|
 |
Hurdles to speaking languages fluently | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| BiaHuda Triglot Groupie Vietnam Joined 5355 days ago 97 posts - 127 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Vietnamese Studies: Cantonese | Message 25 of 42 05 October 2010 at 4:06am | IP Logged | |||||
|
OK to get back on topic. I would say that the biggest hurdle for me was all the figurative expressions. Just think of all of the English expressions that use apple for example. The subject "apple" has no relation to the conversation whatever i.e., Thae apple doesn't fall far from the tree, how about them apples, your the apple of my eye etc.. These expressions must make machine programmers weep. Films and books would be about the only way of getting the proper feel for them being used in your TL.
The other thing is the innocent sounding words that can be offensive. For whatever reason animal names often correspond to human anatomy. The names of birds, felines and shellfish like in English often have double meanings. The moral, be careful when talking about the oysters to the hostess at a dinner party. Edited by BiaHuda on 05 October 2010 at 6:09am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5165 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 26 of 42 05 October 2010 at 9:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks, BiaHuda. How did you personally overcome the problem, I mean that abstract expressions are hard to learn? Often humour brings in "taboo" language, for example a joke I saw in Italian where you see one elephant saying to another "Si tromba?" The expression has a double meaning for Italians! I enjoyed reading and getting the joke and it is, I suppose, one way to learn such things. What do you think? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6695 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 27 of 42 05 October 2010 at 10:05am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Back to the digression for a short moment.
I tend to agree with Volte and Aineko on the preceding page about the problems in the C2 definition when used on native speakers. The problem being - of course - that many native speakers are fairly incompetent. They have a restricted vocabulary, they can't form sentences correctly, they can't express a logical thought (maybe because they don't know what logic is)... but still they are recognized as native speakers. Why? Because we know that they are speaking the language they learned as children, not something they have tried to learn later. Besides they sound like other persons from their community, who also learned their language as children (with the same mediocre result). By closer analysis there may be certain patterns in the errors they make - they may fluctuate less in their pronunciation, they may have problems in forming sentences but not in morphology etc. and their pronunciation may be lightyears ahead of their sentence forming abilities. But on top of that there is the cultural factors: they live in a relevant place so they know all the latest gossip, all the film stars and TV shops and the brand names of the candy bars in the local supermarkets. In short: when we see native-like speech as the ultimate goal we must be thinking about the best native speakers, but below them there is a shadow going all the way down to no language at all (if we include persons with mental handicaps). 'Native' speech may generally be better than even most cases of advanced C2 fluency, but being native doesn't garantee that you can fulfill the criteria in C2. And now back to the hurdles: I have already stated that lack of cultural background in my opinion is the main factor that separate the best L2 learners from those just below. Technical knowledge is another hurdle, but with the reservation that you can't expect everybody to know all kinds of technical vocabulary. As a general rule I would say that you should demand the same level of terminological savvy from the upper crust of language learners as a decent native speaker has, but not more. Btw. one good way of learning specialized vocabulary is of course to study the corresponding topic through books or by watching TV attentively - for instance there are programs on Discovery and similar channels about how to make certain things, and there you hear a lot of technical terms which even native speakers may not know. The problem is finding such material, but books and internet sources are a good alternative (though less appealing to coach potatoes). My mother, who hasn't got a higher education, for a long time had a friend (now dead) who was a high school teacher. Once in a while it would turn out that my mother knew a certain obscure thing and her friend would ask totally baffled "where the heck do you know that from??". Well, reading historical novels and novels about other special subjects and magazines and watching TV - you don't have to have an academical education or follow courses to know things. Just studying ordinary sources with more attention can make a big difference. Edited by Iversen on 05 October 2010 at 10:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5422 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 28 of 42 05 October 2010 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
Before we rush to judgment about the weaknesses of the C2 level in the CEFR model, it is important to remember the purpose and the rationale of the CEFR in the first place. It is not and never was intended to be a universal system of assessment of language skills. In particular, it does not apply to first languages at all. The CEFR was developed in the context of a political union of many countries with many languages (23 official languages if I'm not mistaken) and a need to facilitate the free movement of people within that space. Since all organizations and institutions are confronted with the issue of foreign language competence, it was deemed necessary to put in place a standard system for assessing foreign language proficiency. There are two specific "markets" for users of this system: employers and schools. (By the way, there are other similar systems around. Many countries and local jurisdictions have their own systems of assessment. For example, in Canada there is the Canadian Language Benchmarks. Here is a quote: "The Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB) and Niveaux de compétence linguistique canadiens (NCLC) are the national standards for describing, measuring and recognizing the second language proficiency of adult immigrants and prospective immigrants for living and working in Canada.") For all its limitations, the CEFR model has the merit of being a standard for the European Union. It has replaced a hodgepodge of systems along the lines of what we see here all the time at HTLAL when people speak of basic, intermediate or advanced fluency. It is very important to understand that the CEFR model is based on the communicative and task-based approach to evaluating language performance. It does not look at vocabulary size or mastery of specific grammatical structures. It looks at the ability to do certain things. All of this has major implications for teaching and testing of languages. At last we have a standard system for stating what people will be able to accomplish after taking a course or what their operational abilities truly are. It means for example that instead of the usual outlandish claims that the self-study materials make all the time, they will come to state the appropriate CEFR level. Instead of all that speak-fluently-like-a-native-in-just-weeks crap, the Rosetta Stones, Pimsleurs, Michel Thomases and others of this world will begrudgingly put on paper just exactly what their users will or should be able to do. When we look at the definition of the highest level, C2, it is structurally no different from any of the others. When it says "Can understand with ease virtually everything heard or read." you have to remember that we are looking at second language performance and relevant content. Also keep in mind that we are talking primarily about employers looking at prospective employees and universities and colleges determining entrance requirements. The CEFR standard doesn't fall apart at the C2 level. Quite the contrary, it is totally coherent. Of course, one could say that many native speakers do not meet these standards. Remember they are not meant for native speakers. Secondly, the CEFR is really biased towards academic and institutional requirements. As high as it is, a C2 level is not the same as native-level proficiency. They are two separate things. But the real point of all of this for us here is that the CEFR model is a standardized way of talking about proficiency. How many times do we have to read here at HTLAL these inane discussions about the kinds of fluency and the very fuzzy distinctions between basic, intermediate and advanced fluency? Then, there are the pentaglots, heptaglots, octoglots, hyperglots and superglots who claim to speak many languages with who knows what degree of so-called fluency. Finally, we have the real enthusiasts who have a shopping list of 10 or more languages to learn to advanced fluency within the next 10 years. The use of the CEFR model--or any standardized model of assessment-- would put some order into this madness, Edited by s_allard on 05 October 2010 at 5:05pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5211 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 29 of 42 05 October 2010 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
My hurdles: as that was the original request.
I had years and years of school French which I really enjoyed plus some amateur exposure at home before my first exchange trip to the France. I had no fear of French. Hurdle 1 : School lessons don't actually teach you to communicate, in everyday language. Hurdle 2 : Fear of looking foolish. I am over this one now. It took me more than a week living with a French family to do any more than nod or shake my head. Hurdle 3 : Vocabulary and understanding native accents. You can't be fluent if you can't understand the answer. I also believe that occasionally I heard Breton rather than French and didn't understand a word of it. Hurdle 4 : Prosody - actually producing the language following a native Rhythm, speed, volume and pitch ResolutionIt was great that the elder sister of my exchange partner would do everything over with me twice, sometimes more. We did nursery rhymes, childrens songs, read comics, practised working in their shop, went to the market etc etc i picked up most of my idiomatic French this way. German: sheer unadulterated panic. Hurdle 1 Lack of vocabulary. Had the number of words but the wrong words. I never ever needed to ask for a screwdriver or mention accelerator pedal.... Hurdle 2 Never actually got a grip of the intellectual side of the grammar because I was too busy just getting on with the process of surviving. Resolution Beer. Lashings and lashings of it. A game called schock or somesuch with dice in a leather cup and a rule about drinking strong liquids when you were losing. Edit: schock not schlock! Edited by maydayayday on 05 October 2010 at 7:14pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5951 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 30 of 42 05 October 2010 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
Below is what I've been doing to address some of the hurdles mentioned by maydayayday. Hurdle 1; I use many different movies and TV programs in my target language which is Mandarin. Percentage wise, I use very little material that was specifically created for language learning. Hurdle 3; I've been listening to native speaker materials for over 2 years now. My various movies have a lot of different accents. I've also been interacting with native speakers who live locally. The native speakers will usually explain words that I don't catch. Also the native speakers here are from many different provinces in China, so I can hear various accents in person. Hurdle 4; I'm doing lots of echoing and some shadowing which is helping. Most of the material for this is again movies and TV programs. Edited by Snowflake on 05 October 2010 at 8:36pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6264 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 31 of 42 08 October 2010 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Beer helps. I slur an L2 more fluently after a few beers.
3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tyr Senior Member Sweden Joined 5774 days ago 316 posts - 384 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish | Message 32 of 42 08 October 2010 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
The big hurdle for me is i'm not very good at listening even in English.
When I'm out with my friends in a busy bar I'm always the guy having to lean close to people and asking them to repeat themselves. Its not that I'm deaf, I'm just rubbish at discerning speach from background noise and picking individuals' speech from the general noise. With reading languages I'm usually great, I'm often top of the class when I take to learning one. Speaking and listening though...awful. Maybe this then leads to another problem with me...I just can't think in languages very well. Aside from a few words when I'm thinking of what to say in other languages its always piecing to gether in my head 'OK, I want to say this English phrase in French...that word is that...that is that...and French grammar puts it like this....so....' which of course takes a while. Edited by Tyr on 08 October 2010 at 4:37pm 2 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. |
