by Dr. Jack Dempsey, Director of Research
Language Learning Challenges
When students enter the language learning classroom, which Pew Research reports is a less common activity than one might expect, they are undertaking a major learning endeavor. Learning a new language not only requires acquiring a new system of describing the world around us, it also requires us to examine what we know about our own language practices. This ability to reflect on our own language is called metalinguistic awareness, and it ranges from an understanding that words are largely arbitrary (an ‘airplane’ could also be called a ‘zipzoof’) to explicit knowledge of linguistic structures like direct objects, clauses, and verbs.
As language instructors will tell you, many students entering the language learning classroom do not bring with them a strong level of metalinguistic knowledge, especially if students come from a monolingual background. So, if you’re a Spanish or French instructor trying to teach students that direct object pronouns appear before the verb, students are likely to have trouble applying these new rules if they don’t have a firm grasp on what a direct object pronoun is in the first place. Metalinguistic awareness can make the task of transferring knowledge from a student’s first language(s) to the language they are learning an easier undertaking; however, there’s only so much time in the language learning classroom. So how do teachers perform the balancing act of bolstering students’ metalinguistic knowledge and teaching how syntax expresses meaning differently in the language being taught?
The Cascade Format Implicitly Cues Differences in Grammar
The Cascade Format provides a visual map to the structure of sentences that can be applied to any written language. Although grammar differs between languages, all human languages have a hierarchical structure that is realized through many of the same linguistic elements (e.g., subjects, verbs, prepositions, nouns, etc.). These universal patterns allow the Cascade Format to not only show how a sentence is grammatically organized in a single language, but it can also show how this same structure is realized in different languages. For example, “Jack is going to read the book this weekend” would look like this in Cascaded Text:
That same sentence in French, “Jack va lire le livre ce weekend,” looks similar. However, changing ‘the book’ to a direct object pronoun, ‘it’, makes the languages seem less similar.
For this construction, French instructors need to teach students to move direct object pronouns (‘it’) before the verb. A simple line of text provides little in the way of visual cues to the structural differences between the two languages. On the other hand, the Cascade Format automatically shows that what’s being read (‘le’ in French vs. ‘it’ in English) appears indented past ‘read,’ regardless of word order.
These visual cues scaffold syntactic knowledge as learners read Cascaded Text, improving their knowledge of the new language and that of their first language(s).
Cascade Reading for Implicit and Explicit Language Learning
Many language learning applications and programs tend to focus more on speaking ability; however, reading remains fundamental if learners wish to become competent in another language. The Cascade Format applied to texts can help students become more confident in the different grammatical regularities in their new language, which can in turn improve other language outcomes like speaking proficiency and listening comprehension.
The Cascade Explorer View, in addition to other tools that could be designed via our flexible API, provides instructors and students with the opportunity to interactively explore syntax at a deeper level. For instance, users can automatically detect parts of speech like verbs, nouns, and adjectives, automatically detect syntactic categories like subjects, predicates, and prepositional phrases, and reveal clause structure via colorization and expand/collapse tools. When sentences differ greatly in structure, it might be helpful to highlight syntactic elements like nouns and direct objects, as shown below.
We are pleased to announce that Cascade Reading will officially launch in four additional languages this January!
Readers, language learners, and instructors in Spanish, French, German, and Italian can soon enjoy all the benefits of the Cascade Format and its free tools. Whether helping individual teachers with their lessons or integrating our API into e-learning platforms, the future of reading and writing is multilingual, and Cascade Reading is here to help! Stay tuned for the official announcement in a few weeks!
