|
 |
Can adult learners achieve native levels? | ||
Tags: Native Fluency | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 241 of 303 22 October 2012 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I really have to agree with @okjhum, nothing can beat a good teacher. What we all need is corrective feedback. No self-teaching materials can do that. This applies to writing as well as speaking. Absent a teacher, we have to make do. And the results are usually quite noticeable.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 242 of 303 22 October 2012 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
1. where have you even noticed the results? is there anyone in Canada who's not had any language classes? what *I* have noticed is that the results of listening too much to fellow non-natives are always noticeable.
2. as Arekkusu said elsewhere, the best 'mentor' is not necessarily a teacher with a formal background, degree or even a desire to teach. (and in my experience, corrections in writing are enough if writing is your first goal. if you can write correctly, you mostly need shadowing for getting your speech to the same level - and you WILL notice your mistakes. i'm only speaking of TRULY being able to write well, not producing a mess at first and then cleaning it up with a grammar book) besides, learning on your own doesn't mean "learning without human contact", as you seem to think. every native speaker should be your teacher, whether they correct you or not. Edited by Serpent on 22 October 2012 at 11:53pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 243 of 303 23 October 2012 at 5:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
As I said, "Absent a teacher, we have to make do. And the results are noticeable." I think the results here speak for themselves.
But rather than cast pearls before swine, let's move on to more important issues. I'm really intrigued as to how the individuals mentioned by @okjhum attained native-like phonetic ability in Swedish (and not under the tutelage of @okjhum). What kind of instruction did they have? And what were their other linguistic skills like? Just this evening I watched the commentary by New York Times staff of the American presidential debate between Romney and Obama. As I was listening to the commentary, I tried to imagine how could an adult learner of English arrive at an equivalent level of phonological proficiency and at the same time a comparable level of mastery of the morphosyntax, the vocabulary and all the cultural references to be able to perform exactly like one of the reporters from the Times. I really don't see how it could be done. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4933 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 244 of 303 23 October 2012 at 8:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
What is the point you are trying to make? The typical texts written on this forum are of good quality when compared to numerous other web boards mostly colonized by natives. Literal mastery is needed to compose spot-on texts, and the art of writing is a rare gift among natives as well. Talent to write Harry Potter or capacity to perform as a top journalist of first-class newspaper is not the baseline of native-like proficiency. Edited by petteri on 23 October 2012 at 4:01pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 245 of 303 24 October 2012 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Anyway, absent an ability to learn on their own, people rely on classes. And the results are noticeable. If by saying *here* you mean this forum, compared to the people you know in real life who've had language instruction, I'm absolutely sure that living in Canada (or even the USA - for Spanish learners) has more to do with this than having classes. As for those Swedish learners, I'm really curious if they feel they've reached a perfect pronunciation because they're talented or because they worked hard. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 246 of 303 24 October 2012 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I strongly dislike this kind of litmus test. If you take an average native speaker off the street, and ask them to do what those New York Times reporters are doing, they'll fail miserably. These reporters are well-educated and well-read. They've written an enormous number of words in their careers. They've gorged non-stop on political news for the last year (or the last decade or two). Their co-workers discuss these topics every day. They have professional experience in speaking before cameras. And most of the analysis isn't even original—it's recycled conventional wisdom, insider opinions, and reworked talking points. I'm moderately articulate, as native speakers go, and if I tried to do television commentary without a heavy diet of news and lots of practice, I'd look like a complete idiot. Public speaking is hard, and it takes practice. Could a non-native speaker perform at that level? Probably not, unless they did all the things that a native would typically do: Go to university, write for a living, and spend a decade or two working as a political reporter and pundit. In the past, I've occasionally glanced at various Chinese and Japanese forums, and they're absolutely full of people who say things like, "Can you speak like such-and-such an actor? Or pundit? Can you write like Famous Author X? Well, then you don't really speak the language." And I've always found this idea to be ludicrous. … What can non-native speakers reasonably achieve, if they use their target language professionally for a decade or two? I'm reminder of Linus Torvalds, the original author and architect of the Linux operating system, which you can find in every Android phone and many web servers. He's a Swedish-speaking Finn who moved to the US in 1997, and who spends most of the day reading and writing English. His wife is Finish. Here's a clip of Linus Torvalds, speaking publicly in English. If you're at work, stop it before you reach the 30-second mark, because Linus uses some rude language: Torvalds on nVidia (warning: profanity at 30-second mark)
In this short clip, Linus has a light accent. He pauses once while looking for the right words, he drops an "s" from a plural, and pronounces "hardware" rather strangely and slurred. Linus can spontaneously produce perfectly normal educated English. He also uses the vulgar register in a standard fashion, with full knowledge of how insulting he's being. His phonology is quite acceptable, although clearly non-native to anybody with a good ear. If I spoke French as well as Linus speaks English, I'd be delighted. As the FSI points out:
If a high, non-native level is good enough for successful programmers and diplomats, then I'm happy to make it my goal for the next decade or so. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 247 of 303 24 October 2012 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
That clip of Linus is pretty much the level any foreigner would dream of being at.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 248 of 303 24 October 2012 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I guess a double warning for a single F-word can only come from the US... Other than that I think Torvalds's English is really good, but he's not the only foreigner who can speak English like that. 4 persons have 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. |
