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Splog at University | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 49 of 72 04 March 2011 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm confused: weren't you just saying that teachers should seek to help students become self-sufficient? Now, you seem to be saying that they should decide what part of reality students need to be self-sufficient in. I used to get students that had studied French for many years and most would complain that they couldn't understand anything when they heard people talk on the bus, etc. Grant it, such students had perhaps not done their homework -- namely go out and expose themselves to the real world --, but I couldn't honestly reach any other conclusion than that their teachers had failed to provide them with the basic tools necessary to understand spoken French – the tools to make them self-sufficient. How well did the teacher do if he couldn't even get his students to understand what's said to them in natural language after many years of study? As a student, I don't want anyone deciding for me what parts of reality I should be ignoring. Teach me what I need to express myself and to understand people as they naturally explain the world around them. That's the real language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5670 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 50 of 72 04 March 2011 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sorry if I made myself unclear. My argument is that the informal language is not best taught in the classroom, since: (1) it changes too quickly for textbooks and teachers to keep up; (2) it can distract the student from formal Czech. When I said informal Czech in best learned "in the pub" I meant that the best way to pick it up and keep track of it as it continually evolves is by exposure in real life, with "real people" outside the classroom. In fact, I was part of an experiment last year where the university used my class as guinea pigs and tried to teach us informal Czech for a while. The morphological part was very interesting, but the vocabulary and idioms were clearly out of date (even to me). When I asked Czech friends about some of them, they said "that is the kind of stuff my grandmother would say, but nobody younger than 40 would ever use those expressions". It reminds me a little of when I was living in Luxembourg, and a co-worker, keen to practice some "cool" English phrase he had learned with a native speaker said bizarre things such as "Hey, man, want to split your pad and cruise for some foxy kittens?" 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 51 of 72 04 March 2011 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It is certainly possible to integrate, within a teaching regimen, formal language and the grammar and vocabulary of modern spoken language.
The fact that some textbooks are 40 years behind their time doesn't mean it shouldn't or can't be done. If it's hard to do, then that's the teachers' challenge. In any case, all students would benefit from a course that could integrate both aspects of the language. For instance, in spoken Québec French, instead of saying "est-il fatigué" [is he tired], people commonly say "y est-tu fatigué", where "tu" is a question marker that happens to look like the word for "you". If you say the latter to students, all students will inevitably assume you asked "are you tired". It's a very basic element of spoken QF and you'll be hard pressed to find a teacher who teaches that, on the basis that it's not proper French. But it's real French. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6106 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 52 of 72 04 March 2011 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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"Hey, man, want to split your pad and cruise for some foxy kittens?"
That made me smile, very 60's....early 70's Only fourty years out of date !! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 53 of 72 04 March 2011 at 9:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sounds like a fun evening, literally or figuratively! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5670 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 54 of 72 05 March 2011 at 8:04am | IP Logged | |||||
I understand what you are saying, and I would agree that with French, English, Spanish, well, pretty much most languages, this is certainly not a major challenge. Czech, though, has a different history. The language was forbidden by law for several hundreds of years of occupation. People were forced to write and speak in German. Czech, then, was only used among people at home, and even then was often only used among less educated people. The result is that for several hundred years, regional dialects evolved quite separately, and over those hundreds of years these dialects changed quite dramatically from the "forbidden" standard variant of the language. When the language became legal again, the formal language was reintroduced and it was several hundred years out of step with the colloquial language. This remains the same today. It is very ill mannered to use the colloquial variant in shops, on the bus, at the post office, with teachers. Well, pretty much with anybody apart from your closest friends and family. In fact, the colloquial variant is sometimes used as a form of insult to somebody you do not know well: showing them that you do not respect them enough to use the formal variant. It can also be a sign of being ill educated - so a foreigner speaking colloquial czech at the wrong time will tend to be looked down on. Formal Czech, on the other hand, it always safe. To understand the situation better, imagine if with French, all letters and spoken communication outside the home were in medieval french, whereas the current modern version were used only among family and the closest of friends . Edited by Splog on 05 March 2011 at 8:09am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 55 of 72 05 March 2011 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well isn't it like that in France? Ok, it was a joke. The French don't hark back to Ancien François as spoken by Hugues Capet, but only to the kind of French that was spoken in the 17. century by Richelieu. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 56 of 72 06 March 2011 at 2:47am | IP Logged | |||||
I understand, from what you are saying, that the situation is not the same as French. Nevertheless, "friends and family" certainly qualifies as an important part of language use. The fact that it would be rude to use colloquial Czech in the wrong place or with the wrong people shouldn't imply that students shouldn't know it for fear of using it wrongly. Anyway, I'm sorry I've kind of hijacked your blog; I didn't mean to. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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