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How Krashen will delay your fluency

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J-Learner
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 6031 days ago

556 posts - 636 votes 
Studies: Yiddish, English*
Studies: Dutch

 
 Message 33 of 81
31 July 2009 at 3:06pm | IP Logged 
Too many corrections could come about if you do try to do too far beyond your ability in speaking/writing. Even the most critical of teachers can't over-correct if you don't make too many mistakes.
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William Camden
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French

 
 Message 34 of 81
31 July 2009 at 5:59pm | IP Logged 
I have probably posted about this before, but Krashen featured in a British TV programme about language learning. A clip of him was shown giving a talk in which he illustrated how to get meaning across. He seems to prefer simple sentences and a lot of gesticulation. I haven't studied his theories or techniques in any depth.
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Bao
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5
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Speaks: German*, English
Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin

 
 Message 35 of 81
31 July 2009 at 6:16pm | IP Logged 
Sunja wrote:
Iversen wrote:
Sunja wrote:
The important thing, again, is to have the correction.


The important thing is to have enough corrections to keep you moving forward, but no so many that you get stuck.


This is interesting. I give a lot of corrections and I get a lot in return. What would be "so many that you get stuck"? I suppose the learning process could be thwarted if the person is trying to express something that they're not ready to write yet, or they get caught in a habit of direct translation -- which is a real hinderance. Or could you mean getting so many corrections back, that you don't have time to review them all (which would be my problem) (^_^)


The most relevant first. If a learner of, let's say German, Spanish or Russian produces a sentence that has: the wrong grammatical person, the wrong tense (eg. simple past where perfect tense sounds better) and a slightly odd-sounding word, it's probably the best choice to correct only the person at this stage, and leave tense and vocabulary for later.
Of course people will try to say things that are way over their head. :)
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healing332
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5621 days ago

164 posts - 211 votes 

 
 Message 36 of 81
31 July 2009 at 8:33pm | IP Logged 
zocurtis wrote:
Pyx wrote:
Jimmymac wrote:
What? Really? You learned Spanish in 5 months. Why didn't you tell us that earlier? if it was me I would go on and on and on about it.

Aww, Jimmy, that's not nice! Didn't you read the other thread? Sarcasm is not polite, not constructive, is offensive, yadda yadda yadda.

Also, did any evidence ever get produced that this guy does actually speak acceptable Spanish? I stopped reading the 50 other threads before that question ever got resolved..

Maybe the problem is you are studying Spanish and still cannot get it..stop fighting and maybe you will learn

Hahaha, good one. I saw his Spanish sentence that he wrote out a few threads ago and the grammar was all screwed up. Forgive me if I'm wrong but it looked as if he used an online translator and we all know what happens when you use an online translator.


Actually I have never written in Spanish( I did learn to speak and understand all Spanish in 5 months..i really do not care who believes me..) but did it in real time on that thread so..you are wrong as usual Zocurtis..as for online translations..i use NO translations for Swedish or any language..also someone argued with you and said when i wrote Spanish that he understood me perfectly..so please stop your nonsense zocutis..or zoolander or whatever you are called..

I will post in any language I am studying and I have no ego about mistakes which is why I speak from day 1..i fear no one...that why I learn so well a new language

I see you are "trying" to study Spanish..having a little difficulty?

Edited by healing332 on 31 July 2009 at 8:37pm

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mrhenrik
Triglot
Moderator
Norway
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 Message 37 of 81
31 July 2009 at 8:39pm | IP Logged 
I think the point was that your 5-month method did not bring you to the kind of fluency that a lot of people here are looking for. Fluent understandable Spanish and fluent Spanish are two quite different things. While it was probably very understandable, many learners here want something more out of their studies, for instance working in the target language or at least speaking with the same proficiency as a native - perhaps in an accent but at least with the same word and grammar usage.

The problem with your method in that respect is that you tend to shoot down methods and principles that might work for people on the basis that your method worked for you without putting much emphasis on the fact that your method made you fluently understandable, not the kind of fluent that a lot of people would perhaps expect the word to indicate.

Edit: your last comment there was a little uncalled for and below the belt. ;p

Edited by mrhenrik on 31 July 2009 at 8:41pm

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Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
Joined 6012 days ago

4399 posts - 7687 votes 
Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh

 
 Message 38 of 81
31 July 2009 at 8:48pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
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.

Well said.

I'd take this further and say that the problem with every justification I've seen from the natural/direct schools is that they make the assumption that what goes on inside your head is fundamentally different from your interactions with the world. Or more simply that any that they don't see didn't happen.

So when they say "no early production", they're ignoring (as you say) internal production.

When they say "no translation, not even in your head", they assume that their students are not translating, even though they can't know this for sure.

And when they say "no grammar rules", they assume that the learners won't extract the rules and make them into declarative knowledge.

My experience suggests that these assumptions are all wrong.

I'm sure I've written about this before, but it bears repeating. I was given one hour of direct instruction in Finnish as part of my CELTA course.

The teacher came into the room and said something that sounded like "houva paeeva" (there was no writing in this class, so I don't know how to spell it). He said it again and we repeated it. Even though I was trying not to translate, I couldn't help but associate it with "good morning". When we repeated it, he congratulated us with "ehreetaeen houva". Five minutes into the class with no rules and no translation, I could already tell you that Finnish adjectives come before nouns and Finnish adverbs come before adjectives. Of course, that may not be true -- good may be the exception as it is in a number of languages. After the hour was up, we were asked what we knew about Finnish. From around the room we had things about grammatical gender, articles etc etc.

So my experience is that people (and not just myself) do translate and do build up declarative knowledge in an immersive environment. It may be a very small sample set, but it is a major concern that these studies rarely address.

I would love to see a longitudinal study on changing levels of declarative knowledge among students in the natural-method classroom, because I suspect that it's the people who build up that declarative knowledge early on who succeed. Just because they don't know it at the end doesn't mean that they didn't know it at the start -- it could be like Iversen's Latin and buried away because the brain stops needing it once fluency is achieved. I know that I've forgotten (explicit, declarative) rules in Spanish that I used to know, but I still appear to be able to produce spoken sentences that fit the rules.
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Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
Joined 6012 days ago

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Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh

 
 Message 39 of 81
31 July 2009 at 8:50pm | IP Logged 
healing332 wrote:
I see you are "trying" to study Spanish..having a little difficulty?

Some people are just more humble about their achievements than others. I wouldn't bet against him having better Spanish than you.
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