[Topic of the Moment: Learning English through "Shinsho" Paperbacks] Mutsumi Imai: Acquiring the "Schema" to Use English Freely

2022/01/20

What does it mean to learn? Many people believe that learning is about discovering information they didn't previously have, incorporating it into themselves, and memorizing it. However, when we read a text or listen to a lecture, how exactly does that information enter (.....) us?

We cannot store texts or lectures word-for-word in our memory like a recording device. On the contrary, we can only take in and remember a small fraction of the content. We take information into ourselves and memorize it. This is something we do every day, and the "Schema" plays a vital role in that process. As I mentioned in my book "Eigo Dokushu-ho" (Iwanami Shinsho), a "schema" is like a "cluster of implicit knowledge" that we aren't even aware we possess. Schemas are something people build unconsciously by generalizing their own experiences; they unconsciously select information, aid understanding, and are deeply involved in incorporating information into memory and retrieving information from memory. To "understand" information is nothing other than using a schema to fill in the gaps between the lines of external information and interpreting that information. If a schema cannot be recalled and the gaps cannot be filled, that information can hardly be understood. And because it cannot be understood, it naturally cannot be remembered.

Schemas are not always correct. For example, many children hold the incorrect schema that numbers exist solely for counting objects. From infancy, they frequently hear number words (one, two, three...), but in most cases, these are used in the context of counting things. This incorrect schema later makes learning arithmetic difficult for children. Numbers for counting things are limited to natural numbers. Since the concept of fractions contradicts this schema, children experience significant difficulty in learning fractions.

Schemas are also deeply involved in language learning. While children learn words, they don't just learn the meanings of individual words; they notice patterns and regularities inherent in the vocabulary itself and create schemas. For example, with names of objects, they can apply a learned word to objects with similar shapes, rather than focusing on color, material, or size. With action words (verbs), they can apply a learned word to the same movement, regardless of the agent or the object of the action. Children grow their vocabulary guided by these types of schemas.

However, here too, if a schema is incorrect, it causes the learned words to be extended in the wrong direction. This problem becomes prominent in foreign language learning. People have very rich schemas for their mother tongue (first language). When learning a foreign language, beginners do not have a schema for that language. However, without a schema, it is difficult to infer the meaning of words. Children discover the structure of vocabulary while learning words in their mother tongue and build schemas for learning that language. Adults, however, already have a schema for their mother tongue and unconsciously use it when learning a foreign language. For example, when language structures differ greatly, as with Japanese and English, the schemas inevitably differ as well. Using the schema of one's mother tongue for a foreign language leads to various problems.

For example, when learning nouns, English speakers always pay attention to whether the noun is countable or uncountable. Children discern this from adult speech and use it to infer the meaning of nouns. In English, actions are often clearly distinguished from states or results using different verbs. When learning verbs, they pay attention to whether the verb is frequently used in the "-ing" progressive form. Verbs used with "-ing" have a high probability of being verbs that represent actions rather than states or results. Conversely, verbs not used with "-ing" are likely to be verbs representing states or results. They create such schemas to infer the meanings of unknown verbs.

Japanese does not distinguish between countable and uncountable nouns from the start. In sentences like "Saikin computer o katta yo" (I bought a computer recently) and "Saki mizu o nonda yo" (I drank some water just now), both nouns are used as-is, and one cannot tell from the form that the former is countable and the latter is uncountable. In Japanese verbs, the distinction between action verbs and verbs representing states or results is also ambiguous. When you want to say "Samui kara coat o kinasai" (Put on a coat because it's cold) and "Kawaii coat o kite iru ne" (You are wearing a cute coat), English requires completely different verbs ("put on" for the former, "wear" for the latter), but Japanese uses "kiru" for both the action and the state. Furthermore, the conjugation "-te iru" is used for both actions and states, as in "I am changing my clothes right now" and "Where did you buy the clothes you are wearing now?" Becoming accustomed to Japanese like this from infancy makes it difficult to pay attention to conceptual distinctions that are very important for acquiring and using English, such as the distinction between countable/uncountable or action/state. One implicitly creates an equation like: "Whenever I want to say 'kite iru,' it's always 'wear'." Incidentally, this (the perception that words in a mother tongue and a foreign language correspond one-to-one) is a typical "incorrect schema" that foreign language learners tend to have.

Ultimately, in order to learn a foreign language after establishing a mother tongue, a process is required to analyze and consciously replace the differences between the schemas one has in their mother tongue and the schemas held by native speakers of the foreign language being learned.

Eigo Dokushu-ho (English Self-Study Method)

Mutsumi Imai

Iwanami Shinsho

282 pages, 968 yen (tax included)