Running trail in Amman

One drawback of spending the summer in Amman is that it's really hard to go out for a run.  With temperatures of 30-35° during the day, dry and dusty air, and pavements that are often blocked or end abruptly, running in the street isn't really an option.

I joined the al-Madina gym at Sport City.  It's a fairly reasonably priced, well equipped gym, but I find running on the treadmill just so dull.  So I was really pleased to find a shady, quiet trail nearby.  I'm writing this post to help other people find it.

I found it with the help of this blog post, which has pictures of the trail and some descriptions of the facilities in Sport City.  Sport City is a large complex that includes the national football stadium, some running tracks, a showjumping ring, squash courts, etc.  Just by the stadium is a wooded area with a small hill.  The trail goes back and forth under the pine trees, making a circuit of about 2 km.  The length isn't ideal (I had to do 11 laps last Thursday) but it's cool (and even smells good) under the trees, and there's no traffic noise.

On the map below (credit: Google Maps), Sport City (or Al Hussein Youth City) is the whole area bounded by the main roads (Queen Alia, Haroun al Rasheed, Al Riyada and the yellow one at the top whose name I forget).  Al-Madina gym is in the building next to the pool in the northwestern part of the complex (the pool is nice, but it costs 15 dinars a day).  There are entrances to the complex at that white building between the pool and the word "Queen", and almost due north of the stadium (I think you can probably work out where the stadium is).  The trail is in the triangular wooded area southeast of the stadium, right under the words "Al Hussein Youth City".  (You don't need to be a member of Al-Madina gym to use it, but if you are, you exit the gym through the disused lower-ground car park, skirt round the stadium, and cut across the main stadium car park.)

I'd really recommend this trail for anyone like me who can't face more than 20 minutes on the treadmill, but wants to get some decent miles while in Amman.  The shade isn't perfect (don't forget a cap and sunscreen) and it can still be hot, but it's definitely better than taking your chances among the traffic.

Comprehensible input: vocabulary vs. grammar

What is "comprehensible input"?  What's just the right amount of it to be able to learn a language?  What's the relative importance of vocabulary and grammar in making input comprehensible?  And why do I always forget the word for "forget"?

I've spent the last month working almost exclusively on learning Classical Arabic.  It's a tough language for a native English speaker. Obviously it has a different alphabet and little common vocabulary - I look back fondly to my Spanish-learning days, restaurante, política, incendio and all that - but the learning process is also complicated by the fact that the formal classical language is quite different from that spoken every day.  It's not as different as, say, Latin is from English (or even from Spanish), but it is different enough to make talking with taxi drivers depressingly difficult.

In order to learn, I'm largely reliant on input in classes and from books, as well as the small number of other media that use the formal fussha version of the language.  Fortunately (honestly!), the school where I'm studying gives us plenty of homework - every week we have a whole list of vocabulary to take away and memorise.  The words and phrases in that list are defined only in Arabic, which not only forces us to think carefully about their meanings but also, more often than not, requires more new words to be learnt just to make the definitions comprehensible.

The problem is that most of the vocabulary isn't that relevant to my purposes.  I'm studying Classical Arabic in order to be able to read medieval astronomical texts, whereas most people on this course are Muslims or Islamic Studies students who would like to be able to understand the Qur'an, Hadith and other early religious texts.  So the vocabulary we have been learning, and the texts we read, have been tailored towards these subjects.  In the last few weeks I've learned the words for prayer mat, betrothal, and a battle at which the Prophet Muhammad was (or was not) present, as well as many different words for morality.

Have I not bothered learning this vocabulary, because it doesn't suit my purposes perfectly?  Of course not (pardon the double negative).  I've made a big effort, for three reasons.  First, I always do as I'm told.  Secondly, surely no learning is a waste, and you never know when a word will come in useful.  But thirdly and most importantly, learning the words makes the class input comprehensible - essential for acquiring the language.

Three ways to make a point comprehensible (at the Jordan Museum)

What is comprehensible input?  Put simply, it's the idea that if all the foreign language you encounter is on a spectrum from completely comprehensible (for you) to completely incomprehensible, the perfect level for you will be somewhere in the middle.  If you understand nothing, you'll learn nothing, but the same is true if you already understand everything.  The best situation is if you understand the gist of an utterance but not every word.  You will be able to absorb the meanings of the previously unknown words (imagine if you understood the gist of the previous sentence but not the word "utterance" - you'd probably guess what it meant with little or no thought).

The theory of comprehensible input (about which you can read more on the excellent LanguageSurfer blog) goes along with another theory (also credited to Stephen Krashen): that a distinction can be made between language acquisition and learning.  The former is an instinctive but slow process; the latter requires conscious effort.  The former is what you're doing if you read that sentence above and absorb the meaning of the word "utterance"; the latter might involve reading a grammar book and making notes.  And, says Krashen, the former is superior - it's the only way you can really know a language, rather than just knowing about it.  (Again, see LanguageSurfer for more on this).

Grammar fans may of course protest that understanding the structure of of a language is just as crucial to knowing it as knowing its vocabulary.  I don't know about that - many native speakers don't have the first clue about the structure of their own language and get on fine most of the time (at least until they try to teach it).  But it's surely true to say that for a foreign-language learner, a solid knowledge of grammar can only help with language acquisition.  If I know from my grammar studies that the muta prefix and i vowel in the Arabic word muta'allim make it the active participle of Form 5, from the Form 1 root 'alima, meaning "to know", and I know that Form 5 typically expresses the result of Form 2, which itself tends to indicate causation of Form 1 (so that Form 5 ends up being a gradual version of Form 1), then I might be able to guess that muta'allim means a learner or apprentice - though it's more often used in an adjectival sense, as "educated".  (If you're interested, the Form 2 verb 'allama means "to teach".)

This post is already getting quite long - so time to wrap up what all this has taught me about language learning.  The first thing to say is that vocabulary must be the most important part of learning a language.  If you want to ask the way to the railway station, no amount of grammar will help you if you don't know any of the relevant vocabulary (though you can always imitate a train, something I enjoy doing at every opportunity).  Secondly, I've learned much here about how vocabulary builds on itself.  If you know a few words in a sentence, you'll be more likely to learn other words.  I suffered in the first few weeks here because my vocabulary was very poor, but as I learned some of the words the teacher uses regularly (sometimes this had to be through the conscious process of looking them up in a dictionary), I was able to pick up others with less effort.  And finally, there's no substitute for using new vocabulary in as many contexts as possible.  No matter that I mainly just want to read classical texts: hearing, writing and speaking are all important ways to drive content into my brain, and it is much easier to learn vocabulary by using it in some kind of context than by memorising lists of words.

And why I always forget the word for "forget"?  I forget the answer to that one.  It might have something to do with the weak letter root, but more probably it's just my defective brain.

Arabic in Amman: Immersion?

This blog is taking a holiday from astronomical instruments, and turning its attention to language learning.  That's odd! I hear you exclaim.  Yes, it may seem that way, but I have long been fascinated by different languages, and passionate about learning them.  And now I am in Jordan, spending 2 months improving my Arabic.  I plan to write a short series of language-focused posts while I'm here.

The big question for this post: to immerse or not to immerse?  When is it better to learn a language in that language, and when is it better to do it in your native language?

This makes me feel exotic and special...

First, a bit about why I'm here and what I'm doing.  I'm studying at the Qasid Institute in Amman.  This is a specialist language school which started out teaching Classical Arabic to Americans who were keen to read the Qur'an and other religious texts, but over the last decade or so has expanded into Modern Standard (written) Arabic, and now has students who come to learn the language for all kinds of reasons (still mainly Americans, though).  This is the second time I've studied here (I spent 2 months here in Summer 2012 too) and I am impressed by their professionalism and the standard of teaching.  I'm here now because texts translated from Arabic were incredibly important in medieval astronomy, and I'd like to be able to access some of those texts (many of which remain unpublished) in their original language.

But what's the best way for me to do this? Should I be focused on immersing myself in Arabic, or should I be thinking about translating into English and understanding the structures of the language?

Now, I have some experience teaching English - both as a foreign language (EFL) and English literature, though it's obviously EFL that's relevant here.  When I trained as a TEFL teacher, the course included 4 hours of full immersion Swedish.  Why? In order to show us how a language can be taught from scratch without a word of the user's native language being used.  Many people believe this is the best way to learn: you are not constantly comparing the language to your own, you quickly learn to think in the language instead of translating, and you can somehow trick yourself into forgetting that you can use your native language.  That last point means you're less likely to switch back into your native language, and will instead force yourself to make the best use of whatever ability you have in the new language to communicate whatever it is you want to say.

At the other end of the spectrum are the people who say that the best way to learn a language is to understand how it works, and it is much quicker and easier to do that through your native language.  These people tend to place emphasis on understanding the structures and grammar of a language, in contrast to advocates of immersion who focus on vocabulary and communication strategies.  This approach might well be suitable for someone like me, more interested in reading, understanding and translating texts than speaking.  Arguably it's well suited to Classical (and Modern Standard) Arabic in general, which are structured written languages, distinct from the spoken dialects ('Amia).  This way of learning is familiar to anyone who's learned Latin. (Are there any schools that teach full immersion Latin? That would be interesting.)  And since I've learned Latin on-and-off for a while, it might suit me quite well.

Now most people, when confronted by a spectrum of views like this, assume that the optimum is somewhere in the middle.  But for the immersionists, of course, there is no happy medium: if you get used to using your native language, particularly if you become accustomed to using it with a particular individual (your teacher, say), it immediately becomes much harder to use and to think in the target language.

Qasid have come up with a nice solution to this problem.  They split the class in two, with a different teacher for each half.  So each day I have two hours of "Skills", followed by two hours of "Sciences".  The Skills are taught exclusively in Arabic, including all instructions, definitions and feedback.  In these two hours we use the familiar four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking - but no translation, you'll note.  In the Sciences class we study Arabic grammar, learning to analyse and parse the structures of texts, discussing the patterns of grammar and seeing how the texts fit together.

For me, this is a good compromise.  It has its drawbacks: grammar questions arise in the immersion (Skills) class, of course, and it's tricky to ask in Arabic why a verb has a certain ending, and even harder to understand the teacher's answer.  Meanwhile questions of vocabulary and usage arise in the grammar (Sciences) class, but asking them sometimes feels like a distraction, as if it's inappropriate to focus on minutiae when we're looking at the bigger picture.  But in general I like the approach.  There's not much space at present for translation, but that's a skill to work on in future.  For now, I'm happy getting my head around the 10 Forms in one class, and discussing the battle tactics of the companions of the Prophet Mohammed in the other.  Come back soon for an update on how it's going!

What are your experiences of language learning?  How do you prefer to learn?  Feel free to comment below!