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Viewpoint: You can damage Language by writing and speaking

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46 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 46  Next >>
montmorency
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 Message 33 of 46
23 July 2014 at 2:18pm | IP Logged 
There are enough barriers to spontaneous production of language (especially speaking)
in traditional language teaching, without erecting another one, i.e. the premise (false
in my judgement) of this thread, i.e. that "You can damage Language by writing and
speaking".


We learn from our mistakes, and if we are afraid of opening our mouth or putting pen to
paper (or finger to keyboard), for fear of making mistakes, then we will not progress.

"I need to renovate my ID card - can you tell me where the nearest icensing office is
please?"

"Oh, you want to renew it - yes of course, it's down the street and ...."

...

"giving sausages for children" - he might have meant "making sausages for children".

But if this is a mistake, so what? Native speakers make that kind of "mistake" all the
time.

Is it "bored of..." (watching tv, say), or "bored with..."?
"Bored of" sets my teeth on edge, but there again, I can be "fed up of TV", or "fed up
with TV", so what's the big deal?

Who knows? Who cares?

If you are taking an exam or writing an essay or an article, then aim for perfection,
and that will make you good at passing exams, writing essays and articles.

If you just want to be a spontaneous and natural user of the language then just go out
and use it, paying close attention of course, to how it is used around you by native
speakers and writers.

Correction is important, but it has to be done carefully and not overdone.
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Serpent
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 Message 34 of 46
23 July 2014 at 6:28pm | IP Logged 
The article doesn't advocate adding more barriers to traditional teaching. It advocates dumping it and having only this one barrier.
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luke
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 Message 35 of 46
23 July 2014 at 7:55pm | IP Logged 
How Tests Make Us Smarter
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Gemuse
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 Message 36 of 46
24 July 2014 at 12:01pm | IP Logged 
Fuenf_Katzen wrote:
I would've liked to have gone to the store


This is incorrect?
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Iversen
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 Message 37 of 46
24 July 2014 at 1:52pm | IP Logged 
I can image certain fairly contrived circumstances where it would be correct. For instance somebody might have blamed me some time ago for not going to a certain store, and now I regret not having had the opportunity in that situation to truthfully claim that I had been in the store in question.

Or maybe we shouldn't bother about such complicated things. Maybe we should think simple thoughts which don't test the limits of our languages.

Edited by Iversen on 24 July 2014 at 1:54pm

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Javi
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 Message 38 of 46
27 July 2014 at 12:25am | IP Logged 
Back in the day, I learnt English (from Assimil to C1) using this Atimoon method. If my memory serves my right, it was before AJATT and Anki (the Japanese guy has now 'discovered' gap-filling sentences, wow! why am I not impressed?). All in all, I think it is good stuff. They say it's geared towards 'serious' learners (I take that to mean techies and nerds), and they say:

Quote:
If you want to learn English well, you cannot rely on English classes. You have to take control of your learning. We’ll show you how to do it in a fun and effective way.


Key words: well, English classes
To be taken with a pinch of salt: fun

Well, when you learn a language well and look back, where did the bulk of it all come from? Teachers? Textbooks? Certainly not from a process of making mistakes and being corrected (personally I've never had my mistakes corrected). Serpent said:

Quote:
I also disagree with how the article is summarized in the title of this thread, btw. It's a lack of input that causes damage, not writing or speaking themselves. Your own writing shouldn't be your main source of input, and ideally neither should textbooks, at least as soon as you're capable of getting comprehensible input elsewhere. Our brain is likely to give more weight to what we said or wrote ourselves, so any uncorrected output has to be balanced out by quality input.


I can't speak for everyone, but in my case it's been listening and reading (aka input). On the other hand, the context of the article is the traditional classroom setting with very little input. That's what this guy stands against, so if anyone reads it as 'if you write or speak you'll go blind', they'd be getting the wrong end of the stick.


Edited by Javi on 27 July 2014 at 2:06am

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Serpent
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 Message 39 of 46
27 July 2014 at 1:48am | IP Logged 
Great post and I'm glad you seem to agree with me :)

As for Khatzumoto, he's always paid tribute to antimoon and doesn't claim to have invented cloze deletion. He basically adapted the antimoon methods to Japanese and invented/popularized MCD (cards with a large amount of text that you don't need to read in its entirety when doing repetitions).

Edited by Serpent on 27 July 2014 at 1:49am

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Javi
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 Message 40 of 46
27 July 2014 at 2:26am | IP Logged 
Yeah, that's true. I used to follow Khatzumoto for the 'inspirational' posts, but I picked up all the techniques from Antimoon right from the start. Back then I couldn't have made head nor tail of his prose anyway. The Polish guys of Antimoon were more straightforward :)

Edited by Javi on 27 July 2014 at 2:31am



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