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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4620 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 65 of 74 29 October 2013 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have dabbled in teaching some German to beginners. I'm aware of the fact that "get" covers many situations in English, which require separate verbs in German. That's before we, er, get to the more idiomatic usage such as "get away with it" or "get it up and running" The word "up" also seems to have a powerful effect when appended to common verbs. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 66 of 74 29 October 2013 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
If a student asks me to do this I'll do it. But you make it sound like language is an inflexible concrete wall, when it's an active living thing. Yes, there are general principles and many conversations are based on a set of words, but that means you can't deviate from the norm. Deviating from the norm is what everyone does all the time, and it is what you have to learn to speak fluently. The trick is to get into the situations often, not to understand the predictable parts (you can do this in a day), but to deal with the deviations, and that can be in any of 6060606060 scenarios. That's why I keep it free-form, so I naturally approach a situation where we discuss a topic and I react like a different person would, forcing the student to think on their feet and DEVELOP methods to cope with the unknown. Any dunce can recite ritualised conversations, but that is not what you want to teach people. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 67 of 74 29 October 2013 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Come on people. It's not as if I'm saying that you can learn ten canned phrases and then you stop learning. We
all know very well that many conversational interactions have what I called ritualized components. A typical example is answering the phone. Are there twenty-five ways of answering the phone? How many ways are there of asking to speak to someone? How many ways are there of saying that the person is busy or not there? And how do you say goodbye? All of this sounds so simple until you have to do it spontaneously without stuttering. Just saying goodbye properly is often challenging. That is the ritualized part of a telephone conversation. This I can work on easily. The rest of the conversation is another question. Greetings and salutations are perfect examples of ritualized interactions. Some people sneer at learning this stuff because it's not considered important. Sure it's pretty simple but I tell students that the very first thing that comes out of your mouth tells people (or gives them the impression) how well you speak. Just being able to say a good clear Bonjour with an impecable accent will sollicit a Bonjour from the other person. Being able to ask if the elevator is going up or down is very simple but it is a simple means of engaging the language. Something like "Please, after you" can do wonders for developing self-confidence and encourage further llearning. And above all, it gets you speaking right away. And, please, don't tell me that learning to speak a language can be reduced to learning a few lines for dunces. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 68 of 74 29 October 2013 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
I can vary with at least 5 different opening lines depending on who's calling, and similarly with quite a few depending on when I leave.
If you're going to insinuate, read correctly. Ritualized scripts are things you can MEMORIZE. I don't need to be capable of any creative thought to speak well in this context. Yes, anyone who can memorize a bit can learn this. The biggest hurdle will be training pronunciation. What you can't teach this way is confidence, motivation, inspiration or creativity, which is what makes language stellar and unique. What you can't teach them is what to do when something happens that is not a textbook situation... ...and this is going to happen every day. I can learn tons of scripts but it's script learning. It's got nothing to do with language teaching. Edited by tarvos on 29 October 2013 at 4:25pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 69 of 74 29 October 2013 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I can learn the common greetings in the plane to my next travel destination. Until then my primary concern is to be able to read about themes like those I mentioned, and the discussions I have had in different countries are partly those foreseen by travel guides, partly those about my favorite themes - for instance when I talk to guests and employees at museums. And yes, the themes I mentioned are actually themes I have been discussing with native speakers during my travels - that's why I mentioned them. But of course I'll also learn to ask for a room in a hotel or the price of a blue bag of potato chips.
The wish to start out with simple conversation phrases is quite understandable if your reference frame is courses with budding language learners - every teacher would probably love to have pupils that can greet him/her and each others, give their names and discuss the weather and other standard themes. But for independent students those discussions may be less relevant. And the element of role playing is positively abhorrent to me. Edited by Iversen on 29 October 2013 at 4:26pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 70 of 74 29 October 2013 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Really, I don't know what there is to discuss. If simple conversation strategies are of no importance to you, then
you should not learn them. I have just attended an international conference on multilingualism and neuroscience at a local university. This was full of heady academic language of course. Probably right up @iversen's alley. I noticed how all the speakers began and ended their presentations. They all pretty much followed the same pattern. This is what I teach. I say that there are a few ways of introducing yourself. You could say: I am X or My name is X. Now if you wanted to be really creative you could probably concoct other ways. But those two will carry you a long way. I tell students that at the end of a presentation, they will probably hear a variant of: Well if there are no more questions, we'll call it a day. Thank you professor X for an excellent presentation. Is this exactly what they will hear every time? Of course not but it is a sort of template that will vary. The same thing with telephone conversation openings and cloisings. Of course they vary from speaker to speaker but they fall into general patterns. It's not more complicated than that. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 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 71 of 74 29 October 2013 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
You're fluent in English and Spanish, two languages that have this all. Is it so hard to understand that your experience is limited to big languages fairly similar to your native one? Even in other fairly big languages like Portuguese, German and Italian I can't have as much as I can have in Spanish, not to mention my other languages. But more importantly, people ARE producing plenty of materials for all these languages, and some for the smaller ones too. They just produce the wrong things, and it's frustrating. Why should it be the learner's job to make a course for themselves when there are people who are paid to do that? Why are they producing boring shite when they could make great courses that would help even casual learners achieve a good level? Oh wait... 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4826 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 72 of 74 29 October 2013 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
There's a joke there somewhere, but I'm too mindful of this being a family-oriented forum to over-emphasise it. :-) 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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