Language Acquisition: Then and Now. Part 2

written December, 2022.

Another vein that emerged in the late 1800s and continued to the 20th century was the idea of Great books. Great books, an established canon of works for one to pursue an understanding of and to engage in fruitful discussion did notably escape the control of religious dogma, since in its canon, many works actually criticized religion; yet, even in institutions that had a religious identity it was still valued to be a teaching way. Many of the books in the Western canon of Great books, that is those which are commonly ascribed to it are works of different languages than English. Due to this, the more advance Great book programs like University of Chicago and Colombia promote individuals learning languages that are relevant to reading primary sources. This tradition had been very strong in the United States and it lead to derivative trends we would see in the late 20th century.

In the middle of the 20th century, education became a national issue. The Soviets had just sent up Sputnik in 1959, and thus science and engineering became pressing nature for the White House administration. Due to this, education was flooded with money and other resources in order to catch up to the Soviet Union.22 The pursuit of knowledge in this period was greatly helped with the rise of the English language as the lingua franca, that is the common language of commerce. Despite, the decline of the British Empire after World War 2; the United States became the predominant power in the world and everyone knew it. With this development, the influence of French and German declined in scholarly activity; although in some fields such as Engineering and Science, German continued to have a prominent role.2323 This is due in part to the Marshal plan and its funding to rebuild key industry in Europe. The Germans from their destruction emerged as manufactures of lots of cars and other high quality goods. The French on the other hand recovered and focused on chemical and nuclear energy development. Since the Eisenhower administration had deregulated part of the nuclear industry for its civilian production, this helped out the industries of other nations expand as well.24

Something notable happened to language learning in the 1960s and that was the rise of applied linguistics and genitive grammar. Applied Linguistics, being the preferred term for is essentially the umbrella term that took over for Philology in the English speaking world, while Genitive grammar, pioneered by scholar Noam Chomsky, attempted to scientifically analyses grammar and other elements of language in a robust mater.25 This genitive grammar arrived at a time in which philosophy had also turned more analytical with those in the English speaking world preferring Analytical philosophy, a way of looking at philosophy with mathematics and unique symbolism versus the continental tradition of the European continent, which put less emphasis on mathematical structure. This continental tradition emerged largely in France and thus the French language became more sought after by those in the English speaking world. 26What is interesting is that although the demand of science was being met by American students at the time, the language acquisition largely did not keep up to speed.

For different reasons, English speaking nations then and now continue to have difficulty in establishing good performance in language education. In Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, students take years of language education in a foreign language and yet many do not get very far.27 Some place the blame on the dominance of English in parlance, some blame it on the failure of the overall system of education. Whatever the reason, this lack of success in the field has caused people in these nations to miss out on developments in other countries. This is especially profound for business people as many English speaking nations now have vast amounts of different people moving there and thus have to find a way to meet the new supply and demand element of this. Part of the problem is the lack of innovation shown in many programs. Secular education in these countries still insists on students memorizing words, puts little emphasis on natural reading and just doing grammar exercises.28 Not only does the memorizing of words not work efficiently in the pursuit of language learning, it also takes away from one of the key motivations of language learning, motivation.

Motivation has and will continue to be an important aspect of language learning. For prospective scholars of the past, languages allowed for interested parties to explore new areas of the world for the culture, archaeology, and even literature. For those in Europe who had tried to make a name for themselves in their own frontiers, this was a large motivation. The ideas of Europe diffused over into North America and became more pronounced in the time period after the US Civil War. This coincided with the rise of American ambition to join the European powers in economic and military expansion. The Navy in this way was the most pronounced in its influence for scholars because of their reach in different ports of the world. After the Spanish American war of 1898, the US had gained the territory of Puerto Rico, Guam and gave the Americans the ability to buy the Philippines from Spain for 20 million dollars. From this intervention, it grew the need for the US to have negotiators in Spanish in particular to reach the new populations that it had annexed.29

To train US soldiers and members of the Navy, the US employed special institutions to train for languages and corresponding military manuals. The role of language was notable for one of the premier institutions of the US Army, West Point. In 1803, West Point had the vast majority of its military guides and manuals in French, and thus many people who spoke French were recruited domestically and from abroad.3030 Before and After the US-Mexican War, officers had the pressing need for Spanish and thus that was added to the teaching curriculum in the 1850s on wards, and so; as the 20th century rolled around there was precedent for the teaching of languages. The First World War caused the US to increase its investment in its language capabilities, despite its late entrance into the War, it had seen the technical challenges that required advance knowledge of geography and technical vocabulary. Due to this, it was more common for US personnel in the 1920s – 1930s to send officers to learn languages at foreign embassies.3131 With the rise of Hitler and the Japanese imperialistic empire, it became clear that the US needed to increase its institutions for language learning. The Defense Language institute predecessors were established to meet the needs of the military. There rigorous training was given out to prepare soldiers in the field for the roles they needed to play in intelligence and reconnaissance. Not surprisingly, the institute was first centered in California, an area with many bilingual people. The Defense Language institute at this time was called “Military Intelligence Service Language School”, MISLS led the efforts in the training of field officers in languages important for the time.32 By 1941, Japanese and German had become security necessities for soldiers and thus the 4th Army was ordered to start a formal school for Japanese. There it was run by Lietuenant Colonel John Weckerling and Captain Kai Rasmussen, graduates of previous programs in Tokyo. They recruited many Japanese Americans to help and to learn for the United States.33

Unfortunately, the start of the World War in late 1941, caused many racial legislation to be passed. In accordance, Executive Order 9066 was passed by President Franklin Delanor Roosevelt that required Japanese Americans to be removed from the West coast of the United States3434 Due to this, the 4th Army was pressured significantly and lost many members of the classes from suspicion by military police and then in June 1942, MISLS was moved to Minnesota for the remainder of the war. In Minnesota, members of the graduate class with proficiency in Japanese were sent to the Pacific in short order.3535 Something significant happened just a year later in the midst of battle for the Pacific; in April 1943, a MIS linguist, Harold Fudenna intercepted a radio signal about the whereabouts of the infamous Admiral, Isoroku Yamamoto. This was the man who was responsible for the attack and planning of Pearl Harbor and from this information, the US Navy found Admiral Yamamoto’s plane and shot it down.3636 The death of such a respected military man from Japan was a major blow to the morale of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Successes such as this and further major operations established MISLS in a positive regard and thus when World War 2 had ended, MISLS returned to California and was renamed the Defense Language Institute. The Institute continued to expand and to this day runs two major centers, one in Monterrey, California and an English language school here in San Antonio, Texas.

In the aftermath of World War 2, the demand for language learning and better ways for professionals, soldiers, etc. to obtain it just increased because of the onset of the Cold War. The Cold War started slowly when talking about budgets and demand, but by the 1950s, massive expansion of the military and other services pushed many fields of diplomacy and education forward.38 For one thing, many interpreters and members of the military left the service with valuable skill sets. For Japanese studies, eminent scholars such as Donald Keene and Donald Richie came to establish themselves in Literature and film studies respectively. They had initial support from the US government during the occupation of Japan, but afterwards, it was individual effort in a new market that established them in their fields.39 In addition, the flow of information from the United States was not one sided, from Europe and Asia came many individuals to assist in economic and diplomacy. From Germany, the now declassified “Operation Paperclip” was an operation that confirmed and supported many German scientists from the ruined Third Reich, whether these individuals were virtuous or not was not important to the United States Government, but rather whether or not they had expertise to help bolster the Nuclear, rocket and other scientific developments aspects of the economy were they included to leave Germany.4040 To support this transition, many interpreters from the Defense Language Institute and other contractors with high secretary clearances were brought in to provide language support. All of these operations and developments were reasons why the next age of language acquisition moved from a very institution based system, to more of one of individual needs and aspirations.

The rise of the notable polyglot, that is by definition someone who has fluency and advanced proficient in many languages began to increase in the middle to late 20th century. There had been people in the past who had achieved great success in a number of languages, individuals such as Emil Krebs, John Milton and Giuseppi Mezzofanti; but, beginning in the 20th century offered more technology like video, audio recordings on tape and easier transportation for people to exploit these technological advancements to meet many people in different countries.4242 On these new technological grounds, individuals within the different structures of diplomacy, education and business sent prospective persons to learn in other countries and yet, they did not rely on coursework. For example, Steve Kaufman, a Canadian polyglot spent time in Hong Kong learning Mandarin, despite, Hong Kong being in a near proximity of China, Mandarin wasn’t the people of Hong Kong’s primary language and so, Mr. Kaufman went out of his way to learn by tape, reading graded readers, and speaking to as many people as possible. From there, he was posted to Japan and had to restart the process. Afterwards, throughout the 1980s onward, he was able to use self study methods to pick up many other languages for personal interest and business.4343 Steve Kaufmann methods of reading lots of books and listening to audio is what scholars of language acquisition call “input based learning”. The idea being that the majority of the exposure one would get from this is going to be from a personal self lead experience by working through material. This idea of self driven work is supported by scholars such as Professor Stephen Krashen’s research into applied linguistics and bilingual studies, his input hypothesis has been that comprehensible input, that is stories and sentences that can mostly be understood by the reader while adding new vocabulary is a strong method and perhaps the best method to learning a foreign language.44 While Krashen’s ideas and methods are not without some scrutiny, many individuals still find value in his ways of learning language, even proponents of Output based learning.

Output based learning is that of speaking with different people and producing the language as being the main method of learning the language. Of course, some input is needed in this method, yet, most of the productive work is done by producing the language of choice according to its proponents. An example of the output method in action would be of the polyglot Moses McCormick. On the social media website, Youtube; he would create many videos of him walking around in many different venues like malls, grocery stores, retail stores and even public gatherings and ask people he met, using context clues to whether or not they were from another nation and then ask them a series of introductory information. Moses McCormick stated on his videos and posts that he adapted a standard set of sayings and expressions from self study books such as Colloquial series and the Teach Yourself series and used personal experience from his tutoring and the usage of connecting words to formulate a standard procedure of what to learn first and then expand from this common curriculum. Doing this, he was able to establish a baseline of understanding of different languages and would then go on to search for additional material. As mentioned before about the failure of many students to learn how to hold a basic conversation with people of other countries after years of study, this method was much more effective for those who have adopted it. It is not a surprise, since the output hypothesis has been researched by scholars into its utility. The success of these modern polyglots in scenarios and learning pedagogy that largely avoid the classroom has caused many to seek out new ways to find more efficient methods in the process of language learning.47 Both of these polyglots, Moses McCormick and Steve Kaufman show a dialectic that has emerged in modern second language acquisition, the argument of a pure input based education versus an output based method.

Language Acquisition: Then and Now. Part 1

written December, 2022.

The History of language education is one of parallel ideas and continuously changing movements. From the age of the Enlightenment to our present time period there has always been multiple ways of thoughts and methods on how to teach language. In the time leading up into the 1700s, Christianity and its various lineages had played a major role in shaping the way in which people had thought about education, including languages; however, by the end of the 1700s, the character of education had changed. This was because the Age of Enlightenment had fundamentally changed how scholars and the public had looked at religion and thus this directly impacted the way in which education was taught. Secular education took a more important role in the upbringing of many professionals and thus while Latin was the main language of science and with its supplements of Ancient Greek, by the end of the 1700s and as the 1800s progressed, vernacular languages of English, French and German had become dominant in the time of the Industrial revolutions.1 With this reality in mind, it becomes sensible to limit the examination of this history of language acquisition to the United States, in order to track the developments from the 1700s onward. This is appropriate since despite the colonial foundation that had settled the Americas, the United States was more free to pursue different lines of heritage for its education. In the Americas, individuals such as Benjamin Franklin and Horace Mann had called for reform of education.2 This included establishing “classless schools” and public libraries. Such luxuries were not available to the common person in other western nations; therefore, it gave Educators the ability to develop into separate and remarkable paths for all education and more specifically language learning.

In following the paths language education was to take, it is appropriate to consider the origins. Class played an important role in European and American systems. The Monastery and private institutions gave those with capital the ability to become knowledgeable in a strict education of the Bible and great works composed by those who had established themselves as remarkable in the discourses of philosophy. Latin, being the language of religion and many scientific works in its later Latin form was studied and grammatical cases and tables were studied vehemently.3

This sort of rote education is not unique to the Western education experience from that time period of the 1700s to 1800s, as education in other parts of the world, notably cultures in the Asian continent utilize a lot of the same education pedagogy for thousands of years4. As the 1800s progressed, the monastery lost a lot of power of authority with the diffusion of knowledge to the majority and thus, private religious schools and secular schools became the prime mover of education.5 Along with this, a robust tradition of literary excellence established in the old world and beginning in the new world gave more students the opportunity to expand their horizons for understanding text. This motivated many to learn German, Italian and French in their studies to understand the radical ideas of writers of the day.6 What the diffusion of knowledge also allowed was the substantiation of knowledge being taught to those of the working class. From the 1840s onward, class played less of a role onto what education one received. Horace Mann in his role as secretary of Education in the state of Massachusetts, he worked to create a standard system where teacher would learn about trends of teaching and pedagogy that had been accessed as meritorious.7 In addition, he believed in taxes from the locals to fund their school systems and more involvement from the community, a common core that embraces democracy and ideas of the US constitution, Education must not be religiously aligned to one sect versus another, and that teachers should be well prepared to teach.8 To support his idea, he traveled to Europe and reported changes that were to be made in benefit of the school system. For the aspect of language education, he focused on children learning whole words instead of the alphabet, this is similar to how phrases can be learned in the approaches to learning foreign languages. Although, Horace Mann’s idea was limited in scope, as time progressed, more people came to support the idea of learning phrases to learn language.9

One of the biggest challenges that had been persistent among Americans in the 1800s and early 1900s was the problem of illiteracy.10 The nature of the US economy of the time meant there was many factors that had played into limiting education for people. Many immigrant groups did not speak English when they arrived at the United States and due to crowded conditions in cities, some did not have the opportunity to good schooling. To add on, there was the existing minority population within these areas whom due to racism and other factors such as economics had to send their children into the work force early or did not have the institutions to give people a solid education.11

For the immigrant populations, the rise of nationalism; particularly around the World War 1 era directly impacted German immigrants that they were not taught their heritage language. Other groups, even if they weren’t considered enemies of the United States were told by societal powers and even amongst their own families to assimilate and leave their culture behind.1212 This mentality was very unfortunate since many children missed out on rich literature from their home languages and didn’t receive a strong education in English and thus limited their prospects for advancement in the economy. What is interesting about this is how despite not being a direct class system like in the United Kingdom, the wealthy and business classes were actually showing the opposite of this trend. Language learning had always been important to those in Europe in order to conduct business and diplomacy and the same was true in the United States. Education at Ivy league schools and other elite institutions prided themselves on their robust philology program13

Philology, coming from the Greek root of Philologia, or the “love of language” is the term for the study of language in written and oral sources. It had a rich heritage in Europe and that knowledge had permeated the United States education system along with its overall ideas of the Prussian education.1414 With such a strong connection to Germany and its academic community, some scholars rejected the ideas and manners of this study due to World War 1. Of course, this mindset had roots in blatant nationalism and not objective criticism in methodology of learning language, it did wane the term in the United States, but the ideas still existed just under different labels. In the North East United States, specialization and overall rates of literacy were increasing at a steady rate; however, in other parts of the country, particularly the Southern United States, efforts were not as widespread.15

Many in the Southern United States did not receive a strong education until long into the 20th century, as Jim crow laws and other barriers kept many from joining their northern peers in educational attainment.16 This mentality kept the South behind in development, but did not affect the north as much as although education had been more centralized by the end of the 1800s, by the middle of the 1900s; much of education had a common school system but with a very decentralized structure. States more than anything had instructed schools on how to run their curriculum.17

For some of the gaps in education that existed, there was the increasing role of libraries and private tutoring that emerged to fill gaps. Public library systems greatly expanded in the 20th century, particularly in the American South and West, where large populations were moving to in the 1930s and 1940s. Philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller had established foundations and trusts to give away vasts amount of money to establish universities and public library systems. For those systems that existed, buildings and material was added in vast amounts.18

One of the primary institutions to benefit from this philanthropy was the University of Chicago. University of Chicago along with University of Berkeley, UCLA and Colombia had established themselves as premier places to learn history, philosophy and in that pursuit, languages.19 Language learning in the 20th century became even more important as the archives of European libraries and Universities became more accessible. It was not enough to know the just the English speaking approach to a historical or philosophical topic, but rather all Western sources needed to be consulted to have robust scholarship. In this vein, scholars would learn the language of the area in which they were studying more in depth. This tradition had originated in the British Empire as they expanded their colonial borders. For example, many interpreters and scholars of Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian emerged in the ranks of the British East India company to reap the rewards of civil service in addition to basically having little real barriers to accessing ancient and contemporary works.20 From the transition from the company to the British Raj, their role only became more important. Imperialism was not the only factor in this, but the Industrial revolutions continued the need to exchange information on different technology.