a self-motivated and self-directed second language learner: heinrich schliemann

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A Self-Motivated and Self-Directed Second Language Learner: Heinrich Schliemann Author(s): Jürgen Jahn Source: The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 63, No. 5/6 (Sep. - Oct., 1979), pp. 273-276 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/324234 . Accessed: 17/12/2014 18:03 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Wiley and National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Modern Language Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Wed, 17 Dec 2014 18:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: A Self-Motivated and Self-Directed Second Language Learner: Heinrich Schliemann

A Self-Motivated and Self-Directed Second Language Learner: Heinrich SchliemannAuthor(s): Jürgen JahnSource: The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 63, No. 5/6 (Sep. - Oct., 1979), pp. 273-276Published by: Wiley on behalf of the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers AssociationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/324234 .

Accessed: 17/12/2014 18:03

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Wiley and National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to The Modern Language Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Wed, 17 Dec 2014 18:03:03 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: A Self-Motivated and Self-Directed Second Language Learner: Heinrich Schliemann

A Self-Mot vated and Self-Directed

Second Language Learner:

Heinrich Schliemann *

JURGEN JAHN, The University of Calgary (Alberta)

H EINRICH SCHLIEMANN, the renowned nineteenth century German archaeolo-

gist and excavator of Troy, was born in 1822 in a humble parsonage in Mecklenburg, Northern

Germany.' As a child, Schliemann read a German translation of Homer's Illiad. Since that

day, it was his dream to learn ancient Greek and to search for the legendary city of Troy. In 1842, when his education was cut short by a family scandal, he went to Hamburg and then to Amsterdam to work as an office boy. He began to learn English because he felt that a command of English would advance his business career. Within a short number of years he became fluent in many languages and as a businessman he amassed such a fortune that he was able to follow his childhood dream to discover Troy.

What interests us is that Heinrich Schliemann learned eighteen languages with relative ease and considerable speed. Schliemann was, of course, a highly motivated and self-directed learner who wanted to proceed quickly and

thoroughly. To this end he developed his own

methodology of learning. When he learned his first foreign language, English, he studied with a native speaker of that language for one hour each day. He also read out loud for extended

periods of time and he wrote a composition every night about a topic of interest to him. These

compositions were then corrected by his native informant on the following day. After the cor- rection, Schliemann would commit his composi- tion to memory. During his working hours he would utilize every minute to memorize passages of the target language. Since he was an office boy, he had many opportunities to recite as he walked along the streets of Amsterdam or while he was waiting in the anterooms of local trading companies. This intensive mental training im-

JURGEN JAHN teaches German at the University of Calgary.

proved his memory significantly and also ac- celerated his linguistic progress. Every waking minute was utilized for language learning. While Schliemann waited to fall asleep, he reviewed

everything that he had learned during the day, and in this manner his studies soon carried over into his hours of sleep.

He also took every opportunity to hear his tar-

get language. On Sundays he would attend two

English church services, standing in a corner of the church so that he would be able to repeat to himself every word of the sermon. Within six months he learned to speak and write English; in another half year he became fluent in French. In order to acquire the same fluency in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, he needed in each case

only six weeks. At the age of twenty-two he spoke seven languages: German, Dutch, English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

What can we learn from Heinrich Schlie- mann's success story in second language acquisi- tion? Most people would claim that he was a lin-

guistic genius, whose extraordinary feats cannot be duplicated by ordinary mortals. However, most outstanding performances in almost any field of study are just as much related to hard work as they are a result of exceptional ability. It is certainly obvious that Schliemann was highly motivated. He had a dream which he wished to realize; every one of his actions was a step in this direction. He wanted to become successful and

financially independent; to attain this goal he had to acquire highly marketable skills. In the commercial world of Amsterdam this meant the

mastery of several languages.

*Paper originally presented at the Thirtieth Annual Con- ference of the Pacific Northwest Council on Foreign Lan-

guages, Las Vegas, Nevada, April 19-21, 1979. 'Heinrich Schliemann, Heinrich Schliemanns Selbstbio-

graphie (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1892).

273

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Page 3: A Self-Motivated and Self-Directed Second Language Learner: Heinrich Schliemann

THE MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL

From the beginning, Schliemann was a highly self-motivated and self-directed learner. He pre- ferred untrained language informants over

specialized language teachers because the former would not interfere with his personal learning strategies. Schliemann used the "massive" ap- proach to learning; he made the study of second

languages his consuming passion. During the six months of learning English he spent every free minute on this task, after work as well as during working hours. If we assume that he worked for ten hours as an office boy and messenger, he had

many opportunities to practice English on the streets and in offices. This practice during work-

ing hours may have amounted to at least four hours per day; during the evening he may have

spent another three to four hours in study and review. On Sundays he may have studied for as

many as ten hours. With seven hours on week-

days and ten hours on Sundays he could have amassed the conservative estimate of 1,350 hours of English in six months. The miracle of the lin-

guistic genius looks now more like the outstand-

ing achievement of the highly motivated auto- didact. If one combines 1,350 hours of intensive

study with highly effective learning strategies, one can surmise that such results could be dupli- cated by others, if only learners were willing to dedicate themselves to the task in a similar manner. But even if we do not commit ourselves or others to such a massive and monomanic ap- proach, we can still learn much from Schlie- mann's techniques.

Schliemann placed great emphasis on mental

training by memorizing long passages in the

foreign language every day. Above all, he com- mitted to memory his own corrected composi- tions in the target language. This is indeed a

meaningful way to memorize, rich in personal associations: he first chose a topic of interest to him, wrote a composition within the limits of his

linguistic skills, had the composition corrected and then memorized it. In other words, he memorized something that was essentially his own, something with which he had previously worked, something which was therefore very meaningful. It is not surprising that he would achieve high recall with such passages. As a re- sult of daily rigorous memorization he increased his memory to such an extent that he could re- member any passage after only three readings. Thus, we cannot simply speak of Schliemann as

a learner with a photographic memory who looks at something once to retain it from then on; rather we can see that rigorous mental training leads to very gratifying results.

Schliemann would use another striking learn-

ing strategy: on account of his intense study habits, he would get so hyperactive that he was often unable to fall asleep for a long time. He used this time in bed to review what he had learned during the day. Most everyone knows from his own observations that whatever occu-

pies us intensely during waking hours may very readily carry over into our dreams. Every night we go through several periods of REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement sleep).2 REM sleep is

essentially a period of mental activity. If we have the right kind of stimulation during waking hours, we may get an involuntary recall or review

during a dream. Most serious language learners know what an

exhilarating experience it is to dream in the tar-

get language. Even if we remember very little of the dream, it is an exciting and reassuring sign that intense study of the target language is pene- trating the deeper levels of our mind.

Schliemann was a very dynamic language learner who devised learning strategies to make his studies more life-like. While learning Rus- sian, he had to move three times, because neigh- bors were disturbed by his loud readings and recitations. Since he could not find a native

speaker of Russian in Amsterdam, he hired an old gentleman to listen to him, although this man could not understand one word of Russian; Schliemann felt that this audience was infinitely better than having no audience at all. He would also pace up and down his room as he was speak- ing or reciting in the foreign language, perhaps because he learned so much while delivering messages in Amsterdam! Without being fully aware of it, he strengthened the retention of learned material by accompanying the learning task with ambulatory motor activity, and per- haps associating this learning with a number of

places (locz), perhaps very similar to the ancient art of mnemonics.3

2Ian Oswald, Sleep (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Eng- land: Penguin Books, Inc., 1976), pp. 95-110.

3Vernon Gregg, Human Memory (London: Methuen, 1974), p. 111.

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Page 4: A Self-Motivated and Self-Directed Second Language Learner: Heinrich Schliemann

A SELF-DIRECTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNER

Schliemann's success story provides also some

significant evidence for positive transfer.

Through effective learning strategies he taught himself English and French in six months. When he subsequently learned further languages, he had perfected his learning techniques to such an extent and had profited so much from Latin and Greek roots in English and French, that he could learn Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese within six weeks each.

Schliemann also realized the economy and ef- fectiveness of contextual learning. He studied modern Greek by getting himself a translation of Paul et Virginie. He read through the Greek translation by comparing each word with the French original. After one reading of the novel, he claimed to have mastered fifty percent of the

vocabulary of the book. After one additional

comparative reading, he knew most vocabulary items without having wasted countless hours in

searching for translations in a dictionary. Let us now consider once more the time ele-

ment of Schliemann's study of English. He achieved functional mastery of English after ap- proximately 1,350 hours of very intensive, highly motivated and self-directed language study. By comparison, if a student at a high school, college, or university were to have three hours of second language instruction per week for one academic year, he would have been exposed to a second language for approximately 108 hours. If we add to this as many hours of frequently ineffi- ciently structured home study, we do not have to be surprised about the results. At this rate a stu- dent would have to study at least six to seven

years to accomplish what Schliemann could achieve in six months. However, since few stu- dents would be as highly motivated, and since learning spread over such a long period of time would incur much proactive and retroactive interference from past and subsequent learning, it is more likely that the language learner in the classroom would perhaps need ten or more years of language study to equal Schliemann's at- tainment.

Perhaps we ought to communicate more clearly to second language learners and to the community at large that learning a second lan- guage in a classroom is one of the most difficult learning tasks for a human being, and that al- though we can teach someone the basics within the limits of our curriculum, functional mastery

of a second language would require a consider- able additional effort on the part of the learner, perhaps within the context of a country where the target language is spoken.

We should also communicate more clearly to the second language learner that he is respon- sible for his own learning. This is obviously more

easily said than brought about. Students

generally expect too much from school and col-

lege. Often they perceive these institutions of

knowledge as mental filling stations where teachers and professors equipped with "Niirn-

berg funnels" are replenishing empty heads. This impression has also been fostered by the

proponents of psychological associationism who claim that learning is a process of habit forma- tion. From this point of view the learner is seen as a more or less willing but essentially passive stimulus-response organism. This school of

thought would tend to believe in programmed instruction, utilizing the language laboratory and even computer programs to expose students to carefully structured learning experiences. While this model of instruction may be useful for remedial work and some individualized pro- grams, it does not tap the inquisitive and crea- tive impulses nor the insights of a self-directed and self-motivated language learner.

If, on the other hand, we accept the postulate of modern linguistics and of cognitive psychology that language is a system of words and rules with an infinite number of possible utterances, we must then realize that teaching will never be enough, that it will never be able to prepare the learner sufficiently for real life in the second lan-

guage community. Only self-motivated, self- directed and inquisitive learners can make the dream of functional bilingualism come true.

The sooner we give students the opportunity to become self-directed language learners who generate language according to their communi- cative needs, the sooner we can expect personal fulfillment and linguistic competence in the sec- ond language classroom.

We can help the learner in this task by first of all explaining to him the power of motivation and showing him how he can motivate himself. Secondly, we must teach the learner how to structure his time to maximize learning effective- ness. Thirdly, we must show him how to study effectively by profiting from the empirical evi- dence provided by the psychology of verbal

275

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Page 5: A Self-Motivated and Self-Directed Second Language Learner: Heinrich Schliemann

THE MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL THE MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL

learning and the ancient practical wisdom of the art of mnemonics. If we take these suggestions seriously, the teaching of second languages will

learning and the ancient practical wisdom of the art of mnemonics. If we take these suggestions seriously, the teaching of second languages will

become more than the mere transmission of the

subject matter; it will also teach learners how to learn a second language effectively.

become more than the mere transmission of the

subject matter; it will also teach learners how to learn a second language effectively.

Against Bilingual Education

TOM BETHELL, Harper's Magazine

Against Bilingual Education

TOM BETHELL, Harper's Magazine

T HIS YEAR the United States govern-

ment, which I am beginning to think is afflicted with a death wish, is spending $150 mil- lion on "bilingual education" programs in American classrooms. There is nothing "bi" about it, however. The languages in which in- struction is conducted now include: Central

Yup'ik, Aleut, Yup'ik, Gwich'in, Athabascan

(the foregoing in Alaska), Navajo, Tagalog, Pima, Plaute (I promise I'm not making this up), Ilocano, Cambodian, Yiddish, Chinese, Viet-

namese, Punjabi, Greek, Italian, Korean, Polish, French, Haitian, Haitian-French, Portu-

guese, Arabic, Crow (yes, Virginia ... .), Cree, Keresian, Tewa, Apache, Mohawk, Japanese, Lakota, Choctaw, Samoan, Chamorro, Caro-

linian, Creek-Seminole, and Russian. And there are more, such as Trukese,

Palauna, Ulithian, Woleian, Marshallese, Kusaian, Ponapean, and, not least, Yapese. And

Spanish--how could I have so nearly forgotten it? The bilingual education program is more or less the Hispanic equivalent of affirmative ac-

tion, creating jobs for thousands of Spanish teachers; by which I mean teachers who speak Spanish, although not necessarily English, it has turned out. One observer has described the

HEW-sponsored program as "affirmative eth-

nicity." Although Spanish is only one of seventy languages in which instruction is carried on (I seem to have missed a good many of them), it ac- counts for 80 percent of the program.

Bilingual education is an idea that appeals to teachers of Spanish and other tongues, but also to those who never did think that another idea, the United States of America, was a particularly good one to begin with, and that the sooner it is

TOM BETHELL is a Washington editor of Harper's Maga- zine.

T HIS YEAR the United States govern-

ment, which I am beginning to think is afflicted with a death wish, is spending $150 mil- lion on "bilingual education" programs in American classrooms. There is nothing "bi" about it, however. The languages in which in- struction is conducted now include: Central

Yup'ik, Aleut, Yup'ik, Gwich'in, Athabascan

(the foregoing in Alaska), Navajo, Tagalog, Pima, Plaute (I promise I'm not making this up), Ilocano, Cambodian, Yiddish, Chinese, Viet-

namese, Punjabi, Greek, Italian, Korean, Polish, French, Haitian, Haitian-French, Portu-

guese, Arabic, Crow (yes, Virginia ... .), Cree, Keresian, Tewa, Apache, Mohawk, Japanese, Lakota, Choctaw, Samoan, Chamorro, Caro-

linian, Creek-Seminole, and Russian. And there are more, such as Trukese,

Palauna, Ulithian, Woleian, Marshallese, Kusaian, Ponapean, and, not least, Yapese. And

Spanish--how could I have so nearly forgotten it? The bilingual education program is more or less the Hispanic equivalent of affirmative ac-

tion, creating jobs for thousands of Spanish teachers; by which I mean teachers who speak Spanish, although not necessarily English, it has turned out. One observer has described the

HEW-sponsored program as "affirmative eth-

nicity." Although Spanish is only one of seventy languages in which instruction is carried on (I seem to have missed a good many of them), it ac- counts for 80 percent of the program.

Bilingual education is an idea that appeals to teachers of Spanish and other tongues, but also to those who never did think that another idea, the United States of America, was a particularly good one to begin with, and that the sooner it is

TOM BETHELL is a Washington editor of Harper's Maga- zine.

restored to its component "ethnic" parts the better off we shall all be. Such people have been welcomed with open arms into the upper reaches of the federal government in recent years, giving rise to the suspicion of a death wish.

THE BILINGUAL EDUCATION program began in a small way (the way such programs al-

ways begin) in 1968, when the Elementary and

Secondary Education Act of 1965 was amended

(by what is always referred to as "Title VII") to

permit the development of "pilot projects" to

help poor children who were "educationally dis-

advantaged because of their inability to speak English," and whose parents were either on wel- fare or earning less than $3,000 a year. At this

germinal stage the program cost a mere $7.5 million, and as its sponsors (among them Sen. Alan Cranston of California) later boasted, it was enacted without any public challenge whatever.

"With practically no one paying heed,"

Stephen Rosenfeld wrote in the Washington Post in 1974 (i.e., six years after the program began),

Congress has radically altered the traditional way by which immigrants become Americanized. No

longer will the public schools be expected to serve

largely as a "melting pot, " assimilating foreigners to a common culture. Rather, under a substantial new program for "bilingual" education, the schools-in addition to teaching English-are to teach the "home" language and culture to children who speak English poorly. Rosenfeld raised the important point that "it

is not clear how educating children in the lan-

guage and culture of their ancestral homeland will better equip them for the rigors of contem-

porary life in the United States." But in re-

*Copyright ?1979 by Harper's Magazine. All rights re- served. Reprinted from the February 1979 issue by special permission.

restored to its component "ethnic" parts the better off we shall all be. Such people have been welcomed with open arms into the upper reaches of the federal government in recent years, giving rise to the suspicion of a death wish.

THE BILINGUAL EDUCATION program began in a small way (the way such programs al-

ways begin) in 1968, when the Elementary and

Secondary Education Act of 1965 was amended

(by what is always referred to as "Title VII") to

permit the development of "pilot projects" to

help poor children who were "educationally dis-

advantaged because of their inability to speak English," and whose parents were either on wel- fare or earning less than $3,000 a year. At this

germinal stage the program cost a mere $7.5 million, and as its sponsors (among them Sen. Alan Cranston of California) later boasted, it was enacted without any public challenge whatever.

"With practically no one paying heed,"

Stephen Rosenfeld wrote in the Washington Post in 1974 (i.e., six years after the program began),

Congress has radically altered the traditional way by which immigrants become Americanized. No

longer will the public schools be expected to serve

largely as a "melting pot, " assimilating foreigners to a common culture. Rather, under a substantial new program for "bilingual" education, the schools-in addition to teaching English-are to teach the "home" language and culture to children who speak English poorly. Rosenfeld raised the important point that "it

is not clear how educating children in the lan-

guage and culture of their ancestral homeland will better equip them for the rigors of contem-

porary life in the United States." But in re-

*Copyright ?1979 by Harper's Magazine. All rights re- served. Reprinted from the February 1979 issue by special permission.

276 276

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