JASMIN BANIC, GOETHE-INSTITUT, SAN FRANCISCO

JASMIN.BANIC@GMAIL.COM

ASSOCATIVE LEARNING:
Language of Head
or Heart?
HOW DO YOU CONDUCT
YOUR LANGUAGE CLASSES?
• Monolingual vs. bilingual?
• What would be your #1 linguistic goal
with the following text?
• Grammar? Semantics? Features of
Romaticism?
 HEAD VS. HEART

“If you talk to a man in a language he

understands, that goes in his head. If
you talk to him in his language, that
goes in his heart.”
Nelson Mandela
 Pinker, Steven: “How the Mind Works”
“The Romantic movement in philosophy, literature, and art began about
two hundred years ago, and since the emotions and the intellect have been
assigned to different realms. The emotions come from nature and live in the
body. They are hot, irrational impulses and intuitions, which follow the
imperatives of biology. The intellect comes from civilization and lives in
the mind. It is a cool deliberator that follows the interests of self and society
by keeping emotions in check. Romantics believe that the emotions are the
source of wisdom, innocence, authenticity, and creativity, and should not be
repressed by individuals or society. Often the romantics acknowledge a
dark side, the price we must pay for artistic greatness.”
 Similarity by Ending

English Spanish German Italian

-ty -dad creatividad, -tät, -shaft, -keit -tà
creativity, society, sociedad, autencidad Kreativität, Gesellschaft, creatività,so
authenticity Glaubwürdigkeit cietà,
autenticità

-tion -ción -tion -tà

civilization civilización Zivilisation civiltá
Similarity by Formation

English German
sing, sang, sung singen, sang, gesungen

begin, began, begun beginnen, began, begonnen

False Cognates

salir/ to go out salire/to go up

guardar/to keep, to guardare/to look

guard
burro/donkey burro/
 HEAD VS. HEART: Implementation
Suggestions

 Visual Recognition
 Encouraging Word Formation
 Audio + Video Assignments: TV, YouTube, Street signs & Adds
 References
Chomsky, Noam: “Language and Mind”, 1972
Jackendoff, Ray: “Patterns in the Mind”, 1994
Pinker, Steven: “How the Mind Works”, 1997
Pinker, Steven: “Words and Rules – The Ingredients of
Language”, 1999
Pinker, Steven: “The Stuff of Thought – Language as a
Window into Human Nature”, 2007
Erard Michael: “Slips, Stumbles and Verbal Blunders
and What They Mean”, 2007
McWhorter, John: “What Language is (And what it isn’t
and What it Could Be), 2011
 GR
AC
IA S
c i e
G ra

THANK YOU Da
nk
e
V A LA
H

Jasmin Banic, jasmin.banic@gmail.com