Becoming Fluent

The slowing that adults experience has a variety of important implications for the adult foreign language learner, particularly in the classroom and in interacting with native speakers. In foreign language classes, instructors frequently employ a cued response technique. That is, the teacher will point to a student, and then the student is expected to quickly provide an appropriate response. This can be an effective way of keeping the students’ attention, and a rapid-paced, dynamic approach can certainly make a class feel more engaging. However, an adult who has returned to the classroom after several years away may find herself not keeping up with her younger counterparts by being able to respond as quickly as they can. She may know just as much as they do (or even more), but she may not be able to articulate a reply as swiftly.

In a similar way, conversations between native speakers are marked by very short pauses between turns. The average length of these pauses is only a few tenths of a second. It is amazing to consider how much cognitive processing takes place over such a short period of time: the conversational partner’s statement has to be comprehended, a suitable response must be crafted, and the motor program to articulate the words has to be initiated. However, all of this is going to be slower for the nonnative, nonfluent speaker. As a result, a short pause may occur in the language student’s speech, and this may be interpreted by the native conversational partner as hesitancy or even a lack of cooperativeness.²

So what is the relatively slower, nonnative speaker to do? The best advice is don’t pressure yourself—expect that your replies will take longer, and allow yourself the time it takes to respond. Of course, your conversational partner may not be so accommodating, and one way to deal with this is to learn a number of stock phrases in your new language that will keep your partner from jumping in or (even worse) switching to your native language. Examples in English include “Let me see,” or “Hold on,” or “Just a moment.” This can turn the awkward interval into what linguists call a “filled pause,” which prevents the exchange from being hijacked by your conversational partner.³ Once again, we see how adults, who understand the ground rules of conversation, can capitalize on this knowledge to minimize the impact of being somewhat slower comprehenders and speakers.

You may have heard that learning another language is one method for preventing or at least postponing the onset of dementia. Dementia refers to the loss of cognitive abilities, and one of its most common forms is Alzheimer’s disease (AD). At this time, the causes of AD are not well understood, and consequently, there are no proven steps that people can take to prevent it. Nonetheless, some researchers have suggested that learning a foreign language might help delay the onset of dementia.

To explore this possibility more deeply, let’s look at some of the common misconceptions about dementia and the aging brain. First of all, dementia is not an inevitable part of the normal aging process. Most older adults do not develop AD or other forms of dementia. It is also important to remember that dementia is not the same thing as normal forgetfulness. At any age, we might experience difficulty finding the exact word we want or have trouble remembering the name of the person we just met. People with dementia have more serious problems, like feeling confused or getting lost in a familiar place. Think of it this way: if you forget where you parked your car at the mall, that’s normal; if you forget how to drive a car, that may be a signal that something more serious is going on.

The idea that dementia can be prevented is based on the comparison of the brain to a muscle. When people talk about the brain, they sometimes say things like “It is important to exercise your brain” or “To stay mentally fit, you have to give your brain a workout.” Although these are colorful analogies, in reality the brain is not a muscle. Unlike muscles, the brain is always active and works even during periods of rest and sleep. In addition, although some muscle cells have a lifespan of only a few days, brain cells last a lifetime. Not only that, but it has been shown that new brain cells are being created throughout one’s lifespan.

So, if the brain is not a muscle, can it still be exercised? Once again, researchers don’t know for sure. There are now many computer, online, and mobile device applications that claim to be able to “train your brain,” and they typically tap into a variety of cognitive abilities. However, research suggests that although this type of training may improve one’s abilities at the tasks themselves, they don’t seem to improve other abilities.⁴ In other words, practicing a letter-detection task will, over time, improve your letter-detection skills, but it will not necessarily enhance your other perceptual abilities. Basically, solving crossword puzzles will make you a better crossword puzzle solver.

The best evidence that foreign language learning confers cognitive benefits comes from research with those who are already bilingual.⁵ A bilingual person is someone who is fluent in two languages. (People who know three languages could therefore be called trilingual, but the most commonly used term to describe a person with three or more languages is multilingual.) Bilingualism most commonly occurs when children are exposed to two languages, either in the home (mom speaks Dutch, dad speaks Spanish) or more formally in early schooling. But bilingualism certainly occurs in adulthood as well.

Bilingualism and multilingualism are actually more common than you might think. In fact, it has been estimated that there are fewer monolingual speakers in the world than bilinguals and multilinguals.⁶ Although in many countries most inhabitants share just one language (for example, Germany and Japan), other countries have several official languages. Switzerland, for example, has about the same population as New York City (about eight million people), and yet it has four official languages: German, French, Italian, and Romansh. Throughout large parts of Africa, Arabic, Swahili, French, and English are often known and used by individuals who speak a different, indigenous language in their home than they do in the marketplace. So bilingualism and multilingualism are pervasive worldwide. And with regard to cognitive abilities, the research on those who possess more than one language paints an encouraging picture.

For one thing, bilinguals outperform monolinguals on tests of selective attention and multitasking. Selective attention can be measured by what is called the “Stroop Test” in which individuals look at a list of color names written in different colors. The task is to name the colors that words are printed in, rather than say the word itself. (If you search for “Stroop Test” or “Stroop Effect” online, you can take this test yourself.) Because we read automatically, it can be difficult to ignore the word “blue,” and report that it is printed in green. Bilinguals perform better on the Stroop Test, as well as other measures of selective attention.⁷

They also are better at multitasking, or doing two or more things at once. When you’re chatting on your cell phone and avoiding fellow pedestrians on a crowded sidewalk, you’re multitasking. One explanation of this superiority is that speakers of two languages are continually inhibiting one of their languages, and this process of inhibition confers general cognitive benefits to other activities. In fact, bilingual individuals outperform their monolingual counterparts on a variety of cognitive measures, such as performing concept-formation tasks, following complex instructions, and switching to new instructions. For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that the advantages of being bilingual are not universal across all cognitive domains. Bilingual individuals have been shown to have smaller vocabularies and to take longer in retrieving words from memory when compared to monolinguals. In the long run, however, the cognitive and linguistic advantages of being bilingual far outweigh these two issues.⁸

If the benefits of being bilingual spill over to other aspects of cognition, then we would expect to see a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease in bilinguals than in monolinguals, or at least a later onset of AD for bilinguals. In fact, there is evidence to support this claim. Ellen Bialystok and her colleagues obtained the histories of 184 individuals who had made use of a memory clinic in Toronto. For those who showing signs of dementia, the monolinguals in the sample had an average age at time of onset of 71.4 years. The bilinguals, in contrast, received their diagnosis at 75.5 years, on average. In a study of this sort, a difference of four years is highly significant, and could not be explained by other systematic differences between the two groups. For example, the monolinguals reported, on average, a year and a half more schooling than their bilingual counterparts, so the effect was clearly not due to formal education.⁹

A separate study, conducted in India, found strikingly similar results: bilingual patients developed symptoms of dementia 4.5 years later than monolinguals, even after other potential factors, such as gender and occupation, were controlled for. In addition, researchers have reported other positive effects of bilingualism for cognitive abilities in later life, even when the person acquired the language in adulthood. Crucially, Bialystok suggested that the positive benefits of being bilingual only really accrued to those who used both languages all the time.¹⁰

But as encouraging as these kinds of studies are, they still have not established exactly how or why differences between bilinguals and monolinguals exist. Because these studies looked back at the histories of people who were already bilingual, the results can only say that a difference between the two groups was found, but not why that difference occurred. Further research is needed to determine what caused the differences in age of onset between the two groups.¹¹

Other studies of successful aging suggest that being connected to one’s community and having plenty of social interaction is also important in forestalling the onset of dementia. Once again, however, the results are far less clear than the popular media might lead you to believe. Older individuals who lead active social lives are, almost by definition, healthier than their counterparts who rarely leave their homes or interact with others. So we can’t really say whether being socially active prevents the onset of dementia, or if people who don’t have dementia are more likely to be socially active.¹²

But even if studying a foreign language is not a magical cure-all, there is one thing it will do: it will make you a better speaker of a foreign language. Doing that confers a whole host of advantages we do know about.

One of the most important aspects of achieving foreign language fluency is being able to understand the spoken language of others. At first, this can be extremely challenging, because without knowing the individual words in the language, it’s hard to break up the steady stream of sound into units of meaning. Think about the last time you heard a foreign language speaker being interviewed on TV or the radio. You probably had the subjective impression that the individual was speaking very rapidly—much faster than a speaker of your native language, for example. And while there is variation across the world’s languages in how rapidly they’re spoken (measured in words per minute), the differences are not all that large. For example, the spontaneous rate of speech is about the same in English as it is in Japanese.¹³ However, most English speakers would claim that Japanese speakers talk much more rapidly than they themselves do (and vice versa). Why might this be?

It turns out that when listening to one’s native language, a powerful perceptual illusion occurs: it sounds like the speaker is pausing slightly after every word she utters. But. Nobody. Really. Talks. Like. This. Do. They? Since native speakers know the words of their mother tongue, their perceptual and cognitive systems are able to segment the sounds into discrete words. And at first, no similar segmentation can occur in a foreign language, because the language learner lacks the relevant vocabulary. The steady rush of sound without any perceptual landmarks creates the illusion of very rapid speech. As time goes by, however, it’s possible for the perceptual system to train itself to pluck individual words out of this acoustic stream. This capacity for perceptual generalization isn’t unique to foreign language learning, either: it occurs in any domain in which we gradually acquire expertise.

Imagine that you’ve decided to take up bird watching. At first, you would find the process of identification to be extremely challenging—all small brown birds might look alike to you. Assuming that you don’t give up out of sheer frustration, you would gradually learn to look for certain distinctive characteristics, such as the size and shape of the bird’s head, the length of its wings or legs, and the appearance of its bill. You might also use other factors as clues, like the bird’s song or its behavior. Eventually, you would reach a point where you could successfully identify a bird based on its unique combination of characteristics.

The thing is, you can achieve this kind of acuity only by looking at a lot of different birds. To continue with this example, you really can’t learn to identify birds by merely studying individual illustrations of species in a field guide. This might work for distinctive species, but what about what birders call a “little brown job,” which might be a sparrow, warbler, wren, or finch? Birds are small and active, and the lighting for viewing them is often far from ideal. Birders discover that they need to see a lot of individual sparrows to be able to differentiate them from other, similar looking species. In other words, the more sparrows you see, the better you’ll be able to truly see them.

This same process of perceptual generalization occurs in foreign language learning. You might think, for example, that one of the best ways to learn a new language is to listen to the same native speaker over an extended period of time. But that’s like studying one illustration of a sparrow—out in the wild, the real sparrows may look quite different. You will certainly begin to develop a feel for the language’s sounds and rhythms by repeatedly listening to one voice, but you may end up with relatively poor transfer, which in this case would be the comprehension of speakers you’ve never heard before. After all, your goal is to understand the diverse individuals you may encounter in your travels abroad, and not just one speaker whose recordings you have repeatedly listened to. That would be like a speaker of Spanish listening to the speeches of Winston Churchill and expecting to comprehend London cab drivers and Glasgow shopkeepers.

Researchers have demonstrated this phenomenon of generalization and transfer in a number of studies. Ann Bradlow and Tessa Bent, for example, asked native English participants to listen to multiple speakers of Chinese-accented English. Later, these participants were exposed to another speaker of Chinese-accented English whom they had not heard previously. The participants’ ability to understand this new speaker was greater than it was for another group of participants who were only exposed to a single speaker of Chinese-accented English.¹⁴

This generalization effect even holds true for native dialects of the same language. Do you think you would perform better, for example, at the task of identifying someone as being from Boston if you’d only ever heard one other speaker from that city, or many other speakers? Cynthia Clopper and David Pisoni explored this issue by asking participants to classify multiple speakers according to the region of the United States the speakers were from. When exposed to new speakers, the participants were better able to classify the speakers’ dialects than a second group of participants who had been exposed to only one speaker from a particular region.¹⁵

It should now be apparent that the traditional method of classroom language instruction is less than ideal for perceptual generalization. In many classes, foreign language students are rarely exposed to much diversity with regard to speakers of the target language. And this constancy doesn’t provide the perceptual system with the variability that is necessary to comprehend a speaker of French, as opposed to how your instructor speaks French.

Fortunately, there are many activities you can engage in to foster perceptual generalization in your new language. Although you may have just one instructor, you can expose yourself to actors in films, characters in TV series, and YouTube videos. In fact, the Internet provides you with an unlimited number of native speakers to hone your generalization skills. Your goal should be to hear as many native speakers as you possibly can. Even if you’re a relative novice to the language, don’t despair—just let the language in a video or play or a recording wash over you. Although this can’t be the only technique you rely on to learn a foreign language, the important point is to provide the perceptual system with the raw material necessary to work its generalization magic.

Foreign language acquisition typically requires mastering phonemes that do not exist in your native tongue. A phoneme, as you may recall, is a meaningful difference in sound within a particular language. The phonemic inventory of English contains about forty sounds. Some languages get by with relatively few phonemes (Hawaiian is famous for having only thirteen), whereas some African languages have more than a hundred. Unfortunately, your ability to produce or to even hear these phonemic distinctions gets more difficult with age. Let’s see why.

By convention, phonemes are designated by letters or other symbols between forward slashes. So the /p/ in “pin” and /b/ in “bin” are phonemic in English—changing the initial sounds in these words changes their meaning from a metal peg to a receptacle for storing things. Other sound differences in English are not phonemic. For example, there are two versions of /p/, and the way they are pronounced depends on the context. When /p/ is word initial, as in “pin,” a little puff of air follows the production of /p/. This is called aspiration, and it doesn’t occur when /p/ occurs in other positions, as in the word “spin.” (You can prove this to yourself by saying “pin” and “spin” over and over into your raised palm—you’ll feel the puff of air in the first case, but not in the second.) If you are a native speaker of English, as a young child you acquired this rule implicitly, although you were probably unaware of any such distinction until now. In a similar way, speaking with a hoarse voice or a stuffy nose changes the sounds of the words you utter, but not the meaning of what you say. You simply sound like a person with a cold.

Things become more complicated when you must master the phonemes in a foreign language. Some of these sounds will be more difficult to acquire than others. The French and Czech /r/ would be examples of sounds that English speakers find troublesome, and mastering Arabic requires producing sounds much farther back in the vocal tract than is typical for many of the world’s languages.

Although some adult learners of a foreign language do master nonnative sounds, most speak with an accent. But even native speakers of a language do not all speak it the same way. English speakers from Melbourne, Memphis, and Manchester will sound quite different from each other.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “If only I had started learning a foreign language when I was in college, or even if I had stuck with it in high school, then I wouldn’t sound like a nonnative speaker.” The truth of the matter is that even starting in high school still might have been too late. In a study conducted by James Flege and his colleagues, South Koreans who came to the United States as children were assessed with regard to their fluency in English phonology. The participants heard an English sentence, modeled for them by a native speaker, and then were asked to repeat it. These productions were recorded, and judged by native English speakers on a nine-point scale, ranging from “very strong foreign accent” (1) to “no accent” (9).¹⁶

The results of this study appear in figure 5.1. The native speakers, as one would expect, received the highest ratings—a few slightly below eight, but with the majority rated between eight and nine. Almost none of the native Korean speakers demonstrated that level of fluency. Even for those who arrived in the United States as infants, their foreign accent ratings were below those for the native group. And as the age of arrival increased, the accent ratings declined. Native Koreans arriving in the United States at age 10 received an average rating of 6 on the accent scale. At the age of 15, the average rating had fallen to 4. And those arriving at age 20 scored only a 3.

Figure 5.1

Reprinted from Journal of Memory and Language 41 (1), James Emil Flege, Grace H. Yeni-Komshian, and Serena Liu, “Age Constraints on Second-Language Acquisition,” © 1999, with permission from Elsevier.

Although it may be tempting to conclude that these results are due to the fact that English and Korean are so different from each other, this is not the case. Later research on native Italians who immigrated to the United States revealed a similar pattern with regard to age of arrival and perceived accents.¹⁷

However, other aspects of language are less affected by age of arrival. Flege and his colleagues also assessed the Korean natives’ mastery of English grammar. The participants were asked to listen to and make yes-no judgments about the acceptability of various sentences recorded by a native speaker of English. Half of these sentences were correct, but the other half contained grammatical violations. For example, some of the sentences contained errors with regard to past tense (“A policeman give Alan a ticket for speeding yesterday”), plurals (“Todd has many coat in his closet”), pronouns (“Susan is making some cookies for we”), as well as other types of mistakes. Once again, a small number of native English speakers were also tested.

The results of the study appear in figure 5.2. The native English speakers, as you might expect, performed quite well: they all scored between 90 and 100 percent. However, notice that the Korean participants who arrived in the United States at the age of 15 scored, on average, only a bit below 80 percent. Those who had arrived at age 20 earned scores that approached 70 percent. However, when the researchers accounted for the number of years of education in the United States, grammatical ability was almost identical: 84 percent for those who arrived earlier in life, and 83 percent for those who arrived later.

The underlying reason for these results has been the topic of considerable debate by researchers in cognitive science. Some have argued that the data are consistent with a critical period explanation, in which the innate mechanisms that allow first language acquisition in children decline steeply with age. However, if this were the entire story, then we would expect to see similar effects for the mastery of grammar as we do with phonology (compare figure 5.2 and figure 5.1). But that is not the case.

Figure 5.2

For adult foreign language learners, the results are clear enough. Although it may not be easy to achieve a native-like mastery of the sounds of a language, this does not affect the ability to approach native-like mastery of other aspects of the language, such as grammar. But if you speak your second language with an accent, this also means you’ve also acquired the language. Roger, who began studying German as a high school freshman, was once told by a native German speaker that he had a “distinguished, Hungarian” accent—which is far preferable to not speaking German at all.

People seek out the services of speech-language pathologists (also known as speech therapists) for a variety of reasons, including problems with making speech sounds, stuttering, or stroke-related conditions such as aphasia. Because of their training, certified speech language pathologists are also qualified to help clients with accent reduction or accent modification. When they do, they help change how individuals produce sounds or how they stress words and phrases, or the rhythm of their speech.

Accent modification therapy is often sought by nonnative speakers who want to sound more native or by native speakers who want to get rid of a regional accent or dialect. In addition, actors preparing for a role may seek out this kind of help—although, rather than go to a speech language pathologist, many use the services of a dialogue coach to help them train for a role.

Because people who enroll in accent modification therapy are highly motivated to change the way they sound when they speak, it might seem that such changes would be easily embraced. But changing a person’s accent requires an intensive amount of work, not only in how to physically make the sounds a different way, but also in how to cope with being a “new” person who speaks in this new way. The actress Meryl Streep, an undisputed virtuoso of accents and dialect, once said, “To capture how someone speaks is to capture them.”¹⁸

In this book we make the claim that it is important for foreign language learners to start very early on establishing their own unique identity in the foreign language. After all, you are not just trying to communicate in a foreign language, you are trying to express yourself in that language—which is not the same thing at all. Even when students communicate adequately in a foreign language, they often become frustrated when they are unable to use the language to reflect their individuality, personality, or character. Learning new vocabulary words, grammatical structures, and pragmatic devices that are relevant to you will make it easier for you to speak in the new language and will help you establish an identity in that language. Getting rid of your accent will not help you do any of this, and in fact may have quite the opposite effect.

Accents, as one indicator of background and personal history, are a useful, necessary, and appropriate part of one’s speech pattern. We argue, therefore, that not only is it a waste of time and energy to try to get rid of your accent, it is actually counterproductive. We recommend instead that you embrace your accent. Show it off! By considering your accent an asset, as opposed to a liability, you will have more incentive to speak the language—which will in turn improve your level of fluency and your confidence.

Clearly, if your speech is so heavily accented that you are unintelligible, or if your accent is so unusual that others focus not on what you say, but on how you say it, then you will need to work on improving your accent. Nothing is more frustrating than having to repeat a phrase or a word over and over—only to have the native speaker, when he finally does understand what you are trying to say, repeat it back to you in a way that sounds exactly the same. When this happens, of course you should pay attention to the subtle differences in pronunciation, stress, vowel length, or any other critical features that are important for your target language. But being able to articulate the sounds of the target language exactly like a native speaker is perhaps the most difficult part of learning a foreign language as an adult.

Rather than spend an inordinate amount of time fighting against your accent, it is much better to capitalize on your advanced metacognitive skills to analyze where and how it interferes with intelligibility. Then find ways to work around these problems, given the accent you already have. For example, you could learn another word that expresses the same idea, but which you can more easily pronounce. There is no reason why you can’t choose words that fit comfortably into the way you speak. Or you can find a way to prime the listener for what you mean to say by providing more context. In Korean, for example, when Richard says the word for “translate” it often ends up sounding like the word for “violence”—and vice versa. But when he says “translator” it immediately becomes clear what he means because there is no such word as “violencer.” Over time, Richard may get better at distinguishing between violence and translation—but until then, he can at least minimize the likelihood that he will be misunderstood.

There is, in fact, a word to describe foreign language learners who speak with an accent and choose for themselves the words, phrases, and pragmatic devices through which they express their own unique personality, even though this leaves their speech somewhat “foreign-sounding.” They are called charming.

On May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest. But he didn’t do it alone: he was accompanied every step of the way by the Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay. Why didn’t Hillary climb Mount Everest alone? Because he needed someone who had previous experience climbing the mountain to help him navigate the dangerous terrain. In fact, at one point, Tenzing saved Hillary’s life. Learning another language must also be a team effort, and ideally the person by your side has already climbed that mountain and can show you how it’s done.

Unfortunately, one of the most common beliefs when it comes to learning a language is that it can only be learned from a native speaker. And it is true that learning from a native speaker allows you to hear proper pronunciation and phrasing in a naturalistic way. But learning from a native speaker alone is like being guided up Mt. Everest by someone who was born at the top of the mountain and is shouting directions down from above. The sounds may be pronounced correctly, but that won’t help you find firm footing among the loose boulders and treacherous crevasses. What you need is a language Sherpa, if you will: a nonnative speaker who struggled with the language and who conquered it. This may seem counterintuitive, and it is not to suggest that learning from a native speaker is useless—far from it. However, there is much to be said for learning a language as an adult from someone who knows the terrain.

Richard studied French in many different places, but the best French teacher he ever had was someone who was born and grew up in the United States, a person who had fallen in love with France and the French and had learned the language as an adult. This teacher understood how Americans approach French. And therefore, he knew how to teach French to Americans. He understood fully why Americans make the mistakes they do, because he had made them as well. As a result, he was able to give his students insider strategies for avoiding these mistakes.

As metacognitive experts, adult language learners look for patterns and relationships among the sounds, words, phrases, and figures of speech in the target language. Therefore, it is important for adults to learn the target language from someone who can help them think strategically about it. Nonnative speakers who previously struggled with the language themselves often have insights into the language that native speakers do not have.

For example, when it comes to building vocabulary, although it’s true that native speakers can tell you which words are common and which words are uncommon, they can’t always tell you which words will give you the most “bang for your buck.” Adult language learners, as strategic language learners, often seek out vocabulary words that can be used in the widest variety of settings. Experienced nonnative speakers will have discovered these words, and will already be capitalizing on them—and can easily teach them to you.

Strangely, in the US educational system, fluent nonnative speakers often teach children and native speakers teach adults. We feel that this trend should be reversed. Adults can do well if they learn from highly fluent nonnative speakers who also learned the language as adults. By contrast, children greatly benefit from being instructed by native speakers, since their ability to learn a language without an accent is superior to that of adults. The best advice for adult foreign language learners is to seek out fluent nonnative speakers of a language to help think about, and strategize on, the most useful words, phrases, grammar patterns, and figures of speech in the target language.