the walshsensei blog

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不都合な真実
君のためなら千回でも
美しい人
ブエナビスタソシアルクラブ
Baraka
それでも生きる子供たちへ
ダーウィンの悪夢
グアンタナモ、僕達が見た真実

In the language learning classroom, there are many valuable things that can and need to be done with the little time available, and one certainly could argue for any number of things over activities that are open-ended, that is, those where the language to be used to achieve the goal of the task is not predetermined, but these freer types of exercises are exactly what the EFL learner in an institutional setting is missing.
There needs to be a gap between the action in the outside world the learner intends to create with language and the language s/he is able to find to enact that function. Before any gap can exist, the learner needs to have an action in mind and attempt to achieve it.
The problem is the little amount of output and the limited range of speech acts these activities can produce, or rather, sometimes fail to produce, especially with lower proficiency groups.
There is a danger that both the instructor and learner could end up feeling unproductive when comparing a mildly successful open-ended activity to some more industrious language focus work.
What is needed is some faith that people learn to speak by speaking, and this can take some time. While this very aspect of perhaps being faith-based is one criticism of communicitative methodologies, such as Task-based Learning, that promote the use of free frameworks, let me ask you this question: Aside from perhaps the amount of comprehesible input experienced, what is the difference between the learner that has lived in, and operated in a foreign language speaking environment for even a short span of time and is ipso facto somewhat successful with their foreign language and the diligent learner lacking such experience who is not? The answer is the balance of experience, action and focus.

The other day, one of my students was looking up some words in the online dictionary in order to understand a text. She was having problems. She couldn't understand 'in order to'. She began looking up each word: first 'in', then 'order' then 'to'. It was of no use! I saw her doing this and I told her "you have to think of 'in order to' as one word." After I said that another student said "Oh! I've heard that! ..but what does it mean again?" I told her "何々をするように、という目的で” and she said "Oh yeah, now I remember!"

This made me think about how often words are connected to other words. There are many terms for this kind of thing like 'collocation', 'fixed expressions', 'formulaic speech', or 'multi-word items', but the message is the same. Words are involved in relations with other words and recognizing these phrases or combinations as one unit of meaning is neccessary. You have to look to the right and to the left of a word to understand it. You don't believe me? Look at how many multi word items were in this text:

the other day
one of (determiner, plural noun)
look up
online dictionary
to have a problem
to begin (~ing)
in order to
be of no use
to have to (v)
think of (noun phrase) as (noun phrase)
Now I remember.
think about (noun phrase)
how often
to be connected to
this/that kind of (singular noun)
fixed expressions
formulaic speech
multi words item
the message is [that] (clause)
to be the same
to be involved in relations with
as (noun phrase)
to the right/left
to look at (noun phrase)
how many

The other day, I overheard an old man talking to his grandson as they were leaving the public bath in my neighborhood. The young boy was asking a question, but the grandfather didn't like the question because it was too simple. The old man refused to answer the question. Instead, he told the boy "頭で考えろ！"
I thought about that phrase for a minute. It's a funny thing to say, really. Why say "think with your head"? What else are you supposed to think with? Could you say "think with your foot" in Japanese; '足で考えろ'？
The answer is of course, no, you can't say that, but why? 'Thinking with your foot' sounds silly, but, in a way, so does 'think with your head', because thinking with anything else is impossible.

The Answer:
I think the answer is that '頭で考えろ' is a set phrase, or a semi-idiom in Japanese. The meaning is roughly: "That is such a stupid question that I refuse to answer it. Stop asking such questions and start learning how to think for yourself". It is not the kind of phrase that you make using logic, or make by choosing words to fit into a pattern. The meaning comes from the phrase and not from the words within. It is almost like one word. It is used 'as is' and you can't really change it. In other words, you don't 'assemble' it, you just use it as as one piece.
In fact, if you think about it, language is filled with these kinds of idioms! Actually, they are very convenient. If we put together everything we said it would get very tiring!
So, the more idioms like this that you know, the easier it becomes to speak or listen. Things become more automatic. There are less choices to be made, and you can be more confident about the meaning. After all, idioms are easy to understand. There is more meaning in them than just the words.
I've decided to listen for more idioms like this and try to remember them. Why don't you do this too!
By the way, there is a similar idiom in English that has exactly the same meaning.
It is: "Use your head".