Episode 74- Why is Vocabulary So Important?

[Music] Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, cats and dogs, and those six geese who do nothing but sit around a lane for 12 days. It's Thursday at 3 o'clock in what that means. Life on the Michigan State University campus, life from Chao Chila, California, and life from Germany on the other side of the pond. It's tea with BBP. I'm your host, Bill Van Pat, aka BBP, international superstar, and your own personal diva of SLA. And speaking of geese, my softest down partners in crime, my wonderful co-hosts, Angela Cramer and Walter Hopkins. Say hello. Hello. Hello. I like being a soft goose. That's good. Yeah. Soft is down, little goose partner in crime you are. Angela Cramer, you are skyping in today from Germany, right? That is correct, yes. What part of Germany you in? What town? Southwest Germany. Closer Stuttgart. Oh, Closer Stuttgart. Okay, so now I know where you are. Walter's in back in the studio today with the crew, and of course I'm out here in Chao Chila. So we are the technology is just, isn't technology just wonderful? It's just it is. It amazes me. What that really means is Walter's the only one working right now. You know, Walter's still in East Lansing. Come on now, people. What do you think I'm doing here? I've been up since 530 this morning working. What do you think I'm doing? I'm supposed to be sleeping right now. What time is it there, Angela Cramer? It's gracious. Nine o'clock, but I mean, felt I've been up for, I don't know how long. Oh yeah. Yeah, because you just traveled yesterday, didn't you? Yeah, I just got you today. All right, well, let me welcome everybody out there in our listening audience to the last show for this semester, not our last show ever, of course, but just our last show for this semester of 2017. We will be on hiatus as everyone here at T with BVP, scatters to the far corners of this wonderful global ours. We will be back on January 11th with a new semester, and hopefully some new surprises for you on our shows. Really? Are we going to be surprised too? Yes, you're going to be very surprised, Walter, when we replace that name plaque with somebody else's name. Oh, Holly. Yeah. Oh, wait. Do I say that? Yeah, you'll be saying, "Howelloo you when you don't get that paycheck on February 1st?" Right. I love that song, "Howelloo you" by the way. Not a great song. It is. Oh, it is. Yeah. Not the Messiah one. Not the Messiah one. I'll talk about the Leonard Cohen one. I guess I don't know that one. You know the Leonard Cohen. Yeah, you do. You do. Sing it for me. Come on now. It's been what he called it, covered by so many people. It's a great song. I'm like a singer right now. I've got like a, I'm having what he called it, allergies in my nose is acting up, but I'm very sainsy. And can we, I'm going to be singing like a chipmunk again. And speaking of my time is near. Speaking of singing, Francis, also known as Francisco, I'm still verifying whether or not he is right about the challenge from last week. Only because the internet says one thing doesn't mean that it's the truth. So I will sing for him, but just not today. I am, yeah, traveling is not good for your voice. It's not. And you must be in a nicely appropriated room in your, your pipes, your pipes must be well lubricated with some nice tea with honey and lemon and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So no, I don't want to sing it. I just don't feel like singing today. I really don't. I always feel like singing. Although, do I might do a deep question about a singer, but that's another story. Of course you do. Oh, I know one thing I need to do before we get going here. Senor Jordan out there. Now listening audience, guess what today is? It is his birthday. Happy birthday, Senor Jordan. Let's go to some gibots. Talk. I thought maybe you might do that on a Miriam and Rol thing where she sang Happy Birthday to Joe Kennedy. Happy birthday. That's very magic. Senor Jordan. All right, then moving right along. Senor Jordan. All right. So Happy Birthday, Senor Jordan. We're happy to send him a shout out for that. Well, I got no news. I mean, I was actually, I got one little thing to tell you all before I remind everybody what our topic is, but I have this book that I bought back in August. I think I was on a holiday with our friend of mine. We went out to Pacheco Pass here in California. And I stopped at the place that is called Casa de Fruta, which is actually owned by the family of a woman that I went to college with. And I know her the Zanger family. I know her quite well. I remember, I'm called, I mean, we haven't been in touch in a long time. But anyway, so I bought this book in the Rage shop called Weird Laws in the United States. And there's and then just cover all kinds of things. And there's one law. There's this one chapter on marriage and relationships, so on. And so those of you out there in Texas, I want you to verify this for me. Because if it's true, I'm grabbing Jake Jill and Holl and going down to Texas. So it says that you can be married to someone if you publicly introduce that person as your husband or wife three times in public. So that's what it said. This book of Weird Laws I go, is that true? You know, and of course, these people wrote the book. I always make a little joke about that. Mixed bar is interesting. Or something like that in Texas. I thought I wanted to say that out there. And people in Texas, if they're listening, I mean, you did double check on that and let us know if that's true. Is it the whole state of Texas? Or is it in certain town? That's crazy. That's a state lock. All these, yeah. No way. So some of these laws are old and nobody uses them anymore, but they're still in the books. And that's what makes them weird and funny. But, oh, and there's also just other states, I forget what states, for example, like an unmarried woman can't write a horse on Sundays and things like that. I mean, people just haven't bothered to change the laws on the books. But I want to know about that one in Texas. If you just introduce someone as your wife or your husband three times publicly, then that's considered a marriage contract in New York. Married, isn't that interesting? That's crazy. That's one word for it. All right. Well, enough about that. Texas, let us know. Okay, our topic today is the role of vocabulary in both communication and acquisition. It's a great topic. We've touched on this a little bit in the past, not too much, but I wanted to bring a couple of points up today on that. And I don't think vocabulary in communication and acquisition gets enough airtime among people. I mean, people just too dang focused, speaking of Texas, too dang focused on grammar all the time. And they don't talk about the role of vocabulary in communication acquisition. So we're going to talk about that today and it's important. To remember that during the show, there's the SLA challenge question. Everybody knows how that works right. In a few minutes, I will give you the question, the SLA challenge question. And the first person to get a call in with the correct answer wins a prize. So that reminds me, we're going to get some more prizes, don't we? So as like to remind everybody, keep your cell phones close by. We don't want you running into the wall or stubbing your toe to find your phone as you run forward to answer the SLA challenge question. Same goes true. A same is true for the Diva challenge question. I'll read that question at some point. And you'll have time to put your pringles down, put your chips of hoys down, pick up the phone, punch in our number and tell Dustin on the phone, I've got the answer to the Diva question. That's a good one today, too. The number to reach a set is 517-884-4321. What's that number? 517-884-4321 is the number to call. Again, Dustin is on the line waiting for you to call. So make him a happy man and call in and say hi to Dustin. You can also send us queries over Mixler and so on. I forget who's looking at what today, because we're all scattered across the world today. So somebody's looking at Mixler and somebody's looking at the tweets and somebody's doing something. I don't know what. I'm just here yacking away. And actually, if I may interrupt you for just a second, just-- What would you say if I said no? Who would you say if I said no? I would still interrupt you. I'd say no. So we are already in second information from Texas. I guess their tally is telling us that it is indeed common law marriage does exist in apparently his stepmother and father were common law married for a few years before getting married. I don't know if they introduce each other as husband and wife, and that's how it happened. He also said that stealing a horse is a hangable offense. Well, that's true. But I mean, the common law exists in lots of places. It's how you get to be common law. I mean, I want to know three times. Clicking your heels in the Wizard of Oz. You know, three times. Boom, you're married. There's no place like home. Jake Junkhall down to Texas if that's the case. And then Y'all send me something from Neiman Marcus. Okay. So again, we are a Colin talk show. So I want you to call and then talk to us about our topic today or any topic you want. You don't have to talk about vocabulary. You know, we we answer all kinds of questions. If you have something else about language teaching or language, I guess you want to talk to just give us a call. If you want tips for the holiday season for decorating your table, give us a call. If you want to know how to cook a turkey, give us a call. We do all this thing. I will also give you my recipe for masa for tamales. If you're planning on making tamales for Christmas, the way I am. Again, our number is 517-884-4321. - All right, right, right, right. - Dustin, I'm gonna do this first. - Dustin's looking really sad over there. He has no one to talk to. - Well, 'cause yeah, he's, ooh, my papers are falling all the way to play. Sorry, I had to back away in a mic a minute. Oh my gosh, my papers just fell off my desk. Hang on a second, everybody. (laughing) I need a new set up here. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and give the SLI challenge question all right, so that we have that out there and then I'm gonna talk a little about vocabulary by that SLI. - We already have an answer for it. - We do, huh? Okay. (laughing) - There's an answer. - This is a true false question. - Oh, that would be a good answer. Okay, here's a true false question. There is significant research out there showing that cognates facilitate comprehension and acquisition, true false. There is significant research out there that shows cognates, facilitate comprehension and acquisition, true or false. So, calling with an answer and then we will send you a prize if you are correct. Okay, dokeys. I can tell the phone is gonna start ringing off the hook real soon. All right, should I talk a little bit about vocabulary? - Talk about vocabulary. - Let's do it. - I'm gonna talk about vocabulary. I'm gonna talk about the role of vocabulary. Well, it's an angelica. I have a question for the two of you. - Oh, no. - If I were to ask the two of you this, what do you think the major role of vocabulary in second language development is? What would you say at the top of your heads? Quick, just say something real quick, something, in words or less. - Super important. How are you gonna communicate with a vocabulary? - Okay, Walter, what would you say? - Super important. How are you gonna communicate without vocabulary? (laughing) - That's six diesel A and Walter. That's six parrots of macken. (laughing) - I agree with what Angelica said. I think it's super important. What are you gonna say? - Without vocabulary. - Well, of course, that is what she said. - That's the first thing that comes to mind. What I wanna talk about are three things. I wanna talk about comprehension, acquisition, and what was my third one? Oh yeah, about meanings and words and their meanings. Okay, so if you let's talk about comprehension, 'cause comprehension is part of communication, right? It is obvious that the more words you know, the more you can comprehend, right? That makes sense. The more words you know, the more you can comprehend. - Correct. - But at this way, you can imagine any eight word sentence on Angelica, Walter, in your head, make up an eight word sentence. If I understand only one word of that sentence, comprehension of what you say is probably not likely, right? If I understand three words, comprehension may be increased, it still may not be likely, it depends on the words, right? The words that I actually understand. If I understand five or six of the eight words in your sentence, I'm a much better chance at figuring out what is being said to me overall, right? But here's the rub. Here's a rub about vocabulary and comprehension. Or I don't know if it's the rub or it's odd. That's not odd. It's the rub. Here's the rub. Most words are learned in context. That is while you're listening and while you're reading. So you need words to comprehend, but you also need comprehension to learn words. It's almost like a vicious circle. And so a lot of people don't understand that vocabulary, the bulk of vocabulary learning itself happens through comprehension yet, and a good deal of it. In fact, most of it for educated people is through reading. It's not through interaction, here one on one or all interaction. But again, you need words to comprehend, but you need comprehension to learn words. This is why, for example, in language teaching, we stress at the very, very beginning, you short sentences in your language classes. Use pauses and increase the frequency, use words over and over and over, because all these things help attenuate the problem of comprehension for learners at the beginning and increase the likelihood that they're able to extract the words out of the input that they're actually trying to comprehend. So that's why we suggest so many strategies at the beginning stages. And then as they learn more words, they can start reading and so on. And then you're the cycle builds up. And I figured what the threshold is, what they say, the research is something like 4,000 words is a threshold, you need 4,000 words more or less, really, really well, in order to launch yourself into self-reading and so on. Now, that's comprehension. Now let's talk about acquisition. Because acquisition is input dependent, what happens gang, the more input you comprehend, the more language you can acquire. Thus, vocabulary becomes critical to acquiring all parts of language. That includes formal features of language, like morphological endings on verbs, verb inflections, noun inflections, all that kind of stuff, other bits of grammar, sentence structure, pragmatics, speaker intent, what sentences actually mean, social linguistic appropriateness, using language the right way and the right context, and all of the kinds of things. So let's look at people like to talk about grammar, because everybody's obsessed with grammar. Look at something as simple as past tense and past tense endings. Now, there are two ways to make what we call temporal references in language. Temporal reference just means referring to past present or future, right? There are two ways to understand or get that from the input, depending on the language you're learning. Verb endings are one way to get past present and future temporal reference, or, and/or words and phrases that actually indicate themselves temporal reference. So in a sentence like the following, let me get my sample sentence. I got to shove my papers around. So in the sample sentence, John called last night, there are actually two places in that sentence, where temporal reference is indicated. One is on the verb called, and the other is on the phrase last night, both of these things signal pastness. Now, what looks to be the case in acquisition is that learners first acquire vocabulary that indicate temporal reference. And then, with some time, use the vocabulary items to bootstrap themselves into how the language encodes temporal reference grammatically. In other words, so what learners are trying to get from the input, what they need to start learning temporal references, not grammar endings, but words that signal temporal reference that later they can attach, they can match with the grammar endings. So I need to learn words like last night, next week, tomorrow, yesterday, and so on. And as these words get into my vocabulary, and they become robustly represented, they take what we might call deep root in my mental dictionary, I can then use those words to start bootstrapping myself into how the language might, if it does, at all, incorporate temporal reference grammatically. So there's a good example of how it's vocabulary that leads the acquisition grammar and not vice versa. And vocabulary becomes very important for getting grammar. Now, the third thing I want to touch on about this in terms of acquisition development is the following. And it relates again to getting grammar and getting sentence structure. Words aren't just meanings. I've said this before in the show, but I don't think we can say this enough. Words also have grammatical properties, especially verbs. So here's an easy comparative example. I'm going to take three verbs, eat, pull, and die. So eat, for example, has-- all these verbs have what we call a thematic grid or a fetid grid. This grid talks about the underlying entities needed or are optional for that thing to happen. So eat, for example, requires what we call an agent. And sometimes it also requires a patient or a thing. So I can say I eat a lot, or I eat frequently-- I usually have everybody eat frequently-- but that can also say I eat bananas every day. So it always requires an agent. So somebody who's the eater, optional is whether or not it requires a patient, such as bananas, or a lot, or leftovers. And so we can contrast that with a verb like die, which doesn't have an agent. There's nothing that causes the dying. Die has what we call the fetid grid an experiencer. So the event of dying is experienced by someone. It's that experience that becomes a subject of the sentence. So if I say my best friend is dying, notice that that's the only thing that verb can take. It takes no other entities. So eat takes obligatory one, optionally another. Die only takes one. That's not the same kind of thing as eat. And then there's the verb put. Like I put the books on the table. So put requires always three things. It requires an agent, the thing that's doing the putting. It requires a theme or patient, the thing that gets put. Then it requires what's called a location, where the thing gets put. In most languages that have the verb put, anyone of those things makes a sentence nonsensical or ungrammatical. So you can't say I put the book. You have to say where? You have to have location. You can't say I put on the table. You have to say the what, the theme. So all of these these thematic grades or these underlying things required by verbs project onto the syntax. So what this means that is that as you learn vocabulary and you learn and you start to find out what these vocabulary items entail, that can help push the syntax along. In other words, having unconscious knowledge about how what underlies words, pushes me as a language learner in English, for example, to make sure that all parts of the underlying verb get expressed in a sentence with a verb like put. Okay? And it also helps me to comprehend sentences with a verb like put. So let's look at something like Spanish. Let's say you're learning Spanish. And you hear "Bamos a ponerlos helados en la neveira." Right? So which means we're going to put the ice creams in the freezer. Now, if I comprehend "Bamos a ponerlos," if I understand that means we're going to put. And I also understand, I also comprehend elados ice creams. But maybe I don't know the word "neveira." I've never heard it before, right? But my underlying and unconscious knowledge of the verb "ponerlos" pushes me to deduce that this word "neveira" must be the place where we're putting the ice cream. Why? Because put requires three entities, "ponerlos" requires three entities, a putter, the thing put, and the place where it's put. So if I infer, if I figure out that "Bamos a ponerlos helados," if I enter comprehend that means we're going to put the ice creams, I have to, my knowledge, that verb, not just what it means, but it's underlying entailments. I'm telling you that that "neveira" must be the place we're going to put the ice cream. And then I use real world knowledge to figure out, hey, maybe that means freezer, right? So this underlying knowledge of verbs that we have, an underlying knowledge of words helps tell us certain things about how a sentence is going to behave. And from that, guess what? We learn more grammar, we learn more language, right? So vocabulary is not just about, not just about meanings. So vocabulary becomes really important in language development and language acquisition for three things. It's important during comprehension. It's important during acquisition, and it's important because of the grammatical information that it carries. That is vocabulary carries, and that helps, again, along with acquisition. So I think those are important things for us to keep in mind, and that's why those of us who push a lot of vocabulary and work with lots of words in the class and emphasize vocabulary or grammar are actually doing our students to service, as opposed to spending a lot of time on grammar and less time on vocabulary. Or, "Celebrary is the key for a long time for language acquisition." So with that, I will stop and leave that in our listeners' heads so that they can ponder that. Would you guys think about that? Interesting, right? Absolutely. And actually, Auret has a quick follow-up question. So a word encountered across many contexts should lead to acquisition of grammar, but repeated identical contexts, for example, Flashcards, audio video replay, isn't robust enough for acquisition? Is that correct? That's correct. That's correct. So it might be okay in the beginning, because what learners like to do is map one form with one meaning or one function, which means not just grammar, but also words. So it might take a while for learners. They might hear "cook" only as a verb, and only map it on as a verb, and not know that it's a noun as well. It might take a while from the beginning, and it does a noun that he's a cook, and he cooks, both use the same word, right? So read his right, that multiple contexts expand your language and expand your grammar, but in the beginning, learners might rely on a strategy of one word means one thing. So that's a conundrum, but it works itself out in acquisition over time. Okay, oh, we've got somebody on the line already. We've got say-sare on the phone. Say-sare are you there? Yes, I'm here. Say-sare to say-sare are you calling from Mexico? Yeah, yeah, I'm from Mexico. Okay, from Mexico, but they get part thing. From what part of Mexico are you calling from? I said from La Ciudad de Mexico. La Ciudad, La Capitale. Wow, okay, you're there. I think a lot of people get mad when I say that, especially Mexicans, because there's a lot of CDs, I don't know why we're called that, but anyway. That's all right. That's the way it's, well, you know, there's, I know I know I know what the politics of that are, so we won't get it on the show. We'll do, we'll deal with that in some other show, but okay, I understand you're calling about the SLA challenge question. Is that correct? Yes. Well, let me go ahead and let me let me read that question again, everybody, and then you can tell us your answer. So it's a true or false question. Here's the statement. There is significant research out there showing that cognates facilitate comprehension and acquisition. True or false, they said. It depends. That's my answer. It depends on whether the student's language is very close or very far apart from the target language. So for example, people are in Spanish. If they come from Italy or from Brazil, there's a point when they're intermediate level that there's just so many false cognates that it becomes confusing and frustrating. There's the other side of the spectrum, the Chinese students, the Japanese students, for example, they come here and some Chinese students don't even have the necessary basic skills to recognize the word as word. And then there's the students in the sort of sweet spot they come from, the US or France, they speak European language. So there's a equilibrium or a balance there where they can recognize a lot of words, but they're not very confusing because there's not a lot of cognates, false cognates. Okay. I'm going to give you the answer. I'm going to go ding, ding, ding, and say you're right. But you're not quite right because I think that was such a good answer and you're right on lots of levels. So let me tell you that the answer technically is false. So let me, let me, because it's kind of a trick question. I was actually trying to trick the audience and so I'm not going to let you get tricked. I'm going to let you get a prize for calling in and offering answer. But the question really is about, is there significant research out there showing that cognates facilitate comprehension and acquisition? The answer is actually there isn't that kind of research. There's all the kind of research that you just talked about. There's research, a lot of research on the relationship between cognates and an L1 and L2 to what degree are their cognates, to what degree aren't their cognates? There's research on that. There's research on bilingual children ability to recognize cognates. There's some research on the idea that concrete words and cognates are easy to learn. In most of the research, it means memorize compared to other words. And then again, there's research on the recognizability of cognates that you talked about. But no, no research actually looks at the facilitative effect of cognates. It's just, all this research that you were talking about and I just mentioned assumes that cognates have a facility of effect on comprehension and not that's an acquisition. Which is why people research all those things. But nobody's actually researched whether or not cognates facilitate comprehension. Now of course, intuitively it makes sense, right? But we have to be careful because a lot of intuition has been shown not to be true. So this is a good topic for people out there looking for a thesis topic or an MA topic or a paper topic or an dissertation topic. That how do we show not that people can recognize cognates, which is the bulk of the research out there. But and whether cognates are easy to learn the non-cognates, we want to know does having cognates actually facilitate comprehension and that's acquisition. That's it. So that would be interesting to look at and how would we look at that. So say so, we're going to send your prize because you're a champion and a trooper for calling in and for a trick question today. I think it's kind of funny though that most people are responding based on their experience. When the question while there was, is there research out there saying this? But alas, people don't like to listen to real questions. Say, "Sar, no, I'm just kidding." Say, "Sar, I need your address." So if you can please send me your address to our Gmail account, [email protected]. Say, "Sar, I would love to have your address so that we can send you that prize because you are the winner of the SLA challenge question today." Oh, thank you so much. And there you go. Taking my quote. Thank you. You guys are rock stars in the middle of the day. We're only rock stars because they're great people like you. So thank you, say so much. Okay. Asa Pronto, a recuerdo nos vemos. Okay, bye-bye. Thanks for calling in. Bye-bye, say, "Sar." That was, yeah, I do that question on purpose because I want to get that discussion of cognates in this part of our talk about vocabulary today. But it's interesting. There isn't research on compression itself. The book, the book of the research is on, "Can people recognize cognates?" There's a lot, believe it or not, there's a lot of work on bilingual kids. And when they're able to start recognize cognates and make mistakes, but nobody, you know, because all teachers say, "Use cognates that facilitates comprehension." And we say that. Use cognates that facilitates comprehension. But we don't even know that it does. And so, but one step is recognizable. And another step is then comprehension. Just because you can recognize something does not mean you can comprehend better. Especially when it comes to oral language, not just written language. And the book of research has also been done by the way on written language. Hardly anybody looks at cognates in oral language, which is a whole, another kettle of pescados, as we say. All right. All right. Right, right, right, right. Okay. Before I give the Diva Challenge question out, we've got a few minutes here. I'm going to actually read a couple of things from our Twitter feed. Where's my Twitter feed? And a Twitter feed. It's on the floor with all the rest of your papers. My Twitter feed has disappeared. It was not acceptable. Oh, my gosh. Who's doing the very happens today, huh? There it is. How am I doing my Twitter feed today? Oh, I've got to see that new Churchill movie with Gary Oldman. This is our finest hour. Okay. This was the question on Twitter from Winston Churchill. What was the highlight of tea with BVP this semester? What was the highlight of tea with BVP this semester for you? We got some pretty good answers here. Pamela said, "I'm adopting the word learners instead of students from now on." She goes, "That was something that was a big thing for her and a big highlight for her." And so she's made those changes in her syllabus in the way she's doing things. And instead of talking about student responsibilities and class, she's not talking about learners' responsibilities. That's kind of cool. Let's see. Missyur Sullivan says, "Reading his highlight was reading while we were on the topic, one chapter a week while we were doing the countdown to ACFOs." That's kind of cool. I'm glad he liked that. Hope other people liked that too. All right. Senorita Telenata says, "One of the highlights for her just consistently is when she listens to the show and we state things that reaffirms her gut feelings about certain educational trends. I won't say which one she mentions." But she does like, for example, the idea of saying, "It's okay to have a teacher-led classroom as opposed to a teacher-centered classroom." And a learner-centered classroom, or like, "Was it just a classroom?" It's better than talking about a student-centered classroom and so on. She said, "Those all reinforced ways she was thinking about running her classroom, but she couldn't articulate it well for people who were advocating a students must do all the work." So she was glad that was a highlight for her. Mary says that community. She thinks TVP- with VVP-profider-great community. It's weekly profession development with top language teachers. And so she likes that aspect of what we do. So good for her. We've got a couple others. I might save those in a minute. We've got stuff from longiness and from Chris. I'll save those. We'll come back to those. I'm going to go ahead and give the David Challenge question now for people. It's not about vocabulary, David Challenge question, by the way. It's just my typical David Challenge question. You guys ready? Yes, we're ready. We'll see if Walter knows the answer to this question. I think the answer to that question is no. There's no. Here we go. So here's the David Challenge question. The Broadway diva, Patti Lupone, won her first Tony in 1980 for What Musical. Call us with your answer. Call us with questions about vocabulary. Call us with questions about language teaching, language acquisition. Just call us. We're in the words of Deborah Harry. Call me. Call me. Call me anytime. All right. Okay. So what else do we have? Anything I mix up going on? Who's doing mix up? I'm doing mix up. I'm doing mix up. Okay. So what's going on mix up? Anybody talking to us there? Too shy to call in. Yeah. I keep telling them to call in. Reed was asking earlier if you can give a statistical learning or experience based account of put constructions when you were talking about put and eat and die. I'm not quite sure what he means. Do you know what he means? I know what he means. He's talking about usage based things. What I can tell him is that there's no research on this. This is my hypothesis. Great. Now he's telling me not to ask that. Well, Reed, you got to make up your mind. Okay. Well, this kind of goes back to something we were saying earlier about context because the verb "poner" for example in Spanish is does not just mean put. I mean, to us speakers, it means put, but it means put in different ways that don't have English translations. The English can translate as this put. So for example, there's "poner" and then there's "ponerse" which means to put on reflexively at your close-on. But then there's the use of "ponerse" for example, like say "puso a correr" like he began to run. We have to translate that in English as he began. But literally as a speaker Spanish what I'm saying is he put himself into running. You can tell the engent of nature. It's interesting about that. It reads and other listeners out there is at what learners first get are the prototypical meanings and functions and grammaticalities of a verb like put or "ponerse" in Spanish. They get the prototypical ones because they're the most frequent. And so frequency dries with a first get. And so learners Spanish have hypothesized first gets the "ponerse" and like I put the book on the table. And then the next most frequent thing they're going to get, again it, it deals with frequencies driven by frequency largely is the reflexive version of putting close-on and so on. And then one of the much lighter things they get is things where "ponerse" is taken out of this context of putting in an English view of the world and into a Spanish view of the world where you're putting yourself to running for some, you know, "puso a correr" so you begin to run. And what's interesting about that is you'll be find that learners because of the nature of "ponerse" because it requires an animate agent, the root of "ponerse" requires an animate agent, learners, I've never encountered a learner make some mistake of saying something like "sé puso a llover" it began to rain. You can't say that in Spanish. "sé puso a lloverse" sounds really weird. The reason is because "ponerse" requires an agent. No matter what usage, no matter what kind of collocation it requires an agent. And so "sé puso a lloverse" sounds really weird because raining has no agency. You have to use the neutral "empesso" which literally means "began" "empesso a lloverse" which doesn't require agency because anything can begin. But "ponerse" requires agency and so that's why you can't use it in situations with things that don't have agency. So learners have that underlying knowledge and that's an example of how it constrains a grammar, how vocabulary helps them to learn the grammar and constrain the grammar because they won't use it improperly because of their underlying knowledge of what "ponerse" really means. Okay, we got grant underlying grant for you there. Our name is Grant. Grant. Grant, is your seat tall, are you calling for Minnesota? I'm calling for Minnesota where it's likely snowing here this afternoon. Oh, well, it was not likely snowing yesterday in Michigan. Oh my god, tell me about it. I've been to the Blizzard Mea about it. When I was at Dairy Queen with Walter, there was Blizzard's all around me to tell you. It was just, my planes were all delayed yesterday but I got out, I got out just next time because I think things must have shut down afterwards, I don't know. Anyway, Grant, what's up? What are you calling about? Well, I'm just calling to say hi and I wanted to, things were kind of, there weren't any calls inside that I'd call in but this really important question and it's not just for you, BVP although I'm interested in your answer but it's also for Angelica and Walter. I'm wondering if you can recommend your favorite holiday cocktail. Yes. I can tell you right now. That was a quick yes. Yeah, because do you remember Grant that I invented the Equinox Martini? I remember that. I remember that. Yes. It's the Solstice version of the Martini which this next Thursday on the 21st I'm having a Solstice party and so I'm making Solstice Martinis. It's the same ingredients but instead of equal parts, Kallua and Vodka, it's two thirds parts, Kallua and one part Vodka. Because the days are long, I mean the nights are longer and the rest of the solstice is when you have that, you know, most night. You make it the same way. You put your chilled vodka in the Martini glass and then you slowly drizzle the Kallua into the glass so that it's layered. You have a two layer drink and then there's more Kallua than there is Vodka. And then in the summer solstice, you reverse it. It's two parts Vodka and one part Kallua because you have more daylight in the summer solstice. And so that's my cocktail drink for the solstice as that. I tried your Equinox one and I could not get the two to maintain, to continue to be separate. What is the trick to that? You probably poured two parts. Was your vodka from the freezer? Yes. Okay. Cheetos even. Yeah, okay. And then you really, did you really slowly pour the, I had to really slowly pour on the side, you have to like drizzle it down the side of the glass. I did. I poured it really slowly. I poured it super. I even tried, that was the first time. The second time I tried to pour it slower. The third time I tried to pour it over the back side of a spoon that didn't work. And the fifth or fourth, I can't remember how I continued to try after that. Well, by that time you were drunk on the first three. I don't remember what you did. Wow. By the time you were going, who, who gives a rat's behind on this? I'm just pointing. Warren the vodka and vodka but I can find it. All right, now what about, I don't know why, I don't know why Grant, but works for me every time. I can layer, I can layer just about anything in vodka. I've made a Ruby Red, here's another good Christmas drink for you too, if you want a little holiday red. I call it a Ruby Red Slipper, but you can use it as a Christmas drink. You can call it the Christmas ornament. Again, it's the same thing in vodka, and then you drizzle just a tiniest amount of shambour into the vodka so it sinks to the bottom. You got a tiny little hint of red at the bottom of your martini. And so that's like an ornament hanging in a tree. So you can call it a Ruby Red Slipper because it's like the two little feet at the bottom of the body, but you can use it as Christmas as the ornament hanging on the tree. There you go, try that one. It's really good. Very nice. I'll give it a try. What about on Gellik and Walter? Well, I usually just drink glue vine, right? Tiss the season. Tiss the season for blue vine, that's true. And Walter, orange juice. Yeah, water. This sounds good to me. It was the very queen for a blizzard. It was a whole variety. All right. Happy holidays, you guys. Happy holidays, man. Thank you. Thanks for having me. That was the first time we ever got a drink question. Yeah, and it took up half the show. Now, come on. Let's get moving here. It didn't take a while. Well, I'm waiting for you guys to give me some of my stuff from Mixler or this question. I've got a question. Are you ready? We're going to bring it on Walter. Let's make music together. All right, here we go. This is a question from Stephen. Sorry, Stephen. I'm assuming you can see him not Stefan, but anyway. He says, "Hi, everybody. I love the show more and more every week. How's that possible?" There's got to be a point at which you don't love it anymore. But anyway, I have a question that has been troubling me for a while. Many students learn vocabulary from bilingual lists and then later they are able to understand these words in the input or produce them in the output. Is this not an example of explicit knowledge about L2 becoming implicit? There's the question from Stephen and he would like an answer. So there you have it. Yeah, the implicit explicit debate has never been about vocabulary. It's only been about grammar. So we don't tend to talk about vocabulary involving explicit implicit learning. In fact, when I talk about explicit implicit debate, in grammar I say there is a role for explicit strategies and explicit learning and explicit implicit debate for grammar, but has nothing to do with grammar and has to do with trying to understand a message and vocabulary is implicated. So what's interesting is that the research is inconclusive on whether just to what degree explicit learning of vocabulary itself actually helps to learn the vocabulary. There's just as much research that shows that not doing explicit things with vocabulary in the sense of memorizing writing words out so on. So just learning words and context, but again, a reduced context, Stephen. So it's not that you hear a bunch of input and you pick the words out of the input. You might see a picture with a word and so you're just matching the picture to the word while you're hearing it. And that's, I mean, you can call that explicit learning if you want, but it doesn't involve you repeating, practicing, writing it down, trying to use in a sense. Those are all the more explicit approaches of vocabulary acquisition. So, and I don't know of any research that really shows actually that learning words from bilingualists and so on help you recognize things in the input. I have enough anecdotal evidence myself to suggest that it doesn't work very well. So again, when we use our experiences to talk about language acquisition, we tend to be selective. We tend to pick out things we think are happening, but these are all researchable things. There are a lot of things when I was getting started. I used to think happened and I used to think students to think, so that's a researching them and then I realized, oh, they don't do that. That doesn't work. And so I think in this case, memorizing and learning words from a bilingualist, has some effect, but I think it's pretty minimal over the long haul. So anyway, that's my answer to that Walter. - All right, there you have it. - Anything else on Mixler? Arthur, yes, we get Steven to call us sometime. That was a good question. I like that. Anything else coming in? Oh, we've got a call coming in. Here we go. Francesca, are you on the line? - Hello. - Hey Francesca, are you there? - I'm on the line. - There you go. I can hear you or I know you're there. (laughs) - Hi Francesca. - Hi. - Hello, hi. - You're calling from California, right? - Yeah, but I'm still a California. - Yep, you're on my time zone, so good. All right, I see on the, I see on my screen that you are calling about the Diva Challenge question. Is that correct? - I am, I have a guess. - Well then, let me go ahead and read the question again for our audience and for Walter and Angelica. And then you can provide the answer. Are you ready? Here it goes. - Okay. - The Broadway Diva, Paddy Lupone, won her first Tony in 1980 for what musical? Francesca, what do you say? - Evita. - Excellent. - She comes from the people. Yes, exactly. - There it is. - There you go. - Oh, you wanna throw me your antenna? - Yes, exactly. So, not all of people don't know that the best Evita ever was Paddy Lupone, longer for there was Madonna, of course. - Oh, yes. - One kids don't know this, but man, if you ever get a hold of the CD or if you go through iTunes of the original Broadway cast from 1979 with Paddy Lupone and Mandy Patinkin and all that group, my gosh, what an opera. Just fabulous. - Yeah, my mom was a drama teacher for 30, some odd years and now I'm high school and she would always take her drama kids every year to New York in the winter. So she saw like, "Aquist, chorus line, all those from that era." - Yeah. - That's awesome. - Actually was, I was living in teaching and researching and records at the time and I went to Paddy Lupone and Broadway that year. So it was, I am glad that I did. That's one of my things in life on my bucket list. I don't have to worry about it. So there you go. All right, but thank you. - Thank you, thank you. - Thank you so much for that. - Thank you so much. - I'm so, thank you. - I'm so, thank you. - All right, well we're gonna make sure you, make sure you have given your address to, or send it to us by email either way so that we can send you your price. - Okay. All right, thank you so much. - Thanks for being, bye. - Thanks for being, bye bye. - Bye Francesca. - I love me my Paddy Lupone. I'm glad Francesca got that right. Good for her. Paddy Lupone is just incredible. And not just as a singing actress, but just as a dramatic actress, she is just. I saw her on, what was that? Was it showtime, Marish, but I think it was showtime had that limited series on called Penny Dreadful. Anybody see that? With that, Eva, what's her name? The British actress Timothy Dalton, and Paddy Lupone had a guest dance for like about five or six episodes. Oh my God, I was riveted. She was so good. Okay, anyway. Well back to SLA, off the Diva stuff, I'm back to SLA. Again, I'm glad Francesca got that. - Anything else coming in on email or Mixla, or Twitter as Walter likes to say, Twitter? - I have a question here from Dan in Colorado. And he says he's wondering how to build a large lexicon for students at the upper levels of language learning. So as he teaches levels four and five, IB. His understanding is that CITPRS, in CITPRS, you're supposed to shelter vocabulary to a certain extent, especially at the lower level. So it's not to overwhelm students with large lists of vocabulary, but at the same time prepare them for the rigor of these types of tests like the IB and the AP. So how do you build that large lexicon for your students at the upper levels? Is Dan from Colorado? - Content learning and content reading. Reading, reading, reading, reading. Once you get out of initial stages of language acquisition, the biggest contributor to vocabulary build up is reading. It's pretty undisputed in literature. And so, and how it actually happened, it's an incidental learning, it's called incidental learning, what, and it's called incidental learning because you're focused on trying to extract meaning from a text you're reading, and incidentally, while you're doing that, you're learning new words. You're learning to vocabulary, and you might also be grammar development might be pushed along too through that. So, it's reading, reading is all about reading. And there's been a lot of research on this about the impact of incidental, about reading on incidental vocabulary development, so on. The process itself is still, I don't think thoroughly understood exactly how incidental learning happens, but reading, reading, reading, it's all about reading. So, lots of content reading. Was that again, Dan? So, Dan, lots of content reading and lots of discussion of the reading. And again, there's a lot of individual variation, individual development at that stage. So, you can't assume everybody's learning the same words. You can assume that there's probably some commonalities, but so a Walter and a Galgokan, I could be reading the same text and maybe pick up 10 new words all the same, but then there's another five words Walter picks up and a different five words on Galgok picks up and then the three words I pick up that are different because of our, when it was white. So yeah, reading, all about reading. Okay, I just saw on my screen, we got another call. We have, is it Levi? Is it Levi? Yep. Are they, Levy? No, it's Levi. Hi, Levi. Hey, Levi, where you calling from? How you doing? I'm Colin from Lincoln, Nebraska. From Lincoln, Nebraska? Great. Well, welcome to the show. And thanks for calling and what you call about, Levi. I don't know if it was answered earlier in the show, but I have kind of been thinking lately when I introduce new vocabulary and when we're kind of, when I'm speaking and using, I'm a Latin teacher here in Lincoln. So when I'm speaking and using words, I didn't know if I should be giving the L1 equivalence with like the grammatical ending information attached. So since Latin has the different endings, like Puerh means boy. So I would write Puerh with the English equivalent next to it. So with Puerh, that's the possessive of boy. So would it, would it be better to write of the boy or would it be better to just write boy? Is that something that I've kind of been wondering about whether, if that would be helpful for students to form that in their brain or if it doesn't really matter, they're just going to pick up the basic understanding of the word. Well, in a word like Puerh, you can even take some, I mean, Puerh is regular in a certain sense. What my suggestion is, and again, there's no research on this, but I think it just makes sense to try this as a strategy, is to just tell them very quickly what that means. So, for example, in your example, Puerh, that would be the boys and give them, it's not like the boy's sweater or the boys' baseball bat. Just tell them real quick what it is, and then you've got to be using it because it's going to be hearing it and reading it in context where they actually get it. But what that initial real real quick brief translation does is ensures that they're understanding what that version of Puerh means. So just like Kabalus, if they hear Kabalus, for example, for horse, they do hear Kabalum, which also means the horse, but the horse is an object. They get all those things in context, but it doesn't hurt. So just like the last question that you were saying? Yeah, so it doesn't hurt to just very quickly establish the meaning, but then use it in context a lot because they need to hear it and see it in context a lot. We just did a study on Latin, by the way, and our results were kind of interesting about this stuff. We were looking at case marking on Latin nouns, and what we discovered that learned is very quickly can just, if they've got clear context in a very short sense, as they can very quickly develop sensitivity to endings on nouns, for example, very quickly. But they have to have very clear context of what those things mean for that to happen. Well, I will keep my story sentences short. Yeah, keep your story sentences short. And then again, just use that, if you're introducing, because Latin's a little bit different the way it's taught, it depends on where you are. But in that particular case, for example, you can just introduce real quickly what the word means and then use it a lot. Ask some different questions about the boy's mother, the boy's father, the boy's, whatever, whatever the story's about. So there you go. All right. Thank you so much. Well, thanks. Thanks, Levi. Thanks for calling. Bye, Levi. Bye, Levi. I think that's interesting that he teaches Latin. His name was Levi. Because I don't know, is Levi, but Levi, who was, was it Levi? Who was the Greek, the Roman author? Was it was, was it Ellie, Vy? What was it? Got him. My, my, my, God, I'm getting old. I can't remember half the stuff I've learned in my life. And I've left brain cells all over the United States. That's awful. I tell you. What's that stuff that's good for your memory? I can't remember the name of it. I need to start taking it. I think it's levy, levy, y. So it's interesting that Levi is almost like levy. Oh, well, that joke went out the window because again, I need to source this more tea. Oh, my, well, that too. Okay. Anything else? Anything else on Mixler email? Kelly was asking, this is a general question to the Mixler world, but maybe you have a thought on this. Does anyone have ideas for getting content into early level English as a second language or English for speakers of other languages into those classes while using CI and keeping it interesting? Places we can look or information you can direct us to. So content into early level ESL classes. Yeah, I don't have any, I don't have any sites on that. I'm assuming she's done a Google search and maybe nothing turned up. Excuse me. But so any English teachers out there, Kelly wants that answer. But there must be, I mean, there must be stuff like that because Canada does this, for example, gets content in as soon as they can, for example, some of their English immersion schools as do other places. So I guess it just depends on what kind of content. And you know, because there's content and there's content, right? I mean, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, there's content. So yeah. Anything else? What else is out there? One more quick question before we. Well, I have a statement. This is from Reed in Minnesota. He says, not a question, but a resource. Hope this is all right. Last week, there were a few language questions, not related to SLA. There's a podcast, not nearly as good as yours, but close, called Away with Words. They answer word origin questions all of the time. One of the hosts is a lexicographer. I think I said that, right? It is a show about language and how we use it. This is a great resource for anyone and everyone who loves language. And then parentheses S, so language or languages. I was not asked to write this by the show, by the way. If people are interested. Make sure Ryan gets that so we can post that on our site because that sounds like something I'd like to look at. It sounds like fun. I love. I was talking to somebody recently about the origin of word, a word, oh my doctor, because I have a cult blood in the urine. And so he says, he goes, you just use the word occult. I go, yeah. He goes, most people wouldn't do that. He goes, because it sounds like they're talking about spooky stuff. I go, no, a cult comes from Latin occultus. And I started talking about occultus means, literally means not seen. Something you can't see. And he goes, yeah, all may is because I knew that. Then we had, so after we talked about my urine, we had a half-hour conversation about linguistics. There you go. I don't know what to tell. I think we're ending on that. We're ending your on that. Wow. My God, Bill. Hey, Angelica, you're in my territory now. Obviously. Am I glad that there's an ocean that sets us apart right now? Anyway, I think it's time to wrap up the show. I wish I might want to. All right. No, but that was my doctor as a great guy. He actually was just, sat down talking about linguistics for half an hour. He's just fast-ass male kinds of questions and stuff. So all right, then. Well, this is our last show of the semester. We won't say anybody, everybody until January 11th. So I'm going to do our acknowledgements. We want to thank our technical producer, Daniel Trago, who's not here today, but he had to go to Mexico. And so taking over him the soundboard today, what is Chad? Chad Bosley. So Chad, thank you. Chad. Good Chad. And doing that. You've been doing a great job. Thank you. Our media producer, Luca Japanese, who's also not here today. And Ryan stuck our other internist. Took over that job for the running the Trello board and delivering things and so on. But we still thank Daniel. Luca anyway, because they do everything to set up the show before they leave to make sure everything goes smoothly. And again, I just thank them both Chad and Ryan are interns for what they do. But when they're not doing not feeling in for Dan and Luca, they're doing other things. So thank you. We thank the College of Arts and Letters at MSU, especially our Dean, Christopher Long. Hey, Chris. Hope you're having a great end of the semester. As a reminder, the ideas and opinions expressed in our show do not reflect those of the college of arts and letters, any of our sponsors, or any other official entity of Michigan State University. And of course, we always thank our listeners out there and our loyal fans who love you because we love you too. All right, again, we're on hiatus until January 11. We'll be back on Elvis's birthday. Until then, happy holidays. Goodbye, everybody. Right, happy great winter's closest friend. And happy acquisition to everyone. Goodbye, my little down covered friends.