“Learning a language means learning to think with it and to act with it in one and the same operation.” – M.A.K. Halliday, Language and Education (Collected Works, Volume 9)
While reading an old essay written by renowned linguist M.A.K. Halliday, I stumbled across references to a scholar of language learning from the 19th century, named François Gouin.
Gouin is somewhat obscure, but in some circles is known as inventor of the Series Method. Gouin’s aim was to combine thought and action in the second language, focusing on sentences, and particularly the verbs in the sentences, arranged in a series of steps describing an action or a set of actions.
In the past I described Brian MacWhinney’s notions of resonance and transfer (also see the end of this post, on mantras), which recall Vygotsky’s ideas of how children initially learn languages; Gouin’s method, which can be found in its original form in the aforelinked book, was based on the same observations. An introduction and breakdown can be found here.
Update: A perhaps simpler explanation of this post here.
Over the centuries, we’ve since moved on to an appreciation of the superiority of mixing explicit and implicit learning, both deliberate and immersive, using the native language to learn the second language, and the notion of multicompetence is replacing the ineffectual imitation of native language users in light of research.
However, this means not discarding work such as Gouin’s, but instead updating it and adapting it, augmenting it to achieve the important transfer of L1-steeped knowledge and behaviour into L1/L2-steeped knowledge and behaviour. Sustaining resonant strands between thought and action, creating strong networks of language and embodied cognition so that switching between languages to make meaning in a given situation is effortless.
So, what precisely does Gouin’s series method look like, and how do we implement it?
The idea at its simplest is to take basic, everyday behaviours, such as going through a doorway by opening and closing the door, and schematizing them into a themed series of sentences, specifically, ~8 L2 sentences, arranged in steps. (In general, remember also that thematic clusters are beneficial for vocabulary learning, while semantic clusters create interference.)
Language, thought, and action are fundamentally connected, and even simply visualizing actions triggers the same neural areas as executing them in actuality. Here we are teaching ourselves to think to ourselves in Japanese, visualizing or enacting these behaviours and linking them inextricably to our Japanese thoughts which guide and reflect them.
We thus want to establish a repertoire of these embodied Japanese thoughts that comprises a suite of unavoidable triggers which extend our usual incessant inner monologue, giving us a more proactive set of language knowledge.
Moving to this process of thinking in Japanese might be best reserved for an intermediate stage of learning, where we can reasonably devise a set of Japanese sentences, in absence of premade series, without ingraining errors in translation or whathaveyou. Keeping the sentences short, and/or using corpora, or even Google, to check accuracy and naturalness would help as well. You might also want to preload the vocabulary upfront with Anki study.
Example of a themed series, from this useful site which features 19 other examples (see the 日本語 ＋ English link at the bottom of each Unit’s Practice page)—these might in fact be useful at the beginner stage, rather than only intermediate:
- 電話ボックスまで歩く。
I walk to a phone booth. - ドアを押し開ける。
I push open the door. - 中へ入る。
I step inside. - ドアを閉める。
I close the door. - 電話帳を引く。
I look in the phone book. - 番号を見つける。
I find the number. - 手帳を取り出す。
I take out my notebook. - 番号を書き留める。
I write down the number.
This book features outdated Japanese examples with English translations, but it’s rather flawed linguistically and unintentionally amusing, which can be excused by its age.
Other examples and tips, sans Japanese, can be found here and here.
Finally, there is also the idea of learning by teaching or explaining, so forming sentences in the manner of a second-person how-to sequence might also be effective. Perhaps a site like OKGuide would come in handy, though it’s mostly limited to 3 steps per how-to.
