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Is comprehension measurable? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 177 of 211 26 August 2014 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would think she did a lot of "self talk" to develop her fluency.
French gender is much harder to predict than in, say, Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 178 of 211 27 August 2014 at 1:34am | IP Logged | |||||
French grammatical gender is not harder to predict than in any other language with gender. The very cause of the problem is precisely this trying to predict gender from the form of the noun instead of learning the gender in the first place. One of the most harmful myths of many learners of French is that nouns ending in -e are feminine. Many words ending in -e, if not most, are probably feminine, but if you follow this rule you are guaranteed to make many mistakes because a) certain words ending in -e are not feminine and b) many words that do not end in -e are also feminine. Why do native speakers of French hardly ever make gender mistakes? There are some dual gender words and dialectal differences, e.g. une job vs un job, une ascenseur vs un ascenseur but these are quite rare. The key to mastering the gender system in French, and probably in all gender languages, is to do what natives do and that is to learn gender as an integral part of the word. This applies to the article that often accompanies the noun also to all the words that must agree with the noun. In other words, gender is very much part of the native comprehension of a noun or sentence. In the following sentence: La maison est belle a native speaker links La maison and belle into sort of unit that we would call agreement. Maison does not exist without la, and belle goes with maison where necessary. There is no question of trying to predict whether maison is feminine or masculine. The reason all this is important in our discussion about comprehension is that one could argue that learners do not immediately perceive and understand underlying grammatical characteristics despite claiming to understand the words of a sentence. For example, the phrase above is understood as The house is beautiful, but if the learner has not really picked up the grammar, they could very well say La maison est beau, which is exactly what happens. Similarly, one notices that French speakers have a terrible time with when to use and not use -s and the end of words despite hearing English speakers use the correct forms all the time. The problem stems from the fact that their comprehension of English does not include the distinctions between -s and no -s. They hear and understand "one of my best friends" perfectly well but they don't see the -s as an integral part of friends. They will then very well say "one of my best friend". All of this applies to the many other aspects of grammar such as verb forms, usage of articles and prepositions. We see this in the mistakes we make when speaking but I believe that the mistakes are made when understanding, it's just that they are invisible when we claim to understand. Edited by s_allard on 27 August 2014 at 1:35am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4670 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 179 of 211 27 August 2014 at 3:21am | IP Logged | |||||
But this is much harder in French, than even in 3gendered Norwegian (for example Nynorsk): ein sumar - sumaren - sumrar - sumrane (masculine) [a summer - the summer - summers - the summers] ei mus - musa - myser - mysene (feminine) [a mouse - the mouse - mice - the mice] eit barn - barnet - born - borna (neutrum) [a child - the child - children - the children] If you learn nouns in Norwegian (and Swedish) with def. article glued to it, you can do the Spanish trick (most -o nouns are m., most -a nouns are f.): -en words are masculine, -a words are feminine, -et words are neutrum. By using this approach, I've never had mistakes with 3 gendered Norwegian, unlike in 3 gendered languages like German in which def. articles are neither glued onto the nouns, nor is gender information available from bare noun endings (except in rare cases like -ung words). Edited by Medulin on 27 August 2014 at 3:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 180 of 211 27 August 2014 at 3:23am | IP Logged | |||||
La casa es bonita. Take two poor first year students. One takes Spanish. The other takes French. Now, imagine the test is to use proper definite article given to both students. ___ casa. ___ maison. Even with poor students, a very high percentage will get the Spanish article correct. With poor French students, about 1/2 will get it wrong. Also, throwing the adjective into the sentence, again, Spanish is easier to make sound correct. La casa es [ bonita | bonito ]. La maison est [ bel | belle | beau ]. Article and adjective agreement is easier in Spanish. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4034 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 181 of 211 27 August 2014 at 4:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Don't forget conjugation, French conjugation is a decaying redundant feature with barely if no purpose and has
irregularities not found in Spanish whose conjugation is still healthy. Edited by Stolan on 27 August 2014 at 4:13am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 182 of 211 27 August 2014 at 5:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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We can say that in Spanish gender is more predictable than in French because there are certain regularities about
noun endings and associated gender. So, casa is likely to go with LA because the sound of the two A's. But the real comparison shouldn't be with maison but with a word with a comparable clue. Hence something like: __casa __case There is a good chance that our poor French student will do just as well as our poor Spanish student because they are both guessing using the ending as a clue. That said, I think the gender agreement system is easier to master in Spanish than in French because there are some major complications of French that do not exist in Spanish. At the same time a key issue here is that French-speakers do not make more gender errors than Spanish- speakers. Both groups master the system by learning gender as an integral part of the system. Edited by s_allard on 27 August 2014 at 6:28am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 183 of 211 27 August 2014 at 5:47am | IP Logged | |||||
This, as emk would say, is vraiment n'import(e) quoi. What in the world is a decaying redundant feature? Edited by s_allard on 27 August 2014 at 5:56am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 184 of 211 27 August 2014 at 6:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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To get back to the main theme of the thread, after a bit of a sideshow here, the key idea here is that to really
understand something in a language you have to not only know the words you have some understanding of how these words are linked by rules of grammar. Let me illustrate this with an example. Here are French and English versions of the same snippet of a dialog: - Have you ever been to Paris? - Yes, I have. - Êtes-vous déjà allé à Paris ? - Oui, j'y suis déjà allé. There are of course other ways of saying this, but we can agree that native speakers could say these sentences. These sentences are basically equivalent in meaning. At the same time, we see how each language uses its specific mechanisms. English can say "Yes, I have" and we know that this refers to "been to Paris". French uses "Oui, j'y suis allé" where y refers to Paris before the auxiliary être followed by the past participle. Let's say that our speakers are language students and claim to understand the other dialog. These dialogs are not particularly challenging. Both students can claim to understand 100% and they would be right. I don't doubt this level of understanding but my question is then how exactly do these students understand what has been said in the other language. Do they understand the way the native speakers understand? Of course, one could ask, Is it necessary to understand like a native? Probably not, except if one wanted to speak like a native. This is the proof of the pudding. Suppose we ask our students to spontaneously make up similar dialogs in the opposite language, What would the results be? At very high levels of proficiency, let's say C1-C2, the student would probably come up with something relatively idiomatic, like what we have here. At lower levels, our student, despite hearing the correct forms in the course of conversations, will likely come up with some awkward construction and a number of mistakes. Yet this person can claim to understand the dialogs in the other language completely. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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