Why do we learn a new language?To what degree do we need to master that language?

Ox-bridge supervision section

Nov. 20th By Eve Sun

"I speak English, so I don't have to learn a foreign language...."– Only 5.6 % of the world's total population speaks English as a primary language.

That number doubles when people who speak English as a second or third language are counted.

“Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

– Do you agree?

– Why? Why not?

“We have strong evidence today that studying a foreign language has a ripple effect, helping to improve student performance in other subjects.” – Richard Riley, U.S. Secretary of Education under Bill Clinton

– Can you think of some examples in other subjects that will support this statement?

“As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.” – Margaret Mead, American anthropologist

– In what ways this statement can be true?

An insurmountable challenge(?)

– According to research, older educated native speakers of English know somewhere around 15,000 to 20,000 ‘functionally important’ word families. (Zechmeister et al., 1995)

Questions to be addressed

– Is it possible for an L2 learner to reach a mental lexicon size equal to a native speaker? Is it advisable?

– What does ‘knowing’ a word mean?

– How is a word ‘learned’, and what does ‘learned’ mean?

– What do we mean when we say ‘word’?