[The following is a guest post from my grandfather, Dr. Robert Wallace Blair. Check out my extended introduction for more details on my grandfather and this article.]
“Ballpark Mnemonics”: a tool for learning foreign language phrases
On the first day of my Russian 101 class at BYU in 1948, we were given a homework assignment to memorize three phrases, one of which was, REPEAT, PLEASE. ПОВТОРИТЕ, ПОЖАЛУЙСТА. No assistance was given, no modeling, no help on the Cyrillic spelling, no audio recording, nothing. We were left to our own devices. Although I had had two years of high school Latin and French, I was at a loss how to even pronounce the Russian phrases, much less memorize them. I guess that at that time no one in their right mind would have thought of mediating that phrase through a mnemonic.
It was forty some years after my Russian 101 class that I directed a Russian class of my own. I had by then learned from my brother-in-law Dee Groberg how to engage the power of mnemonics. By rendering that same phrase, ПОВТОРИТЕ ПОЖАЛУЙСТА in “ballpark mnemonics” PUFF TA REACH YA, PUSH ALL STAR, the pronunciation becomes instantly learnable., and it needs very little tweaking to bring it to home base.
A learning experiment
Around 1970, Dee Groberg, then director of the Mobil Oil Language Training Program in Tokyo, published an experimental book Fifty Japanese Phrases in Fifty Minutes. Using “ballpark mnemonics” and clever cartoons, the book aimed to teach the Japanese equivalent of fifty expressions such as ‘good morning,’ ‘excuse me,’ ‘after you,’ ‘let’s eat,’… To test the effectiveness of the instruction, Dee returned to Idaho Falls where he found friends of his parents who had no knowledge of Japanese, but who were willing to participate in an experiment. It went like this: each of the several individuals sat alone in a quiet room with only the book. There was no audio recording, no “listen and repeat” drill, only the book to look at for fifty minutes.
Retention is what matters
The real challenge of Fifty Japanese Phrases in Fifty Minutes came well after the learning exercise was terminated and the subjects were tested by orally translating each of the phrases from English to Japanese. Their success was near the 90 percent level! Their recorded responses were given fluently and with little hesitation. But the real test came several days later. They had not been told there would be a repeat test. They had not been told to keep the phrases in mind. They had no access to the book and no apparent reason to retain what they had learned.
The test was the same: Dee spoke each of the English phrases and they gave the Japanese equivalent as they remembered. The test was recorded for each one. Again their combined success in translating the fifty English phrases to Japanese was near the 90 percent level!
A DLI Assessment: “They’ve probably lived 6 months in Japan”
Some time later, the Bonneville Corporation of Provo, Utah was contracted by the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, California to make an assessment of their intensive Japanese training program. Dee (then a graduate student at BYU) and I were privileged to be members of the assessment team. That’s when it really got interesting. Dee invited some of the native Japanese instructors to listen to an experiment in learning Japanese. We met in a small room where Dee played several minutes of the recorded tests. Then he invited the Japanese instructors to comment on what they heard.
One said something like “excellent Japanese.” Another estimated they had probably lived in Japan for six months! When Dee revealed who the subjects actually were, and how they had learned to speak fifty phrases in Japanese simply by going through a book for 50 minutes, the professional DLI instructors were incredulous. Nothing could convince them it was not some kind of trick. They simply could not accept the power of mnemonics in acquiring phrases in a language right from scratch. Dee sold his book to Japan Air Lines, which put it in their seat pockets on flights to Japan. But the phenomenal success of that little book led to my experimentation with mnemonics in learning a few useful phrases in foreign languages right off.
My quest for answers
In the course of the next several years following my experience with a first-day Russian assignment in 1948, I had occasion to work long and intensively on learning and teaching several languages while, with government support, developing basic courses in them. During that experience, I became increasingly interested in how languages are taught – or can best be taught. I traveled widely to attend workshops directed by such method innovators as Caleb Gattegno (The Silent Way), Charles Curran (Community Language Learning) and Giorgi Lozanov (Suggestopedia). Also I observed highly innovative language classes taught by Stephen Sternfeld at the University of Utah, Jabra at Camp Williams, and other noted innovators. I also attended lectures by Steven Krashen (the Listening language labs, Comprehension Approach) and James Asher (Total Physical Response).
I learned a lot from each of them. They all questioned the effectiveness of the traditional grammar-based approaches to language teaching supported by textbooks, workbooks, listen-and-repeat drills, etc. – the way I had been taught Latin, French and Russian. I read journal articles and books about language teaching methodology. I looked closely at commercial courses, Rosetta Stone, Berlitz, Linguaphone, Pimsleur and others, designed for individual study.
I myself did a lot of experimentation with innovative approaches. By 1980 I was ready to put together my book Innovative Approaches to Language Teaching, published in 1982 by Newbury House. The book had a long life and a wide readership in Europe and America.
An experiment with “ballpark mnemonics”
One of my experiments is described in my book. I took a 30-line (!) Russian dialog and invented mnemonics for each line. Then, within one hour, I taught the entire 30-line dialog to a number of willing subjects who had no previous knowledge of Russian. Then I tested them to see if they could translate the entire dialog from English to Russian. They performed it beautifully. I ran the same experiment several times, with similar results. It was many years later that I realized this could be made into a mobile app available to anyone traveling to Russia. Starting with zero ability in the language when they board the plane, they could have over 30 conversation phrases in memory when they arrive in Russia.
And for those who want to learn to pronounce words written in the Cyrillic alphabet, another experiment of mine indicates that with the help of mnemonics they can learn that in less than one hour.
An ongoing work.
Our work is nowhere near finished. Working with my son Dell, we’ll have mnemonicized phrases and stories not only in Chinese, but also in Spanish and Arabic. The recordings, along with the text, all on mobile apps, will constitute a gigantic treasure for those who seek efficiency and delight in learning a language.
It’s time for something tested and proven far away more effective, and far away less costly, than the outdated methodologies provided in Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur models that are so extravagantly advertised. After all, why would you invest hundreds of dollars in programs that use vintage techniques when you can learn foreign phrases faster, more effectively, and with greater retention through the language learning techniques of ballpark mnemonics.
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