Eight Dollar Blog

“How does beauty fit into the equation?”
“Beautiful images soothe a ruffled soul,” Julian observed with a deep sigh. “A bouquet of roses or a simple, solitary daffodil will have a highly salutary effect on your senses and relax you no end. Ideally, you should savor such beauty in a space that will serve as a Sanctuary of the Self.”

“What’s that?”
“Basically, it is a place that will become your secret forum for mental and spiritual expansion. This might be a spare room in your house or simply a peaceful corner of a small apartment. The point is to reserve a spot for your renewal activities, a place that sits there quietly awaiting your arrival.”

“I love the sound of that. I think having a silent place to go to when I come home from work would make a world of difference. I could decompress for a while and let go of the stresses of the day It would probably make me a much nicer person to be around.”

“That brings up another important point. The Ritual of
Solitude works best when you practice it at the same time every day.”

Taken From:THE MONK WHO SOLD HIS FERRARI

Bedford (1985) was the first to test Krashen’s Din Hypothesis empirically. In the questionnaire Bedford constructed for his survey study, he described the phenomenon as follows:

You have spontaneous rehearsal if you sometimes “hear” a clearly noticeable din or jumble of Spanish words, sounds, phrases, or even characteristic melody patterns in your head. (This is very normal!) These words and phrases are usually things you have been hearing
recently (in class or on Spanish tapes, etc.). Often you “hear” the words or phrases in the voice qualities of your teacher or of the people who made the language lab tapes, or maybe even in your own voice. These random “snatches” of Spanish just pop into the head at nearly any time or place, and it’s usually quite involuntarily. At times it may be active enough to be described as a “constant rehearsal in the head.” (p. 286)

On the basis of responses by 160 L2 college and FL adult learners, Bedford was able to confirm that the Din was a widespread phenomenon rather than restricted to a few individuals. He found no difference by amount of previous study, thus being unable to support Krashen’s prediction that the Din would disappear with more proficiency. Bedford clarified, however, that none of the subjects in his sample could be described as a “very advanced acquirer” (p. 283).

In 1987, Guerrero replicated Bedford’s study with a sample of 52 ESL college students at three levels of proficiency. Again, the Din was confirmed to be a wellknown phenomenon for the language learners, 79% admitting to having experienced it. Guerrero (1987) found no difference in frequency of Din activity among the three levels, although there was a slight (nonsignificant) increase with proficiency. Thus, Guerrero concluded that mental rehearsal could occur at any moment during acquisition and that, contrary to Krashen’s prediction, even very advanced learners mentally rehearse. Furthermore, Guerrero observed what Krashen had not mentioned,
namely, that, in addition to experiencing involuntary playback of the L2, the students also engaged in voluntary rehearsal. During this deliberate, purposeful rehearsal, the students were consciously retrieving information from memory in order to prepare for future production. This preparation included “organizing the material to be utilized, checking correctness, locating words in memory, refining meaning, etc.” (p. 544).

Taken From:Inner Speech – L2 hinking words in a second langunge

“Okay. Do you ever make pit-stops along the way?”
“Yes. For food, or if I’m feeling a little sleepy I’ll take a quick nap after having listened to my kids fight in the back seat for six hours.”

“Well, think of the Ritual of Solitude as a pit-stop for the soul.
Its purpose is self-renewal and this is accomplished by spending time alone, immersed in the beautiful blanket of silence.”

“What is so special about silence?”
“Good question. Solitude and quiet connects you to your creative source and releases the limitless intelligence of the Universe. You see, John, the mind is like a lake. In our chaotic world, most people’s minds are not still. We are full of inner turbulence. However, by simply taking the time to be still and quiet every day, the lake of the mind becomes as smooth as a plate of glass. This inner quietness brings with it a wealth of benefits including a deep sense of well-being, inner peace and boundless energy. You will even sleep better and enjoy a renewed feeling of balance in your day-to-day activities.”

“Where should I go for this period of peace?”
“Theoretically, you could do it anywhere, from your bedroom to your office. The key is to find a place of true quiet — and beauty.”

Taken From:THE MONK WHO SOLD HIS FERRARI

Mental Rehearsal as a “Din ”
Mental rehearsal gained distinction as an SLA phenomenon when Krashen (1983) called attention to the “Din,” which he defined as “an involuntary rehearsal of second language words, sounds, and phrases” (p. 41). Krashen had read about this phenomenon in an article by Barber (1980), a linguist and FL learner of Russian, French, and German. Barber reported experiencing a “din” as she was traveling in Russia:

By the third day . . . the linguist in me was noticing a rising din [italics added] of Russian in my head: words, sounds, intonations, phrases, all swimming about in the voices of the people I talked with.

The sounds in my head became so intense after five days that I found myself mindlessly chewing on them, like so much linguistic cud, to the rhythm of my own footsteps as I walked the streets and museums. Whenever I noticed this din, the linguist in me would demand to know what I was saying. Half the time I had to look what I was saying up, or somehow reconstruct what it meant from the context in which I had heard it hours or days earlier. The constant rehearsal [italics added] of these phrases of course was making it easier and easier to speak quickly and fluently; things popped out as
prefabricated chunks. But I had no control over what my subconscious fed into my “chewer” each day. It fed me what it considered to be memorable-usually from a surprising or stressful or isolated incident-not what I considered maximally useful. Nonetheless, my overall command of Russian improved more in a single week than it would have in a month or two of intensive reading, (p. 30)

Krashen (1983) recognized the Din as an experience he himself had undergone at a conference after listening to several hours of presentations in German, an FL to him. After the conference, “on the plane, walking to the hotel, [Krashen] felt the Din rattling in [his] brain, exactly as Barber described it” (p. 42). On the basis of these anecdotal reports and in harmony with his SLA theory, Krashen hypothesized that “the Din is a result of stimulation of the Language Acquisition Device” (p. 43), that it is triggered by comprehensible input of the i +1 variety, and that it will not occur in very advanced
learners “since they will receive less input containing i +1, having acquired most of the language” (p. 43). Perhaps also in keeping with his usual dismissal of monitoring as a successful acquisition activity, Krashen did not contemplate the possibility of rehearsal occurring voluntarily, that is, as a result of the learner’s own desire to control
input or production. This possibility would later be found to be real by Guerrero (1987).

Taken From:Inner Speech – L2 hinking words in a second langunge

That night, sitting on the floor of my cluttered living room, I learned what Julian called “The Ten Rituals of Radiant Living.” Some of them required a little concentrated effort on my part. Others could be performed effortlessly. All were intriguing and rich with the promise of extraordinary things to come.

“The first strategy was known to the sages as the Ritual of Solitude. This involves nothing more than ensuring that your daily schedule includes a mandatory period of peace.”

“Just what is a period of peace?”
“It is a period of time, as little as fifteen minutes or as much as fifty, wherein you explore the healing power of silence and come to know who you really are,” Julian explained.

“Sort of a rest break for that overheated engine of mine?” I suggested with a slight smile.
“That’s a pretty accurate way of looking at it. Have you ever been on a long road trip with your family?”
“Sure. Every summer we drive down to the islands to spend a couple of weeks with Jenny’s parents.”

Taken From:THE MONK WHO SOLD HIS FERRARI

Further insights into L2 inner speech are provided by studies dealing with mental rehearsal of an L2, a language learning strategy that has been defined as “the covert practice of the L2″ (Guerrero, 1994, p. 84). Mental rehearsal appears to be a major learning strategy among L2 students. It has been associated with repetition (Chamot, 1987; O’Malley, Chamot, Stewner-Manzanares, Russo, & Ktipper, 1985), practice (Rubin, 1987), advance preparation (Chamot, 1987), and production (Tarone, 1983) of the L2. O’Malley et al. (1985) found that within eleven cognitive strategies reported by beginning and intermediate ESL students, repetition-a strategy that involves silent
rehearsal-had the highest percentage of use.

Of course, verbal rehearsal in short-term memory has been for years associated with long-term recall (Bransford, 1979; Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Houston, 1986). More recently, research within the working-memory model (as discussed in Chapter 2) has stressed the importance of rehearsal in long-term retention of FL vocabulary among adults (Baddeley et al., 1998; Gathercole & Thorn, 1998). Several studies (Ellis & Beaton, 1993; Ellis & Sinclair, 1996; Papagno, Valentine, & Baddeley, 1991; Service, 1992; Service & Kohonen, 1995) have found that audible and subvocal repetition have positive effects on long-term retention of words43 and that suppressing rehearsal produces negative effects. It has also been suggested that gifted language learners, or people that appear to have a natural talent for learning FLs, have superior phonological loop skills, that is, excellent use of the mechanism involving articulatory rehearsal (inner voice) and phonological memory (inner ear) (Baddeley et al., 1998). Evidence for this link between language ability and phonological memory was presented in Papagno and Vallar’s (1995) study of “polyglots.”

References connecting mental rehearsal and inner speech abound. One of the earliest is an observation made by Vygotsky (1986) himself. In his comment that inner speech “serves as preparation for external speech-for instance, in thinking over a lecture to be given” (p. 88), Vygotsky was assigning a rehearsal role to inner speech.
In 1983, Smith equated rehearsal with the usual practice of “talking to oneself,” a form of inner speech “by which we prepare for something we might want to say” or by which “we recapitulate and elaborate upon conversations after the event” (p. 90). In 1987, Rohrer argued that inner speech is “the language of the mind” (p. 92), used in various mental operations, one of which is rehearsal. In 1990, Murphey reviewed studies conducted on the “din in the head,” linking this phenomenon to Vygotsky’s concept of inner speech: “What [Vygotsky] calls inner speech may have a strong
connection to what is now being called the Din” (Murphey, 1990, p. 55). In all these references, it appears that mental rehearsal, both in the LI and the L2, is tightly linked to inner speech.

Taken From:Inner Speech – L2 hinking words in a second langunge

“Of course not.”
“Well then, why are you not taking some time every day for your personal pit stop or rest break? Why are you not taking the time to cool down the high performance engine of your mind? Do you see my point? Taking the time to renew yourself is the most important thing you can do. Ironically, taking time out from your hectic schedule for self-improvement and personal enrichment will dramatically improve your effectiveness once you get back into it.”

“One hour a day for thirty days is all it takes?”
“It’s the magic formula I was always searching for. I would probably have paid a couple of million dollars for it in my old glory days, if I had understood its importance. Little did I know that it was free, as is all priceless knowledge. Having said this, you must be disciplined and apply the strategies which make up the formula daily, with utter conviction in their value.”

“This is not a quick-fix type deal. Once you are in, you are in it for the long term.”
“What do you mean?”
“Spending one hour a day tending to yourself will surely give you dramatic results in thirty days — provided you do the right things. It takes about one month to fully install a new habit. After this period, the strategies and techniques you will learn will fit like a second skin. The key is that you must keep on practicing them every day if you want to keep on seeing the results.”

“Fair enough,” I agreed. Julian clearly had unlocked a wellspring of personal vitality and inner serenity in his own life. Actually, his transformation from a sickly old litigator to a radiant, energetic philosopher was nothing less than miraculous. At that moment I resolved to dedicate one hour a day to implementing the techniques and principles I was about to hear. I decided to work on improving myself before working to change others, as had been my habit. Maybe I too could undergo a “Mantle-like” transformation.
It was surely worth a try.

Taken From:THE MONK WHO SOLD HIS FERRARI

The student has to learn to understand oral and written speech quickly and accurately, with a minimal participation of articulatory movements (the only factor capable of ensuring a rapid rate in understanding utterances or a text being read). But the student can only achieve this by means of a maximally unfolded articulatory fixation of speech in the course of preceding practical experience in the spoken language. This may seem contradictory, yet there is no other solution for this problem, (p. 263)

Another study that made connections between inner speech and L2 learning in the context of reading was that by Upton and Lee-Thompson (2001). Arguing that mental translation is related to Vygotsky’s notion of inner speech, the authors observed the role of the LI in reading L2 texts. Twenty ESL college students (10 Chinese and 10 Japanese native speakers) representing three proficiency levels participated in the study. As the students read a passage in English, they were encouraged to verbalize their thoughts in the language (LI or L2) they were thinking those thoughts. The researchers found that as proficiency increased there was a decline in use of the LI as the language of thought for processing the L2 text. When the LI was used, it was found that it mainly served the purpose of wrestling with or confirming meaning.
Upton and Lee-Thompson argue for the need to go beyond the view of the role of the LI as a mere translating (decoding) strategy in L2 reading. They propose instead a Vygotskyan sociocultural perspective, “which sees inner speech as the foundation of thought [and] suggests that the LI would quite naturally serve as a tool to help students think about and make sense of (i.e., mediate their thinking about) the structures, content, and meaning of the L2 texts they read” (p. 491).

The notion of mental translation has also been challenged in study by Huh (2002) that focused on inner speech in L2 writing. In the study, framed within Vygotskyan sociocultural theory, Huh found that the subjects-2 Korean-Ll advanced ESL learners-did not compose their texts by writing first in Korean and then translating into English. Rather, the learners used LI (Korean) inner speech to generate ideas and then tried to formulate them into English sentences. Through the stimulated recall technique, Huh discovered that much of the planning stage of composing for the two subjects consisted of turning thoughts into words through the use of LI inner speech. The writers, however, did not fully develop a text in Korean that would then be translated word for word into English. Their inner speech consisted of fragmentary and elliptical forms, images condensed into words, keywords saturated with sense, and the verbalization of self and other inner voices, all in Korean. From these sketchy verbal representations rendered in LI inner speech, the subjects went on to identify the linguistic structures of the L2. One of the subjects explained this process: “I could only briefly sketch the diverse images and associations . . . in Korean. Then, I thought
how to communicate them in English” (p. 6). The process of turning LI inner speech into fully developed English text was not a smooth one, however. It consisted of “successive approximations of L2 texts through expansion, rephrasing, and editing [of the subject's] LI inner speech” (p. 9). On the basis of these data, the researcher thus contended that LI inner speech is a critical mediational tool in the process of writing in the L2, enabling writers to construct and convey meaning to their audience.

“successive approximations of L2 texts through expansion, rephrasing, and editing [of the subject's] LI inner speech” (p. 9). On the basis of these data, the researcher thus contended that LI inner speech is a critical mediational tool in the process of writing in the L2, enabling writers to construct and convey meaning to their audience.

Taken From:Inner Speech – L2 hinking words in a second langunge

“But I don’t,” I said honestly. “My practice is really booming. I don’t have ten minutes to myself, let alone a full hour, Julian.”
“As I told you, saying that you do not have the time to improve yourself, whether this means improving your mind or nourishing your spirit, is much like saying you do not have time to stop for gas because you are too busy driving. Eventually it will catch up with you.”

“Really?”
“Really.”
“How so?”
“Let me put it this way. You are very much like a highperformance
race car worth millions of dollars; a well-oiled, highly sophisticated machine.”

“Why thank you Julian.”
“Your mind is the greatest wonder of the universe and your body has the capacity to perform feats that might astonish you.”

“Agreed.”
“Knowing the value of this high performance multi-million dollar machine, would it be wise to run it full out every minute of every day without taking a pit stop to let the motor cool down?”

Taken From:THE MONK WHO SOLD HIS FERRARI

An ancillary observation during the above experiments was that beginning students of English evidenced their difficulty in translating the foreign text by reading the text aloud, whispering, or moving the lips as they read. Sokolov’s hypothesis in this respect was that “for people who are in the initial stage of mastering a foreign language, inhibition of articulation should represent a substantial obstacle to their translating of foreign texts” (p. 148). A study conducted by Babalova (as reported by Sokolov, p. 148) tested this hypothesis. The purpose of the study was to observe the effects of inhibited articulation and motor speech interference on thinking. As in the previous experiments, FL learners were used as subjects. In this case, two groups of students of English, in their first and fifth year of college respectively, participated. The fifth-year students were asked to translate English texts at two levels of difficulty: adapted (simplified) and non-adapted pieces of fiction. The first-year students
translated only the simplified texts. All subjects were asked to read (and presumably mentally translate) the texts under varying conditions of speech articulation and then retell the contents in Russian. There were three conditions of articulation during reading: (1) mechanical retardation of articulation (such as clamping the tongue between the teeth), (2) concurrent articulation of extraneous syllables (such as “la, la, la”), and (3) concurrent recitation of a poem. A fourth condition used as control was free articulation. Outcomes were compared in terms of (a) amount of time taken in reading (and translating) the text and (b) number of semantic units translated correctly.

Results were complicated, but some definite patterns arose. In the translation of simplified texts, mechanical retardation of articulation and enunciation of syllables had almost no negative effects for any of the subjects, whether beginners or advanced. Adverse effects were noticed, however, in the poem recital condition, most impressively amongst the first-year group. In the translation of the more difficult texts, the fifth-year students evidenced negative effects in only the recital condition. It appeared then that retardation or interference with speech articulation affected the most
when it was maximally instantiated (as when subjects were concurrently reciting a poem) and when verbal mastery of the FL (”verbal connections,” in Sokolov’s words, p. 150) was least strong. How did Sokolov explain these findings? When texts are difficult, as in the case of the first-year students and of the fifth-year students when reading complex texts, suppressing the possibility of inwardly articulating words causes serious troubles in comprehending, translating, and remembering. When texts offer no major difficulties, either because of their inherent simplicity or because of the reader’s high level of competence, no extensive inner articulation of speech is
necessary. Advanced students in fact indicated experiencing at times immediate comprehension of texts, even when articulation was obstructed. As they reported, these students were able to “grasp the text with their eyes and enunciate the words inwardly” and to “read easy texts without translating them” (p. 151). With less simplified texts, however, Sokolov observed, “verbal interference rendered the translation more difficult by hindering the articulation of the words of the text” (p. 152).

Sokolov’s experiments highlight the role of inner speech in vital mental processes involved in using an FL, such as reading, translating, comprehending, and retelling. The evidence suggests that inner speech is instrumental in aiding understanding and memorization through the formation of semantic complexes and verbal generalizations. The extent and nature of inner speech in processes of FL comprehension, however, is relative to the subject’s mastery (degree of automatization) over these processes. The
greater the mastery, the less need for unfolded and intense inner speech activity. In this case, inner speech is reduced to the auditory or visual recognition of words in the stimuli and to incomplete articulatory reproduction of key words. The more active the efforts in understanding the verbal data, however, the greater the reliance on complete articulatory reproduction of the speech heard or read. Among the conclusions derived from these foreign text reading experiments, Sokolov points out “the extreme importance which the fixation and reproduction of words and their grammatical connections within sentences by means of articulation has for the study of foreign languages” (p. 263). The relative, and to some extent paradoxical, role of inner speech in FL understanding is thus explained:

Taken From:Inner Speech – L2 hinking words in a second langunge