2

KNOWING A lANGUAGE:
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

People talk admiringly about how many languages others know but when they
talk about their own language knowledge they are more conservative. They realise
that there is much more to knowing a language than being able to exchange short
conversations with visiting tourists. This chapter investigates four aspects involved
in 'knowing' a language.

What does it mean to know a language? For the moment let's compare
it with learning to ride a bicycle. When you learned that skill as a child
there were at least three things involved. You needed some actual
information, such as how the brakes worked. Then there were the skills,
such as not losing your balance. The third part had to do with your
attitude, especially when you felt you were not making progress. In both
riding a bicycle and learning a language you are building on what has
gone before, whether that was keeping your balance while riding a
tricycle or climbing a tree or, in the case of languages, speaking and
understanding your own language already.
What do you actually need to know? The knowledge you need can
be summarised under these headings:

Knowledge about the form of the language

Knowledge about how the language is used in different situations
Knowledge about putting the language together in speech and
writing
Words to describe what you know

26
M. Lewis, How to Study Foreign Languages
© Marilyn Lewis 1999
KNOWING A LANGUAGE: WHAT DOES IT MEAN? 27

According to one student, some courses concentrate mainly on the form

of the language (pronouncing and spelling words properly), forgetting
that the social rules are important. So, too, is the business of making
sure what you say or write fits in with everything else that is being said
and written. What he says about learning Japanese could just as easily
be said about learning other languages:

I think the other thing people should be careful of when studying Japanese
is not to fall into the trap of thinking that learning lots of vocab. or grammar
structures is the be all, although they are of course essential. I found that
there was very little concentration on my part, and on the part of teachers,
on discourse-level competence [the way ideas are joined together in
speech and writing]. Sociolinguistic competence is not covered enough at
Uni either. The way for learners to combat this problem is to make
Japanese friends and talk with them, and more importantly, listening to
their speech. There are heaps of Japanese coming to this country to visit
for working holidays, etc., all the time, and a lot of them are pretty
hopeless at English, so there is no shortage of subjects!!

We look now at each of these aspects in turn.

2.1 THE FORM OF THE LANGUAGE

The information you learned about a bicycle's parts was probably quite
simple. You knew there were wheels to keep you moving, brakes to stop
you, and handlebars to hold on to in the meantime.
Before you ever started formal foreign-language learning you prob-
ably had an impression about languages other than your own. People
pick up bits of folk information such as these:

German has very long words.

Chinese uses tones.
Some languages use polite language for talking to certain people.

For some years, knowing about our own language has been seen as not
very important. Language learners would often be able to describe
another language better than their own. This viewpoint has changed a
little. Whereas we learn our first language as babies and little children,
a language studied at high school or university is studied more con-
sciously. Students don't have all those years to spend on their learning
and they find that actually making conscious some of the knowledge