NATIVES Language Transfer

"We have the best of both worlds, even though maybe our grandparents don't think so. We can express ourselves in Italian or German, depending on what we want to say and who we want to say it to."— Florian Castlunger, 30-something resident of Bozen

It took a summer hiking trip to Bozen/Bolzano in South Tyrol to make me realise the important role language plays as a cultural bridge to unite people, but also how through history, this bridge has (and can), divided people.

South Tyrol, a gorgeous pocket of long, winding green Wiese (green fields) flanked by the ancient UNESCO-heritage Dolomites with their light dusting of snow on the Eppan peak, is tucked into modern-day northern Italy. Once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the region was annexed to Italia after the end of the First World War, as a kind of thank you present for Italy being on the side of the Allies.

Then when Mussolini enacted his totalitarian fascist regime, he instituted a series of laws designed to "purge" the region of the German-speaking peoples which had inhabited the region for thousands of years: he forbade German being spoken at home and Italian was made mandatory; families had to change their surnames; all business was to be done in Italian; all German street signs were removed and replaced with Italian ones. Italians from the south were re-settled up north, mostly to work as public functionaries or for il Duce. For those South Tyroleans who did not comply, they were offered forced exile and their homes and properties appropriated.

South Tyroleans, a German-speaking mountain people, are the original inhabitants of the region. "Our identity has always been our pride", Florian, a local inhabitant and senior staffer at the South Tyrol Culture and Marketing Office tells me during our summer walking tour through Bozen's delightful old streets and character-filled squares. "We were never German, although we speak German. We were never ethnically Austrian, but were a part of the Empire. Now we are Italian, yet on paper only. What never waivers is our sense of who we are".

It is challenging for someone from Australia, one of the world's most multicultural societies, to put South Tyrol's history and unique culture into some kind of context. Yet perhaps when thinking about the impact of language in South Tyrol, 'context' is not the right approach, as it suggests some kind of finality or sealed off, dead end as though their rich culture has come to an end. Maybe it is more about the new 'chapters' that are yet to be written in the region's book.

This article was written by guest author, Petra Zlatevska.

Part 2 to follow next week!

Arianna Huffington knows a thing or two about what she thought was success—she is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Huffington Post, which in 2012 won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting, the first for an online news portal. She is also on the list of Forbes most powerful women in the world. What she didn't realise was that her outdated notion of success was leading to her downfall, before she took urgent action.

At her official German book launch of "Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder" at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin in early October, Huffington found any reason to bring in her love of ancient Greek philosophy.

The quest for what is a good life has been occupying philosophers and thinkers since time immemorial—how do you define it? How do you live it?

In our world of modern technology, 24-hour days and global connectedness, Huffington argues that what may objectively be a good life has been reduced to what is a "successful life". "Success" in our society has come to be measured by two traditional, and as she argues, now outmoded metrics: money and power. She told the packed house in Berlin that the third leg of this stool needed to be a new "metric" to enable us to thrive: well-being, as a way to enable human wonder, wisdom and giving.

Sounds convincing enough, in theory. Yet when she continued and openly recounted her physical collapse from burnout and exhaustion in a pool of blood a few years after starting the Huff Post, I sensed that a few people in the audience had flashes of "This could have been me". Her collapse led her to re-evaluate her life and reassess her priorities.

Her honesty seems a rare trait for a global media persona, it is, however, what makes her such an endearing character. In her rigorous approach to research for the book, she notes how modern science has essentially confirmed ancient wisdom: the link between sufficient sleep and health. In fact, sleep deprivation has been shown to cause Alzheimer's, cancer and creativity deprivation.

"We are currently in a collective disillusion which preaches that burn out is the only way to succeed. It is so entrenched in our mainstream culture, just like during the Middle Ages when everyone believed that the earth was flat rather than round, and of course that turned out to be wrong", laughed Huffington.

She implemented a personal 12-step programme and joked that it was like Alcoholics Anonymous. She noted that you need to pick the step that resonates with you and hers was lack of sleep. She set in train a simple tool to have an additional 30 minutes sleep per night and found that she was able to incrementally increase this to eight hours per night rather than her previous four.

"I promised myself I would not write another book, yet after I gave a commencement speech at Smith College (to a group of female graduates), I indirectly gave the thesis of what became the book as a sort of personal philosophy. After that I was flooded with emails about how many people thought the same thing", Huffington said.

With a wry sense of humour and a sharp tongue, Huffington even apologised for her strong Greek accent and told us how her first husband enlisted the help of a dialogue coach to correct her pronunciation (she migrated to the US from Greece in her teens). "I was made to feel that my foreignness was embarrassing until I realised it was a powerful differentiator and a cause for celebration of my uniqueness", she said.

Huffington showed how well-prepared she was, sharing some interesting statistics for Germany on lack of sleep and productivity:

• Burnout costs the German economy approximately €10bn per year.
• The consumption of anti-depressants is rising.
• Volkswagen has instituted a closed email system from 7pm to 7am so that staff cannot physically check or respond to emails when they are at home during these hours.
• Heidelberg University runs happiness courses for its students.

You cannot control the circumstances of your life, but you can control your attitude towards them and this is what ultimately leads to freedom, because you accept you are responsible for your own actions", mused Huffington.

This article was written by guest author, Petra Zlatevska.

Being an English trainer has taught me several things, but one thing is for sure: throughout the world, learning English as a second language has become essential in global communication. English has become the most important language in a time of globalisation and worldwide correspondence.

Textbooks are helpful when learning and teaching a second language. How does a teacher know, however, which book is the most appropriate for effective learning and teaching, before having used it? What criteria should be considered?

Most textbooks, thanks to marketing experts, meet all the requirements needed to count as good books. Critical teachers however, have no other opportunity than to study the contents of a book, try the books out, and finally rely on their own initiative. Fortunately, several guidelines referring to textbook analysis have been created in order to assist teachers in finding appropriate textbooks.

Teachers are able to create their own personal guidelines for choosing the most effective textbook. I believe that the creation of an ultimate textbook would be impossible to achieve. All teachers would probably agree on two things, namely that textbooks should be motivating and interesting and that learning should be enjoyable.

In reality and because teachers have individual ideas of their own, there can be no such thing as a universal, best textbook. In my opinion, the answer is to rethink and be creative. First of all, teachers should not depend too much on their books, but depend on themselves. A teacher should be capable of noticing whether participants are interested, motivated and enjoying themselves. A teacher should also notice whether certain tasks are effective and fun.

A teacher needs to be creative and reconsider how to make tasks more interesting, enjoyable, and more effective. Teachers must realize what works and what doesn't. In the end it is down to the teacher's experience, creativity and how seriously the frameworks are taken into consideration.

Marko Müller is not your average language aficionado—he wants to learn Gaelic, and reads Edgar Allen Poe and Shakespeare when he is not sweating it out in the gym.

Light bulbs and life

Three years ago, Marko Müller turned his life around. "I had been working in sales and management for around 10 years moving around Bavaria, Sauerland, Dortmund and North Rhein Westfalia. One of my parents was unwell at the time and I needed to decide: career or family. I chose the latter and relocated back to Bielefeld. I didn't have a plan, but decided at some point to take a personal training course, just for myself. I sat the exams, quit my existing job and set up my own business. At some point in all of it, I had a light-bulb moment. The decision changed my life".

There's training and then there's training

Marko drew on the rigour and discipline while learning English and studying Macbeth in high school to apply himself and become a fully qualified personal trainer in under one year.

He then created his own business and has since gone on local radio to discuss health and fitness, run in-house workshops on healthy living and nutrition for one of the region's largest insurance companies, Menze & Menze, and has private personal training clients (none other than NATIVES Commander-in-Chief, Jessica). He saw the potential in devising tailored health and nutrition workshops and lifestyle programmes as a way to reach out to people who work long hours and may not have previously thought about the importance of sport for their wellbeing.

One of the main challenges was finding ways to transfer the existing skills he had in his former corporate career to now being on the other side of a corporation—teaching people about burnout, how to be healthy and work less and live more. "I built on my existing people skills, all that I learned about sales and management and tried to bring it to my new business".

On Shakespeare, Scotland and staying motivated

His love of languages came from his high school experience learning English, followed by a "devastating experience" in his early 20s on a visit to Scotland where he could not understand anyone! After that, he became an autodidact par excellence: he started subscribing to English business journals for language students (Spotlight) and started to read English books.

Years later, he enrolled in a 6-week English language course to further polish his language skills. He has a love of urban fantasy novels and has commenced a love affair with film noir Tarantino classics and sci-fi thrillers á la Matrix (all without that eponymous German dubbing).

Marko is also testament to that old adage that we learn best when we are passionate about something: "When stuff fascinates me, it is as if it is burned into my brain. At some point, I started to experiment with old English. I like the way it is spoken, the way it is written and how it sounds". These days he can randomly recite passages from Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe with concentrated, personal fondness.

English's saucy first cousin, français, was never a language that Marko warmed to "I studied French at school and people told me if you enjoyed English then you would enjoy French. This was bullsh** as I hated French and gave up after half a year". Gaelic, on the other hand, has been a long-time passion project, based on his great empathy with the Scots. He adds laughing that he would have pursued Gaelic, had the Scots voted in favour of independence in the recent September referendum.

And what about the quirkiness of English, its spelling and mix of borrowed words? "In comparison to German, English is a much more accessible language. We're bombarded with English via internet, film and media in our daily lives and this makes it easier to motivate yourself to keep learning. Look at the kids and teens of today—they have much earlier contact with English compared with 20 years ago." Marko believes that if it were the other way round, that is, if deutsch were the all-pervasive global language, then its prevalence would make it more accessible. It was not to be: "History did not turn out that way, I guess", Marko adds with a smile.

This article was written by guest author, Petra Zlatevska.

One of the most intimidating tasks for the language learner is without a doubt learning vocabulary. Nobody really likes learning grammar but at least it does seem to be finite. Vocabulary, on the other hand can seem never-ending. And to add to the frustration, when you do learn a word, it doesn’t stay in your head for long.

What can language learners do to address these problems? Well, one tried and tested method is the trusty deck of flashcards. The learner writes the L1 word on the first side, the corresponding L2 word on the second side and tests himself regularly. Over time the deck grows and with frequent reviews, the words become more and more familiar.

Micheal Erard in his book "Babel No More", went on a quest to investigate the world’s best language learners. He discovered that the legendary Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who was said to have spoken anywhere between 30 and 72 languages, relied heavily on his collection of carefully handwritten flashcards. "It does not appear that the Cardinal possessed any extraordinary secret" he said. "In Mezzofanti’s own time, his methods must have seemed sensibly industrious. Today they dazzle us only by their vigour and persistence." This just goes to show the power of the humble flashcard when combined with a great deal of motivation.

And modern flashcard programs make the process much more manageable and eliminate at least some of the "vigour and persistence" required. With a deck of electronic flashcards, the learner can take his vocabulary on the go and synchronise them across multiple devices.

These programs go a long way to addressing most of the practical problems associated with an analogue (paper) deck of flashcards but are they any more effective? Do they help us learn more?

Why do we forget?

Fiction and real life are full of examples of people who we admire for their minds. We are amazed by people like Daniel Tammet who learned Icelandic in a week or magicians and memory champions who memorise decks of cards or impossibly long strings of numbers. We watch films like "Limitless", in which a wonder drug allows characters to learn skills and retain information like a supercomputer. We accept however that these examples are not reality. People with savant-like abilities often can’t lead normal lives, memory tricks are by nature tricks and have limited practical application and fiction requires us to suspend belief.

We marvel at these people and enjoy the movies but at the same time, we accept that in fact it is natural to forget. Our brains sort through what we learn, and when a particular piece of information is not recalled often enough, it is deemed not useful and allowed to be forgotten. Anything else would be inefficient.

How do we forget?

In 1885, German scientist Hermann Ebbinghaus published his book "Über das Gedächtnis. Untersuchungen zur Experimentellen Psychologie". This work detailed a phenomenon known as the spacing effect. Ebbinghaus’ research showed that we forget at an exponential rate and that this rate (the so-called forgetting curve) is predictable. Because it is predictable, Ebbinghaus concluded that if we are reminded at a specific time, just before we forget, information can be more successfully retained.

On the one hand, this isn’t really new. Obviously, consistent study over an extended period of time is better for learning than cramming but Ebbinghaus’ method is so efficient that study time can be drastically reduced. Unfortunately, this pattern of forgetting is far too complex for the human brain to calculate….

Flashcards 2.0

This is where an SRS (Spaced Repetition Software) program comes in. On the surface it looks like any other flashcard program, but after checking both sides of the card, the user is asked to rate the card on a difficulty scale of 1 - 4. An algorithm then determines when the card should next be reviewed. Cards with more '1' ratings are shown more often to the user (perhaps twice in ten minutes for example) and cards with more '4' ratings appear less frequently (perhaps just once every six months). Each time a card is viewed, the user gives it a new rating.

Because of the algorithm, learners can be confident that the information that is scheduled for that day, is the only information that needs to be studied in order to retain it.

"I know Kung-fu"

Ok, so we’re not quite at the point where we can download information into our heads. But the use of an SRS system can really help with the age old problem of remembering vocabulary. You just need to outsource some of your memory to your computer…… and let’s not forget the "vigour and persistence".

Sources:

http://archive.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus

Babel No More: The Search for the World’s most Extraordinary Langauge Learners / Michael Erard

Image: 

http://static2.akpool.de/images/cards/10/101934.jpg