While learning 3 languages simultaneously is no problem for a young child - as long as there is sufficient input -I think it may be slightly more challenging for older learners. It can be partcularly probematic when the languages being learnt are typologically related. I personally stopped learning Portuguese as a beginner when I was also learning Spanish (at intermediate level) because of constant cross-linguistic influences, especially at phonemic level, which elicited the scorn of my Portuguese teacher. Of course, learning a typologically related language also has advantages as there are parts that can be understood more quickly, and a feeling of familiarity with the language (affordances) can lower foreign language anxiety.
See: Jarvis, Scott & Pavlenko, Aneta 2008. Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. New York: Routledge.
De Angelis, Gessica 2007. Third or Additional Language Acquisition. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
De Angelis, Gessica & Dewaele, Jean-Marc 2011. New Trends in Crosslinguistic Influence and Multilingualism Research. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Dewaele, Jean-Marc 2010. Multilingualism and affordances: Variation in self-perceived communicative competence and communicative anxiety in French L1, L2, L3 and L4. International Review of Applied Linguistics 48, 105–129.
I found the meaning of your question as a following response the main cause for presenting my reaction to your question is based on the differences between learning and acquiring. I hope that this words be a useful thing for you.
It is clear that language is thought (Chamsky 1975).In language learning the term of exposure is an important issue.In other words, it happens during once's life experience. By regarding these three vital concepts,it is obvious that if once belongs to a community which it serves three conditions of language exposing so he or she will be a multilingual person , just imagine a child belongs to a family which his or her father speaks Turkish and while his or her mom speaks Persian ( Farsi ; The Iranian language ) in English community .The result of this kind of exposure reveals a multilingual person.
While learning 3 languages simultaneously is no problem for a young child - as long as there is sufficient input -I think it may be slightly more challenging for older learners. It can be partcularly probematic when the languages being learnt are typologically related. I personally stopped learning Portuguese as a beginner when I was also learning Spanish (at intermediate level) because of constant cross-linguistic influences, especially at phonemic level, which elicited the scorn of my Portuguese teacher. Of course, learning a typologically related language also has advantages as there are parts that can be understood more quickly, and a feeling of familiarity with the language (affordances) can lower foreign language anxiety.
See: Jarvis, Scott & Pavlenko, Aneta 2008. Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. New York: Routledge.
De Angelis, Gessica 2007. Third or Additional Language Acquisition. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
De Angelis, Gessica & Dewaele, Jean-Marc 2011. New Trends in Crosslinguistic Influence and Multilingualism Research. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Dewaele, Jean-Marc 2010. Multilingualism and affordances: Variation in self-perceived communicative competence and communicative anxiety in French L1, L2, L3 and L4. International Review of Applied Linguistics 48, 105–129.
Mahnaz Bathaie:
Certainly a young child can acquire three languages rather effortlessly and sort of quickly IF the cultural/sociolinguistic environments for each of them provide equal time, settings, speakers, etc. These factors should be as equal as possible (not necessarily so easy) so as not to give one or two an unfair lead in the progression. So, as a general answer, it is "...possible to learn (sic) three languages at the same time." My "sic" means that "acquisition" is more appropriate as a descriptor for native language(s) presenting themselves to the mind of youngsters.
Remember, also, that Roman Jakobson acquired (learned?) the ability to speak Russian in 7 different languages !
Thank you for the question, input and references that respond to the challenge of learning three languages at the same time. In South Africa this is the case in many primary schools. Children get exposed to three languages in their early childhood years even before attending school. In a typical scenario, the learner's mother may be SeSotho speaking, his/her father may be speaking IsiZulu and the learner may be raised by his/her grand mother who speaks SeTswana. Wnen the learner goes to school, he/she might attend a school where SeSotho is taught as the language of learning and teaching (the curriculum term for language of instuction in South Africa). English is introduced as the L2 (called first additional language) from Grade R. In this case, the learner is acquiring 4 languages at the same time. Input, questions and discussions on this topic can assist teachers and those responsible for their training and support to manage the challenges more effectively.
I am to start a plurilingual skills teaching project and I am very grateful for this discussion. I am interested in how do you understand the effective management of learning challenges? What could be (a) measure(s) for learning and teaching effectiveness? As straightforward as that. So that a teacher could be guided by these criteria.
Hello and thankyou for your attractive question.As some people mentioned above why not? But in other hand there are some problems such as when this process is occured?my mean is at what age?It seems this issue is more problematic in older people than younger one. It may be interesting if I say I have an experience in this domain by myself and as one mentioned above the problem of interruption of these languages is very cosiderable but as everyone knews everything is propotional.And in my idea it is related to many items suchas cultural similarity of languages, their infrastructure and ....
I think to proceed with type of a case study you have to bear in mind the dichotomy that may exist between learning/acquisition. Following the thread of learning/and acquisition is very enticing. Yet, to capture the reality of learning the three languages with varying degrees of proficiency is always problematic. Because, one language may have the privilege of input more than the other (or the degree of importance: academic vs. social) or the proximity of linguistic distance (the writing system, family belonging “romance language” alphabetic vs. logographic, written or oral, etc.). I have conducted a case study with 3 multilingual readers (you may read this case study in my page), this case study looked at their strategic reading, the paper entitle “Three readers, three languages, three texts: The Strategic reading of multilingual and multiliterate readers. The Reading Matrix, 11, 1, 34-53.for the year 2011. What I discovered is that beside the three languages I have investigated “French, English and Hausa”, I found that those three readers (from African countries) speak and know other African languages (local languages) that they speak in their community. In addition to that they memorized many chapters from Quran in Arabic (although they don’t speak Arabic). The ability of the human mind is incredible.
Yes. Easy. Young children in multi-lingual environments learn to communicate with different people around them often in a strangely compartmentalized way - ie speak in one way with grandmother. speak in a different way with father, speak in a different way with mother's younger sister's child. I watched my son doing this in English and Japanese from about 2 to 5. The point is that children do not conceptualize languages as distinct phenomena, as adults do. Also, the aspects of language they learn are not things like encoded grammar or lexis.
Adults learning language, say in classrooms, can learn the language forms, but using them is different. Yes, there are many multi-lingual people who can code switch with ease, but I cannot. Here in Japan it is either Japanese and English or English and German - I cannot do Japanese and German together. I have Chinese exchange students who do code-switch Mandarin, Japanese, English all the time though. I am sure there is a lot of other anecdotal evidence.
every body has the ability to learn more than one language. so I thought it would be easy to do if it is accompanied by a great willingness to learn.
You need to be more precise in your question, because it depends of a lot of things, age, culture, background, language etc. And then it will be possible, not easy but possible!
It is a myth that bilingual or trilingual language acquisition is effortless.
Mahnaz,
if your question is still relevant - can you specify more: the age of learners, the purpose, is it a part of a school programme or learning just out of pure curiosity...? An answer depends on all these...generally, yes, certanly it is possible to learn three languages at the same time. How? Just the way you learn one foreign language.
You may as well ask: Is it possible to learn physics, mathemaics and chemistry at the same time? What do you think...., is it?
Mahnaz, It happens routinely in most cases in India. Children learn English , their mother tongue (one of the regional languages) and Hindi (official language). In fact, some may learn even four( tribals, for example). If you are interested in Multilingualism, you may contact A.K. Mohanty or Minati Panda at Jawahar Lal Univ NeW Delhi. They have a large project and have published in this area.
Dear Mahnaz, yes. Concurrent teaching of two related foreign languages in the same classroom is feasible. That is my research. On the course of this research, Greek children aged 6-10 have been taught English and Italian simultaneously in the same classroom. I suppose three languages can be taught simultaneously in the same classroom under the same presuppositions. All this research is based on a project I have carried out: is is called cross-didactics: it is a new term I introduced in order to meet the needs of my research concerning the “Concurrent Teaching of Two Related Languages in the Same Classroom”. It is the theory and practical application of teaching two similar language systems concurrently, which interact and affect both the linguistic performance and the linguistic development of the individual concerned. This typically refers two similar languages, for example, the influence of Italian or an Italian native speaker who is learning Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian or even English.
The theory of Cross-didactic Learning method focuses on the baseline cross-linguistic knowledge students aquire and seeks to improve upon and convey this information. It also refers to the foundation or starting point in a lesson plan consisting of concurrent teaching of two related languages in the same classroom, where the overall objective is cross-linguistic and multicultural awareness. An appropriately educated teacher functions in this role as an authoritative figure, but also as both a guide and a resource for students.
So, Cross-didactics could be applied to the concurrent teaching of three related foreign languages in the same classroom.
I'm learning Spanish, German, and a little Esperanto and French here and there, all at the same time right now. Es muy divertido. :)
I probably think about 20% of the time in Spanish and the rest mostly in English. I'm in my first German class, so I'm not quite good enough to think much in it yet.
I don't really feel any of them interfere with each other for long. I mean, right after German class, I code-switch into German a lot, but it's usually switched off after a few minutes. In German class itself, I'll often code-switch between Spanish, German, French, and English (but mostly Spanish ("Ich bin in su clase. Oh, wait. Oops")) very rapidly when I can't think of the word in German (although, I do find myself gaining automaticity fairly quickly in German, which I suppose makes sense since it's like my fifth language to have studied in school). The other day in linguistics class, we learned 24 Basque words. I'm also constructing a language and learning it as I go. I recently relearned how to decline Latin nouns (1st and 2nd declensions), while in German we were learning its case (on a digressed note, German is a very irregular language beyond the verbs). I don't really feel any of them hinder each other much at all (I mean, there certainly is some amount of interferrence in the realm of syntax, but it feels relatively small and not at all difficult-feeling). I do have fairly frequent mental code-switching, though (their lexicons all seem to be in the same place, so when I'm going for "money", I get money and dinero about equally, and I feel a faint geld, and when I end up going with the word from one language, I end up in that language ("Welp, I gues I'm-a go to the biblioteca ahora para obtenar some books."). I do quite enjoy the code-switching, though; makes things infinitely more interesting. :) I find switching phonemic inventories more difficult, though; they seem to be quite distinct from each other, although I can more easily switch between the phonemic inventories of English and Spanish, so maybe it just has to do with my not having gotten enough of German and French down yet. I don't have much difficulty remembering which word is from which language, but I have synesthesia and really like orthographies, so it's probably easier for me than normal people to remember.
Well, anyways, my anecdotal evidence shows that at least I can learn ~3 or so languages at once. Whether I'm an outlier, I'm not sure, but I imagine most anyone could learn multiple languages at the same time given motivation and a good understanding of linguistics. :)
Dear Miles,
Thank you very much indeed for giving your valuable learning experience. It is really remarkable and among rare cases.
since you have the experience, what is your idea in teaching three languages at formal classroom situation? which techniques should be utilized encountering interferences? what are your own strategies tackling those problems, if they are problems for you?
Dear Mahnaz,
As I said last time, the ability of human mind to learn language is incredible. Yes, a person can learn three or more languages but we have to consider the variables within the confines of this kind of learning. For example, the input, the interest, the efforts, the motivation “intrinsic or extrinsic”, the linguistic proximity ”Chinese vs. Arabic as opposed to French-Spanish”, the daily exposure, the personal efforts, writing system, variations on emphasis, attitude towards the language and its speakers, the body of culture the language carries, the environment, the types of instruction, the appealing of the phonology system, cultural orientation, the syntactic complexity, etc. For example, when I learned French “coming from a background of Arabic and English” , , I found that the syntactic structure of French can be compared easily to Arabic and not English. Further, I can claim French has many ways of expression than English, even my phonological preference is for French rather than English. When I started learning German, I found such interest when I have some English-German’s cognates. There are always pathways among human languages. For example, when I studied Hausa “west Africa”, I found that there are some Arabic words “especially those with religions connotations “derived from Islam”.
Those are some good questions!
I'm not exactly sure at this moment how I'd tackle that particular task, but I do know that when languages are related, historical linguistics helps me a lot. Like, knowing sound change laws and archaic forms of my native language. For example, in German, 'woher' was easy because I was already quite comfortable with 'whence'. English had other words, too, like "yonder" and "thou", which most English speakers are aware of. It's always surprised me that none of my language teachers have tried to play off of the similarities between "thou" "tu" "du" etc., especially considering that thou was also informal back in the day.
'zeit', 'trinken', 'denken' and other words are easy to figure out because there are a lot of sound correspondences between German and English, like t > z/s , d > t , th > d, etc. (and zeit from tid, which I knew from messing with Old English and other archaic Germanic languages). Same with Spanish. 'que', for example. I know that from PIE, Germanic languages underwent Grimm's Law and that the h was independently lost in 'hw' clusters in English and German. I also know that the w was lost in /kw/ clusters in most (all? not sure) living romance languages. In a sense to me, "what", "was", "que", "quel", "hvadh" are all cognates.
But these are all related languages. Sound changes probably won't help an English speaker much when learning Japanese or Basque. I noticed when we were learning those 24 Basque words (I think half of them were invented, though, and the words, although Basque, may not have meant to us what they really mean in Basque) in linguistics class (the teacher was having us re-enact a study that tested the influence of abstractness on the ability to learn words), that I mostly went off of phonosemantics and my synesthesia. There was one picture of an abstract bent round ring, and it had in it, and I focussed on those letters because L felt like bending and O like something round. We only had a few seconds to learn each word, but that association was enough for me to comprehend the word for "abstract bended round ring" when we were reshown it a few minutes later. "Sagu" was easier and I still remember the entire words because it's yellowish for me, and fingers are sort of yellow in some sense (and also the fact that is yellow for me probably helped (there's an in fingers)) (I should say, though, that I never thought to pin words to their English equivalents until about halfway through the second set of words). I know most people don't have synesthesia, but maybe having students associate letters with colors anyway might help? If you do try that, it might help to know that the majority (certainly not all) grapheme>color synesthetes have as red. It also might help to know that for me, the colors of letters generally has more to do with manner and voicing than place (all nasals are green, and are yellow and is a light tan, < d b g j > are all sort of brick red or brown, are all purpleish, /j/ and /i/ and are white (I have sound > color too, so how letters are pronounced changes their color), etc.). You could also have them associate a color with common words like the days of the week. Monday could be red, for example. They could then associate "red" with "Monday" in all three languages, and when it comes time to remember the word, they just have to pick the one that feels red to them.
For interferences, like "lustig" in German meaning something more like "nice" (I don't remember the exact meaning, but I have a feeling as to what it is) than "lusty" (which is the cognate) and "lusty" meaning, well, lusty; and like "fleisch" meaning "meat" rather than "flesh" (bleh), I sort of get a different feel for them again based on color. Lustig is darker to me than lusty ([u] is more back than a stressed schwa, and back means dark for me and many people), and fleisch is brighter feeling than flesh, and I sort of pin the meanings to the coloration.
Grammar's more difficult of course. Luckily, English has the possessive clitic, which can be manipulated to teach understanding of Japanese's postfixes ("Maria's cat" is only a step away from a postfix, "Maria hes cat", and once you're comfortable with one postfix, you can get used to others). ((I realized after I wrote this part that it wasn't so much about multiple language learning, but it's useful anyway, so I've kept it in))
I find that when I learn the grammar of any foreign language, canned phrases are really helpful. It's way easier for me to ramble off "como se dice?" than "como me digo?", even though I'm really comfortable conjugating things in the present, because the former is more frequent (not because it's irregular; I only recently learned it's "digo" and not "dizo", and if anything, I've found it less hard since I learned the correct form). For para vs por (which I'm still working on), I'm used to hearing "para mi" or "para ti", not "por mi" or "por ti", and that's sort of how I'm learning it: just based on frequency of utterance and what feels right. So that German and English express age differently than Spanish and French, and that English expresses hunger differently than all three isn't problematic when I'm actually trying to speak those languages, because I've rarely ever heard anything like "Soy 18 anos" or "Ich habe 18 Jahren" and would feel awkward producing them. So, I didn't need to spend time memorizing which language used which phrasing because I feel more comfortable using the ones I've heard more often.
I usually don't have words pinned to their English or Spanish equivalents for long before they become their own thing (I do do a lot of learning words through Spanish instead of English because of the convenience of more regular parts of speech, even though it's an L2 (which I've, granted, been learning on and off since I was 4)). This is nice because it eliminates a tremendous amount of overhead. I don't have to remember that rot is red or that rojo is red and constantly translate in my head when I want to say anything. I just feel rot is rot and red is red and rojo is rojo. In a sense, I try not to learn words as "the German word for this English word" but as "the German word for this phenomenon". Although, I suppose that has less to do with multiple language learning than with learning any language in general.
Anyways, yeah. Hope these help! :)
wooooow!
you and your learning system is unique and amazing, realy. regarding vocabulary learning, it seems, you keep each lexicon apart. but i always try to find a relation. for example, when i was learning Deutsch, i tried to find a link "trinken" to "to drink" and for example "urlaub machen" to persian equivalant and the part " machen" to my mother tongue Azari turkish (makh=to do) ..... and i see that it is more complex.
thank you again for all your explaation and strategies fore-mentioned.
they really are helpful and now i think that i should read all your answer indetail and and many desiplines (linguistics, phonetics, phonology, historical linguistics) are involved . thank you
Very interesting discussion. I do not have the advantage of second-language learning, although I have had some limited exposure to German and Spanish. Your earlier question was how to teach multiple languages in a classroom. For adults and children, I think establishing a common conversational routine and then imposing a functional script within that setting would be helpful. For example, identify some routines that could be established in the classroom for simulations. So, would one need to ask directions and find a location? The routine could be re-enacted for each language. The conversations from each routine could be compared. In terms of language interference, I think intense and prolonged experience using the language functionally, and practice with a competent speaker of the language result in the best oral skills. Writing to describe the talk routines could also be utilized dependent on the age, literacy needs and skills of your students.
Interesting question. I think that is important the age of the learners. In the childhood is easy to learn different languages. Other aspect is the "roots" of the languages, for example, Italian, French and Spanish are Neo-Latin languages and could be easy to learn it; the same for the Anglo-Saxon languages.
Dear Nicoletta, that's exactly what I have commented above regarding simultaneous teaching of two related languages. This relation should be primarily morphological. By the way, I found out that the 58% of English words stem from Latin, therefore I taught Greek pupils (aged 7-9) English and Italian simultaneously in the same classroom. On account of the results, I speculate that Italian with Spanish-French-Portuguese and/or even Romanian could be taught simultaneously in the same classroom.
Dear Mahnaz, have a look at: http://www.eurocom.uni-frankfurt.de/english/compact/kurs/text_seite_1468.htm
If one moves into a new culture that (1) has an official national language different than one's own, (2) has a large number of dialects spoken in the same area where one is living and/or (3) encounters on a daily basis or regular basis still-another FL one might end up trying to decipher and/or learn three or more other languages at the same time, especially if one already has a desire or inclination to more intimately function in a new L3, L4, L5 etc.
In short, if one is not satisfied with English or some other adopted "universal language", one is motivated to learn more. In my own case, I am living in Oman and have brought rudimentary Arabic knowledge--i.e. with skills that I have yet to hone greatly. I am married to a Filipino now for 4 years whom I met while working in Kuwait. I am considering retiring in Philippines and in a region where several dialects are spoken. I am trying to listen to Filipino lyrics on mp3 player to and from work each day. Here in Oman I have students from two or three dialect speaking groups of unwritten nature--Jaballi and Mahri. I ask my students occasionally questions about these languages and compare them to Arabic. In short, motivation is prevalent for learning as much as I can about all languages--esp. as I live here and may be here for five or more years.
My daughter is now three and was born in the Philippines. She will want to learn the two dialects her mother speaks as well as Filipino. We primarily use English but she goes to a play school with Arabs and Indian students. My daughter watches Dora and other cartoons in English, Urdu, Arabic and sometimes French. Dora also teaches some Spanish--and I speak Spanish to my daughter as well. Across the hallway from us at our flat is an Arab family whom I tutor in German. (They desire to emigrate to Europe.) My daughter will hear me use the language if visiting that family with me. I also speak to her occasionally in German or count steps in German as we climb up them.
In 1983, I first moved to Europe and lived with a farming family in Alsace--on the border with Switzerland. When I arrived to work there for 6 months, I was asked whether I wanted to learn German or French. Only after 6 months had I come to know that the family normally spoke two German dialects in the house--both from Switzerland. the parents spoke the dialects and the children spoke French, dialects and slang. (When I went to work in Germany the next year, I could understand both high German and adapt quite well to dialects. )
In my experience of living, working in, & volunteering in 12 countries, I would say that it is not that uncommon for peoples to try and pick up multiple languages at the same time on Planet Earth.
There are several places in wich two or three languages co-exist because they are used for different porposses. In some places in Corrientes province, in Argentina, kids speak spanish at school, german at home and guaraní with his friends. Each language is used for a specific part of life. Similar situations can be found in middle east.
Yes it is possible. For example the Kurds of Urmia speak Kurdish, Azeri and Persian. The Iranian Talysh speak four languages: Talysh, Gilaki, Azeri, and Persian.
Also in Dagestan they speak usually two or three languages. In Gorno-Badakhshan they speak their own Pamiri dialect, plus Shugni (lingua Franca of Pamiris), Tajik and Russian (and English nowadays). The school children in the Netherlands have to learn Dutch, English, German/French (they had to learn both in earlier days); those of Turkish origin learn also Turkish. Those of Moroccan origin learn Berber (their mother tongue) from their parents, and Moroccan Arabic from TV, and often also Arabic from the religion teacher or French from their relatives.
People are very intelligent and learn multiple languages at the same time, especially when we widen our definition of language from natural languages to other types of language (computer languages, sign language, language within an academic discipline, etc.). During my academic career I learned Spanish (elementary school), French and Latin (high school), but sadly have fallen out of practice over the years. I am fluent in at least 4 computer programming languages (it helps that 3 of them are in the same 'linguistic' family and there is overlap). Everyone has given excellent examples and input on this topic (with great insight).
World-wide, mutilingualism is the rule, not the exception. The issues in learning natural languages (artificial languages, too) are mainly motivation and opportunity rather than intelligence or even age.
My own experience during linguistic fieldwork in various parts of West Africa bears out some of the previous comments. I have come across many educated and less educated people who have learned several languages to a native or native-like degree of proficiency at various points in their lives: often a mother tongue, a father tongue (where there are exogamous marriage conventions), a language used in trade such as Hausa. a pidgin, a foreign language such as English/French in school, and the administrative language, which is generally the former colonial language, i.e. French or English in this region. Not only this, I have had many African and Asian students who have come to study in Europe and as adults also learned German to native-like proficiency.
Dafydd makes a common observation, but he is right to highlight it as its implications have not been grasped. People differ greatly in every sort of intellectual ability, yet seem to differ far less in their ability to learn languages, or in the structure and complexity of the languages they use. Together with the realisation that there is no feasible brain site for Chomsky's Language Acquisiton Device, this suggests that it is auditory input rather than the state of the brain that sets up language.
Agreed, though I would not want to speculate about a 'Language Acquisition Device', since we have no independent evidence about this in addition to the speech and text contexts which we observe. The point I want to make here is that multilingualism is very common, while monolingualism is restricted either to isolated areas, or to certain (not all) linguistically highly institutionalised nation states.
Hi Mahnaz,
I think you were looking for more practical advice than theoretical considerations, judging by the question's description; "In EFL situation, I want to conduct a case study." So, I am assuming that what you really meant to ask was, "Does anyone know of a way of teaching two additional languages simultaneously?"
For your case study, I suggest that you pick a subject who is under 12 and preferably, under 10. I don't know how you would devise a pedagogical approach, but you may be able to develop some ideas (or others here may be able to help you) based on own my personal experience:
I came to the UK when I was almost 11. At the time, I had studied English at primary school in Iran. However, although I had a strong grounding in grammar (thanks mainly to the emphasis on understanding Persian grammar at school and being able to transfer those principles to the English I was leaning), my conversational skills were poor. Two months after my arrival, when the summer holidays ended, I started secondary school. There, even though I was still struggling with English, I was required to attend French language classes. At the end of the first year, my French had improved faster than the other kids in the class and I have a theory as to why.
Much of the French grammar that we were being taught was fairly alien to the English boys (it was an all-boys school), whereas I was able to apply the principles to both the English that I was learning in context and the French that we were being taught. In other words, the French grammar that we were being taught was much more ‘relevant’ to my situation, as a second language learner in situ, than to the other boys.
So, may be, if you practice a short piece of conversation (which will hopefully be highly relevant to your student) with your student in one language and then repeat the same conversation in another language and then explain the similarities (and any differences) in the grammatical structures, then my expectation would be that the overlapping concepts will reinforce the learning of both languages.
I look forward to hearing the outcome of your study.
I am responding to an earlier post about learning languages simultaneously by Anthony. Yes, from my research, clinical experience, and observations, even children with severe disabilities learn language. However, Anthony, would you expand a bit on your description of language learning as primarily auditory input rather than the state of the brain?
I agree with Bijan that the question is more about practical ways of learning three languages simultaneously.
To understand language learning in normals, it is instructive to look at various clinical groups with varying linguistic abilities;
1. Children with brain damage or general maldevelopment. Those with intellectual disability (low IQ) can learn language normally.
2. Specific language delay. No consistent evidence of brain damage is evident, and any brain difference found is most likely a result not cause of language delay.
3. Children with verbal/non-verbal IQ differences. Known brain damage reduces full-scale and/or non-verbal IQ. There is no brain disorder that selectively reduces verbal IQ.
4. Congenitally deafness. This is of peripheral, not central origin, so, as expected, non-verbal IQs are normal. Language and speech are grossly delayed, reflected in very low verbal IQ scores.
5. Dyslexia. If this was due to brain disorder, one would expect P to be lower than V IQs. The opposite is the case. It seems to be generally accepted that this is secondary to a phonological disorder. General intelligence (g) is so-called because it correlates with and underlies virtually every other sort of intellectual ability (and numerous non-intellectual ones as well). One of the very few that does not correlate with 'g' is phonological skill, further strong evidence that this is not of cortical origin. I have found evidence for fluctuant dextral ear disease in infancy in dyslexia, which would disrupt normal development of the phonological analyser in the left hemisphere.
6. Autism. All the symptoms of autism, linguistic and non-linguistic, can be explained as primary or secondary consequences of fluctuant auditory-vestibular function of inner ear origin in infancy.
The model for childhood developmental disorders should be congenital deafness, not adult neurology.
Anthony, I would suggest to group children with brain damage with those with “general maldevelopment” is too broad a brush. A descriptor of brain damage implies direct damage to the brain such as in traumatic brain injury, some type of malformation of the brain leading to many issues, including speech and/or language changes, or some disease process that leads to mental deterioration, including loss of language. When there is direct damage to the brain, whether a child or an adult, if the child has acquired language prior to the injury, dependent on localization of the lesion, children will demonstrate particular disorders of speech and language learning (apraxia and dysarthria). I agree that children with intellectual disability may demonstrate acceptable speech and language skills in spite of the diagnosis. However, the population is heterogeneous. I have worked with children exhibiting Down Syndrome. In spite of normal hearing, these children may present with difficulties conceptualizing, learning language and using language. I agree that many scholars identify a phonological problem as a causal factor in language disorder. But your conclusions are novel to me and I will need time to ponder over these. Problems in the auditory system may be peripheral (outside the brain); however, they may also be central (inside the brain). And when individuals have difficulty associating meaning with sounds that typify a language, that’s a central problem and gets into the issue of dyslexia, auditory processing problems, and some types of aphasias in adults who will talk fluently without sense making (Wernicke’s Aphasia). I disagree that congenital deafness should be the model for childhood developmental disorders. You may agree that a big piece of the puzzle that we have not discussed in environmental. So, the issue of nature vs. nurture, which over and over has proved to be a powerful change agent. I do agree with you that disturbances in the vestibular system are associated with autism. You are obviously more abreast of this particularly literature than I am. But getting back to the central question that Mahnaz posed, it is possible to learn three languages simultaneously, dependent upon necessity, opportunity, and good learning opportunities.
"I would suggest to group children with brain damage with those with “general maldevelopment” is too broad a brush".
Yes, but the dominant approach is to use an adult model of brain damage to explain developmental disorders.
"When there is direct damage to the brain, whether a child or an adult, if the child has acquired language prior to the injury, dependent on localization of the lesion, children will demonstrate particular disorders of speech and language learning"
Not sure about the learning disorders, but an adult model of aphasia and brain localisation is appropriate here.
"I have worked with children exhibiting Down Syndrome. In spite of normal hearing"
I don't recall ever testing a young child with Downs who did not have a middle ear effusion, and hence inconsistent hearing.
" when individuals have difficulty associating meaning with sounds that typify a language, that’s a central problem and gets into the issue of dyslexia"
Yes, but did it start out as a central disorder. I think not.
"Problems in the auditory system may be peripheral (outside the brain); however, they may also be central (inside the brain)."
So, there should be plenty of good examples of primary central auditory disorder. If there are any cases of central deafness due to proven brain lesions (other than very rare sequential bilateral strokes), I can't find them. (Nor could Freud!).
"You may agree that a big piece of the puzzle that we have not discussed in environmental"
Like virtually everything else in psychology and medicine, disorders have genetic and environmental causes. However, the environmental factors are those specific to the child, not affecting siblings, and are not common ones like social class, books in the home, etc. A century of psychology has been wasted looking at the wrong types of environmental factors.
Maria has brought up an interesting point about the ease of learning languages. I am sure it is easier as an adult to learn related languages than ones in a different linguistic family. Is this because we have to unlearn the tricks and short cuts in our own language? Or are some languages just more difficult than others? This raises another interesting question, "Do infants learn some first languages more quickly than others? This has important implications for understanding which age group in society first used language in human evolution (see my RG question on this). I do not know the answer to this last question, and have not done a literature search, but my guess is that infants find all first languages equally easy (or hard!).
If Maria is right that all languages are learned equally by infants, then I think a strong inference can be drawn about the origin of language. (If anyone disagrees with Maria on this point, please post, preferably with references). I don't think any adult (especially a linguist!) could construct a language that could be seamlessly learned by infants, but even it this could happen, the idea that the difficulty would be identical whatever the society or culture is fanciful. So, the structure of language and languages must have have originated in the minds of infants.
in line with Rama's comment, multilingualism is the norm, rather than the exception in India. I can safely say all children are brought up in (at least) bilingual households, making the study of SLA and TLA a little difficult in the Indian context. However, an adult learning three languages at once would find it tedious, unless of course positive transfer effects prevail. For instance, the Devnagri script is shared for Hindi and Marathi (Indian languages based on phonetics). Therefore, learning how to read the Devnagri script implies knowing how to read both Hindi and Marathi (but not necessarily understanding both). Moreover, learning a language would entail reading, writing, and speaking; and from what I've come across, most individuals can manage to "learn" three languages without meeting the reading-writing-speaking criteria for all.
Hope this helps :)
Hi Mahnaz
I am not sure what age group you are interested in, but I will share my knowledge of working with children in the early years, from zero to eight. In the early years children tend to absorb languages like sponge absorbs water. The pattern of learning is highly absorbent and without much difficulty. Research shows that children from bilingual or trilingual homes tend to do very well in schools. Jim Cummins from OISE Toronto has done a lot of work on bilingual and you may find it useful to look up his work. Moll too has worked with bilingual children. In Canada (and it probably in other parts of the world too), the challenge of maintaining dual languages at later stages of children's lives is lack of supporting literacy materials in further developing the home languages.
Hi Shahnaaz
Thank you for your time, comment and useful references.
The envirenment is always ideal for bilingual or even multilingual childeren or adults. I am trying to find a way to apply those natural experiences in meer EFL context for adults (in EFL classroom situation).
I disagree with Bijan above. One can use adults who are already multilingual or bilingual to gain many of the same results.
Dear Mahnaz,
Not entirely sure whether you are asking this as an academic question or a language-learning question, so I'll drop in a language-learning response. Yes, I think it is possible. My college roommate did this as a young adult [already bilingual, English&Japanese]. His technique was to study at differing levels [advanced French, intermediate Spanish, beginning German]. Jean-MArc's point about Spanish and Portuguese is an issue from which I also suffer with this language pair, but I am unsure if this is not due to exactly what he notes about "cross-linguistic influences, especially at phonemic level." Personally, I constantly learn [or play] with different languages, but these target langauges are purposefully linguistically "distant" [like playing with Turkish and French while continuing Chinese], and, as my roommate taught me, at different levels [beginning-intermediate-advanced, in this case].
Your respondents seem include many linguists; I'm an amateur in this area, just working on language economics.
Yes, I agree - it is easy for young learners and it is very demanding for adult learners.
Thanks to all answers.
Dear kimberly,
Actually my question is about finding a practical way to teach three languages at the same time and in the context of EFLclassroom. May I ask you to clarify your solution?
Thanks
Regards.
It depends how fluent the teacher is, what the methodology is and how the three languages are related. I don't see why it would it impossible to teach English, French and Spanish at the same time. However, it is another question whether students would be able to acquire knowledge in the three languages, provided they have never learned any of them before. My personal experience tells me one needs to devote at least 20 hours per week (sometimes many more) during the first two years to learn a language to some extent. Time, rhythm and timing are important factors.
Dear petrova,
Thank you for your answer. As you commented the possiblity of teaching three languages at the same time and the learnability of language learners for that are two different but related issues. So far there has not been any answer to give the evidence for the former situation let alone the latter.
( in my nation there is a need somtimes for some people in higher levels to learn two or three languages e.g. French, Deutch, and Turkish) at the same time. They take two or three classes and this is a frustrating for them. This question emerges from that problem.
I would say yes it can be done if the languages are similar to one another. Example: Spanish and Italian are similar.
No matter how many and which languages one is supposed to learn, my advice would be to start with and focus on listening (with headphones) and speaking first. These are the most difficult abilities to form and although learners will rarely pick up a near-native accent, the more and the earlier learners immerse themselves, the easier it would be for them to develop some intuition about the language and speak at a near-natural level (that is how children learn - they have already mastered basic listening and speaking skills before learning grammar). Numbers are also hard to learn because, for some reason, we tend to translate them first.
Yes. Agree with you. Tracing first language acquisition and teaching based on its principles is one way but sure one. Although adult learners have the ability to work on higher order learning, i.e. grammar and vocabulary, it is not the case coming to pronunciation and speaking/listening skills.
You know Mahanz, When I started to learn Spanish, The thing that helped me the most was learning the Spanish alphabet and the sounds of the letters. The repetitive of listening to the words was also helpful. Learning a little about the culture brought better understanding of the how to speak the language properly and when you said the thicker the accent the better, You are right about accent and annunciation and pronunciation. But I also learned that Spanish is spoken very fast. Then the 3 forms of singular and plural and when it is proper to use the female male endings .. Anyway I had a heck of a time. And when I visited Mexico the people promised not to laugh at my Spanish if I promised not to laugh at their English.
My daughter learned three languages from birth (French, Dutch, English), acquired some Urdu through her Pakistani childminder - she lost the Urdu when she moved to nursery school - and later studied Spanish at school. She comments on the effortless acquisition of the first 3 languages and the more laborious acquisition of Spanish in her blog: http://www.multilingualliving.com/2013/04/29/trilingual-sixteen-quadrilingual/
Children can learn 3 or more languages at the same time provided that they are exposed to the languages in questions in different domains. If for instance, a child is exposed to language A at home, language B in the neighborhood, and language C at school, he or she can pick up the three languages at the same time. For adults, I would say it may be possible. Emprical research needs to be conducted to answer this question.
Children can learn 3 or more languages at the same time provided that they are exposed to the languages in questions in different domains. If for instance, a child is exposed to language A at home, language B in the neighborhood, and language C at school, he or she can pick up the three languages at the same time. For adults, I would say it may be possible. Emprical research needs to be conducted to answer this question.
At any age any person at all can learn three languages provided the interest is there. At Wisconsin International University College students admitted in the first year do Advance English, French and Chinese. The greatest problem would be that of phonetic. If you can read some French look for the work of Raymond R. (2003). La methode verbo-tonale d'integration phonetique.
I think it is important to differentiate between natural language acquisition and language learning in a formal (classroom environment). In natural language acquisition as a child, the acquisition of three languages is the reality for many children all over the world, Here in Africa it is very common that children grow up with three languages and these need not be differentiated by domain of usage, or, by the persons who speak the languages to the child. The young mind/ brain is able to differentiate the languages 'automatically' as it were -- given that there is sufficient exposure to each of the languages.
Adult language learning -- especially in a formal classroom -- is a different story. While it may be possible in principle to learn three languages in terms of brain capacity there are a number of interfering factors. One such factor is that the adult mind/ brain is no longer able to differentiate all the phonemes (meaningful sounds in languages) in foreign languages and doesn't pick up grammar as easily as a young child's brain does either. Additional problems come from the fact that as an adult language learner a person needs an enormous amount of determination and a huge investment of time (vocabulary learning is mainly a memory drill), especially if you are trying to learn more than one language. I once tried to learn isiZulu and Arabic at the same time and it was incredibly time consuming. However, it also felt as if my brain adjusted to the double task. Hence memory for new words became much better overall as time progressed. I wouldn't have been able to fit learning a third language into my hectic work day though.
It is possible to learen three different languages at the same time - not necessarily belonging to the same language group. I myself learned English, German and Russian simultaneously for a few years. Of course - there was some interference of English and German but genarally I didn't find it difficult to acquire any of these languages. Each of the three languages I practiced on my own , outside classroom. I tried to find out similarities between English and German grammar, vocabulary, sentence structires -there were many and it was very helpful. There is a great difference in pronunciation between English and German and these i had to practice a lot. I don't even mention russian as it belongs to the same language group of languages as Polish. Anyway , it was at the time when I went to school and during my studies, mostly. While working a lot after studies I started learning Swedish and it went well as it resembles English, German and Old English in its grammatical structures, but I gave up after 2 yearsas iI realized it wouldn't be useful in my future work.
Any adult has already acquired a mother tongue. He or she has began learning a second language and now he wants to learn a third language. The two languages that he or she is learning become foreign to that adult. The foreignness, we have said is as a result of some traits that those languages have that are nonexistent in the new languages that he or she is learning. Some of the mother tongue sounds would interfere with the sounds of the new languages.The articulatory organs of the learner have also been adopted to the pronunciation of the sounds in the mother tongue. These traits manifest themselves greatly at the phonetic or phonological level. In order to help the learner to minimize the interference errors and to sustain his or her interest in the activities in the new languages, the teacher should sensitize the learner in some prosodic features in the new languages namely: sounds, melody and rhythm. After the sensitization exercise, the teacher should not insist on the correction of all pronunciation errors. Those sound pronunciations which would not bring about a change in meaning should be regarded as allomorphs and should therefore not be corrected from the beginning. As the larger progresses he or she would be able to overcome these pronunciation difficulties.This sensitization could take the form of poems accompanied by movements which translate the prosodic peculiarities or segments of the target languages. After the sensitization. At the syntactic level, a comparative study of the structural arrangements in the target languages and the mother tongue could be undertaken.This will clearer for adults to understand than children. Similar approaches could be adopted to create interest in an adult learner at morphological and semantic levels.
Dennis talks a bit about "comparing" and Heike talked a bit about "automaticity". I'd like to focus on these two concepts and add a third for discussion.
NOTE: The third concept is, namely, what are each of us referring to in this thread when we try to define language learning and/ or language acquisition??
I will give an example of when I was finishing up my M.A. in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) at the University of Kansas (USA)and I took these courses alongside my masters seminar project on English language testing and Japanese schools:
--intermediate Japanese,
--Latin American Literature and Film Seminar (in Spanish),
--and German Literature (Goethe) Seminar all at the same time.
This meant that on a weekly basis, I was dealing with and learning from, comparing/contrasting, working with improving language skills in 3 or 4 languages--sometimes in the same day.
My mind was revved up much of the time. I was consciously aware of comparing and contrasting cultures across space and time. I was also able to keep up best in those language skills I was already stronger in --automaticity came to fore. By the development of automaticity, I mean "a learning to driving" metaphor----i.e. with this metaphor we see that there are phases where one moves (and often has moved) from doing driver's education (constantly under the gaze of a teacher) to driving by oneself without much strong cognizance that one is dong many things with one's body and mind while driving.
In contrast to my MA project in English and the courses in Spanish and German I was taking I felt much weaker in my learning domains. In short, in Japanese, the one language that was not a Western language in structure, I felt the least progress on or comfortable in using in many ways.
However, as I had previously lived in Japan two years and had taught in rural schools there with only Japanese colleagues around me--and with the vast majority of people around me speaking Japanese, my audio-lingual vocabulary skills continued to surge at times (especially, while in language labs watching Japanese programming). In contrast, even while my writing and reading in Japanese seemed to drag on, I know that this is the case in learning most languages--i.e. one will often be much weaker in thee writing and reading skills early on--regardless of the language (unless it is similar to one you know which you already can compare it to). In other words, there was still evident movement towards automaticity in my realms of developing speaking and listening Japanese.
Janina (above) brought up the concept of motivation in learning one language or another, too. I am currently flummoxed by my inability to acquire Arabic skills in the Middle East where I now live. My motivation is high here to learn it in all its facets, but the opportunity is weak in the countries I have lived in. In the UAE, where I first tried to take classes in Arabic, I came to understand that I was not surrounded with native speakers of similar languages to Arabic most of my 24 hours day. I had a similar problem in Kuwait a few years later.
I had, in the interim, also taught in Monterrey , Mexico where continuous education for language teachers and others were offered. So, I had availed myself of French lessons in a classroom setting with my colleagues and had reached a lower intermediate level in that language. Opportunity to learn and acquire languages in a motivating and supportive community is also a factor in language acquisition.
Age does play a factor as Heike noted but these other factors are relevant at all ages:
(1) how one defines learning a language
(2) what acquisition is
(3) what one's motivation is
(4) which languages or language skills you target automaticity in
(5) what one's language learning opportunities are in terms of time and space
(6) how supportive the learning community around you is
Dear Ms Bathaie ,
these are very insightful informative articles on your study:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2167/illt44.0#.VSJzEVx9vww
http://www.languagesurfer.com/2013/03/14/can-you-learn-multiple-languages-at-the-same-time/
good luck with your research
a.
yes. It is possible especially for young learners provided that they are exposed to the 3 languages in conducive environment.
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