Beyond Fluency: mastery of meaning for English Language learning (ESL)

How can a non-native student achieve the best ESL English Language results? 

Language fluency is widely considered the ultimate measure of language learning. But it is not, in fact, a true measure of language skill – because fluency is not the fundamental purpose and actual use of language. The only true purpose of language is to express ideas, thoughts, and opinions, to communicate these to another person with the greatest possible clarity, to allow the listener to naturally and effortlessly attain complete understanding of the ideas conveyed in the spoken or written word. To obtain the best ESL results, the non-native speaker must study language for the purpose of expressing thoughts in speech and writing. Fluency might occur after all, but is not the primary focus. 

The expression of thought and the medium of language are inextricably bound. But the essential practice is always the study of and creation of meaning – it is the use of language and intelligence to generate precision of expression and quality of thought. The ordinary layperson might observe mastery of language in native-level fluency, in an eloquence and expressive power of speech, but these arise only after the fact, and even incidentally. Essay Engineering teaches students to think with clarity, precision, and insight. Education and intelligence do not exist to impress other people, but rather to convey one’s own thoughts and understand another person’s thoughts.

How do ESL students benefit from Essay Engineering & studying English literature? 

Essay Engineering teaches students to achieve a perfect grasp of language as a medium for articulating thought – and literature is the most advanced form of language in all elements of thought, in vocabulary, syntax, and sheer complexity. Literature comprises the most challenging ways of using language and constructing meaning; and the Essay Engineering methodology of analyzing the literary work teaches students to reconstruct the meaning of sophisticated intellectual content. The language-learning student makes rapid, efficient progress with this practice of meaning reconstruction by working with a challenging text and the complex ideas it contains. When the ESL student masters a literary text, the student progresses to mastery of the English language. 

How does one train the mind to think in a foreign language? 

The language learner must become aware of his mental processes, and must think only in the English language until this becomes natural. (One must never think in a different language and translate into English.)

A major challenge is the practical nature of thinking in a foreign language, which requires a careful balancing of both correct grammar and spontaneous sentence composition. It is essential to recognize these two distinct elements, and to allow each its correct measure.

Namely, an excessive emphasis on correct grammar will hamper spontaneous sentence composition, which is the natural capacity of humans to form the correct string of words. Put more simply, the beginner student must develop the natural instinct of a foreign language, which is the instinct to allow these new words to involuntarily “tumble out” of oneself. But if a student is nervous about or preoccupied with the textbook rules for noun declension or verb conjugation, she or he won’t be able to form the actual verb or specific noun that is required and desired. Correct grammar is, of course, ultimately essential and required, but the beginner and intermediate student must allow herself or himself to speak and write sentences that are, at first, not entirely correct. After the fact, the student can observe what these errors were and be sure to correct them in subsequent usage.

Conversely, the excessive emphasis on spontaneous sentence composition causes persistent grammatical errors, when the student never take the time to reflect on the grammar of sentences spoken or written. The natural remedy to this is the after-the-fact scrutiny of spoken and written words and the revision of these sentences with the application of correct grammatical forms.

A second major challenge for the beginner and intermediate language student is the unavoidable limitations of a constrained vocabulary. How can a student speak a sentence if there is some essential word she or he does not know? There is a natural function of the English language and every language that readily addresses this challenge. The technical term of circumlocution might be unfamiliar, but the practice it indicates is common in everyday life: if you cannot think of a complex word, then use a series of simple words to express the idea. If you want to talk about the currency of a country, but don’t know this word, you can say, “the money of a country, like the dollar of the US, the pound of England, the franc of Switzerland.” Or, if you want to say "Mole is tired of doing chores and cleaning the house", but don't know the words chore and cleaning.  You could instead say 'Mole does not want to do the work of making the house look better, and take out the trash.' And if you don’t know the word take out, you can use the word move or carry. It's not the precise meaning, but it is adequate for expressing the basic idea. After putting together this first basic sentence, the language learner can look up these words in the dictionary or can ask a native speaker.

When learning a foreign language, it is crucial that students work with their existing English vocabulary – this is the only way a student learns to think in English. It is to avoid searching for a word in a native vocabulary, which breaks the spell of thinking in English language.

What are the best practical methods for exposure to a foreign language?

Whether studying the English language or any other foreign language – the student must understand that learning a foreign language is a serious undertaking. Any significant progress requires a commitment to genuine effort in all four modes of language (reading, writing; listening, speaking). This might sound more than anyone can manage. But while it is important to have exposure at least two or three times a week, or even daily, this need not cover all four modes at the same time. For two or three months, a student might pursue only listening and reading practice; after which, the student might spend two or three months practicing only writing and listening. A thrice-weekly schedule is often less feasible for speaking, where, depending on circumstance, once or twice a week practice might be all one can do. But recent developments in AI chatbots can be used to practice short written composition; spoken and written expression overlap significantly, and improvement in one brings about improvement in the other. (Conversely, listening comprehension is a distinctive skill that is not greatly improved with reading comprehension.)

Listening exposure with radio programs is the most attainable of the four modes because this can be a somewhat passive effort and still yield significant benefit; i.e. listening to the radio while walking or cooking or in the bathtub. (The term radio of course refers to any radio program broadcast over the internet, as well as podcasts and video programs.) Persistence in listening exposure is also extremely helpful for the most significant challenge facing the language learner who wants to either relocate to or visit a country for first-hand language practice – namely, listening comprehension is extremely challenging with different native speakers whose idiosyncratic vocalization and tone is unfamiliar (e.g. when speaking to a shop worker or barista for the first time and for a brief interaction not repeated), who speaks quickly or with a regional accent, whose vocabulary naturally far outstrips the non-native speaker.

Repetition is also a key element to exposure. That is, don’t just listen to a radio program once. Listen to the same episode of a radio program at least two or three times. Repeated exposure will allow the mind to internalize the foreign language sounds and make better sense of the words conveyed.

Exposure need not be intensive to be beneficial. Daily review of the headlines in a foreign-language newspaper, or daily reading of two or three foreign-language tweets will still be beneficial – as long as the student makes a serious effort to understand. Exposure without effort will not yield results.

Finally, there must be a commitment to persist in this effort continuously and without interruption for months and years at a time. Progress is not measured in days, weeks, or even months, but it is in intervals of a half a year or an entire year that foreign language progress can be observed.

Reading exposure – newspapers, magazines, micro-blogs (e.g. twitter); literature is also excellent practice because the language is complex and the ideas sophisticated, but beginner students should work with beginner level books to avoid being overwhelmed, daunted, and demoralized.

Writing exposure – writing one’s own thoughts in a journal, or exchanging messages and emails with others.

Listening exposure – radio programs (relatively easy to understand); movies or television shows (mimic the fast pace and idiom usage of everyday life)

Speaking exposure – speaking out loud one’s own thoughts either alone or in conversation.

How can the language learner reproduce native pronunciation? 

The language learner must first pay attention to the sound of the native speech. Then, to achieve correct pronunciation, the language learner must listen to his own speech, notice the differences, and determine the different way of moving mouth and tongue to generate the native pronunciation. 

Moreover, there is a phenomenon entirely distinct from the pronunciation of each single word. In every language there is a 'musicality' to the tone of the sentence, which the language learner must also imitate. The 'musicality' indicates the emotional tone and the rhythm (or 'meter', as in poetry). For example, French sentences have a generally flat, unstressed cadence until the end of the sentence, where there is a stress (and sometimes a rise in tone) in the final words. German sentences are very regular in alternating a stressed and unstressed syllable (as 'iambic' meter). English sentences are somewhere in between the German and French, with more stressed syllables than the 'flat' French rhythm, and slightly more unstressed syllables than the German rhythm. 

Who is the man in the photograph, why is he wearing a starched collar, and what does this have to do with English language learning? 

The man in the photograph was the son of Polish nobility, and was named Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski at his birth. His native language was Polish. His second language was French, which he spoke fluently from childhood. His third language was English, which he  began to learn at the age of twenty when he joined a merchant ship, the Skimmer of the Sea, as an "ordinary seaman" in July 1878. 

Today, he is known to the world as Joseph Conrad, and is recognized as one of the great English-language storytellers of the twentieth century. In his novella Heart of Darkness, a man living in the African jungle wears every day a clean shirt which has been laundered, starched, and ironed to perfection. Conrad uses this habit as an indicator of the man's extremely high level of will power. (The man in the starched shirt provides a contrast and antithesis to the novella's protagonist, Kurtz.) The English language student will acquire fluency only through a similarly high level of commitment and will power.