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Imagination and the Learning of Language
by Clyde Coreil, Ph.D.
New Jersey City University
Jersey City, NJ 07305
Keynote Address
Virginia TESOL
September 15, 2001
University of Richmond
A fellow named Kiernan Egan is for Canada what Earl Stevick is for the USA. Both are champions of the imagination; both are scholars; and both are true gentleman. The reason I mention Kiernan is that in a recent article, he talks about the case of a Russian mother during the heyday of soviet realism. At that time, the ideal was sticking to good, solid reality in all things. It was thought that that would yield positive results in terms of the nation, of the economy, and of individual human beings. The fantasy of a child was considered nonsense-irrelevant, counter- productive, and indulgent nonsense. Accordingly, this one good mother attempted to raise her child without anything of fantasy and the imagination. For example, bedtime stories about real people and solid morals were strongly emphasized, and fairy tales were frowned upon. Unfortunately, the child, who was about four years old, did not cooperate. He told his chagrined mother that a red elephant had come to live in his room, that he-the boy-became a reindeer when it snowed, that the rug he sat on was actually a ship, etc. etc.
That case of the Soviet child seems to support the point that children are programmed to create fantasy, much like they are are programmed to create language or at least to speak. If children are programmed to create fantasy, attempting to throw out the exercise of the imagination is at best futile and pointless; and at worst, pathetically and seriously counter-productive. We will return to this later.
If children are programmed to imagine, then it is somewhat likely that there is a reason for it. Possibly, the workings of the imagination are like the workings of the LAD-the "Language Acquisition Device" and of Universal Grammar. These theories hold that at birth, children are capable of learning any language. As they get older, they acquire the language they hear. If that language is English, for example, he doesn't learn the front-rounded [u]. If it's French, he does.
It just might be the case that the mental activity involved in imagining is critical to what will become reality for the particular child. Instead of narrowing his Universal Grammar to fit a particular language, he narrows the workings of his enormously powerful imagination to fit the beliefs and world views of the people he grows up with. For example, the young child might imagine that the oak tree in the yard embodies the spirit of his or her grandfather who died before the child's birth. One society might say that this is a religious insight and deserves special commendation. Another would say that it's nonsense and that the kid had better shape up.
The imagination might also be highly involved in the child's perceiving and learning what his society considers the more important facts of this world. For example, if we want to teach the child about geography or history, it is probably a very good idea to guide the imagination in such a way that those subjects can ride piggy-back on it.
Reversing the Irreversible
Children are often said to learn languages more quickly than adults. The reason for it is often thought to be the decreasing flexibility of the brain. Regardless, it's virtually always considered irreversible. And it might well be. However, I would like to consider a couple of other reasons that involve the imagination and that might lead to modified conclusions-including the partial reversibility of the adult's slowness in language learning. Now you should be aware that I am speculating and not reporting experimental findings.
Part of the slowness of adults in language learning might be due to the fact that the basic structure of their world is complete. In their minds, everything more or less has a cause, and it is not nearly so necessary to imagine. The oak tree in the yard either IS or IS NOT grandpa. Neither is it necessary to imagine what makes the clouds turn grey, the thunder roll and the lightning crack. By the time we are teenagers, we have learned the names for a great many things, and the verbs for what they do. That is, nouns and verbs and the rest of the second language are usually not acquired in a condition when the child's imagination is highly active because he or she is testing reality. To a large degree, these tests are done and have resulted in a sense of identity, of knowing who and what we are in a given society and a given language. Evidence for this is seen in the strong notion that in different languages, the same person has essentially different personalities. An article about this is in Volume IV of our Journal of the Imagination in Language Learning.
Reclaiming Imagination
I propose that we consider the activated imagination as one of the main differences between the child learner of language and the adult learner. I endorse a return to the imagination wherever it is possible in the teaching of ESL, particularly to teenage and adult students. I am speaking of such things as the following:
1. Vary classroom decor
and background through visual projection.
2. Put bits from movies onto video loops
and play them repeatedly.
3. Introduce puppets through whom the
adult learners have to speak.
4. Require that students dance and sing
when they speak and ask questions.
5. Have the students paint or draw and
explain their works.
6. Have the students put on bizarre pieces
of clothing like capes and bonnets and heavy gloves.
7. Wear your academic cap and gown when
teaching class.
What we are trying to do is nothing less than reclaim for the ESL class at least some of the imagination with which we learned our first language. The above list could constitute only the tip of the iceberg. Certainly, the innovative activities need not be hyper, but they would likely require a state of high mental involvement. For example, students might be paired, and checker or chess sets might be distributed. Students would explain to their opponents their moves and strategies. The game would be primarily an opportunity to speak and imagine. These kinds of things would take courage on the part of the student as well as of the teacher. But then courage is not something teachers lack.
Quantified Research
Now I am not a psychologist, but it seems that we have here a hypothesis or two that just might lend itself to quantified, laboratory research. According to our hypothesis, there is a positive correlation at virtually all ages between (A) the exercise of the imagination and (B) the acquisition of knowledge. In a series of experiments, we could compare the speed of learning and retention of both groups. Of course, for the sake of the experiment, we would have to specify what constitutes the imagination. In short, that seems a do-able task. Another thing we would have to do is offer a reason why the imagination is not as active in most adults as it is in most children. Again, that seems do-able. For example, from the age of about five, we learn our lesson well: don't mess around with fantasy and stay out of the imagination. If you must, son , (sigh of Daddy's great male sadness here)...If you must, son, go ahead and play in the band instead of on the football team.
If the budget is tight and something has to be cut, it will be frills like music class, art and storytelling instead of science and geography. It sounds very nice to endorse poetry and drawing, but what our children really need is courses that will help them survive in a hard, dog-eat-dog world. That's what school boards, congressmen and presidents know very well. If you, Mr. Smith, want a promotion or an increase in salary, you had better agree. What we need are more and more multiple-choice tests. "Read my lips: no more music." No more wasting our kids' time with stories about red elephants and rocks that sing........It's remarkable how similar that position is to the Soviet mother who wanted to raise her child with no trace of the useless imagination.
A Wrong Turn
The fact of the matter seems clearly that this turning from the imagination is unnatural and wrong. But why is it wrong? Does our genetic makeup call for imagination? And if so, how should we take advantage of it? To me, that is the central question, and I think that it should be the quest-and I don't use that word lightly-the quest of wise men and of scientists. What is the role played by the imagination in the development and functioning of the human consciousness? It might be that the imagination is the mode of mental activity in which a lot of learning occurs. If this is true, then it should be shouted from the mountaintops because it might seem like old hat but it is also of utmost importance. I say that because the imagination is usually either ignored or ridiculed. It is the first thing to be considered frilly and frothy and therefore on the chopping block of the curriculum.
Carolee
I know an ESL teacher in New York City who had been giving the mandated state exam, and, every term, almost all of her students would fail. Frankly, she and her principal were at their wit's end. Then, the teacher did something totally unexpected. She asked if she could bring into class her great interest in dance. "What?" said the principal. ""Dance? Into an English class?" The teacher explained and pleaded. Eventually, the principal gave in. "The worst is that they would fail," she said. "And they're already doing that."
So, the teacher began to focus on dance, giving examples, drawing out the shy kids, slowly getting them to move to rhythm and to write about dance in their journals. They were shy and wrote only after she had promised not to collect or even read the journals. She was dying to do so, of course, but she would not break her word about privacy. She was banking on the kids becoming more and more excited about dance and about their journals. After a few days, things began to look up. The kids started to become prouder and more involved with what they were doing. They began to beg her to read their journals in class, which she did-sometimes out loud. She made comments and suggestions, both about their attitude to dance and their use of language. She had done the impossible: she had gotten them to take both writing and dance seriously and give both their best efforts!
Of course, there is another part to this story. The next time the state exams came round, all of the students in one class and 95% of those in another passed. Those figures were incredible. And this is a true story. If you don't believe me, ask the teacher herself. Her name is Carolee Bongiorno. An interview with her is in Volume 6, the current issue of the Journal of Imagination in Language Learning. Give her a call. Ask her to talk to you and your school or group. If I know Carolee, she would be delighted to go across the country to talk about the relationship between dance, the imagination and learning.
Language
Now, I would like to look at language from another point of view. Is there any part of language learning that is currently neglected and that would be particularly enhanced by activities designed to foster the imagination? Let's look more closely at this. In terms of language, what is it that the child of three or four or five is acquiring? Well, he or she is learning to make the sounds of English and how to avoid the sounds that are not English-sounds like the back-rounded vowel [u]. And he or she is learning the quite complex rules of English. And, children are picking up simple vocabulary- words like "justice" and "receive" and "training."
But they are also learning another type of unit that is recognized in one way or another by more and more writers, but that is still largely ignored by most as well as by our esteemed and influential linguists from M.I.T. This information tells children that "the other day" means "recently" and not one particular day-for example, Monday-instead of another particular day-for example, Tuesday. If we say "the other week" or "the other month" or "the other year," there is no hint of....recently. In his or her native language, the child will learn the special meaning of expressions like "the other day" in exactly the same sense that we all use it. And making the association between "recently" and "the other day" is a not a small feat. There is no grammatical rule governing the operation. Involved is the principle of association and the memory of individual items.
Let us consider another expression: "go to sleep." Now a straightforward, grammatical analysis would involve combining the idea of "start" with the idea of "sleep." That's what we do when we go to sleep- we "start sleeping." But, if he or she is a native speaker, the child soon learns that no one says, "I [started sleeping] at 10 o'clock last night." Everyone says, "I went to sleep at 10 o'clock last night."
Now if the number of such units were limited to one hundred or two hundred, we could classify them as simply "not the way we say it"; that is, "not idiomatic." But the number of expressions that fall into this category is vast. And not only is the number enormous, but the meaning of these "chunks" of language, these units of memorized speech is extremely important. If you want to see the confusion that results when the specific unit is not used, look at an ESL composition. The lack of these pre-formulated units or a slight variation will render them worse than useless. For example, if a wife says to her husband, "Come to the bed," he will probably walk to a point very near the bed and say, "What do you want, Darling?" But if she says "Come to bed," he will lie down and try to go to sleep.
I call these units of language "supralexicals": "supra-" means "big", and "lexical" means "word." Why don't I call them simply "big words"? Because they constitute a specific kind of linguistic function, one that depends on our great ability to commit things to memory and to recall them precisely. One pianist, for example, can learn millions, even billions of notes in an unlimited number of compositions. For us, a few hundred thousand supralexicals shouldn't even cause a hiccup.
The ability to learn these supralexicals is not forgotten when we grow up. It stays with us as we unconsciously react to advertising slogans and as we learn to refer to new ideas such as "zero tolerance," "student-centered classrooms," and "The Silent Way." We will even use a person's awareness of current supralexicals as a litmus test to determine if they are up on the literature in a given field.
Summary
Now let's see the two points I have made so far this morning. The first is that the imagination just might be a powerful tool of learning. The second is that mastery of supralexicals is extremely important in learning to speak a second language. The third point I will make is that most ESL students are not told about these supralexicals. Of course, they use supralexicals in their first language, but no one tells them about it. In that first language, these pre-formulated phrases pose no problem.
However, in the second language as it is taught in classrooms, supralexicals most definitely constitute a major problem. We tell our students that if they learn the rules of grammar, they will be able to make good sentences. Up to a point, that's true. But it's not all of the picture. What they must also do is learn the individual supralexical that might be associated with the meaning they want to express. For example, "fix a flat" and not "repair a flat," "do a good deed" and not "make a good deed," "boot up a computer" and not "shoe up a computer, "take it easy" and not "relax it easy," "the whole picture" and not "the whole photograph," "the end of the story" and not "the last of the story." Grammatical rules, bless their souls, cannot do this. What we need is what we have-a powerful memory that sucks up supralexicals and stores them in an accessible place like a vacuum cleaner sucks up particles of dust.
So now we are coming to my main point.....We have to devise various means of helping ESL students to become aware that they have these powerful vacuum cleaners in their heads. We have to help them activate these machines, turn them on. We have to help them to recognize supralexicals, to store them in their minds, and to use them actively in their speech and writing. For instance, we can have students underline phrases that they hear often because that is almost always one mark of the supralexical. Or we can ask them to combine supralexicals like "at last" and "come to an end." For example, "At last, the boring lecture came to an end." Or we can assign short readings to pairs of students who must identify the supralexicals and use them in writing new paragraphs. In summary, we must come up with activities that will "sensitize" students to the fact of these structures, and that will enable them to store and use specific supralexicals in their writing and in their speech.
This is no small task, especially when the student has learned to stifle the imagination, which just might be the most effective means of dealing with this problem. What I propose is taking the imagination out of mothballs and harnessing it to this heavy wagon of supralexicals. But the imagination doesn't like heavy wagons. If we give it a chance, it will transform the wagons into red elephants, reindeer, and rugs that sail the ocean blue. In fact, it is helping with this transformation that I am taking the liberty to charge you this morning. I am asking you to think about supralexicals and to come up with brilliantly imaginative ways of teaching them. And not only in specific activities, but in the whole ambiance of your class and your classroom. As much as you can, create the teenage and adult equivalent of the fantasy and imagination presently found only in kindergarten and the lower grades. What does that equivalent look like? I mentioned a few alterations earlier-visual projections, students wearing capes, you wearing academic caps and gowns. But these are only a few suggestions. I am asking you to go out and use your imagination. I assure you, if you build it, they will come.
And how can we share the elements that we might create. Well, I just happen to have access to a website that has a message board. The website is for the "Center for the Imagination in Language Learning" at my college. The address is in your program. If you think of a technique for teaching supralexicals, post a description it on the message board and the rest of us will print it out. This is certainly not ideal, and I doubt that anyone will take me up on it...but, surprise me. It might be a step toward making your students aware of supralexicals and toward making all of us more aware of the critical role the imagination plays in language learning. Thank you.