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Read but can’t speak | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5848 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes  1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 33 31 August 2012 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I know a good example for such a case. This person is now in his 70-s and he can read a French book in the original version, so his passive French skills are good, but he needs lots of time to write a short e-mail in French (while thinking in his native German) and he can barely speak French. French was one of his school languages.
Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 31 August 2012 at 7:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7145 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 10 of 33 31 August 2012 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have an amusing book on this problem, entitled "The Philosopher's Demise: Learning French", by Richard Watson (University of Missouri Press, 1995).
He's a scholar of Descartes who reads and translates French at a high level, but who can't speak the language. The book chronicles his adventures in finally trying to get an ability to speak French by signing up for two months of classes at the Alliance Francaise in Paris, and then attending a congress of experts on Descartes. At the end of the effort, he's engaged in a discussion with a French professor who addresses him in horrible English; Watson suggests that he speak French instead, and the Frenchman says: "All right; I'll speak French. But you speak English. Don't try to speak French. Your French is terrible." 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 11 of 33 31 August 2012 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
I used to have this problem with English, I could read but nothing else. It took much longer than 3 months. It seems to me that reading won't help you too much with other skills, it was like if I was starting with no ability at all, while when you understand spoken language, you can learn to speak and read easily. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 12 of 33 31 August 2012 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My mother was regarded as being "good at languages" at school and achieved A-passes in French, German and Latin in her final-year exams. But in those days, the emphasis was firmly on reading and translating texts and there was little actual speaking. That said, she successfully applied to be an air stewardess in the early 60s, when you had to demonstrate a knowledge of two languages other than your native tongue (how times have changed). But she didn't take up the post.
Over 40 years later, my father received a lengthy email in French via his town heritage website and my mother was able to figure out what it said. Yet around the same time, my mother-in-law (who doesn't speak English) was over from Germany and my mother found it very difficult to communicate with her, relying on myself or my wife to translate sentences like "would you like to see the flowers in the garden?" 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 13 of 33 31 August 2012 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
Which I think demonstrates that getting really good at listening, even if one did nothing else, would be a pretty good start for everything else? Thinking about the (almost proverbial) child learning its own language, it learns to understand what its Mother is saying fairly quickly, then learns to speak relatively quickly, but takes a lot longer to learn to read, and even longer to write well. I'm not sure if this really has any application to adult 2nd language learners, but it might do. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5392 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 14 of 33 31 August 2012 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think this is true. Reading is very beneficial to help consolidate grammar and it can be helpful for learning vocab and for active skills it probably passively gives a boost (many writers say it's hard to write well if you don't read a lot). But the active skills need to be directly practiced, especially speaking which relies on being able to fuse all the components of the language together quickly. With reading it's too easy to gloss over a lot of the minute details you have to pay attention to when writing and speaking if you can understand the meaning. As long as you can recognize the roots of verbs, for example, you don't need to understand the intricacies of combining all the tenses, moods, and conjugations which you need to master in order to speak well. With a related language you may be able to recognize cognates while reading but would never come up with them yourself while speaking. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 15 of 33 31 August 2012 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This is fascinating. It must happen more often than I thought. My own recent experience learning Spanish supports this. If I am not careful to push myself to find opportunities to speak Spanish, I'm going to wind up a fluent reader who is stuck at A2 or so speaking...
My reading, and even listening comprehension continue to grow rapidly and steadily, but my speaking is in another rut... I'm probably one of those intermediate readers who doesn't speak very well at this point. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 16 of 33 31 August 2012 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Similarly with "learning from the context". And I've seen quite a few other people say, as I have found myself, that when learning vocabulary explicitly, it's a lot harder (usually) to go from L1 to L2 than the other way around. And being able to quickly go from L1 to L2 would appear to be a prerequisite to speaking L2. And even if you aren't strictly "translating", I'd say you must be doing something pretty darn close. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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