Languages not only play a role in reading, speaking, listening, and writing, but are also the foundation of people’s thoughts. Even before a person speaks, there are already sentences being formed in their brains to hold the idea they want to express. The first language a person chooses to construct sentences in the brain is what I call a “priority language.”
The choice of priority language is always hard to control consciously. It is common for people to use a specific language to construct sentences in their brains, and then translate the words to another language before speaking. We can imagine that there is a switch in everyone’s brain which controls the priority language the person is using. For language learners, there is a huge benefit in switching their priority language to the language they are learning. For most DKU students, whose native language is not English, it is hard to maintain English as their priority language, or language they think in, and they don’t realize that.
For example, if a person is in an English-speaking environment but has Chinese as their priority language, it will take them time to translate the English information they receive to Chinese and then be able to understand it. If they want to say something, they would first have to think it in Chinese, then translate it. As a result, the language input and output will not be fluent, and sometimes the expressions won’t be idiomatic since it is natural to come up with words that are hard to translate while thinking in your native tongue.
But if a person uses English as their priority language, these problems will cease to exist. They will be able to quickly understand the English information they receive and the ideas in their brains would be formed in English, so they will be able to express them with ease.
Image credit: https://englishharmony.com/think-in-english/
Switching the priority language to the one that the learner is studying can benefit the learner’s language-learning process in multiple ways. First, after switching the priority language, learners will constantly construct sentences and thoughts in that language, leading to continuous practice. Furthermore, it will boost their familiarity with the language, which can reduce the frequency of situations in which one knows the word but needs time to think about how to say it. Yang Li’s “Crazy English” method, which places heavy emphasis on practicing English orally and encourages students to use English as much as possible, actually simulates the condition of changing one’s priority language to English.
Second, it can make people adapt to the language well. Each language has its own sentence structures, which means a different language will make one’s thoughts flow and be constructed differently. Nicola Prentis, writing in Quartz, points out that some people have different personalities when they speak different languages. 1 Each language has its own way of thinking, and this is an important element in making a language learner’s expressions fluent and idiomatic. Every language has its inside logic, and to catch it, learners need to adapt to the language. A person who doesn’t think in their priority language is actually doing translation rather than speaking it, which will cause their expressions to be unnatural. According to scholars Dornyei and Kubanyiova, the knowledge of languages is part of an individual’s personal “core,” forming an important part of one’s identity. 2 Using a language in a translation style rather than prioritizing it will exclude the language from one’s personal identity since the core of a language is its inside logic.
Image credit: https://knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2018/how-second-language-can-boost-brain
What’s more, prioritizing a language is a way to simulate the situation of babies when they are learning to speak, which has always been thought of as the most natural way to learn a language since it is driven by one’s instincts. Some people find that it is harder to learn a language as an adult than as a teenager, because with decades of using the native language, it would have already dominated people’s mind and would pop out automatically when they need to express something. This will hinder the use of other languages and cause them to be practiced with less frequency.
Also, many people find that their English level doesn’t improve as much as they expected when they get into an English-speaking environment. One of the reasons for this is related to their disregard of the importance of switching their priority language to English. For those who keep their default language as their first language, there would be very limited situations in which they would feel the need to use English, mostly related to their jobs or majors. This would result in a vocabulary limited to some specific areas, since they don’t use English in the context of their daily lives. In short, switching your priority language to the one you are learning, will make you think, read, speak, and write in a manner more similar to those of native speakers.
For most language learners at DKU, English is still an obstacle they must tackle daily. Students can use it but not that fluently. They can switch their priority language to English at times, but it is hard to get into the mindset and easy to slip back out of it. For them, language immersion is the best way to switch their priority language to English.
Image credit: https://graphicsurf.com/item/kid-english-learning-vector-design/
Language immersion has a strict condition, needing learners to stay in a situation in which the only allowed input and output is in the language they are learning for an extended period of time. For those who live in an environment surrounded by speakers of their mother tongue, it will be challenging to get a chance to be immersed in another language.
DKU students have the advantage that DKU is an English-speaking school where students are required to use English in and after class to communicate with professors and to complete all the academic work. But as I said, it is easy for the mindset of language immersion to be interrupted, needing as little as several words of one’s mother tongue to switch the priority language back to one’s first language. For Chinese students in particular, there are plenty of distractions around them, such as Chinese brands and advertisements, emails, and messages, and even their mobile phones and computers if they didn’t set them to English. But the most important distraction is other people’s conversations.
In an English-speaking community like DKU, it is natural for those people who speak the same language to communicate in their mother tongue, which breaks their immersion and immediately makes their priority language slip back out of the one they’re learning. This happens mainly because using a language with which they are more familiar allows them to express themselves freely. A great number of them plan a specific time for language learning and use their mother tongue as much as possible at other times. Chinese students keep their mobile and laptop systems in Chinese, watch the news in it, and use translation softwares to read academic papers, all of which hinder their English immersion. It is important to note that this doesn’t represent a lack of enthusiasm towards learning a new language, as they still put in the effort to memorize vocabulary and go over study notes, instead they just don’t notice the switch in their heads and fail to understand the importance of language immersion.
Image credit: https://blog.chatterbug.com/en/language-immersion-home/
There are a few ways that could help DKU language learners stay immersed in a language for longer. First, set your phone and laptop to English so that they won’t distract you when you’re immersing yourself in English. Second, try to use English when you are alone. Maintaining language immersion is hard in an environment where other languages are spoken, and trying to stay immersed in English can be easier when one is alone. Third, try to switch your priority language to English before going to sleep. It will be good for you to arrange your thoughts in English before sleeping, and maybe you can even dream in it.
Above all, just think in English and try to keep your mind flowing in English if conditions don’t allow you to communicate in English. As mentioned by Dornyei and Kubanyiova, scientific research has proven that the brain performs the same action when people interact as when they just imagine hearing or seeing things. 3 Therefore, it is always beneficial to keep English flowing in your mind.
The problem is not so much that language immersion is hard than that many DKU students lack consciousness of the importance of prioritizing the language they are learning. Wanting to be comfortable and refusing to use an unfamiliar language is the main issue. In the end, the solutions all come down to stepping out of your comfort zone. Mechanically memorizing words and sentences will never reach the deep inside logic of a language. Only using the language as much as possible will let you to do that, and the best way to make sure you’re doing this is to make the language you’re learning be your “priority language.”
Editor | Austin Woerner, Giulia de Cristofaro
Layout | Song Lexue 宋乐雪
Lou Kaiyuan (娄开元) is in the Class of 2024 of DKU. His potential major is Data Science. He is interested in astronomy, travel and photography. He wrote this essay in Austin Woerner’s EAP 101B course.
References
- Prentis, N. (2017, March 8). Speaking a foreign language can change your personality. Retrieved from Quartz website: https://qz.com/925630/feel-more-fun-in-french-your-personality-can-change-depending-on-the-language-you-speak/ ↩
- Dornyei, Z, & Kubanyiova, M. (2014). Motivating Learners, Motivating Teachers: Building Vision in the Language Classroom (p. 11,14). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ↩
- Dornyei & Kubanyiova (2014). ↩