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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Uncle B Pentaglot Newbie Hong Kong Joined 5923 days ago 34 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, Mandarin, English, SpanishB1, Portuguese Studies: German Studies: Italian, French, Catalan | Message 1 of 11 18 September 2008 at 11:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello! I am a new member of this forum. I have a great interest on language studies.
So, I spend so many times on it. But I always learned the grammar of the one language firstly. When I finished the grammar, I would learn vocabularies. Also, I learned language through grammar exercises, the Internet, Radio and native speaker. How is my method? Would you give some comments for me? Edited by Uncle B on 18 September 2008 at 11:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Talabí Diglot Newbie Venezuela Joined 5922 days ago 25 posts - 25 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian | Message 2 of 11 18 September 2008 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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As an advise, don't start learning the language ONLY by grammar. If you do it, you'll see is quite difficult to do it. Instead, try to learn the more general grammatical rules of your target language, and find examples where the language is used in context. In this way, you'll see how the language is used in a real-life situation.
What I just said is based on the communicative approach for learning a language, which is the latest trend in language teaching methodology. Edited by Talabí on 18 September 2008 at 8:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Uncle B Pentaglot Newbie Hong Kong Joined 5923 days ago 34 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, Mandarin, English, SpanishB1, Portuguese Studies: German Studies: Italian, French, Catalan | Message 3 of 11 19 September 2008 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||
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You mean, I must practise it in daily life, no?
Should I read the news, listen radio every day or use other methods? Edited by Uncle B on 19 September 2008 at 1:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Talabí Diglot Newbie Venezuela Joined 5922 days ago 25 posts - 25 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 11 19 September 2008 at 10:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Sure you're going to practice it in real-life situations, but what I mean is that you look for examples of the language used in context, for example: a telephone conversation in which the person has to book a table in a restaurant. It's not about learning isolated extracts of the target leanguage, since those are going to be easily forgotten.
If you feel confident enough, you can start reading newspaper, or watching TV programs. I remember when I learned English, I used to watch a movie with its corresponding captures; after I finished watching the movie, I removed the captures, trying to get as much as English as possible. If you have learned certain amount of vocabulary, I recommend you to do it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Uncle B Pentaglot Newbie Hong Kong Joined 5923 days ago 34 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, Mandarin, English, SpanishB1, Portuguese Studies: German Studies: Italian, French, Catalan | Message 5 of 11 19 September 2008 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Great! Thank you! I think I should change the direction now!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6021 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 11 20 September 2008 at 1:46am | IP Logged | ||
The Communicative Approach is not the "latest trend" -- it's "last season's colours". The communicative approach is receiving more and more criticism for focussing too little on grammar, and as a result producing students with very poor accuracy -- and I'm in that school of thought. Uncle B, While I agree with Talabí that context is useful in language learning, the communicative approach confuses context and situation. By learning language for a particular situation, the learner has to attempt to memorise too much vocabulary that is not very reusable. ("I'll have the lobster," for example, is only any use to a rich person in a posh restaurant.) It's important that you make the language meaningful. "I don't know where it is" is a meaningful sentence if you can imagine yourself hunting round the house for something. Conversely, "Can you tell me where the museum is?" is meaningless to me because I don't believe I would ever need to ask that. Grammar is more useful than vocabulary, and we naturally acquire new vocabulary while grammar isn't as easy to absorb. I strongly recommend focusing on grammar, but making sure that you use the language and make it meaningful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Talabí Diglot Newbie Venezuela Joined 5922 days ago 25 posts - 25 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian | Message 7 of 11 20 September 2008 at 2:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, you're right Cainntear, the CA is not the latest trend, since it's been around for three decades, but nothing else has come up.
I think what you said about making the language meaningful is absolutely correct, and I agree that CA weakness is the way grammar is taught, if ever. However, here we enter to the dilemma: how to learn grammar. Of course grammar is important, and I told Uncle B not to exclude it, but I don't think it would be recommendable for a beginner to focus ONLY on grammar, since it can be very difficult; instead, I recommend to acquire a general idea of the language's grammar in early stages of the learning process. Once the person has obtained certain level on the target language, s/he can learn the language's grammar in a more "intense" way. Nevertheless, it's my point of view, and that's how it has worked for me in my personal experience as being both a learner and a teacher, and I'm well aware of the never ending debate of deductive vs inductive grammar teaching. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Uncle B Pentaglot Newbie Hong Kong Joined 5923 days ago 34 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, Mandarin, English, SpanishB1, Portuguese Studies: German Studies: Italian, French, Catalan | Message 8 of 11 20 September 2008 at 5:33am | IP Logged | ||
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There is a big argument. For me, these two methods are very useful because I learned Spanish in the courses, and learned the Portuguese, Italian and French by myself. I used them to learn these languauges.
But I want to mix the two methods. When I learned language by myself, I always started with grammar. Grammar is very easy for me, on the other hand, vocabularies are the problem. I don't know how much words should I learn. You know, this is a long term part in the language studies. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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