CHAPTER THREE

Build a Natural

Language Acquiring

Mechanism

‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a small step”

- LAO TZU

24

in the previous chapter, we talked about the 80/20 rule.

Now, you have got some idea about the workload, which is

not as huge as you might have thought. In the following

pages, I am going to answer your question: How do you

learn vocabulary? Where do you find those common words?

How do you approach them?

Here is my answer: We are going to build a mechanism so that

you can acquire the common words in the core vocabulary of

the language you want to learn in a natural way. In other words,

we are going to build a system that can attract the core

vocabulary you are exposed to. It sounds like hype, doesn’t it?

Before going into the details of the system, I would like to

explain a bit more how the human brain learns a language, the

difference between  learning and   acquiring, and the concepts of

input and output.

How does your brain learn a language?

In his book    Second Nature Brain Science and Human Knowledge,

Nobel Prize winning author Gerald Edelman reveals a lot of

interesting findings about the human brain. A particularly

interesting revelation was the mechanism on which brain

functions. When comparing the human brain with the

computer, he found that the two worked on very different

mechanisms. Unlike computers, our brain cells (neuron)

function by a mechanism that he called “pattern recognition”

and “association” and not on logic. 

In the beginning, these concepts might confuse you; they

certainly confused me. You can think about “pattern

recognition” and “association” as the way in which the brain

starts to draw a new map as you learn a new language. The input

signals you get via your eyes (reading) and ears (listening)

stimulate the cells in the language processing area of your brain.

As you continuously receive inputs, repetitive signals create

“marks” or “traces” in your cortex. The sets of traces and marks

then form something like a “language map” in your brain.

When a guy speaks a new language fluently, it means his new

“language map” has been clearly formed. As he hears or reads

something in the language, his brain recognizes the input signals

by “associating” them to the map in his brain. 

This mechanism explains a very common situation in which a

learner fails to hear a certain word or phrase while listening to

native speech. When he looks at the transcript, he surprisingly

finds that he has already learned the word or phrase before. It

frustrates the learner, as he does not know why he cannot

recognize the word or phrase, even though he has learned it. If

you are in such a situation, you would likely think: “listening to

a foreign language is so difficult!” 

In most cases, the problem lies with your input. The two most

common problems are:

1.   You have learned the word only in its written form but

have missed the sound form. In this case, your input

lacks the “sound” component. Therefore, the language

map in your brain is missing one part of the “data”. So,

when you listen to the “sound” spoken by a native

speaker, there is no “source data” in your brain for it to

“recognize” and “associate” what it just heard, and you

fail to hear the word or phrase.

2.   You have heard the “sound” of the word when you

learned it, but the “sound” you heard was not correct as

it was spoken by a non-native speaker. It means that the

“map” has been incorrectly drawn. So, your brain still

cannot recognize it when you hear the word spoken by

a native speaker.

I am not going to discuss listening skills further in this section

(although I know that listening is one of the most irritating

parts of foreign language learning for many). We will talk more

about it later. Now, let’s discuss further our super weapon, the

brain. 

After gaining some understanding of the human brain, linguists

conducted further research on the various ways to approach a

new language. They found that there were basically two

approaches - learning and acquiring.

Learning happens when a learner consciously puts his or her

efforts into studying or memorizing some detail, such as a word,

phrase or grammatical structure, of the new language. He or she

might review it sometime later or never (I belong to the second

category ☺). Below is an example of a typical learning approach

that we can observe in many foreign language learning classes. 

Teacher says:

    Listen to me and then repeat (normally the whole class

repeats altogether)

    Let’s identify where the subject is, where the object is

and what tense is used…

    Open your book, page number… and do the exercise

number…

    Today, we are going to learn and memorize the

following words (it is normally a list of words)

    Open page number… in your book and translate the

first paragraph 

    Let’s underline the subjects (and/or objects) in this

paragraph.

And on and on…

The learning approach has the following disadvantages:

    It does not create excitement; excitement is an

important factor in studying a new language.

    If the teacher is not a native speaker, the “sound” input

may not be 100% correct.

    Although lectures might be sophisticatedly prepared,

many words introduced and explained in a class may not

be the most common words. The reason is that when

the whole class is assigned a paragraph for translation,

the teacher would normally explain all the new words

emerging, no matter whether they are common words

or not. Students then try to memorize all of them. This

process, therefore, takes time and is not efficient. 

The  acquiring process is different. It happens when learners are

exposed to a large amount of input through reading, listening,

observing or getting involved directly in the new language

environment. The learners then unconsciously remember the

details that attract their attention or that they feel are important.

In other words, acquired details are the ones that remain in the

learners’ mind after they get exposed to a certain amount of the

new language. The acquiring process is similar to the way kids

learn their mother tongue.

However, not everything can be learned effectively using the

acquiring approach. Some topics, such as sentence structure,

could be learned more effectively using the learning approach. In

the next chapter, you will see that most of the techniques that I

use are arrangements of both learning and acquiring approaches.

Input and output

No matter which approach you use, learning a language consists

of two basic parts: input from reading and listening and output

in the form of writing and speaking. Several years ago, I joined

an English class taught by a teacher who was a native speaker of

the language. She was focusing on making the students talk to

each other in English, whether in groups or in pairs. She also

arranged time to talk directly to us in English. In the beginning,

the class was quite exciting as we felt that we could start to talk

using a new language. However, since we did not have much

vocabulary to express more complex ideas, we soon got bored

repeating the same simple sentences, such as “it is raining”,

“have you had dinner?” “the weather was nice yesterday”… We

 could not express more complicated ideas just by practicing

with each other.

Some recent studies on language learning techniques help me

understand why the method used to teach us in that class did

not work. It was not efficient because students in the class did

not have enough input yet. When we did not have much input,

forcing us to produce too much output was not a good

approach. If you observe the way a kid learns to speak his

mother tongue, you will notice that he starts receiving inputs

long before he can speak the first word. The evidence points to

the possibility that kids may be able to understand their parents

from a very early stage, much before they start to speak. So we

must acquire input before being able to produce output. This

finding may make you conclude that we should focus on getting

input by reading and listening for a period of time, then move

on to writing and speaking skills. This is not wrong and many

learners actually do so. But is it the best approach? I do not

think so. First, I believe that working this way makes the

learning process longer as you have to separate the two

processes. Second, you are not sure how long you’ve to wait

until you can start producing output. Will the output come

automatically as it happens with the kids? I believe it will not.

Kids produce output automatically because they have no choice

other than their mother tongue and they have to produce

output in order to communicate. While learning the second

language, we are not in the same situation. 

Getting input and producing output have a mutual impact. In

other words, if we organize input and output well, we can

expedite our learning process. Basically, producing output helps

the learner quickly consolidate what he has got from acquiring

input (reading, listening and watching). In the next chapters,

you will see how we can focus on both input and output

strategically.

Massive input and selective acquisition

As we have mentioned, one of the biggest mistakes that learners

make is to try to memorize a list of words or phrases in the new

language. Memorizing a list will not help you retain the words

for long. No matter how hard you try, you will forget them

quickly. 

When it comes to learning a new language, getting massive

input is the key. When you get massive input, your brain will do

its job to acquire the most common words and phrases. The

basis here is quite simple. In order to possess and master a word

or phrase, you must have the following factors:

    the context in which the word or phrase is placed

    the content and topic to which the word or phrase is

related

    the emotion and/or sense of the speaker

    the other common words that go along with that word

or phrase and the way they are put together (common

structures)

It is very hard to have the above factors in place when you use

the   learning approach. Even if you proactively use a

comprehensive dictionary, it is time consuming and inefficient.

In addition, examples in dictionaries do not belong to a focused

topic. It just does not work. 

Our basic theory here is that when we are exposed to massive

input, the factors listed above, such as context and topic, will

naturally come to us. These factors help us clearly understand

the meaning and usage of words and phrases and help us

remember them for a longer period. If my explanation here is

not easy to follow, please don’t worry too much about it. You

don’t need to understand its essence; just follow my techniques

and you will see the results.

 If you observe those who can speak a second language fluently,

you will notice that they did go through the massive input

getting and selective acquisition process. I have a friend who

stays close to the Chinese border. Every day, she’d go to the

marketplace on the border where Chinese and Vietnamese

people trade with each other. She has no problem speaking

Chinese at all. However, I assume that you do not have that

kind of environment. Even if you do have such an

environment, it will still take you quite a long time to learn a

new language in a purely natural way. It will definitely be much

longer than the period of 6 months that I am promising.

If so, what do I really mean by getting massive input?

As I mentioned earlier, when you are learning a new language,

your brain is “drawing” a new language “map”. Our strategy is

to expedite the process by proactively “drawing” it without

waiting for the brain to draw the map in a natural way. You

make the “marks” and “traces” clearer by going back and forth

over those “traces” until they become a clear map. The most

common words are like the big intersections where various

traces pass through. In the early stages, this map will not be

clear yet, but after getting more and more inputs, the map will

emerge clearer. Then, you will easily      recognize the roads,

which is the essence of listening. When the map becomes

clearer, you can “show people the way” to go somewhere. In

other words, you can express your ideas by      speaking in the

new language.

Therefore, getting massive input continuously for a

short period of time is the basic step to acquiring

the most common words and phrases. In other

words, exposure to massive input is how you can

penetrate the core vocabulary treasure.

In fact, this concept is not new and is applied not only in the

field of language learning but also in other subject areas. I still

recall the time when I was studying at the university. It was very

difficult for me to remember the details in those information rich subjects, such as History of Economics, Religion and

Philosophy and so on. I tried to memorize the information in

the text books without success. As recommended by a friend, I

stopped trying to memorize the textbook and went to the

school library. I looked up several other books on the same

topic. Amazingly, after reading three or four more books on the

same subject, I could easily remember all the information in the

textbook. The good thing was that I did not have to memorize

facts; I just read the books in a painless way. Let me illustrate

this for you. If I gave you a shovel and asked you to dig a hole

10 feet in depth but only 5 inches in diameter, you would not be

able to do it. You would need a bigger diameter in order to dig

in deeper. The same thing happens when you want to memorize

things. You need more information in order to remember a

little. If you want to memorize a book, read four more books

on the same topic!

Let’s come back to our language learning issue. Once you

understand the idea of getting massive input, you will start

thinking about where to get it. Below are some of the most

common sources I have used when I learned English. Such

sources are available in other languages too:

    Foreign television channels

    Books and newspaper written in English

    Foreign radio channels

    Online forum communicating in English

    Expatriates living in my home town. You can easily

make friends with them. If you don’t know how, I have

some tips for you in the Chapter 10

    Friends online

In the Internet age, the problem we are facing is not the lack of

information but too much information. You receive too much

information everyday about courses, documents, reports,

websites, forums, etc. The important thing is to select and use

the information effectively. A good source of input for learning

a new language should have one or more of the following

attributes:

    be on a topic that interests you, preferably a topic you

are passionate about.

    be up-to-date so you can relate to things that are

happening. 

    provide useful information. Why limit yourself to

learning only the language? Gather more knowledge at

the same time!

    contain hot news

    not be too hard for you to understand.

Take advantage of your favorite field or topic

So far we have discussed the basis and mechanism of how you

learn a new language. We have also talked about the potential

reasons why you may have learned it in an inefficient way and

what approach we should use. Right from the next chapter

onwards, we will actually look into the techniques I’ve

mentioned off and on earlier. However, the first thing you need

to do is to select your favorite subject area and topics. Actually,

this is very important to a language learner because motivation

is the key to success. If you do not like what you learn, you will

be less likely to succeed. Selecting favorite topics in your field

will keep you be excited and motivated every time you sit down

to learn. In addition, it will be more interesting when you get

more information in your area of expertise. 

Your concern might be: “But I want to speak the language in

general; what happens if I focus just on a specific field? How

can I speak on another topic?” Don’t worry about it yet! Once

you can master a topic, such as “commerce”, you will easily be

able to master other topics. It is just like if you can ride a

bicycle, it will take you only a few more days to ride a

motorbike. Or if you can ride a motorbike with automatic gears,you can easily master manual gears with a little practice. So, if you’ve chosen your favorite topics to study, let’s launch into the

techniques.