In English, we have two ways to talk about nouns in a general sense. In normal speech, we say things like cats are vicious little creatures -- i.e. we use an indefinite plural. In some very formal prose, you'll see instead the cat is a vicious little creature --i.e. a definite singular.
The existence of the second is probably just a case of "translationese" -- it arises in lots of translations of Latin works, and I believe it is used that way in most of the modern Romance languages (French, Italian etc). Unfortunately this isn't easy for me to verify, as I have no idea whatsoever what to look for in the index of my grammar books.
Bizarrely, this fundamental (and straightforward) element of language seems to have been overlooked in the classical grammar models, so there is no common label for it (hence me not being able to look it up!). This means it is often overlooked in teaching, too. Many beginners' courses pass it by, and even when it comes up, you're not likely to get more than a little box-out mentioning it. It's not really "taught" in the same way as other grammar points. I suppose the reason for this goes back to the very basics of the structuralist view of grammar, which values form over meaning, and too often simply gives a few short sentences explaining usage after drilling form.
But we've been moving away from structuralism for quite some time now. The in-general/universal has been marooned by the incoming tide, as functional and communicative approaches have picked up on the link between form and meaning in the noun and article for specifical and truly indefinite cases, but they've not integrated the general/universal with it.
This underemphasis of the general/universal is particularly noticeable in Gaelic. It's not a subject I've seen come up often at all. I read it in one book and one book only, and I don't believe I've ever heard it discussed ever in classes. According to the book (well, my memory of it -- the book's 100 miles away), the general/universal in Gaelic is the definite singular. (The cat is a vicious little creature, the lion is a noble beast etc.) And yet....
When you study the genitive in Gaelic, it may be pointed out to you that while "describer nouns" in English always stay singular even when representing a plural concept (for example "biscuit" in "biscuit tin", "tooth" in "toothbrush"), this isn't the case in Gaelic genitives, which have both singular and plural forms.
So I was giving a talk in a classroom debate, and I mentioned "teenage pregnancy" which I rendered as "leatromach nan deugairean" -- "pregnancy [of] the teenagers". Genitive, plural. After the class, I started asking myself if that was right, thinking of the general/universal rule. Now I'm too confused and I'll just have to ask one of my teachers to try to clarify....
Showing posts with label generalisation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label generalisation. Show all posts
09 November 2011
04 July 2011
Translation: an unjustified scapegoat
I couldn't count the number of times that I've heard a teacher respond to an error by saying "that's because you're translating! You need to think in the language!" This is all well and goo... no, there's nothing good about it. I found it particularly frustrating when I found myself incapable of saying something specific in Gaelic, and my "friend" refused to let me simply say it in English. I then said it wrong and he then let loose with the old "because you're translating" line (except in Gaelic, just for variety).
Well no, the problem wasn't that I "was translating", it was that I had never learned how to say it. I hadn't learned it, I couldn't say it -- simple as that.
Translation has become something of a bogeyman. If you make an error caused by native-language-interference, the witchfinder in front of you will cry "translation!" and insist you must "learn to think in the language". Except that quite often these days, the witchfinder will be someone who doesn't actually speak your language and therefore blames translation when the converse is actually true.
My favourite example is the English and Spanish conditional constructions. Spanish-speakers regularly get the English wrong, and teachers are wont to issue the usual battlecry of "think in English!" followed by a lecture on "2nd and 3rd conditionals" in abstract grammatical terms. But in fact, Spanish conditionals translate almost verbatim into their English equivalents, so if the Spanish folk were simply encouraged to translate, they'd master the English forms in about half-an-hour.
I found a quote on-line the other day:
The problems that are often blamed on translation are better blamed on generalisation.
Native-language interference is inappropriate generalisation of known patterns (the fact that they are in the native language is incidental).
On top of that, generalisation even accounts for errors such as the conditionals where native-language interference should provide correct results. How so? Well, many intermediate and advanced learners have a tendency to try to construct any new target language structure out of known language structures -- ie they assume the language they have been taught is the whole language and try to generalise the known structures to cover any new case, and they fail to innovate.
For a specific example of generalisation gone wrong regardless of medium, I have to go back a good few years to my first experience of the language classroom: high-school French.
We started off with phrases, albeit with translation. It was all "what is your name?" "I am 12 years old" "I'm fine, and you?"
Now our teacher told us that "j'ai" was "I have" and that it only meant "I am" when discussing ages, but several of the class got themselves in a right guddle over this. Some would say "j'ai" instead of "je", and some would say "j'ai" instead of "je suis". And then they would try using "je suis" instead of "j'ai".
The problem here wasn't translation, because we weren't building up from grammar rules -- we were substituting words in fixed phrases in the hopes of learning "by induction from examples".
So the problem needs to be described in terms of generalisation. Regardless of what the teacher said, certain pupils automatically generalised telling their age to "I am". A change of medium of instruction couldn't have altered that.
So what could have changed that?
I think the main problem was that this was our first encounter of the verb "to have". Quite quickly we moved onto how many brothers and sisters we had, but by this point the confusion had set in.
Ausubel proposed something called progressive differentiation. Under this framework you teach a core, high-level overview of a concept, and then refine all the particulars and special variations after. The core use of "avoir" in French is possession of a physical thing. If that had been taught and thoroughly learned before a specialist idiomatic form was encountered, inappropriate generalisation would have been impossible.
This is how Michel Thomas does it. In his French, Spanish and Italian courses, you play around with "I have it", "I don't have it", "I don't have it but I want it" etc before coming anywhere near idiomatic constructions such as "to have hunger" for "be hungry". It is thus impossible to generalise "to have" incorrectly as "to be". Yes, you can generalise incorrectly the other way, and talk about being hungry (and then get a bollocking off your teacher for translating) but this is a far smaller error. Not only that, this is an error of "not having learned yet", rather than an error of "learning wrong".
So please, don't simply shout down translation indiscriminately -- it's not the nasty beast you think it is.
Well no, the problem wasn't that I "was translating", it was that I had never learned how to say it. I hadn't learned it, I couldn't say it -- simple as that.
Translation has become something of a bogeyman. If you make an error caused by native-language-interference, the witchfinder in front of you will cry "translation!" and insist you must "learn to think in the language". Except that quite often these days, the witchfinder will be someone who doesn't actually speak your language and therefore blames translation when the converse is actually true.
My favourite example is the English and Spanish conditional constructions. Spanish-speakers regularly get the English wrong, and teachers are wont to issue the usual battlecry of "think in English!" followed by a lecture on "2nd and 3rd conditionals" in abstract grammatical terms. But in fact, Spanish conditionals translate almost verbatim into their English equivalents, so if the Spanish folk were simply encouraged to translate, they'd master the English forms in about half-an-hour.
I found a quote on-line the other day:
"Disillusionment regarding the relevance and usefulness of learning theory for educational practice has been responsible, in part, for the emergence of the theories of teaching that are avowedly independent of the theories of learning."
Ausubel, David. Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View, 19681968, but this still seems to hold today. When we discuss learning, there's one word that is perhaps more important than any other: generalisation. Sadly, there's very little discussion of this in teaching literature. Our job is to teach, your job is to learn, so generalisation is dismissed as the student's responsibility.
The problems that are often blamed on translation are better blamed on generalisation.
Native-language interference is inappropriate generalisation of known patterns (the fact that they are in the native language is incidental).
On top of that, generalisation even accounts for errors such as the conditionals where native-language interference should provide correct results. How so? Well, many intermediate and advanced learners have a tendency to try to construct any new target language structure out of known language structures -- ie they assume the language they have been taught is the whole language and try to generalise the known structures to cover any new case, and they fail to innovate.
For a specific example of generalisation gone wrong regardless of medium, I have to go back a good few years to my first experience of the language classroom: high-school French.
We started off with phrases, albeit with translation. It was all "what is your name?" "I am 12 years old" "I'm fine, and you?"
Now our teacher told us that "j'ai" was "I have" and that it only meant "I am" when discussing ages, but several of the class got themselves in a right guddle over this. Some would say "j'ai" instead of "je", and some would say "j'ai" instead of "je suis". And then they would try using "je suis" instead of "j'ai".
The problem here wasn't translation, because we weren't building up from grammar rules -- we were substituting words in fixed phrases in the hopes of learning "by induction from examples".
So the problem needs to be described in terms of generalisation. Regardless of what the teacher said, certain pupils automatically generalised telling their age to "I am". A change of medium of instruction couldn't have altered that.
So what could have changed that?
I think the main problem was that this was our first encounter of the verb "to have". Quite quickly we moved onto how many brothers and sisters we had, but by this point the confusion had set in.
Ausubel proposed something called progressive differentiation. Under this framework you teach a core, high-level overview of a concept, and then refine all the particulars and special variations after. The core use of "avoir" in French is possession of a physical thing. If that had been taught and thoroughly learned before a specialist idiomatic form was encountered, inappropriate generalisation would have been impossible.
This is how Michel Thomas does it. In his French, Spanish and Italian courses, you play around with "I have it", "I don't have it", "I don't have it but I want it" etc before coming anywhere near idiomatic constructions such as "to have hunger" for "be hungry". It is thus impossible to generalise "to have" incorrectly as "to be". Yes, you can generalise incorrectly the other way, and talk about being hungry (and then get a bollocking off your teacher for translating) but this is a far smaller error. Not only that, this is an error of "not having learned yet", rather than an error of "learning wrong".
So please, don't simply shout down translation indiscriminately -- it's not the nasty beast you think it is.
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