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.
Kevin Stein kevchanwow@gmail.com "Knowing a Language"

Acquiring a language means having an implicit

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
Kevin Stein kevchanwow@gmail.com "Knowing a Language"

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. than we would in a decontextualized setting. Which is good as we probably won't. The skill of contextualizing allows us to understand more And this is also true for Even when a someone using a second language as well (Lightbown). understood.

feature of the language is incomprehensible, the meaning or content can be 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
Kevin Stein kevchanwow@gmail.com "Knowing a Language"

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 1 and Practice October, in Second 2011 Language from

Acquisition.

Retrieved

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

Kevin Stein kevchanwow@gmail.com "Knowing a Language"