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How Krashen will delay your fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5985 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes  Speaks: Spanish* | Message 17 of 81 31 July 2009 at 1:48am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Hi, since I can't quite believe you learnt Spanish in 5 months, I suppose you meant that you reached a certain level of fluency in Spanish after that time. It would be interesting to know what exactly it was, not because a single case is going to challenge the much better established ideas of Krashen, but well, just for the sake of discussion. So, for example, given that you seem very interested in language learning theory, after those 5 months, were you able to manage a thread like this in Spanish? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6207 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 18 of 81 31 July 2009 at 1:51am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
All good points :). 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| J-Learner Senior Member Australia Joined 6034 days ago 556 posts - 636 votes Studies: Yiddish, English* Studies: Dutch | Message 19 of 81 31 July 2009 at 3:02am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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It's clear to me that children do not understand everything they hear before they start to give output. Also their output is not always grammatically correct and even native speaking adults are never 100% correct. To me, this invalidates any theory that states input before output and that one has to perfectly understand the input before moving on to putput. But I doubt that is what Krashen is saying but more likely those who pretend to understand what he has to say. (I don't care to read about language learning theories, I prefer to experiment with methods on my own.)
I think there is a difference between speaking aloud the language you are learning and having a conversation when you only know 5 phrases (for example). To me it is common sense that if I moved to the Netherlands, I would learn Dutch quicker. But even quicker if I studied Dutch while I was there. I can't go to the Netherlands and I found AJATT style immersion to be annoying and slowed me down. So where does that leave me? Perhaps it is true that babies don't audibly produce output in the early stages but do so internally? To me all this kind feels like someone saying: Don't have a go at something till you know you'll be good at it! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| JS-1 Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5987 days ago 144 posts - 166 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), German, Japanese, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic (Written) | Message 20 of 81 31 July 2009 at 8:19am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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It seems like utter nonsense to me that having a good passive knowledge of a language is
going to be an impediment to learning to speaking it well. I have a fairly decent passive knowledge of Italian, so do some people believe that this is worse than having no knowledge of the language at all when I eventually start learning to speak it? That just seems ridiculous. Edited by JS-1 on 31 July 2009 at 9:38am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 81 31 July 2009 at 9:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Answer no. 1:
Let's start in a totally different corner. There are two types of pilots: some start slowly and build up speed, others keep the brakes on until the motors are running at full throttle and then they let go. Both methods work, and it takes roughly the same time. But a gradual start requires more runway. Personally I hate communicating if I can't do it fluently, but I'm not too terrified of errors - I expect that they can be weeded out later. If runway is translated into communication with other people then it may seem that I start late, but then arrive at a practical communicating stage fast. But in reality the motor has been running at full throttle long before I let off the brakes. Why? Because many years in school taught me that teachers and others can't stop messing around with my errors, and that would interfere with my main task, which is to get fluent in the sense of fluid. So better shut up until the motor is running so fast that even a teacher can't stop it, and THEN let off the brakes. More extrovert personalities may not have the same problem with interference, and then they can start talking to people as soon as they have learnt the first three words. So they use all the runway. The main problem with the distinction between early production and late production is that it doesn't consider the possibility that you can produce language silently (or in isolation) long before you let your newborn loose amid the carnivores. Edited by Iversen on 31 July 2009 at 9:59am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 22 of 81 31 July 2009 at 9:57am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Answer no. 2:
In consequence of answer no. 1 I can't accept that that the usual distinction between early and late output start is the same as the distinction between learning a language actively vs. passively. Purely passive learning does exist, and I would say that my Latin learning in school was close to purely passive - it was the old grammar-translation method in its purest form. The result was that when I stopped learning it I soon lost the ability to read Latin. But when I decided to relearn it as an active language all the good ol' grammar came back to me in a flash, and that made the whole thing much easier. The problem is that I could have avoided 25 years of inability to read the language if I had learnt it as an active language in the first place. Now I reserve the notion of passive languages for those cases where I haven't got any solid reason for learning a language (or dialect) because I already more or less can read it because I know a close relative - and that would include things like Corsican, which I saw for the first time in my life yesterday. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6089 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 23 of 81 31 July 2009 at 10:07am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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For what it's worth I'm discovering can't get out of the stalemate I'm in with Japanese unless I activate it. A passive knowledge but of 2,000-3,000 is not enough to read it, and yet I can't get any further with the language unless I can read/study it. I've been activating everything that I've learned so far and I'm hoping the language will become clearer to me so that I can continue building. I don't know how people get by in Japanese with just a passive knowledge. I'm not immersed in the language, so the passive road seems too slow and painful to me. The words just slip into "forgotten" unless I do text chat or write. Edited by Sunja on 31 July 2009 at 10:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6679 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 24 of 81 31 July 2009 at 10:32am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It really doesn't matter what you do as long it keeps you motivated interacting with the language. More motivation = more time and intensity = success. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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