|
 |
Reading in a FL: Build vocabulary first | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5946 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 17 of 31 23 December 2011 at 10:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Sorry, I was making two points and didn't make myself clear. Point 1: It's one of the core points of teaching philosophies and they do underemphasise grammar, but don't generally completely ignore it. However, teachers often fail to correct many recurring mistakes claiming "they'll learn the correct form by exposure." Point 2: I've come across a lot of people who tell me that they learned their English or Spanish by exposure -- no lessons, no books. They almost invariably speak a very garbled form and aren't aware of it. In the case of Spanish, that often means a string of unconjugated infinitives and non-agreeing nouns and adjectives, or if you're lucky, it'll always be the present tense + yesterday, today or tomorrow. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4844 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 18 of 31 23 December 2011 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think you're using a "straw man" argument here. I agree with you that exposure is not enough, but I have never heard a teacher claim "they'll learn the correct form by exposure." I'm sure there are teachers who believe that; I once met someone who believes in unicorns. And I'm sure that a lot of beginner learners might believe that. But any teacher with experience will realize that it takes exposure and correction to learn a language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6485 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 19 of 31 25 December 2011 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I have, and I tend to agree with it. I'm all for teaching grammar thoroughly, and a certain amount of correction, but very much against over-correction. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4844 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 20 of 31 28 December 2011 at 1:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Have a look again at what Cainntear wrote:
Is that what you're agreeing with? He didn't mention teachers who are against "over-correction". Really, who would support "over-correction". His comment was about teachers who are against correction. There was a very short lived movement in the late 60s in America in which educationalists taught against giving any correction at all (I don't know if the idea travelled much). It didn't last long because it didn't work. I would be very surprised if a trained language teacher would still support the idea. Have you actually met a teacher who would not correct a student's mistakes because they would learn the correct form by exposure? Maybe you could direct them to the nearest teacher training college. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6532 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 21 of 31 28 December 2011 at 3:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
For example, classes for beginners always have at least a brief introduction to the phonetics and intonation. You read aloud words or sentences that you see for the first time and you are corrected. A month later, when you know every word in exactly the same sentence you read aloud on day 1, the teacher will only need your grammar and vocabulary. You won't be corrected unless your pronunciation is just horribly wrong. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6485 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 22 of 31 28 December 2011 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
There's no need to look at someone else's post to know that I disagree with yours. Let me summarize what I get from reading your posts, and you can tell me if I misunderstood. You think students should be corrected for every single mistake, no matter how minor. This is my definition of extreme over-correction, and I'm very much against it. But you must have a different definition, because you say you are against over-correction. You think a student won't correct any of their mistakes on their own, hence the over-correction in the classroom. I think students will correct most of their mistakes with practice outside of the classroom, and the teacher should focus on correcting the topic which is being taught, with the occasional correction of glaring additional errors. I have had several teachers who over-correct, but many more who correct approximately in the way I described. I believe they were taught this technique in teacher training, but you believe they were taught to over-correct. You think I advocate "no correction", but actually I'm just against "over- correction". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5946 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 23 of 31 28 December 2011 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't know about him, but I wouldn't recommend correcting every mistake.
Personally, I'd class that as under-correction. My experience, as described above, is that people simply do not self-correct by exposure. If it's "good enough" for comprehension, the input stimulus is ignored. I had a couple of students in the class (I mentioned this in a couple of threads recently) and I was doing a listening with them. We were doing a listening task about "house prices", but no matter how many times they listened to it, they kept repreating "prices of houses". People only notice as much as they need to understand, and nothing more. I've met people who've been studying English for years and even living in Edinburgh for a couple of years, and they just can't shake those errors. They often don't know they're even making them. All it takes is a little prod from the teacher to get rid of these. But you can't correct every error -- you work on a few at a time, starting with the most important. But only correcting errors for today's class really doesn't seem to do much. Only focusing on each item for a week has little or no lasting effect. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4844 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 24 of 31 28 December 2011 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You have either misunderstood spectacularly, or you are just winding me up. I said that students need correction. Whoever mentioned every single mistake? Not me. Would it even be possible to correct every single mistake? This is another example of the "straw man" argument: you make the other person's point of view to appear extreme so it is easy to argue with.
Again, I never said anything of the sort. Nobody who has ever taught would ever say such an extreme thing. You've made an exaggerated form of an argument I never even made. I am quite happy for students to learn to correct themselves through exposure to the language. What is funny about what you are writing is that I was actually disagreeing with Cainntear's disagreement with you. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
