I've spent many thousands of hours over the past several years studying foreign languages and developing a general method for foreign-language acquisition. But now I believe it's time to turn this technique in the direction of my native language: English.
Most people make a distinction between one's native language and one's second language(s). But anyone who has learned how to speak with a proper accent in a second language and spent a long enough stretch of time neglecting their native language to let it begin rusting and deteriorating will know that there's no essential difference.
When the average person learns new words in their native language, they imagine that they're learning new concepts. When they study new vocabulary in a foreign language, however, they recognize that they're merely acquiring hitherto-unknown words. They've never taken a step outside the personality their childhood environment conditioned into them. When the only demarcation of thingspace that you know is the semantic structure of your native language, you're bound to believe, for example, that the World is Made of English.
Why study English? I'm already fluent, as you can tell. I have the Magic of a Native Speaker.
Let's put this nonsense behind us and recognize that the map is not the territory, that English is just another map.
My first idea is that it may be useful to develop a working knowledge of the fundamentals of English etymology. A quick search suggests that the majority of words in English have a French or Latin origin. Would it be useful to make an Anki deck with the goal of learning how to readily recognize the building blocks of the English language, such as seeing that the "cardi" in "cardiology", "cardiograph", and "cardiograph" comes from an Ancient Greek word meaning "heart" (καρδιά)?
Besides that, I plan to make a habit of adding any new words I encounter into Anki with their context. For example, let's say I'm reading the introduction to A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume. I encounter the term "proselytes", and upon looking it up in a dictionary I understand the meaning of the passage. I include the spelling of the simplest version of the word ("proselyte"), along with an audio recording of the pronunciation. I'll also toy with adding various other information such as a definition I wrote myself, synonyms or antonyms, and so forth, not knowing how I'll use the information but by virtue of the efficient design of Anki providing myself a plethora of options for innovative card design in the future.
Here's the context in this case:
Amidst all this bustle 'tis not reason, which carries the prize, but eloquence; and no man needs ever despair of gaining proselytes to the most extravagant hypothesis, who has art enough to represent it in any favourable colours. The victory is not gained by the men at arms, who manage the pike and the sword; but by the trumpeters, drummers, and musicians of the army.
With the word on the front of the card and this passage on the back of the card, I give my brain an opportunity to tie words to context rather than lifeless dictionary definitions. I don't know how much colorful meaning this passage may have in isolation, but for me I've read enough of the book to have a feel for his style and what he's talking about here. This highlights the personal nature of Anki decks. Few passages would be better for me when it comes to learning this word, but for you the considerations may be quite different. Far from different people simply having different subsets of the language that they're most concerned about, different people require different contextual definitions based on their own interests and knowledge.
But what about linguistic components that are more complex than a standalone word?
Let's say you run into the sentence, "And as the science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences, so the only solid foundation we can give to this science itself must be laid on experience and observation."
Using Anki, I could perhaps put "And as [reason], so [consequence]" on the front of the card, and the full sentence on the back.
What I'm most concerned with, however, is how to translate such study to an actual improvement in writing ability. Using Anki to play the recognition game, where you see a vocabulary word or grammatical form on the front and have a contextual definition on the back, would certainly improvement quickness of reading comprehension in many cases. But would it make the right connections in the brain so I'm likely to think of the right word or grammatical structure at the right time for writing purposes?
Anyway, any considerations or suggestions concerning how to optimize reading comprehension or especially writing ability in a language one is already quite proficient with would be appreciated.
I'm not sure this is the same thing in a country where English is the native language. In your country, a school that teaches every subject in English might be the only way to make sure students are sufficiently immersed in the language. Your teachers are well aware of the limited English possessed by their students and no doubt adjust their instruction accordingly, perhaps even dipping into the native language as needed to communicate difficult ideas. English fluency at graduation is a selling point for those schools, I bet, and they are willing to take a hit to the efficiency of instruction to get it.
Here in the US, there is little worry that students will not be sufficiently immersed in English. The texts I remember I would summarize as saying that bilingual instruction is great, but that in reality most students are left to "sink or swim". The good news is that most students will, eventually, "swim" and become fluent in English whether we help them or not.
The concern here is what they lost while treading water. You see, graduation rates for students new to English here are not so great.
Which takes us back to the issue of whether academic instruction in the native language is important while the English is weak.
There is a good deal of irony in how and what I learned from these required courses. For reasons that melt into partisan politics, my state is one of a handful that specifically forbids (by law!) instruction in any language other than English (with obvious exceptions for classes teaching foreign languages as second languages). My 6 credit hours were required as part of a federal court settlement -- the state was sued by students who felt ill-served by this law -- which amounted to saying, “if you’re going to mandate English-only instruction, all of your teachers better know best practices for teaching English Language Learners (ELLs) using only English.”
But back to sources. I went to a very dusty bookshelf for you...
Alas, the one text I have left from this era is “Echevarria, Vogt, and Short. Making Content Comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP Model 2008.”, which is a book on best practices focused on English-only instruction... but even this still touches on the value of “L1” (the students’ native language) fluency in making sure students are receiving “comprehensible input” -- an important term in this field, as language that does not reach the threshold of comprehensibility for a given student will not help them build language fluency or academic subject knowledge.
Echevarria, Vogt, and Shorts say their model still allows for students to be “given the opportunity to have a concept or assignment explained in their L1 as needed. Significant controversy surrounds the use of L1 for instructional purposes, but we believe the clarification in students’ L1 by a bilingual instructional aide, peer, or through the use of materials written in the students’ L1 provides an important support for the academic learning of those students who are not yet fully proficient in English.” These authors seemed to be glad that, thanks to internet technologies, all classrooms “should have some resources in most of the students’ native languages.”
Another relevant passage:
“In fact, the National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth found that academic skills such as reading taught in the first language transfer to the second language.”
Summarizing findings from the National Center for Research on Education, Diversity, & Excellence, they listed as a bullet point that “Academic literacy in the native language facilitates the development of academic literacy in English”
I remember stronger endorsements for bilingual instruction in books now lost to me, but even these acknowledged that bilingual instruction generally doesn’t exist for a variety of budgetary and political reasons, so we had better learn to help ELLs get by in an English-only classroom.
Thanks! If I remember correctly, the bilingual schools in my country had a system something like "one hour of math in native language, one hour of math in English". That's different from English-only.