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Speaking before reading | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4461 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 12 09 February 2013 at 1:10pm | IP Logged |
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I would argue that it's better to learn how to voice the sounds of a language, to actually say words containing
these sounds, before seeing them written down. This is particularly important for sounds not present in your own language. I hear a lot of schoolkids in the UK mispronouncing German sounds because they are applying English conventions to foreign words. I presume the same also applies to French learners. I believe this stems from the fact that schools place heavy emphasis on reading and writing a lanaguage before tackling the unusual sounds and trying to get learners to at least approximate the native pronunciation. Maybe this is a major reason why people in some countries have a reputation for switching to English, they genuinely find it a strain to listen to mangled pronunciation in their own tongue. It's not that hard to pick up new sounds, nobody's vocal chords are hardwired. We learn our native language by listening and copying, so a bit of that wouldn't go amiss when starting a new foreign language. Reading comes later. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4504 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 2 of 12 09 February 2013 at 2:15pm | IP Logged |
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I guess it's hard to say what would have happened if I had started differently, but I don't think that learning to pronounce and read French at the same time has hampered me. Of course, I'm not sure that the way I approached it is a very common one: I learned the relevant IPA symbols very early in the process, and *any* time (we're talking thousands) I was unsure about how a written word was pronounced, I looked it up in Wiktionnaire, which gives both IPA and (very often) a recording of a native speaker saying it. Looking back, I think my main mistake in terms of speaking was not reading too early, but not making much effort at producing spontaneous speech for nearly a year into learning the language.
And I wouldn't say my accent is amazing or anything, far from it, but the natives I've talked to don't mention any big, consistent problems with it, and I at least haven't noticed them trying to stifle laughter or struggling to understand my words. Maybe when I go to France. :-) Edited by tastyonions on 09 February 2013 at 2:23pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5821 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 3 of 12 09 February 2013 at 2:55pm | IP Logged |
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I don't think reading is the issue at all. If you care about pronunciation and have access to a good model (e.g. a native speaker or good quality audio resources), there is no reason to delay reading.
Of course, in a UK high school environment, most of the kids don't care about pronunciation and don't have access to a good model. And even if you do have the best audio resources and native speakers on hand, good luck getting disinterested 12 years olds to shut up and pay attention long enough for it to do them any good. Even the ones that do care about pronunciation are probably going to feel so self conscious about doing it properly in front of their classmates that it will suffer (I know I did - my French only started to sound more like French when I started doing A level and knew I was only speaking in front of other people who cared about it too). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Chris Ford Groupie United States Joined 4582 days ago 65 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese | Message 4 of 12 09 February 2013 at 3:24pm | IP Logged |
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I definitely agree with this concept, especially concerning languages which have a similar writing system to the learner's native language. However learning new vocabulary solely through listening is difficult for me (I think I'm a more visual learner), so I prefer to listen to something in the target language and then look at a transcript or list of words used afterwards as an aid to remembering the new words. To me the most important thing about this approach is that I never learn a new word by sight and assign an incorrect pronunciation to it - once you've done that it can take a ridiculous amount of time to un-learn the erroneous pronunciation. A friend of mine took French in a university course years ago, and suffered from a lack of proper native input. She now has some very bad pronunciation ingrained into her speaking, and it's going to take a LOT of effort to relearn everything correctly.
I really got into this concept of listening and repeating first when I started with Portuguese (coming from Spanish), in the form of the Pimsleur Brazilian Portuguese series. I reasoned that the similar writing but very different phonetics meant that I should emphasize the different pronunciation first and foremost, but now I think this approach is just what I should follow with all languages. Others may have different goals which merit different approaches, but for me I find that if I'm not capable of communicating through the most basic speech with natives, my interest and confidence takes a nose dive. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6436 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 5 of 12 09 February 2013 at 5:03pm | IP Logged |
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I prefer to listen before I read and (later) speak.
And I'm an aural learner. I believe anyone who genuinely needs to see the words in writing to remember them better should be allowed to do so. If they do enough listening, especially of longer recordings rather than isolated sentences and short dialogues, I see no reason for this to affect the pronunciation. (But that's only for people who need/want to speak asap. It's even better not to learn individual words at all but just to acquire the language naturally) Finally, I'm sure that with classroom learning the main problem is that you hear a lot of non-native speakers and very few native recordings. When everyone around you speaks with an accent, that's the natural thing to do:/ Edited by Serpent on 14 February 2013 at 1:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4283 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 6 of 12 14 February 2013 at 5:43am | IP Logged |
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If you are referring to Chinese, a lot of 2nd and 3rd generation people in the local
community here would be considered character-illiterate. The parents wanted them to retain the spoken language (Cantonese or Mandarin) but not many can write with any amount of fluency because Chinese is not an alphabet based system until... In the 19th century an Englishman Thomas Wade used English phonetics to help foreigners learn Chinese without knowing the characters and came up with the Giles-Wade phonetics system. The Chinese later adopted the system with modifications which became Pinyin. There are a number of people here who are fluent enough in written Chinese to submit comments on online blogs and many who can carry on conversations but have trouble writing anything besides their name. For European languages you can do a good job learning by listening and pick up the written version later. For a language like Chinese or Japanese to some extent you have to learn enough characters to read a newspaper. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5220 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 12 14 February 2013 at 3:32pm | IP Logged |
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All in all, I'd say that the ability to fine-tune your own pronunciation is either there or it isn't (although it can probably be cultivated to a degree), and it doesn't really matter when you first face written language, you will eventually have to deal with the discrepencies between written and spoken language, anyway. I don't much buy into the idea that person X did Y and is now stuck with a bad pronunciation, etc.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6436 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 8 of 12 14 February 2013 at 8:16pm | IP Logged |
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unless Y is "couldn't be bothered/didn't care/didn't want/was afraid of sounding weird".
and I agree that the damage can't be permanent, apart from young kids maybe - those who aren't particularly talented but just were exposed to the language early enough to have had a chance to develop a better pronunciation. basically, i think there are no wrong techniques but there are harmful attitudes. Edited by Serpent on 14 February 2013 at 8:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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