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Language Hunters | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5127 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes  Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 1 of 11 21 March 2012 at 3:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Using the search function, I couldn't find anything on the language hunters project
(languagehunters.org), but if there is already a thread on this, please point me to it. Language hunting seems to be a very different approach to language learning, emphasizing 'no translation', 'fluency over knowledge', 'mumble along', signing as a bridge language, etc. Does anyone here have experience with this approach, or an opinion? The materials and videos on the website (and various other related ones) lack structure, and I wasn't really able to get a good feeling for the main ideas of this approach. Edited by Bakunin on 21 March 2012 at 3:38am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4867 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 2 of 11 21 March 2012 at 3:32am | IP Logged | ||
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It sounds a bit like Where are Your Keys. http://www.whereareyourkeys.org/
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 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 3 of 11 21 March 2012 at 10:21am | IP Logged | ||
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I took a brief look at their Irish project, and I noticed that the method is like the extreme natural one with one addition, namely standardized body movements (almost like a sign language) which may be inspired by other language teaching trends - there is something called 'total bodily response' out there, though I haven't studied it. Within reasonable limits I do see this as an improvement on the classical natural method, where the teacher is jumping around like a panicked monkey while the pupils are sitting quietly around wathing the spectacle. The movements can undoubtedly be reinforcing the memorizing and recall of a certain sentence.
On the other hand it could be felt as one more step towards the total subjugation of the pupils if they have to closely mimick not only the words, but also the movements of the teacher. It is not an accident that the video on the first page of the Irish section is concentrated on the sentence "Ís cupan é" (= is! cup he -> it's a cup) which can be performed while sitting down - other phrases might be difficult to illustrate while sitting at a table. And errors can't be corrected in the most efficient and quick way - see for instance lesson L1G7 where the inflected preposition "ag" is illustrated. The forms in question are "agam" and "agat", which for instance are used in sentences meaning "I have" and "you have" ('for me is' resp. 'for you is'). The pupils clearly don't notice that the teacher points toward himself while saying "agam" and towards somebody else while saying "agat". And this is actually a very simple situation. I have the usual qualms about this one as about other kinds of extreme natural methods, namely that they deliberately exclude useful techniques and tools like translations and grammar studies and looking things up in dictionaries. And although it is possible to illustrate a language purely through the target language even in writing (as proven by Ørberg for Latin) the written language is excluded in the beginning here (called lap 1,2) - with the consequence that the method becomes extremely teacher driven. I do think that sessions like the ones you see in the videos at this site can be beneficial, but only as a supplement to home study through more traditional methods. Edited by Iversen on 21 March 2012 at 10:36am 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5127 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 4 of 11 21 March 2012 at 1:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, Iversen, that's a very comprehensive answer. I can understand your reservations,
but exactly the avoidance of translation, grammar studies and memorization intrigues me about this approach! I can imagine that the playful character of the sessions is extremely beneficial to language acquisition, as is the sign language piece. I think, language hunting has a radically different concept of what language is and how languages are best learned (namely interaction, and learned through imitation and interaction) as opposed to the traditional/established view of language as a set of facts that need to be memorized (I'm oversimplifying, but you get the point). Anyone out there who has taken part in a language hunting workshop, or has applied a related concept (like where are your keys)? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5127 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 5 of 11 21 March 2012 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ah, by the way, I bought the book (the Language Hunter's Kit). It's much better
structured than the website and explains the techniques more coherently and in more detail. Very interesting read. Need to digest it first, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6148 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 6 of 11 21 March 2012 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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In their sample PDF they mention a large number of individual techniques,
From languagehunterskit sample P3. .. "Language Hunting was born as the result of throwing everything we know that works at the problem - Total Physical Response, Signed Exact English, the ACTFL proficiency scale, Where Are Your Keys?, Spolin Theater games, Coyote Mentoring, Master/Apprentice, Communicative Learning, Language Immersion, Peer Mentoring, NLP, Appreciative Inquiry, Agile teamwork practices, Human Systems Dynamics, and on and on. " Edited by DaraghM on 21 March 2012 at 5:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5529 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 11 21 March 2012 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting. This looks like an "immersion from day 1" approach, with a bunch of
mechanisms designed to keep the students from sinking. How efficient is this method at providing (semi-)comprehensible input? If students did this for an hour or two every day, where would they be in a year or two? (After, say, 350 to 1400 hours?) And does anyone stick with the game for that long? And what happens when students get stuck at the intermediate level, or they run into tricky bits of grammar, or find that some vocabulary just isn't sticking? I pretty much blew off grammar books and SRS in French until I could hold basic conversations and read books. But there came a time when I got sick of mubling "ce? cet? ou cette?" and just looked up the rules, and it helped tremendously. Similarly, an SRS deck (or flash cards) can work wonders for filling in vocabulary gaps. In other words, I'm not convinced that 100% input and interaction is really efficient. Sure, it works for kids, but they thousands and thousands of hours to burn and a huge incentive to communicate. At least for me, spending 10% of my time studying grammar and vocabulary has been helping tremendously at the intermediate level, because I start noticing key parts of the input. I could see this approach working very well for indigenous languages, where few courses, grammars, books or recordings are available. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6579 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 8 of 11 22 March 2012 at 6:57am | IP Logged | ||
Endangered languages is indeed the focus of the proect, so that makes sense. I also believe one of the goals here is to quickly make a native speaker into someone who can teach the language to others. Any comparison with grammar study and vocabulary building seems misdirected to me, since those methods will not produce a teacher in the language in a matter of a few days. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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