The Linguist

26 The Linguist Vol/63 No/2 ciol.org.uk/thelinguist FEATURES sentence where the word 'happen' is missing and asked to fill the gap with a suitable form of the verb. Overall, our model learns to use tense and aspect forms rather well, makes choices that feel natural to English language users and is able to suggest possible alternatives. (Often more than one form is possible; in the example sentence, 'has happened', 'had happened' or 'is happening' could all be used equally well.) We can also look under the hood of this algorithm and identify the cues that support learning. 3 This is where frequency of use comes in again: the verb system appears to consist of two types of tense/aspect combination. Simple tenses, such as simple present and simple past, are very frequently used and therefore strongly associated with specific lexical elements, i.e. regular verbs. Learners need to be exposed to these verbs in their preferred tense/aspect forms, for instance 'you know', 'I mean', 'he replied', 'she nodded'. But there are also more complex tense/aspect combinations which are rarely used and are therefore cued by contextual elements (1-, 2-, 3- and 4-grams, e.g. 'recently' and 'since then'). To become a proficient user of these more complex verb forms, the learner needs to be exposed to context that supports the use of these forms. Practically, when teaching the English tense/aspect system, learners would work their way through the tense/aspect combinations in order of frequency of occurrence, starting with the simple past and present, and focusing on the verbs that occur in these tenses. When this knowledge is secure, attention could gradually shift to the complex tenses, and the contextual elements that support their use. Comparisons with already established tenses can be drawn where appropriate, e.g simple vs progressive past. Crucially, the fine semantic differences between the different ways of expressing, e.g, the past would come from a discussion of the differences between the contextual elements that support each of the relevant tense/aspect combinations. This would replace the current reliance on abstract concepts, such as present relevance, that are typically used to explain the meaning, and hence use, of tense/aspect combinations. In other words, if we follow the science, and learn from data the way first-language users learn from data, and do this using copious amounts of data, we find relevant patterns that are difficult to spot with the naked eye. These patterns are highly relevant for understanding how the system works and hence how it should be taught. Our approach relies on these structures that are detected by applying basic principles of learning without reliance on linguistic rules. An additional strength of our approach is that we can let the algorithm learn from data that matches specific learning goals in terms of genre, style, topic, etc. For example, the conventions for tense/aspect use differ between, say, academic articles and creative fiction. Training our algorithm on examples from the genre or style you are trying to learn or teach will generate tailor- made recommendations. An approach to language founded on principles of learning also enables teachers to shift the focus away from prescribing usage through rules, towards describing usage in a way that directs learners' attention to the type of cues that are useful for learning a particular structure. After all, there is an infinite number of things we might want to say and we cannot teach solutions to an infinite number of problems, but we can teach our students where to look to learn to solve any problem. By equipping learners with a long-term learning strategy, we support them in building a bank of knowledge that is tailored to the task at hand. This increases their chances of developing efficient memory traces that resemble those of native language users and offers a more effective, sustainable and rewarding language-learning experience. www.youtube.com/@outofourminds8219; X @ooominds; outofourminds.bham.ac.uk. For teaching resources see outofourminds.bham.ac.uk/resources. Notes 1 'The', 'be', 'to', 'of', 'and', 'a', 'in', 'that', 'have', 'I'. 2 Rescorla, RA and Wagner, RA (1972) 'A Theory of Pavlovian Conditioning: Variations in the effectiveness of reinforcement and non-reinforcement'. In Black, H and Proksay, WF, Classical Conditioning II, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 64-99 3 Romain, L and Divjak, D (2024) 'The Types of Cues That Help You Learn: Pedagogical implications of a computational simulation on learning the English tense/aspect system from exposure'. In Pedagogical Linguistics, John Benjamins; www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/pl.23003.rom ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT Neither traditional in-person courses nor popular apps have fully mastered the challenges of learning a language IMAGES © PEXELS

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