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Response to past Pimsleur discussions | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6552 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes  1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 137 of 148 11 November 2009 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Why is it wrong? Simple - no single method is the perfect method - being told not to use other books is incorrect. To assume one can only learn orally, suggest that the hearing-impaired cannot learn a language, something that is patently false. Your example is very good but you'd have to demostrate that a) late writing works better b) it improves overall efficieny of learning. My personal experience (n=3 persons) is that even with late writing the 'ei' 'ie' couplets in German will be misread every once in a while by Americans upon seeing them in print, even with hundreds of hours of oral practice. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 138 of 148 11 November 2009 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Read more carefully. The Pimsleur course requires the language to be processed in its spoken form; no one wrote anything about that being the only way to learn, but Pimsleur is a rather strictly audio-based course, and not one which is currently aimed at the hearing impaired to the best of my knowledge. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6552 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes 1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 139 of 148 11 November 2009 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Their site does suggest that no other books be used (perhaps only during the course work) and that audio is the language-learning area of the brain. This is what I take issue on. It seems rather obvious that an audio-only based course would be wasted on the hearing impaired. Rather, my point is that clearly audio is not the only way to learn (and as evident as that might seem to us) the web site suggests otherwise. Edited by zenmonkey on 11 November 2009 at 11:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 140 of 148 12 November 2009 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The hearing impaired seems like a bit of spurious example. People with one leg learn to hop, but you would never recommend that learning to hop was a valid strategy for teaching a healthy two-legged baby to walk. They say that writing "interrupts" the learning process. This does not say that courses with writing don't work at all, but that they're inefficient, that they make the process harder. The claim that language is primarily an auditory experience is fully in-line with mainstream theories in psychology and neuroscience -- I am not aware of any alternative current theory that proposes a different model. Language is first and foremost a spoken phenomenon, and writing is a picture of language. Writing, like any other type of picture, relies on a knowledge of the subject matter that extends beyond what is shown in the picture. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6675 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 141 of 148 12 November 2009 at 9:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes.Writing is a picture of the language and therefore is an extraordinary mnemonic device. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 142 of 148 13 November 2009 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Tell a lie, actually my favourite theory does actually propose a different model. V S Ramachandran reckons that language is actually a spatial phenomenon, and that spoken language works because pronouncing any given phoneme involves changing the shape of your mouth, and the shape of the mouth is spatial in nature. The problem with writing is that the only explicit use of spatial relationships is to encode the temporal relationship. Letters representing "small" sounds are generally the same size as those representing "big" sounds. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6552 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes 1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 143 of 148 13 November 2009 at 10:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Primarily should not mean uniquely - that is what my point is. And while writing is a picture of language we already associate it with language - we've learned that. You could also say sounds are the the music of language. Oral language, like any other type of music, releis on knowledge of the subject matter that extends beyond what is in the heard in the sound. If you wish to continue learning with an orally-focused method, go ahead - but know that even certain Pimsleur has reading books included for, gasp, reading. As a trained biologist, i can tell you that the 'mainstream' theories of language acquisition are not purely about oral acquisition. From Chomsky to Monitor Theory to Canal and Swain a variety of concepts exist out there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 144 of 148 14 November 2009 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes, but we don't just associate writing with "language", but with "a language" -- more specifically our native language. For example, the Basque word "bai" looks like "bay" to English speaker, when it's closer to "by" or "bye". But then if we write "bye" as the approximate transcription, we're cheating ourselves, because it is only approximate and continually "hearing" the English bye when we read reinforces the incorrect pronunciation and stops us learning to say it correctly. It is impossible to write the pronunciation of "bai" correctly in terms of English.
Chomsky focuses far more on the internal representation of language than the perceptual medium. Monitor Theory and Swain's work focus on adult language acquisition, and however important that is to us as language learners, it really tells us very little about the physical nature of language. I'm not familiar with Canal 1 person has voted this message useful |
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