taking sides: does talking to native speakers really help?

2023, 05/03

Generally, most of us would agree that talking to native speakers helps learning their languages. But the other day I watched this video which is meant to challenge this idea.

In this video, the speaker argues,

For 99% of English learners (beginners and intermediate learners alike), it's not ideal to go to an English corner. It's not ideal to talk to a native speaker in hopes of improving your English.

The reason why she believes so is:

If you are talking when you're a beginner, you might not learn anything because they had to come down.

Instead of talking directly to native speakers, she proposes a better version of learning from them:

You can learn so much by just observing and listening to what they're saying, rather than them talking to you... If you're listening to two native speakers talking to each other, you can kind of deduce, even if you run into a word that you don't know, you can deduce what they're talking about based on the context.

Still, she is not trying to say we cannot talk to native speakers, but there's a better timing for us to do so:

There is a time in the place for taking advanced lessons with the native speaker. And I think the best timing is when you've reached a certain level of fluency, when you've reached a basic command of the language, when you've understood the most common words.

It's quite refreshing to reflect on her idea. I never thought that talking with native speakers might not be the best way to learn a language. As a passionate language learner, I always treasure the opportunities to talk with native speakers online because there are not so many immigrants who speak other languages in my country.

But I was indeed reminded of some of my experiences where my learning was not so successful through talking to native speakers. Last year, I began making Spanish-speaking friends on the game Sky COTL. I tried to talk to them in Spanish, but apparently I hadn't reached a certain level of fluency. Whenever our conversation went a little deeper, I had to make them speak English or use the in-game translator. In general it didn't make much sense for me to learn Spanish that way, because I didn't even know how to take turns and get the conversation going. So at the beginning of this year, I decided to make more Spanish-speaking friends and introduce all of them to each other. Now I am learning a lot more when I just silently observe their chats and take notes of their conversations.

As a native Chinese speaker, I also relate to what's said in the video about the "coming down" theory. When I talk to Chinese learners from other countries, I usually consciously or subconsciously avoid saying buzzwords, slang, or memes. And when I talk to Chinese learners from Japan, I even inadvertently speak a Japanese-like Chinese. I know that sounds hilarious and insane, but sometimes I just lose control of my own language system. The underlying causes might not only be linguistic, but also cultural—Japanese people are conventionally too polite when talking, which makes me speak Chinese with a politeness that may not even exist in most people's speech. However, as a Chinese-teacher-to-be, I feel obligated to speak as naturally as possible, so now I'm always trying my best to avoid being affected by other languages.

The key to understanding the main idea of that video is that the effectiveness or efficiency of learning by talking to native speakers only happens when you already know a necessary amount of expressions and know how to take turns when talking to them. I think this idea, in essence, is in line with the point Stephen Krashen has been trying to make in his i+1 principle: "learning is most effective when you meet the learners' current level and add one level of difficulty, like the next rung on a ladder." Krashen defines this kind of input as optimum input and comprehensible input.

With that being said, I still find it helpful to learn from native speakers, even though I'm a beginner in most of the languages that I'm trying to learn. For one thing, learning is still happening. When talking to native speakers, I gamble on the meaning of words and sentences in my output, even though sometimes I speak like a clown. Krashen is so well-regarded that linguistics students unintentionally attach more importance to input than output. However, we cannot internalize all the input we get, and even if we do, it doesn't mean we can correctly output. The correction of these errors cannot be achieved by input alone. Therefore, we need to test our output, and talking to native speakers is a good way to do that. For another thing, talking with native speakers creates pleasant learning experiences. You are not merely learning languages when talking to them, but you also try to make friends with them, and build connections with them. The desire to know more about your friends and share things with them motivates you to learn languages too. Connecting with people is just so fun. Having fun learning is always better than being fed up with dull drills.

So overall, I am all for talking with native speakers, but the strategies applied to the learning experiences of talking to them should be carefully designed as well. Language learning might not be a matter of taking sides—just find out the learning methods that you feel at ease with and design your own methods creatively.

Thanks for reading! 😊

#now