Language is one of the greatest human inventions. We created language to empower ourselves to share our heart and mind and reciprocate as others do the same. Language helped us improve survival skills and organise efforts among big group of people. Language gave words to our imaginations and helped create a world of stories, the most potent tool of collective actions, across time and space boundaries!
To be true, we really know little about how we learn a language – the mother-tongue, a second tongue or a foreign tongue. Over the past few decades, this is what we have come to know about learning a language (with an overt focus on second-language learning such as English – a unique challenge for India):
- The size of frequently used vocabulary is a fair determinant of proficiency in a language. A vocabulary of nearly 5,000 words will afford a fairly high level of comprehension for most communicative needs and entry-level literature-reading capability. To comprehensively understand literary works in a language, a vocabulary of 15,000 + words would be good for the additional infrequent words used (this estimate is writers’ personal observation to help anchor vocabulary targets for children).
- In second-language learning, assessment of comprehension of the texts read is very important. Children must initially be allowed to express their comprehension in mother tongue for the texts read
in the second language; there is no other way to know their level of comprehension of texts read in a second language. - In second-language learning (especially a ‘totally foreign’ language that is not spoken around children’s homes e.g. English for over 80% Indians), children will have to start with Reading (R), then learn to Write (W) to internalise the structure and vocabulary of the language, followed by Speaking (S) in that language and then Listening (L) to other people also speaking it. Parents must NOT expect children to learn to speak English in schools if it is not spoken at home or around; reading and writing capability in English are the first two steps in learning English. If children do speak English, it would only be a memorised language and they will not be able to use the learnt bits in other contexts.
The steps of formally learning mother-tongue (i.e. learning the mother-tongue in school) are very different from formally learning a second language. The first step in learning the mother-tongue is Listening (L) to everyone speaking in the mother-tongue, the second is Speaking (S) to others in the mother-tongue, the third is to start Reading (R) it in school and the last activity is to Write (W) in it. - One of the more important issues in second-language learning is whether second-language reading is a ‘reading challenge’ or ‘language challenge’. There is no doubt among us (writers of this book) that high first-language reading proficiency (i.e. low ‘reading ability challenge’) helps in second-language reading but a threshold level knowledge of the vocabulary and basic grammar of the second-language (i.e. ‘medium language understanding challenge’) is a must before reading proficiency of the first language can help in second-language reading. What defines the threshold language challenge of the second language? It is the level of vocabulary rather than the understanding of grammar!
More importantly, the proficiency in first-language reading is the more important determinant of second-language reading ability if the target is to achieve high level of proficiency in the second-language; if the second language is going to be used at literary or academic level then the reading skills challenge is the bigger block compared to language comprehension challenge. More generally, literary and academic levels in a language are mostly through written language (therefore, more dependent on reading skills) whereas communicative and basic levels are effectively learnt orally also (thus, less dependent on reading skills). - Ironical as it may sound, the efficiency and effectiveness of reading is affected by ‘non-reading skills’ too. The more important of the several ‘non-reading skills’ are:
- Background knowledge of the topic/subject of the text being read and the general knowledge of things around the topic/subject
- The style and ‘content’ of the text (in terms of how well it is written)
- Motivation to read
- Relevant diagrams which help visualisation
- Look and presentation of the text To summarise, the formal process of learning the first-language and process of learning the second-language must not be the same.
