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How to get to fluency faster | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6039 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 41 of 77 19 July 2008 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Cool -- that's perfectly understandable. But my point is that the silent period is A) not a necessary part of learning and B) a myth. A) If you are silent because there are people around you, that's different from being silent because it is "a good way to learn". B) If you are subvocalising, you are not "silent" as far as your mind is concerned. You are not merely accepting and absorbing -- you are also actively producing and manipulating language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| J-Learner Senior Member Australia Joined 6058 days ago 556 posts - 636 votes Studies: Yiddish, English* Studies: Dutch | Message 43 of 77 19 July 2008 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Subvocalising, comprehensible input, silent period.....
Seems to miss the point to me. That is: to communicate with the language. Right? Sorry is I am trivialising this but it seems to be a theoretical abstract divorsed from actual learning. Also not all thinking is auditary. Some "think" in pictures andother senses. I myself have no troubles with blending of sense to come up with insights on things and learn. There is also an abstract (but practical) part of thought which would be the realm of beliefs and analysis. There are many aspects to languages and the learning of them. I think linguistic arguments often miss the point of it all together. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6578 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 44 of 77 20 July 2008 at 3:08am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Agreed. I thought you meant something like that.
I think you are misinterpreting Krashen's active filter hypothesis. I'm a fan of that theory, because it emphasizes that we need to build our confidence, not damage the ego, etc, to learn more effectively. But I don't believe what I think you are saying - that everyone learns in the same way, and some methods block more than others, therefore, there exists a best method, the one that blocks the least, which you claim is Michel Thomas. If that's true, how do you explain the large number of learners who don't learn well with Michel Thomas? Despite the recent influx of enthusiasts on this forum, it's not one of the most positively reviewed methods out there. In fact all methods have a lot of critics; by that I mean people who have tried them and failed. This leads me to believe that there is no one best method for everyone, and therefore disbelieve your theory. I believe there is a filter, but it's only part of the picture. I also believe the "everyone learns differently" theory, while it may not be perfect, more accurately predicts the empirical data than your theory.
I understand you better now, so disagree for different reasons. Teachers are better off trying various methods than trying to find a single method that blocks less than any other.
For the reasons stated above, I disagree. Maybe you've already disclosed this, but do you stand to gain financially from promoting Michel Thomas? So many of your posts come off as advertisements. It makes me not want to read them, which is a pity, because you make so many excellent points.
Agreed. But I think those who read Krashen and come away believing he advises a huge initial silent period are misinterpreting him. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Paul999 Newbie Czech Republic Joined 6082 days ago 12 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English | Message 45 of 77 20 July 2008 at 3:25am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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This is method called listening approach. http://www.algworld.com/ Excerpt from an article by Dr. J. Marvin Brown ...The method says that any attempt to speak (or even think about language), before automatic speaking comes, will cause damage and limit final results! In other words, the method uses a very long "silent period". During the "silent period", students focus only on listening. After 6 - 12 months of intensive listening,students begin to speak spontaneously and naturally-- without effort and without thinking! just listened for as much as a year without speaking at all. We found that adults get almost the same results that children do. If adults understand natural talk, in real situations, without trying to say anything, for a whole year, then fluent speaking with clear pronunciation will come automatically. Forced speaking damages adults. Consciously thinking of one’s sentences – with translations,rules, substitutions, or any other kind of thinking prevents you from speaking like a native. The reason that children always end up as native speakers is because they learn to speak by listening. And the reason that adults don’t is because they learn to speak by speaking... ---------------------- "Your profile only shows English. So how successful has this strategy really been for you?" This strategy is successful for me. Believe me.I am learning English and Russian that way (I'm learning Russian for reason that Steve Kaufmann call "low hanging fruit" (my mother tongue is Czech). I know it works, because I do not think that my progress is slow. I can communicate in English fairly fluently already and I have not read any book in English yet. (I would really love to, but it's just annoying using dictionary more than ten times per a page...) Podcasting is a revolutionary way to learn/improve language. There I have to disagree with http://www.antimoon.com/how/readlisten.htm because listening to podcasts (like eslpod.com) is much more easier then reading a book - even designed for learners. But I am definitely the audiant, my best friend is Mp3 player:-) For example today's podcast (Sunday - July 20, 2008)from www.eslpod.com is called "An Untrustworthy Co-worker" it does sound like a very interesting podcast, doesn't it ? I am more than happy to listen to.:-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6039 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 46 of 77 20 July 2008 at 9:05am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
My use of the term "filter" was not related to Krashen's affective filter (I assume this is what you mean). What I'm really talking about here is learning strategies. I don't believe in Gardner's multiple intelligence theory but I recognise that it arose from valid observations. My personal belief is that the different observed learning styles are ways of dealing with excessive input, and that when you reduce the input to readily manageable levels, these strategies are not needed. When I say "filtering", I'm talking about the internal strategy of reducing the material to small, cognisable chunks.
Easy: Krashen's Affective Filter. ;-) There are three main complaints: Not enough vocabulary. Non-native accent. Grumpy old sod. You may argue that the first two are pedagogic factors, not affective factors, but I suggest otherwise. These two complaints appear (to me) to be more why it can't work rather than why it doesn't work. That is to say that the student has entered the course with a preconceived notion of what constitutes language learning. I've talked elsewhere about my first Gaelic course. The teacher was a retired headmistress, so was a bit of a dragon, but she taught us more in a week than I would have expected to learn in two. But my classmates still complained. She wasn't working to a syllabus... there was no structure... "there are ways of teaching -- and that isn't it". They left thinking that they hadn't learned anything, but they had -- because this teacher was teaching language in little digestible bits, rather than teaching "themes". (My mother also doesn't like Thomas. I was interested in why. It turns out she was doing it in the car -- "I don't have time to sit down and do these things!". So in effect she never actually tried the Michel Thomas method.)
A theory doesn't "predict" the data it's based on, it "reflects" it. The empirical data in question has been generated from existing courses. It cannot say "there is no single perfect teaching technique", all it can say is "at present, we have not developed a single perfect teaching technique". You are saying something cannot exist simply because we haven't found it yet.
Fair question sensitively put. Nope, I have no financial interest in the scheme. I am just sick of the snake oil and pseudoscience ("learn like a child!") that people are sold these days -- I don't want to see people go through what I've done and fill a shelf with language books that never get read past chapter two. I've also wound a few people up over on the official MT forum by complaining about the gradual snake-oiling of the series (the MT for schools uses all sorts of brainless exercises and the course material mentions that Multiple Intelligence mumbo jumbo, and deviations from Michel's successful techniques are brushed away with the usual catch all "it's a very different language"). And even though they've taken "fluency" off the box, they're now using that hoary old "learn another language the way you learned your own" instead. I don't think I've ever said the courses are perfect -- they're not. But it annoys me that the people best equipped (both linguistically and pedagogically) to find the flaws and improve teaching practice dismiss it out of hand. They're the best thing on the market, and will continue to be until other course writers take it seriously and improve upon them. In the meantime, the brand is at risk of becoming a pot-boiler, with never courses being of lower quality than the older ones and just on the name alone. Edited by Cainntear on 21 July 2008 at 12:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| J-Learner Senior Member Australia Joined 6058 days ago 556 posts - 636 votes Studies: Yiddish, English* Studies: Dutch | Message 48 of 77 20 July 2008 at 8:01pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I think the claim that one single method, philosophy of learning, course, etc etc, is all inclusive is nothing more than foolish.
What is so hard to accept that might be more than one way of learning something? *gasps* As a autodidact who has little faith in teachers (no offense intended to any), I find that they simply can't teach anything as extensively as language. Each learner needs to cope with it on their own (largely). For me the number one "technique" is curiosity. Without it I would learn nothing. With it I can learn anything. I think multiple intelligences make sense, at least in my own formulation of ideas on this matter. (I have never read any of the mentioned authors - probably never will). Some people seem to excel much in some areas more than in others. Many musicians cannot draw when given that task to do. They have no practice in it. Of course they lack the skill. Language is a rather diverse phenomena, no wonder there are so many approaches to the learning of it! I think it is best to develop many areas of the human intelligence and to use as many as possible to learn new things. But it is wrong to think that a visual sense will help directly with something that is only auditary and vice-versa. Edited by J-Learner on 20 July 2008 at 8:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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