The Interplay of Theory and Verification

 

The Interplay of Theory and Verification

 

 

Jason Tyler Gong

P.O. Box 4794, Diamond Bar, CA 91765

Feb. 17, 2009

 

 

Dr. Howard Gillman

Dean, College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089

 

Dear Dr. Gillman:

Thank you very much for your kind letter of January 20, 2009. Thank you again for forwarding my letter to some experts in your university. Before they finalize some comments or a verdict on my work, I would like to take an opportunity to make my points more clear for both you and those experts.

The central pillar of the current paradigm on teaching a second language is using a Communicative Approach (emphasizing jigsaw, information gap, Bingo, interview, problem solving… techniques). However, there are three major differences between our program and that approach.

  1. The communicative is our end, not our means. Yet, the communicative approach is, obviously, also the means of the current paradigm.
  2. A consensus that the first language is kind of a learning obstacle for learning a second language is an un-stated premise of the current paradigm. Thus, many class rooms of ESL have a sign “English Only.” On the contrary, the first language must be a springboard for acquiring the second language in our program.
  3. A consensus that a second language is always more difficult to acquire than the first language (the mother tongue) is, also, an un-stated premise of the current paradigm. However, our program addresses or faces off the following two issues squarely. Student A’s (SA) first language is language A (LA). Student B’s (SB) native language is language B (LB).
    1. Can SA acquire LB (second language for SA) with less effort than he acquired LA (his mother tongue)?
    2. Can SA acquire LB with less effort than SB acquires LB (SB’s native language)?

    Our answers for both issues (questions) are affirmative, especially if LB is Chinese language. Of course, our answer must be supported by a valid theoretical framework, and I will discuss it in the later part of this letter. In addition to a theoretical system or persuasion, our statements can be easily tested.

In our Chinese language learning program, it is divided into five (5) steps:

  1. Learning the word form (able to hand-write each and every [all 60,000] Chinese word after glancing it for 10 seconds).
  2. Learning the word meaning (able to dissect and to decode the meaning of all words).
  3. Learning the meaning of composite words (word phrases and sentences).
  4. Learning the entire phonetic bandwidth of Chinese verbal language, and 250 four-tone that encompass it all.
  5. Marrying the phonetic to the written words.

Each step can be tested. However, the test on the first step can be the determining test for the entire system, and it can be done with very little effort. The following is my suggested testing program.

  1. This test will consist of three comparison groups.
    1. Group A — student who had no Chinese language background previously but has studied Chinese language for one (1) semester under your program.
    2. Group B — student who had no Chinese language background previously and will study under our program for 15 hours, 3 hours a day for 5 days.
    3. Group C — professor of physics or anyone with a great analytic mind while he is not knowing any Chinese word. This is the control group as it is a measurement for the difficulty of the test.
  2. Thirty Chinese words will be selected from a current Chinese newspaper randomly and each word is flashed to a screen for 10 seconds. Persons in this test must not copy the word during the flash but try to duplicate them with hand-writing after the flashing. Then, the test score will be compared.
  3. In order to prevent any statistics out-liar, each group should have three persons.

While the above-mentioned test can be easily set up and be verified, I would like to discuss the theoretical reasons for our claims.

  1. Doing or learning the things the second time should always be easier unless the first experience is not a help and becomes an obstacle.
  2. Learning the first language which is quite difficult is because of the following reasons:
    1. Baby’s brain is not fully matured.
    2. As the baby’s brain is a blank sheet, there is no memory anchor (association ) to help it to memorize. Every new data must be anchored by repeated drilling. Yes, by drilling literately.
    3. For a first grader, he or she did acquire the verbal part of the mother tongue. That is, the verbal language becomes the anchor for his learning the written language. Yet, the logic of the language still needs to be drilled into him.
  3. In fact, learning any language (the first or the second) is about to acquire a set of data (words, vocabularies, grammar, phonetic of words, etc.). Acquiring means memorizing. That is, learning a language (the first or the second) is about,
    1. Data management:
      1. a chaotic data set
      2. an organized data system
    2. Memory management:
      1. Memorizing by repetition, the drilling.
      2. Memorizing with anchors (logic, genealogy, self-revealing rules, etc.)

As the meaning of all Chinese words (each and every) is self-revealing through a set of word roots and a clearly defined genealogy, the Chinese written language can be learned without the help (the anchor) of the verbal portion. That is, it can be learned without a language environment, and it takes much less effort than the student used to learn his mother tongue (the verbal part of his first language).

 

For the Chinese verbal language, there are only 250 four-tones (1,000 sounds or phonemes) and absolutely no more. That is, not a single Chinese word’s sound (pronunciation) can escape from the net of this 250 four-tone bandwidth. For a determined student, he can acquire the entire Chinese verbal bandwidth in weeks. Learning Chinese verbal language as the second language with this bandwidth system takes much less effort than native Chinese learns his mother tongue.

 

With the knowledge of Chinese written language and the entire Chinese verbal bandwidth as anchors, the Chinese language (verbal part or the marriage of written and verbal part) as a second language can be acquired with much less effort than he learned his mother tongue and with much less effort than native Chinese learns it as his first language, especially while a native Chinese does not learn his own language as an axiomatic language.

 

In many senses, learning Chinese language with repetition is like driving thousands of nails into a concrete floor. A few determined students might be able to endure this type of torture, but most of them (perhaps 85%) will get carpal tunnel in no time, that is, giving up. Furthermore, Chinese verbal language (with only 1,000 phonemes in its entire system) is one of the easiest verbal language to learn in the world. And, many American students who studied Chinese language for years can speak but remain as semi-illiterate as they are not truly able to read and write. Furthermore, in the history of human engineering, either constructing a building or composing a music, it is very hard to find one example that the end can also be a good means. Using the end as means signifies the lacking of anchor, of springboard and of any help.

 

I do have a presentation (in MS Power Point). It has many examples to make the points of our theory and practice easily understandable for a person who knows not a single Chinese word. It is a two-hour presentation. If you are interested in it, I would like to present it to you.
 
Sincerely yours,

Jason Tyler Gong
 

Note: For K-12 system, the test should consist of the following:

  1. This test will consist of three comparison groups.
    1. Group A — student who had no Chinese language background previously but has studied Chinese language for one (1) year under GCLE program.
    2. Group B — student who had no Chinese language background previously and will study under our program for 15 hours, 3 hours a day for 5 days.
    3. Group C — professor of physics or anyone with a great analytic mind while he is not knowing any Chinese word. This group is very important as it is a measurement for the difficulty of the test.
  2. Thirty Chinese words will be selected from a current Chinese newspaper randomly and each word is flashed to a screen for 10 seconds. Persons in this test must not copy the word during the flash but try to duplicate them with hand-writing after the flashing. Then, the test score will be compared.
  3. In order to prevent any statistics out-liar, each group should have three persons.
  4. In order to measure the scope (the area of it encompasses) of this test, Group A and B should consist of three levels, one 4th grader, one 8th grader and one 12th grader.