People with high IQ’s are good language learners.

 

Laxman Bhatta, Nepal

It is believed that only people with high IQ’s are good language learners. I don't agree with the statement completely.
   As educators, it is important to remember that language learning is usually a nerve-wracking process which involves taking the risk of looking foolish. Rather than IQ, it is often the strategies that educators use - the right strategies - to give the learners more confidence and encourage them to take risks.
I would like to use a story to illustrate this example. Francois Gouin lived at the end of the 19th century. He was a professor of Latin and Greek in France. Sounds like a smart guy, doesn't he? He surely was. Charles Berlitz, who revolutionized language learning, is considered the successor of Gouin. Gouin also wrote many books. His book “The Art and Teaching of Language” is something that every language teacher is recommended to read. Not because of the ideas presented on learning languages, but rather because of his own language learning experience illustrated in the book.
Once Gouin was interested in learning German. So he quit his job as a professor and went to Hamburg, Germany for an entire year. Sounds like a good idea? Surely. Guess what Gouin did for the first 10 days? He spent it in his room studying German. Sounds like a good idea? Not too sure.
He studied 248 irregular German verbs and refused to leave the room until he had memorized them all. Deciding to test his knowledge he ventured into a university class and listened to the professor teaching in German. Do you think he could understand any German? Not a single word.
In Francois’s own words “Not a word, not a single word would penetrate to my understanding. Nay, more than this, I did not even distinguish a single one of the grammatical forms so newly studied. I did not recognize even a single one of the irregular verbs just freshly learned, though they certainly must have fallen in crowds from the lips of the speaker.”
So after, he learned 800 words and memorized the entire grammar book and the irregular verbs. After failing at the university classroom once again he finally decided to go to the store downstairs and speak to the shopkeeper in German. Guess what happened? Everyone laughed at him. Being a professor, he was not used to being ridiculed or being bad at a language. He was smart and had a very high IQ.
Afterward, he tried to learn by heard 30,000 words from the dictionary, dialogues from books, and much more. Alas! It did him no good. At the end of the year, he could not even speak a single word in German.
As a language teacher, the purpose of this story is to first reinforce the fact that memorizing is not the best approach to learning a language.
Secondly, everyone likes to look smart. Especially people like Francois Gouin are used to looking smarter than everyone else. It becomes very difficult for such people to be subject to ridicule and laughter and to look foolish. As a result, they like to choose language learning strategies with the minimum amount of risk to look foolish.
His strategies are not really bad for learning. However, the crucial element missing is the risk-factor which is essential for acquisition which is the ultimate language learning goal.
“Sometimes being smart is what makes you foolish”

#TESOL # Arizona University# Practice# Exercise# Coursera 

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