly being given. 

One might say then that the word is decontextualized, and therefore doesn't find a home in the cognitive matrix.  This is also unsatisfying.  I am surely not alone in learning a word or phrase for a specific, sometimes very necessary purpose, using it correctly in context, achieving my intended linguistic goal, and then promptly forgetting it.  For example, take the word 이발 (haircut).  In preparing to go to the barber, I looked the word up, remembered it, used it correctly, got my haircut, and then a month later had to repeat the same process again. And the following month.  And the following month. That linguistic item was highly contextualized, but somehow it did not beome intake.  It found no home in the syntactic matrix. 

Further complicating matters is the not infrequent occurrence of encountering a word once, and immediately acquiring it--even if it was completely decontextualized and unattended, and my affective filter was sealed tight.  For example, the word 호출 (pickup service).  I heard a taxi driver use it once passively, and have not forgotten it since--and this word is neither common nor particularly useful.  Or even more curiously, the word 바작 (a particular container used by farmers for collecting grass).  I read it in a poem once, looked it up, and have never forgotten it.  This word is so useless that native Korean speakers don't even know it exists.  If I try to use it, they tell me I'm mistaken, until they look it up in their Korean dictionary.  What elements are present in this type of experience that are absent when I purposefully try to learn a word, even making flash cards and trying to cram it awkwardly into conversation? 

As much as I agree with Krashen on every point, he comes up short in this department.  He is not wrong, for he doesn't really adresss it.  It's not a disagreement, just a deficiency in the Input Hypothesis, about which you can bet your lace panties I will continue to have something to say.