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Read but can’t speak | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| grunts67 Diglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5303 days ago 215 posts - 252 votes  Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 17 of 33 31 August 2012 at 10:04pm | IP Logged | ||
I am exactly in this situation with my Spanish, too much LingQ, no speaking or writing. So my reading must be b1+/b2 easily but I speak and write at A1- (I am working on that at the moment.) I had a similar experience in English. I learn English in school. I started reading in English like crazy, I could write 'ok' because of homework or such but I could barely speak and my listening was quite low. I started watching movie with subtitle all the time. After a while, with no subtitle and I started to watch tv show but I mean a S**t load of them one summer(like a season per day - 12-16 hours a day). I started playing online game and I had to express myself in English so my speaking ability just went crazy in a few weeks. So, I think it is quiet common if you are introvert and don't feel the need to talk or write to have your active skill quiet lower than your passive ones Edited by grunts67 on 31 August 2012 at 10:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 18 of 33 31 August 2012 at 10:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Nope, it's not similar to translating. If you're not actively learning words and their equivalents, it might even be difficult to remember an equivalent in your native language, though you obviously know the word well. In the same way, needing time to remember when someone asks "what's the X for Y?" doesn't mean your skills are bad.
As for listening, I quite agree with LaughingChimp! But I wonder if you're an aural learner? I certainly am, I recently even realized I was playing a computer game by ear :D So as I finally got away from the school style and started doing more listening, I was like a fish thrown back into water. Therefore I'm hesitant to generalize my experience. Many people are visual learners. Of course that's not a good reason to neglect listening, but I believe reading can also be useful for active skills. Even I find it useful, if I also do listening. At the very least, it's good for writing - and for me, being able to write but not to speak isn't anything horrible. This just requires some shadowing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4560 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 19 of 33 31 August 2012 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was more or less like that in all of my languages before I started speaking. "Excellent comprehension" is perhaps an exaggeration, but I was reading full-fledged novels quite comfortably and watching TL movies and TV shows with relative ease. Then, once the time felt right, I broke the silence and quickly progressed to a decent B1 or B2 speaking ability.
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 20 of 33 01 September 2012 at 1:13am | IP Logged | ||
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As others have pointed out, this situation is not only common, it is in fact normal. We all basically can understand and/or read better than we can speak or write. This is simply one set of skills is passive and the other active.
We all know that speaking (well) is very challenging. So we shouldn't be beating ourselves down if it is difficult. What is also true, however is that most mainstream language classes do not really teach how to speak. They tend to teach how to read out aloud fro written materials. This is not speaking autonomously. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 21 of 33 01 September 2012 at 1:58am | IP Logged | ||
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The standards (CEFR etc) are different for what you can understand vs what you can produce, therefore a lack of balance is not entirely normal. And it goes both ways - you may be able to say a lot using simple structures/vocab (the famous 300 words lol), but you won't necessarily understand when a native speaker expresses the same ideas.
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| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4766 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 22 of 33 03 September 2012 at 6:22am | IP Logged | ||
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When I was in my ESL graduate program, Krashen and the input hypothesis was the latest
greatest thing. Krashen suggested that developing listening and reading comprehension was the high road to "fluency". Most of us at the University of Hawaii ESL/Second Language Acquisition program, professors and students alike, suspected that it wasn't that simple, but Krashen was the next big thing. Krashen's ideas suggest that learners with strong passive skills, and few active skills should not exist, that comprehension of large amounts of comprehensible input should lead to the acquisition of strong active skills. At that time in my life, my own language learning experience supported this. When I was a Peace Corps volunteer, my biggest surge in learning Samoan came after I started reading, and memorizing every unknown word in the newspaper. This seemed to support Krashen; my rapid improvement in reading comprehension and vocabulary led to an explosion in my productive abilities. Of course at the same time that I was doing all this improvement in comprehension, I was living with a Samoan family, "involved" with a lovely Samoan lady, and generally living a sea of Samoan. I had a million opportunities a day for one of those, "I know what that word means" moments. We (Peace Corps Volunteers) always used to talk about the common experience of learning a word, which we would swear that we had never heard before, and then hearing it 10 times the next day. During my reading and vocabulary phase in Samoan this was most of my life. I think that passive skills can pull you down the road to fluency, but that you can't really learn to talk without talking. steve Edited by sfuqua on 03 September 2012 at 6:23am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4672 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 23 of 33 03 September 2012 at 8:32am | IP Logged | ||
Nicely said. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5220 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 24 of 33 14 October 2012 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | ||
It does sound odd that someone could reach such a high level with vocab and comprehension and not be able to even answer "How are you?" or "What's the matter?" in that same language... but I've seen it happen with my own eyes. Perhaps it's a rare case but it is certainly a real case. My boyfriend's parents- who are in the other room at this very moment, visiting us- fit the description of people who "can read fluently but who can barely talk." They are Russian speakers who have been living in America for 9 years. They are the hardest-working students I know; they CONSTANTLY study and read. As they're both retired they have nothing to do all day long but study. This is literally what they've done every SINGLE day for the past 9 years. Their bookshelves are filled with ESL workbooks and they're always chasing after the newest computer program. His mom reads novels (mysteries [adult-level] and young adult novels) non-stop. Right now she's in the bedroom reading again. She has a notebook and she does a lot of copying back and forth. In addition to textbooks, his father reads a lot of technical manuals (car repair, etc) and can understand scientific stuff I don't even understand. Occasionally they read things out loud to me and while they have trouble with the pronunciation and word stress, they understand about 90% (if not more) of the material. They study new words to death! BUT- and this is a big but- for the life of them they can't answer a question or make a sentence in English. They REALLY want to, and they talk all the time about how much they want to speak English... but they don't/can't*. Even on the rare instances that they try, the most they can do is say a word or two, definitely not a sentence. To me this is strange because they read so much and so well. My boyfriend didn't start learning English until he was 18 and now he speaks fluently (indistinguishable from me). He credits his success to reading so many books, so why shouldn't this also work for his parents? It's certainly not for lack of wanting that they don't speak English. (*An example of this lack of understanding- last week I was in the kitchen with his mom. I said in English "My classes were cancelled today." She responded (in Russian) "Oh, so you like that tea?" pointing at the tea box in my hand. We hadn't been talking prior so I guess it's natural to assume I was talking about the tea, not about work, but these kinds of things happen all the time. If I say "I like your sweater" she says "yes, I will make pelmeni for dinner". Meanwhile, if I were to write the same thing they would have no trouble understanding. They just don't know what the words sound like.) I have a couple of suspicions as to why they can't speak. 1) They're older: 60s and early 70s. Age is rumoured to be a stumbling block for language learning. (But on the other hand, plenty of older folks successfully conquer languages. My mom is the same age and she has slowly been improving her Spanish over the past 10 years.) 2) Their native tongue is Russian. (Again, not necessarily a very good reason.) 3) I don't know about Mom, but Dad truly believes that if you *might* make a mistake while speaking, it's better to not say anything at all. He's terribly embarrassed by any mistakes because he views himself as an intelligent and educated man and he's afraid people might think otherwise if he mispronounces a word and conjugates a verb improperly. (Unfortunately, he doesn't understand that most people think more highly of those who at least try than those who refuse to.) 4) (I think this may have the most weight) They just don't ever try to speak. They shop in pantomime. They either suffer through medical appointments or sometimes the doctor gets a translator. Their daughter lives nearby and while she doesn't speak English very well, she speaks enough to be able to act as a translator when they go to the bank, etc. Aside from food shopping, the doctor, and the bank, they never leave the house. About 4 years ago they asked me, practically begged me, to get them to speak English. Of course I agreed. I've been teaching English for years and I don't know why it should be any different with them, but it never worked. Nowadays they still complain a lot about not being able to speak, but honestly (and kind of cruelly), I've given up on them. I can't help them. Only they can help themselves if they start to believe in themselves. Oh, also, they never watch TV or movies in English, so they can't understand what's being said. Maybe if they did that instead of just reading and studying, they would be able to access all the vocab they've memorized by sight and get it out in a spoken sentence. I know the words are in there, but they're in there by sight and not sound! Sorry for the lengthy post! :p It's a topic that's very close to my heart and the family has had a lot of heated discussions over it. To close, I think Sfuqua is completely right- you can't learn to talk without talking. 8 persons have voted this message useful |
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