How Do We Know What It Means to Know

8/3/2019 How Do We Know What It Means to Know

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Knowing a Language: how do we know what it means to know

K. Stein

If you browse the position postings for English teachers put out by Japanese

universities, you are bound, as often as not, to come across the line, "Must

have native-like ability in English." From the perspective of a university

hiring committee, being able to teach a language requires "native-like

ability." Which, one might think, required a rather high level of 'knowing'

English. But, one would imagine that, just as important as native-like

fluency, a university level English instructor should also have a fair

command of grammatical forms and be able to explicate them in a way that

would be understandable by students faced with the task of producing

research papers in English. And yet, a native speaker of English might very

well never reach a level of conscious awareness of English forms (or essay

structure for that matter) which would allow them to teach a course at a

university. And here we hit on the first thorny issue of what 'knowing a

language' actually means.

One could say that knowing grammatical forms is 'knowing about a

language' and not actually 'knowing a language'. Having information about

a language is very different from being able to use it. Let's imagine a

student who has fallen in love with the present perfect tense and takes

every chance he can get to explain how it is formed and in what types of

situations it should be used. This is still no guarantee that said student will,

when called to do so, accurately use present perfect tense for

communicative purposes such as in the sentence, "I haven't received an

invitation to a party since I started talking about the present perfect tense

all the time."

In fact, according to Krashen's Input Hypothesis, there is no need to

explicitly teach form. Acquiring a language means having an implicit

Kevin Stein [email protected]"Knowing a Language"


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understanding without the need for explicit knowledge. Where would that

put our hypothetical present perfect loving student if, with a little bit of

conscious thought and a few seconds of reflection, he does accurately use

the present perfect tense? Has the student really somehow learned the

language without actually acquiring it? And does it matter in light of the

fact that the appropriate form needed to convey meaning has been

produced?

As a more (or perhaps less) extreme example, would someone who can read

and write at a high level but can barely produce intelligible conversation at

a beginner level 'know' English? In fact, these English speakers can be

found in academia throughout Japan. They can read and produce scientific

journal articles in English, but might have difficulty following basic

conversational English. And yet they do 'know' English, when knowing is

measured by the medium in which the language will be used and the

specific message which is to be conveyed. In fact, these users of English (as

opposed to speakers of English) merely reflect the common sense idea

expounded by Nation that, "there is something about each of the language

skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing that makes them different

from the others." And concurrently the, "more time you spend doing

something, the better you are likely to be at doing it." So while these UOEs

know English in one sense, they do not have the skills to utilize all four

communication skills.

Perhaps we could use a Chomskian idea of generative grammar as a base

and say that knowing a language involves having command of enough finite

rules and vocabulary to create an infinite number of sentences. But how

would we measure when this tipping point took place? Wouldn't every

learner have to input a detailed sample of language for analysis to

determine if they had reached the threshold for infinite variable sentence

production? Still, there is something to the idea that 'knowing a language'

does require some ability to use it in a creative manner, that it requires a



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user of the language to be able to adapt the language they have to

situations which are unforeseen. That being said, even the snubbed "set

phrase" has gotten a rethink in recent years, with the idea that chunking

might account for much more of language than current theories take into

account (Lightbown). So the easy back and forth that comes with

commenting on the weather, while not meeting the requirements of having

acquired a language, still might be considered a kind of 'knowing a

language'. Which should result in a collective sigh of relief from the people

of my hometown Farmington Hills where people rarely speak publicly about

anything else.

So, if we are in Farmington Hills, and we know that the person talking to us

is probably talking about the weather, we can catch the drift of what is

being said even if we don't pay much attention. Which is good as we

probably won't. The skill of contextualizing allows us to understand more

than we would in a decontextualized setting. And this is also true for

someone using a second language as well (Lightbown). Even when a

feature of the language is incomprehensible, the meaning or content can be

understood. And this ability to contextualize is based not only on an

interlocutors linguistic ability, but on previous experience and knowledge in

general. So what a person 'knows' has a profound effect on how much of

verbal and written communication they will be able to understand. Seen in

this light, the general idea of 'knowing' and the idea of 'knowing a language'

are like the cultural and natural features of a topographical map, both of

which are necessary for understanding where you standing.

In the end, perhaps a fairer question than, "What does it mean to 'know a

language?'" might be, "What do we expect a student of a language to learn

and eventually know?" And perhaps here I might be able to come up with a

more concrete set of criterion. I want my students to use spoken English in

an accurate enough fashion that what they want to say can be

communicated without the negotiation for meaning overwhelming the



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content. I would like my students to be able to read and write at a level

which would allow them to function in an English speaking environment so

that they will get their needs met and not pose a hazard to themselves or

others. And I expect my students to understand enough spoken English to

recognize when they didn't know something, so that they can direct the

conversation in such a way as to be able to once again follow what is being

said. Because in the end, 'knowing a language' is not a static condition, but

a reflection of an individual's ever changing linguistic abilities and how those

abilities convey and make sense of messages, whether those messages be a

weather forecast, an ode to the present perfect tense, or a serious

discussion about knowing what it means to know something.

Sources:

Ellis, R (1997) Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Krashen, S.D. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language

Acquisition. Retrieved 1 October, 2011 from

http://sdkrashen.com/Principles_and_Practice/Principles_and_Practice.pdf

Nation, P. (2007) "The Four Strands." Innovation in Language Learning and

Teaching 1 (1), 1-11

Lightbown, P. M. (2003), "SLA research in the classroom/SLA research for the

classroom." Language Learning Journal, 28 pp. 4-13


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How Do We Know What It Means to Know