Literature, Language Learning & Translation

Study a Language -- Learn a Language

noreply@blogger.com (Eric W. Vogt) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:36:00 +0000

Recently, I have been re-examining statements and observations that have been made over the ages about teaching, studying and learning languages. Some come from prefaces to old textbooks, some from the early 1800s and another from the late 1700s; others from classical authors, poets, as well as Medieval and Renaissance philosophers. This blog post is about how to improve vocabulary acquisition -- and leverage it to launch into grammar.

Fist, it is important to point out that teaching, studying and learning are all very different endeavors. Aquinas, for instance, examines from many angles the question of whether one person can teach another person anything. That he even asks the question strongly suggests that he, as a teacher, had his doubts! Communicating knowledge is what teaching is about, but how that is done is the question. And the type of knowledge, the learner, the circumstance and so forth will greatly impact the answer to that question. To paraphrase Aquinas' conclusion in part, he observes that teachers can only be expected to organize the information and communicate it to their pupils in a language and at a level that they can be reasonably expected to grasp.

A few centuries after Aquinas, another great and influential teacher of Latin came along. His name was Comenius. Professor Pieter Loonen has written a very informative article on Comenius. One of the lessons to be derived from Dr. Loonen's article has to do with how to learn vocabulary, or teach it. Employing the senses, at least one of them, is important. Comenius would have liked picture dictionaries. He also would have approved of having students put new words to use as soon as possible, in meaningful or at least memorable sentences. He would probably not have liked flash cards that only have a word on each side.

Drawing on Comenius, Bacon, Aquinas, treatises on the art of memory, and my own experience, I have one suggestion that it powerful because it harnesses the power of the imagination and is 100% portable!

One really only knows what can be recalled and used. Where language mastery is concerned, if it has to be looked up, it hasn't been learned. This fact suggests that students should not rely too much or for too long on flashcards or even picture dictionaries.

So, I propose a method of creating the picture dictionaries in your head.

I call this method the Solar System Model. It is anchored on nouns since, as was observed by Bacon (and quoted by Loonen), knowledge begins with the proper naming of things:

Let's say you need to learn vocabulary about school. Imagine a book, floating in space. Imagine that it is the name of a planet circling another, larger visual image, in this case, a school building. This school building is the sun in this solar system that deals with school -- a main theme word. Around this sun revolve planets of various sizes: the book we have just imagined, a chair, a table, a pencil, and as many objects one expects to be related to school. Next, around each of these planets, like moons, revolve the verbs that are most commonly associated with each noun. Around the planet named book, then, revolve the moons named to read, to open, to close, to check out and so forth. Around the planet named pencil will revolve the moons named to write, to erase, to sharpen and to break.

Each major theme, such as school, shopping, food, travel, clothes, etc., becomes a sun at the center of its own solar system. As students build their imaginary solar systems with a thematic sun at each center, populating them with planets and moons, they will add other features, beginning with how to make the nouns plural, what articles to use with them and article-noun-adjective agreement in gender and number. They'll also add subject-verb agreement as they also expand on the verbs and learn to conjugate them.

Students will find that some solar systems are naturally related to other solar systems and can relate them by visualizing them close to each other in some way. The point is: imagination and visualization are brought into play, creatively and deliberately, to increase memory and thus the ability to recall what one needs when one needs it.

By using this Solar System Model, students will naturally expand from naming things to saying something about them, gradually expanding their knowledge and ability to properly apply the rules of grammar.

How to Improve Your Pronunciation of Spanish

noreply@blogger.com (Eric W. Vogt) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:32:00 +0000

If you're a high school or college student who is taking Spanish right now and are struggling with pronunciation, this article will give you some practical advice and hints about how to improve your pronunciation.

The most important thing you can do is to listen with your full attention to the sounds of Spanish, as spoken by someone who speaks it well. Remember, some native speakers of English would not be good models for teaching a foreigner, so choose your model carefully. I often recommend that students listen to songs, get the lyrics and sing along -- karaoke style. One website in particular has lyrics and video, and although often I find grammatical or spelling errors, I still recommend it. I also recommend one musical video in particular by Shakira -- not only because is it very artistic, but because the close ups of her face make it possible to see how she pronounces many sounds. This may sound silly, but babies watch mouths when they are learning to speak.

Next, pay close attention to vowels. For practical purposes, Spanish has five -- and they are all pure. It may seem like a simple thing, but English speakers have to reign in the range of vowels in order not to have a bad accent. Here are some clear guidelines, based on the "standard" American pronunciation of the English words in these examples:

The letter A is pronounced as the A in the English word father, never as the A in cat.
The letter E is pronounced almost* like the A in the English word paper, never as the E in meet.
The letter I is pronounced like the EE in the English word meet, never as the I in imitate.
The letter O is prononced almost* like the O in the English word hope, never as the O in office.
The letter U is pronounced like the OO in moon, never as the U in up.

* Avoid the upglide into a final Y (as in they) or final U sound (as in how) in these two English examples.

Finally, Spanish consonants present English speakers with some subtle, but important, problems. The most obvious is the way English speakers tend to explode the consonants P, T and K sounds (the latter being found in que, qui, ca, co and cu).

Practice saying the words Pepe, Carlos and Tomás with your hand an inch in front of your mouth. If you feel air, you're exploding the consonants too much. These sounds should be reigned in, so to speak, so as to tend to sound a bit more like B, D and G, respectively.

The trilled R causes a lot of English speakers trouble. There is a way to trick one's tongue into saying it! First, you have to be aware that when pronouncing even the simple R sound in Spanish, the tongue is not positioned in the same place as in the English name Ralph. It is positioned in the same place as when pronouncing the tt or dd in the English words palmetto or paddle or rattle. Once you figure that out, place a D in between the words EL REY > EL DREY and try practicing that. It will probably take a few tries, but you'll actually feel the difference when it happens.

Lastly, when a word ends in a consonant and the next in a vowel, the consonant "goes over" to the vowel when speaking. Likewise, if one word ends in a vowel and the next begins with one, they will also elide into one syllable, more often than not.

Don't forget: there is no substitute for consistent practice accompanied by attentive listening. Don't give up.

Oh, and you might enjoy this website too, for practice with some poetry in Castillian. Both sound and text may be found here.

Jump Start Your Study of Spanish Before School Starts

noreply@blogger.com (Eric W. Vogt) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:43:00 +0000

This blog is dedicated to all the recent high school graduates who are about to become incoming freshmen.

Did you study Spanish in high school? My experience tells me that most of you, if your school had a foreign-language requirement, did take Spanish.

Let's explore some of the reasons why you may have chosen Spanish, starting with the two most common lame ones.

Lame reason #1: "Spanish is the easy language."

First of all, "easy" is a very relative term. Yes, for English speakers, it's easier than Mandarin or Russian. But if you want to actually speak it and not have a ridiculously foreign (American) accent, it will take serious work. The same must be said of the need to study grammar, just as you would trigonometry.

Bottom line: If you want to speak any language correctly, it takes hard work and attention to details. Be a perfectionist.

Lame reason #2: "Spanish is pronounced just as it's written."

Not true. English and Spanish use the same Latin-based alphabet, but many of the sound values of the letters are quite different. Instead of the approximately 14 different vowel sounds for the five written vowels, Spanish has, practically speaking, only five. You'd think it would be easier to have fewer vowel sounds but English speakers continue to pronounce many vowels as they would if they were found in similar looking English words -- and the result is a horrible accent. By the way, Spanish also has one letter that's unique: ñ.

At a local level, you may have chosen Spanish because you heard the teacher was easy or didn't give a lot of homework. On the other hand, if you're interested enough to be reading this blog, it's more likely that you took Spanish for the right reasons. You may have heard the teacher was tough and gave a lot of homework, and that students in his or her class actually learned something.

Right reason #1: "Spanish is useful in any career in the USA."

This is a no-brainer nowadays, but twenty-five years ago, teachers of Spanish had to extole the virtues of law enforcement or becoming a customs agent. Not so now. Medicine, education, law, sales, accounting, advertising.... So, knowing Spanish -- and I mean really knowing it -- will boost your earning power.

Right reason #2: "In the USA, Spanish is the most commonly spoken language other than English, so knowing Spanish will increase my ability to engage in useful social networking."

So true, so obvious, I almost didn't think it necessary to point it out. Knowing any language offers economic and cultural advantages but, to put it in business terms, knowing Spanish in the USA has more immediate "return on investment (ROI)."

You may be struggling with Spanish, but your struggle can be won. Your efforts can pay off!

On the right side of my blog, you'll see links to my three books on the subjunctive, the past tenses and pronouns. By the way, I'll soon have another, on irregular verbs. You'll also find a link to a posting I did in which I explain my rationale for these books. You might want to pass this along.

Finally, I'd love to hear from you. I invite you to post comments, explore my previous blogs.

It's Summer: Learn Spanish!

noreply@blogger.com (Eric W. Vogt) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:36:00 +0000

Now that school is out, it might be a good time to brush off a New Year's resolution about learning another language.

Of course, I'm an advocate of learning Spanish simply because it is the majority language of the Western Hemisphere.

Many people ask me how to get started learning Spanish. Even if you know practically nothing beyond hola, buenos días and how to count to ten, you can use those three simple things to build up a workable and immediately useful bank of phrases. You can learn the rest of the numbers in a very short time, along with days of the week and months. Armed only with that set of related linguistic data, you'll be able to give your phone number, understand schedules, prices, make appointments and more.

Knowing basic greetings is at least an icebreaker and lets the other person know that you are willing to step outside your comfort zone of language and culture -- bridging a divide that many people don't even try to cross.

But if you want to get serious about really learning Spanish and you're just beginning, I recommend Rosetta Stone. You can find my review here. But there comes a time when you'll actually need to go face-to-face with another person and begin meaningful exchanges. That's why I've developed my online program.

Even if you're already pretty good at Spanish -- let's say you're an intermediate-level speaker -- you will benefit from conversational practice with my online program. The average person does not know much about his or her native language -- and can't explain or model proper speech in ways that teach the language to non-natives, that's why I encourage you to take a look at my face-to-face program.

Finally, almost every non-native speaker of Spanish has trouble with pronouns, past tenses and the notorious subjunctive.

Then again, maybe you're just planning a vacation to Mexico -- my phrasebook will come in handy!

If you're wondering about studying in Mexico, I personally endorse The Language Immersion School in Veracruz, Mexico.

If you are a serious student of the language and want to get a taste of its classical literature, take a look -- and even listen to my recitations of Góngora's Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea and Pablo Neruda's Oda a la bella desnuda.

Whatever your plans for the summer, I encourage you to include Spanish in them!

Spanish Live

noreply@blogger.com (Eric W. Vogt) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:59:00 +0000

The website I promised has been launched! You can now learn Spanish face-to-face at my new site. Whether you're a high school or college student in need of tutoring in Spanish, an adult seriously pursuing a life-long goal of mastering Spanish, an executive or other professional who needs to learn Spanish for professional reasons, this site is for you.

My background in executive education, as a professor of Spanish for international business now comes to you live, over the internet, via Skype - provided you have a high-speed connection.

For years, it has been my dream to be able to teach one-on-one to serious students, by-passing the inhuman and dehumanizing confines of brick-and-mortar institutions. Technology has finally caught up with that vision.

I hope to hear from you soon!

Have Fun with Spanish

noreply@blogger.com (Eric W. Vogt) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:17:00 +0000

I've been too serious for the past year. I guess because I get frustrated with students who don't take Spanish class seriously. But hey, I only really teach the front row anyway. The rest are there subsidizing everyone else's education.

So this blog post is for the students I love or ever have ... kinda like Willy Nelson singing To All the Girls I've Loved Before.

So, what are some cool and fun sites for Spanish students to explore? I'm thinking of people old enough to read this blog and maybe old enough to recognize Willy's song.

One of my favorites, and an award-winning site is an Argentine site about the tango. It's awesome. It has the music, the lyrics, history of the tango (the dance form Argentina is known for) and even a huge dictionary of Lunfardo, the dialect of Argentina. The site even has video of various types.

I have two others for wine lovers. One is in Spain and the other in Chile. They are good for getting acquainted with the types of vocabularies you might need if you love wine, order wine, are in the wine business... you name it, if it's wine you love and Spanish you're learning or practicing, you'll really dig these sites.

Do you like Latin pop music? If you do, go to this great site for music, with lyrics. Now and then, the lyrics are printed in a sort of pop shorthand that reminds me of text messaging, so don't go there for spelling lessons! When searching an artist, do so by first name, not last.

Serious students and even business people will appreciate the LANIC site. Just go there; it will speak for itself.

And then, I have to say, try my poetry site. Don't forget to check out my three grammar books (see the links upper right?). And stay tuned, because soon, I'll be online with a website to teach Spanish live in full streaming audio visual via Skype!

Enjoy Spanish. It has long been a world language whose influence, culturally, economically and politically has been great, but now it is growing exponentially.

Online Resource for Learning and Teaching Spanish

noreply@blogger.com (Eric W. Vogt) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:53:00 +0000

Interested in online language-learning resources? Are you looking for understandable and well articulated explanations about Spanish grammar? Perhaps you're a teacher or even a homeschooler in search of tips for effective teaching of certain difficult concepts -- even experienced teachers can use a new trick. If so, you'll love what I've put together at BrightHub. The philosophy of its creators is to provide expert opinions about programs, products and so forth.

Starting more than a year ago, I have had a lot of latitude for creating teaching and learning aids based on my experience. Frequently, textbook explanations are shallow, even timid -- but I like to explain grammar by teaching the concept and following up with examples. All the examples in all the lesson plans or mini lessons are translated. Each item is printable and most fit on one 8.5 X 11 page.

I'd love to have you use them. Just open the link above and scroll down. Check in often too, since more are on their way and much work is being done to organize and cross reference them. I invite suggestions for other articles too, whether you are a student, a teacher, a parent or an administrator of a Spanish language program.

Language Pedagogy: Nihil sub sole novum

noreply@blogger.com (Eric W. Vogt) — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:50:00 +0000

Nothing that is marketed by book publishers or software manufacturers really is new in terms of the methods used to achieve cognition -- that moment when a concept sinks in and becomes part of a learner's own intellectual arsenal. What many think of as new are not the methods but the media of delivery -- particularly software, the web and so on. These wonderful tools are extensions of a teacher somewhere, extensions of what he or she would be doing with a student if they were face-to-face. This is not to diminish the importance of technological advances, on the contrary; improvements in technology which over the past decades have married the typewriter with the telephone and the television, producing PCs, have vastly increased the access to information, people and, as we are concerned with here, instruction.

I have examined Spanish textbooks used over the past two-hundred years and have noted how their authors were pragmatically or culturally motivated. Not surprisingly, the various methods they claim to use respond to wider societal issues and values. After all, textbooks are products that have to sell.

In the USA's early days, a perky desire for establishing commerce with our newly liberated neighbors to the south seemed to prevail, appealing to Yankee pragmatism and its mercantile spirit. Later, the value of foreign languages was more an expression of upper class aspirations of a growing middle class who aspired to imitate the leisure class and send their children on the Grand Tour of Europe. Hence, cultural advantages were cited in the preface to many textbooks.

As I have examined textbooks, I find amusingly enthusiastic declarations of loyalty to the Direct Method in one text, to the Natural Method in another (often treating previous methods or other methods as obsolete, unenlightened and so forth). Late in the nineteenth century, it dawned on someone to glean from all previous "methods" and inject some sense into at least the rhetoric of pedagogy and advertising and baptize his book as the culmination of much labor to create the Eclectic Method.

The fact is, when an effective teacher is in front of one student, the goal is to try to find out what learning strategies work best for that person -- and damn what it is called. A good teacher has a bag of tricks and knows how to explain the same concept in many ways. However, when a teacher is in front of a crowd of students, as is most often the case in current schools from kindergarten through college, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find one method that will work for all students, every day. Using every trick for every concept would make for a very long day indeed -- a fact that goes a long way to explain why so many people are frustrated with the education establishment, other issues aside.

In the late 1960s, a wonderful book was published, entitled 25 Centuries of Language Teaching, by L.G. Kelly. When I first began to teach, nearly thirty years ago, the director of the graduate student instructors made us read it and talk about it. He wanted us to not get the wool pulled over our eyes when a textbook claimed to be "the latest" thing in foreign language pedagogy. In the ensuing years, I have seen many fads come and go. Thanks to that book, I became healthily cynical and I have endeavored to curb my enthusiasm and simply keep adding to my bag of tricks -- know the subject and the methods will follow became my personal motto.

Over the decades that followed, I also observed the explosion of a "new" field: the second-language acquisition expert. As I have listened to many newly minted PhDs effusively endorsing this or that method or text, accompanied by more ancillary materials and programs than I could ever use, I have become concerned that consumerism has eclipsed pedagogy, that too many gadgets and clicks of a mouse now stand between a learner's mind and the object of study. Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, it is important to unplug and confront the material, not the media through which one is trying to learn. I have sometimes learned a new trick from one of these experts, but every time, returning to 25 Centuries of Language Learning, I have found that the method has been tried before. Using modern technologies to deliver what is, in the final analysis, tried-and-true methods, gives the illusion of novelty. As the great Jesuit wit Baltasar Gracián observed in the 1650s: Novelty is bewitching.

Ultimately, the best foreign language textbooks and software programs are eclectic -- not in an abstract sense for public relations and advertising, but in a true sense, in terms of their balance of activities to appeal to different learning styles as evenly as possible. They include a good mix of activities that appeal to different styles of learning in order to not -- please excuse the phrase -- leave anyone behind for very long.

Getting Acquainted

noreply@blogger.com (Eric W. Vogt) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 20:20:00 +0000

Welcome to my blog about language, language learning and translation

I'm a professor of Golden Age Spanish literature, in addition to being a professional translator. I was certified by the American Translators Association in 1993, for technical translation from English to Spanish.

Early in my translation career, I became involved with computer-assisted translation, sometimes also called machine-assisted translation. That was just after the Cold War ended and many interesting translation programs were emerging from previously classified efforts to find a way to eliminate the human translator, or in the case of speech, the interpreter. These efforts, by the end of the 1980s, had mostly been failures. However, enough progress had been made to begin to market commercial products that had the potential to increase a translator's speed as well as to enable translators to create and manage multilingual databases.

In 1992, I founded an in-house translation operation of The American National Red Cross, at their national headquarters in Washington, D.C. During the three years I administered this operation for regulated biomed documents, I created a 16,000-term dictionary utilizing a program called Globalink.

Besides that experience, I had previously worked doing some legal consecutive interpreting, in Philadelphia and D.C., but my first love has always been translating texts. I also have translated some arcane works, such as one on Polynesian archeoastronomy, as well as more mundane business, legal and financial documents. As a scholar, I published my translation of Santa Teresa de Avila's complete poetry.

Recently, I have been involved with an exciting VC-backed project known as BrightHub, whose motto is Truth Before Commerce. We have created a community of experts who make available their studied opinions about a wide range of consumer electronics, including language-learning and translation software. Not all opinions are equal, as anyone can see by surfing Amazon or other similar sites. If anyone can weigh in with an opinion, how is the consumer to sift through all the postings and find only the ones expressed by people whose business it is to know the product, service or industry? BrightHub is filling this niche nicely.

Please visit my reviews and register at the BrightHub site where you can find language-learning and translation software. You don't have to buy anything to register. Whether or not you are a language expert of any kind, you are invited to rate the helpfulness of reviews, click here.