Rubber ducks for Modern Languages

Neil Wykes
Jul 21, 2017 · 3 min read

A Miña Murciana (My little darling from Murcia in Galician) is what I called my cat the first year I began to learn Galician.

I found my my inability to speak this new language I was learning was both embarrassing and frustrating. I’m hardly unique to feel this way, but it was made worse by attending classes meant for native Castilian speakers who wanted to learn the basics of Galician, or for Galician speakers to improve this historically maligned language. The lesson was completely taught in Galician a language I could barely understand spoken.

Conversation in class with my classmates was impossible so it seemed natural to me to try to recreate the conditions that lead to me learning Castilian; Speaking.

Not Impressed

I started speaking to my cat. I’d ask her questions, comment on who activities and answer for her.

It helped me remember the little Galician I knew. Questions, answers and basic tenses.

I also discovered what parts of spontaneous speech, vocabulary and grammar I needed to study in between conversations.


Once you can have a conversation in a language, even the a basic one, the opportunities to practice and learn increase rapidly. Sadly confidence and fluency in speech can be the biggest challenge to modern language learners in the classroom.

Very few language learners have access to a native speaker or have the opportunity to immerse themselves in a language, so I tell my students this story and suggest that they do the same, normally much to their amusement.

Listening to philosophy podcast Irrationally Speaking I discovered that not only is there proof that speaking out loud is a great way of reinforcing knowledge, but students who explain problems to themselves learn faster and more effectively.

There’s even proof that talking to pets help (well almost, it’s actually rubber ducks)

“…Researchers were trying to figure out what it was that made some students much more effective learners than others…. they found that some of them were doing this thing which looked a whole lot like explaining to themselves. They were just doing it spontaneously, as they worked through the problems and thinking, ‘Okay, why does that step follow? Why is this the case?’ And so on.

The students who were doing more of that self-explanation were also doing better on post-tests…”

In the coding world there is a technique known as rubber-ducking that is very similar.

Apparently a coder found that explaining the problem to someone else was a great way to fully understand a problem, but when there was no one around he would speak to their lucky mascot; a rubber duck

https://pixabay.com/en/rubber-duck-bath-duck-toys-costume-1401225/

So, I Thank my cat for her patience and understanding.

Sadly I’ve yet to find any evidence that proves the effectiveness of answering your own questions to the cat in a silly voice, but I’m sure that only a matter of time.

)
Neil Wykes

Written by

Creatively teaching creativity

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