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Speaking like Tarzan will help you. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6378 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes  Speaks: Latin* | Message 81 of 123 13 September 2007 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Well, I, for one, had no doubt you were referring to language exchange with that mutilated dialogue and I rest
my case: mutilating language like that is in bad taste and should not be done even when pursuing a (highly dubious) didactic benefit.
I am just curious if I am the only one who has trouble making any sense of the above passage. :-))) The first sentence is definitely a new word in linguistics. If I read it correctly (and I have read the whole passage several times): students are impeded by correct grammar in the target language because they don't know the grammar in their native language. So to learn the grammar in their native language they should be given bad grammar in their target language... Wait... No... Was it the other way around?.. I give up... :-) By the way, the whole passage is an excellent example of Tarzan-speak. Are you sure English is your first language?! Or are you suggesting it's high time we all learnt it?!..
Now, there is little point in disguising the depravity of the French... Not only did they manage to trick the whole world into misunderstanding the REAL meaning of what everyone believes to be a harmless 'thank you' but they go even further by censoring their etymological dictionaries!!! That's the only reason I can think of as to why our Learned Friend's explanation doesn't seem to make sense in the light of what is set out in the below link: http://www.etudes-litteraires.com/merchi.php Yet we should be grateful for this whole thread: these days one rarely encounters good entertainment in such quantities and at no cost. :-) Edited by furyou_gaijin on 13 September 2007 at 6:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6351 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English* | Message 82 of 123 13 September 2007 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
edit: I can't imagine you're ever going to answer these questions, but I'll repost them one last time.
Edited by FSI on 13 September 2007 at 8:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| xtremelingo Trilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6279 days ago 398 posts - 515 votes Speaks: English*, Hindi*, Punjabi* Studies: German, French, Arabic (Written) | Message 83 of 123 13 September 2007 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
When many first arrived, they knew absolutely zero. Many of them arrived in Canada sponsored by their parents. So many of these students are in the age range from 16-23. I used to volunteer/teach at a community language school during my summers off (it is great to work in education) and taught English exclusively. During my day-job, I often had ESL students whom had excellent mathematical and scientific aptitude, but poor language skills. Many courses I teach require entry exams for admission. Now being a child of an immigrant myself, and having grown up in a very openly racist society in the 80's I felt alot of empathy for these students, because now it wasn't the problem of walking down the street and being called a "paki" to your face anymore, now it was a institutional form of racism that existed in the policy of the university. Unfortunately, these entry exams are very discriminatory because they are heavily long-answer questions based. In some weird way, I feel this was also done to some how purposely to minimize the number of asian/chinese applicants to the program, as at one point they began to dominate the entire department. For new immigrant kids or ESL students, this almost destroys any opportunity they have. This is sad, because it is also wasted potential. From my experience, many ESL kids are great at math, science and engineering if they had the language skills to convert those long paragraph-style word problems and synthesize them into equations and logic. I felt alot of remorse for them as they transferred to different programs because they could not pass these entry exams. Our board and coucil eventually after extensive lobbying on my part and with my colleagues, we were able to remove these entry exam requirements as they were biased and favourable to native english speakers only. Long story, but just to give you familiarity to why ESL is very important to me personally and why I have been actively engaged in helping the youth learn english.
The idea of the tarzan stage is not teach grammar. The idea of tarzan speech is to teach speech earlier by using acquired vocabulary (even if limited), even when grammatical rules are not clear and precise to them. The idea is also to help the learner think in the target language by devising creative phrases and responses mentally and quickly, because often grammar makes them stuck in the process. However, it is EXPECTED and does happen that they lose tarzan speech very soon as they have developed the skills to correct their OWN speech and be corrected by others as they have eventually learned the grammar through comprehensible input and proactive learning.
I taught those languages to myself. I did not have teachers for that language. And yes, I have used this technique in the classroom environment very effectively. This technique at least for me evolved out of watching how students amongst themselves talk and learn. Through examining their behaviour, I noticed that the ones whom engaged in tarzan speak were able to get their point across, and obviously those that did not speak sat there and said nothing. In the end, yes both the non-tarzan speaker and tarzan speaker developed fluently. However, the difference was that, the tarzan speaker was far more confident in speaking and engaging in creative speech. Whereas the non-tarzan speaker had difficulty trying to make conversation (although they fully understood when being spoken too). It demonstrated one very valueable principle to me. That CONFIDENCE is EVERYTHING. Students that learn to accept their own mistakes, revise themselves with corrections and proceed further often get more feedback to their progress as opposed to students that sit silently and speak later. Sure both sides will eventually speak given adequate comprehensible input and practice, but the person that starts this later will develop everything else later in terms of fluency, if all things else are equal. Error-correction is progressive and on-going, it is silly to assume beginners shouldn't make errors, because they will even if you speak to them gramatically perfect. Creating an environment that is inclusive such that making errors is acceptable, PROVIDED you follow up with correction is the best way to engage students in learning confidently.
Well, it looks like today's classrooms where they are teaching everything to be grammatically correct hasn't been going anywhere. So I don't know about you, but some students have been taking French in Canada for 10 years in school and still do not know how to ask how to goto the washroom in french. If that is the current state of language schools today, perhaps those teachers should be fired and not the teachers that can still manage to get students to talk -- even if it is tarzan speak. At least one method is working than NO method. Edited by xtremelingo on 13 September 2007 at 7:34pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| xtremelingo Trilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6279 days ago 398 posts - 515 votes Speaks: English*, Hindi*, Punjabi* Studies: German, French, Arabic (Written) | Message 84 of 123 13 September 2007 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
foryou,
Clearly, you do not know the difference between a word and a sentence.
No, naturally beginners often translate sentences they read and hear in literal form (through bad habit and nature). They can not do translation effectively because they have not yet learned the grammar rules for correct translation (of their target language). To translate correctly and keeping meaning/expression in tact, an element of grammar MUST be considered. However, it is very difficult to prevent a beginner from translating because they have not yet learned how to "think" in the language. Therefore, you must work with the beginners problem and that is to prevent translation (by recognition of acquired and memorized vocabulary) without knowing grammar rules. Preventing translation initially is difficult, therefore how do you effectively promote communication in earlier stages if translation is the main 'skill' at this point they are reliant on? You work with this 'skill' to nullify the 'skill' itself, by permitting the language learner TO RECOGNIZE (in early stages) simplistic logical sequence of words. This sequence is so simplistic that the CORRECT but gramatically incorrect meaning could be derived through intuition. This ability to harness intuition at early stages will get the learner to THINK in the language earlier and build a THINKING and speaking foundation much sooner. Think about how Rosetta Stone works. It develops listening comprehension through visual intuition. It shows a series of pictures and through deduction you are able to select the correct one. But notice that even within these pictures, there are alot of other visual elements in the picture that have nothing to do with the actual context of the message. There is no grammar in the pictures, only varying actions, it is taught through intuition and logical deduction. This is the same idea. However, some people do not see this same concept can work in text and speech For example in Rosetta Stone, consider the colour of the person's clothes when the message is trying to teach "She is running." The colour of her clothes has no relevance to the phrase, however it is still visual stimuli that is considered in the brain when the person is choosing between many pictures. When the student realizes "the colour of the person's clothes" is not in question, they disregard this and filter it out. The idea of this tarzan speech is to FILTER out elements of a sentence that prevent it from being read intuitively/logically and not grammatically. The idea of tarzan speech is to engage the student's intuition in determining what a logical sequence of words mean when put together and therefore easily creating speech on the fly, as all it is required is the knowledge of certain vocabulary words arranged in the most logical order to convey the meaning.
It appears as though you are very excited with your misuse of quotation + question mark combination. Are you excited, confused or bi-curious?
I still await any positive contribution on your part. It is very easy to criticize but not come up with anything else of your own. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| edwin Triglot Senior Member Canada towerofconfusi&Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6456 days ago 160 posts - 183 votes 9 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French, Spanish, Portuguese | Message 85 of 123 13 September 2007 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Xtremelingo,
It is hard for me to imagine someone at the age of 16-23 coming to Canada knowing zero English. They might not be able to speak English, but for sure they know some basic English words. This is why they need to practice speaking but not with the Tarzan method. I live in Toronto, the largest immigrant city in Canada, and this is my observation. Of course, I have no way to disprove your claim. Even if they really know zero English, their vocabulary will grow very fast living in an English-speaking country. Therefore in a scientific sense, I don't think you can justify the effectiveness of your Tarzan method by the progress of your ESL students. A more objective way is to base the observation on another language rather than English. This was why I asked you about your own language learning. It seems that you as a learner did not apply this method with your teacher (because you had no teacher). According to you, applying this method outside the classroom does not make sense. So you are saying that you have never use this method as a learner. This was what I was originally asking. Thanks for the answer finally. This is all I need to know. I have been spending too much time with you on this topic, and I don't think you will change your mind, even with all the research and studies done over the years, and experiences from senior learners going against your theory. The Moderators also don't seem to care. So my last hope is for those who are new to language learning, please do your own research, or google the Internet. There have been tremendous amount of studies conducted already, proving that performing conversation too early (to a real partner) is destructive to the language learners. P.S. Thanks in advance for correcting my typos and grammar (if any). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6351 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English* | Message 86 of 123 13 September 2007 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Edwin is quite correct (again), and this will be my last post in this thread. There are just too many loose ends, and none of them will come together.
xtremelingo, you have repeatedly avoided answering how you reconciled teaching students a speaking technique within the classroom that was not meant to be used outside of the classrooom. This should have been a sign to me that this thread wasn't one to follow, but I'm finally taking heed. I sincerely hope other language learners lurking through the forums take great care before harming their study with anything resembling the method described in this thread. Good evening, everyone. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 87 of 123 14 September 2007 at 2:57am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Just one more question and no more posts from me as well.
OK, the learner speaks like Tarzan because he doesn't know anything else. But why should the exchange partner speak like Tarzan? Isn't it enough to encourage the learner not too worry about grammar mistakes too much? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6378 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 88 of 123 14 September 2007 at 5:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Wow, this thread is taking an unexpected twist! Are you coming on to me? ;-))
Thinking in a language is necessarily organising one's thoughts in logical patterns defined by GRAMMAR - this is what keeps them together and accounts for the difference between a sentence and a bunch of gibberish. Simplistic logical sequence of words does not have to be grammatically incorrect in order to become accessible for beginning students.
I happily admit to having no idea how Rosetta Stone (or most other commercially available language courses) works. Yet comparison between filtering out colours in the picture and grammar elements in the sentence is a very odd one. No amount of students' intuition without any grammar knowledge will help to distingish between even the most basic structures in a grammar-heavy language, such as Japanese. 'The light is green', 'the light was green', 'the light becomes green', 'the light did not become green', 'the light is no longer green' etc. - will all sound roughly the same, with one or two syllables of difference which account for the grammar indicators and make ALL THE DIFFERENCE to the meaning. Disregard them in the beginning and you're (1) making no sense with your speech and (2) in for a long ride catching up at later stages.
Criticising?! Nah, life is too short and I stopped doing it after the first two pages when I realised that you had a habit of ignoring other people's questions and arguments. I'm just having fun now! :-)) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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