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What to expect from a language course | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Nguyen Senior Member Vietnam Joined 5094 days ago 109 posts - 195 votes  Speaks: Vietnamese | Message 17 of 24 30 September 2011 at 8:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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Here is what a real world dialogue would look like in an honest language course:
At The Restaurant You- "What is the special today?" Expected result- "We have steak with baked potato or grilled fish with rice." Assuming you have brushed up on that line and worked out in your head before you said it; the waiter/waitress will think that you probably speak fairly well. The real result will be something more like this: only in rapid fire, accented, ungrammatical "insert your language hear". Waitress: " Everything here is really good and we just got a awesome new cook, the dinner special we have is grilled squid in squid ink. A lot of people really like our salads though and you still got time to order from the lunch menu. The lunch special is a grilled ribeye sandwich or a French dip. The ribeye is out of this world!" Alot of advanced concepts and unusual vocabulary. Pimsluer may not have told you that ribeye was a variety of steak, or that out of this world means reall good, no? After this crushing defeat a merciful wait staff may ask if you need more time to order giving you a chance at round two. More than likely though you will either point to an item hoping for the best or resort to ordering something you have seen before that's familiar to you. "I'll have a hamburger". That's pretty much how it really works out and pretty much sums up the first meal I ordered in the US. Edited by Nguyen on 30 September 2011 at 8:39am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mauritz Octoglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5069 days ago 223 posts - 325 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Esperanto, French Studies: Old English, Yiddish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Korean, Portuguese, Welsh, Icelandic, Afrikaans | Message 18 of 24 30 September 2011 at 10:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree that the becoming fluent by any language course is utter nonsense. However, I've never purchased a
language course with the goal to become fluent in my target language. The purpose of a language course is to give you a solid foundation of the language, enabling you to not only understand the meaning of simple phrases, but to understand the structures behind them. The end result is that you have a functioning, albeit limited, language "machine" that can fairly easily be expanded by "modules" (meaning further vocabulary, grammar etc). So, in my opinion language courses are not an array of phrases with some grammar put in, but a means to gain a good understanding of a language before embarking into the "real" uses of the language. That being said, attaining a certain amount of proficiency by using a language course is possible, provided that you use your knowledge from the course and expand on it on your own. Something that I've learned is to always keep in mind that the language used in a course is (most of the time) not the one that is used in real life but merely an idealized variety of the language. I feel that there are a lot of people on this forum that mix the written language with the spoken one and sometimes even (although probably subconsciously) ignore the differences between the spoken varieties. The kind of language that you encounter in real life will never be the same as the one in your language course, but you will hopefully have enough knowledge to notice the quirks and get along fine. In my experience, people tend to lean towards the written language in their speech if they notice that you're an "outsider", which they most certainly will if you're a a beginner. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 19 of 24 30 September 2011 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Sure, no course can take you to fluency. But there are reasons to be disappointed with a course sometimes. Such as courses which do not keep to what their promise. For exemple the authors claim the textbook and cds will take you to a particular CEFR level and it definitely doesn't lead that far, that is a reason for disappointment. Or the textbook is different from what you expected from reviews and looking inside in a bookshop and you dislike it. This may or may not be author's or publisher's mistake but still can be a reason for not being satisfied by what you got for your money.
It is nonsence to expect too much of a book, such as taking you all the way to fluency. But is the flood of bad courses on market rather a result of expecting too much or too little from a course? Perhaps people often expect just wrong things. But it doesn't mean that noone complaining about a textbook has any reason to do so. p.s. grammar help with the last sentence please, I got lost: noone... has any reason or anyone has no reason or noone has no reason, or noone hasn't got any reason or even something else? Edited by Cavesa on 30 September 2011 at 10:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| H.Computatralis Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6305 days ago 130 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Polish*, French, English Studies: German, Spanish, Latin | Message 20 of 24 01 October 2011 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that the members of this forum generally know that they should not have too high expectations from language courses. To each their own learning method, but I have the approach of taking as much as I can from any resource that I can find. Just complement your learning from various sources and you'll be fine.
@Cavesa: I would probably say "...that none of the people...have any reason to do so". BTW, "noone" is a common misspelling of "no one" and incorrect because unlike "nobody" it would have two adjacent vowels. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5419 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 21 of 24 01 October 2011 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
You could phrase it like: "But it doesn't mean that anyone complaining about a textbook has no reason to do so." or "But it doesn't mean that no one has any reason to complain about a textbook." Edited by jazzboy.bebop on 01 October 2011 at 6:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4910 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 22 of 24 01 October 2011 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think of courses as steps along the way. If I finish a course, I have a sense of accomplishment, and that's a good encouragement to keep learning. I have never thought of finishing a course as "arriving".
I use native materials quite early in my learning process, including books (starting with children's books), comics, music, movies, radio broadcasts, etc. What I expect from a language course is for it to help me understand more of the native material, and move on to more difficult native material. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6551 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 23 of 24 03 October 2011 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
There's a difference between having high expectations and expecting fluency. I have high expectations that a course properly fulfills it's roll in my language plan. And it's reasonable to be disappointed if a course doesn't do what it is famous for in other languages. For example, it's reasonable to be disappointed that MT Mandarin covers a small percentage of common grammar. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4910 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 24 of 24 03 October 2011 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree. There is no reason we should not hold professionally developed courses to high standards. We should not expect miracles, but we can expect quality. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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