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The concepting of noticing | ||
Tags: Corrections | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5422 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 1 of 56 07 December 2010 at 3:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Two incidents recently brought to my attention the importance or role of heightened awareness or consciousness of formal features in the target language. I gather there is some controversy among academics about the true effectiveness of this concept, but I am more and more convinced that it is very valid.
Just yesterday I had read an article about Mexican usage of the the preposition "hasta" whereby it could be construed to mean "not until" instead of the usual "until". I didn't really pay much attention to the article, but this very evening right here in Montreal, Canada, I was talking Spanish to a salesperson and I asked when was the store open tomorrow. He answered something like "Estamos acá hasta las diez." When I expressed surprise that the store would be open till 10 at night "hasta las diez de la noche", the salesperson promptly said "desde las diez de la mañana." So, in fact he was saying that the store opened at 10 A.M. Then it hit me that this was the very phenomenon that the article had made me aware of. The other incident occurred at a French-language meetup where one of the participants stated "je suis à Montréal pour deux mois". I really commended this person for making such an effort to learn French for such a short stay. It was only later on the in conversation that I found out that the person had actually moved here permanently but had wrongly translated "I've been here for two months." I promptly and diplomatically pointed out that the proper form should have been "je suis à Montréal depuis deux mois." These incidents and many others have me thinking how important it is to be corrected and also how it can be important to focus explicitly on certain points of grammar until we master them and can just let them work spontaneously. Wrongly or rightly I'm putting these two ideas into the concept of noticing. The reason I think this idea of noticing is important is that it seems to be the key to making real progress, especially at the advanced levels. Otherwise, the real danger is that we end up stuck in a kind of intermediate rut where we may speak quite fluently but with all kinds of uncorrected mistakes. Have other people experienced this? Edited by s_allard on 11 December 2010 at 8:14am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5312 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 2 of 56 07 December 2010 at 8:10am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree that corrections are important. BTW, did you intentionally make a mistake in the topic title to test whether you would be corrected?
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| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7095 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 3 of 56 07 December 2010 at 9:42am | IP Logged | ||
Could you provide some more information on this controversy? To me it seems obvious that you should notice such things - especially the concept in French of "having been somewhere for a period of time" which I wouldn't regard as particularly advanced. On the other hand, the regional meaning of hasta as no antes de is a difference where even a native Peninsular speaker might slip up if they not familiar with it or context doesn't make it clear. Maybe not everyone "notices" or maybe analyses such things actively or consciously but I know I do. Patterns - similarities as well as differences - are an important part of language study and I don't always like to rely on course materials to point them out to me and indeed sometimes you can't. A recent example discussed on another thread is the somewhat archaic use of voi in place of lei in the older Assmil Italian without Toil. It's not an issue for the course - it was current when it was written but it's something you better "notice" now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6003 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 56 07 December 2010 at 11:40am | IP Logged | ||
I'd agree with this, particularly when you say to "focus explicitly on certain points of grammar". I found that I made most progress with both Spanish and Gaelic when I was only actively working on one or two language points at a time. My process was as follows: 1. Spot a hole in my knowledge or a mistake I made frequently. 2. Start noticing after I'd said it wrong and correcting myself. 3. As I get more used to it, I'd spot myself starting to say it and stop halfway and start again with the correct form. 4. Then I got to the point where I'd realise that I had composed an incorrect phrase just before I opened my mouth, and I'd stop myself from saying it and would instead say it correctly. 5. Next I'd find myself composing both the correct and incorrect phrases simultaneously, and I'd pick the correct one. 6. Slowly the reflex to create the incorrect sentence would fade, and I could produce the correct form without thinking. But yes, right up until stage 6 I had to think about it. I found if I tried to focus on more than 2 or 3 language points, I would take so much time thinking that my fluency suffered. Also, I prefer to stagger the grammar points, only introducing a second point to focus on when I hit stage 4 or 5 (because that's when the process starts to become less effort). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| oli1981 Newbie JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5099 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes | Message 5 of 56 07 December 2010 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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>>Two incidents recently brought to my attention the importance or role of heightened >>awareness or consciousness of formal features in the target language &nbs p;
The first example you gave is abstract language usage that would confuse even a native speaker from another country as Andy E said. In the second case, I don't see how this is 'heightened awareness or consciousness'. The example you give is a fundamental point of grammar, which, while interesting and important for both meaning and form, is something that would be covered by any textbook appropriate to that level. 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 6 of 56 07 December 2010 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, the "concepting" in the title is a mistake, albeit an interesting one. Maybe there is some significance there, a kind of Freudian slip.
As for the academic controversies over the concept of noticing, here is an article on the subject: http://tesl-ej.org/ej23/a2.html. As I alluded to in my original post, I'm not totally sure that "having been corrected" really enters into the concept of noticing. The reason I put it in is that in my observation after I've been corrected, typically by a native speaker, I tend not to make the same mistake again because I've become acutely aware of it. Obviously, this doesn't happen all the time because one can have been corrected and keep making the same mistake. The key idea of noticing, if I understand the concept correctly, is that a heightened awareness of a particular formal area of the target language leads us a) to explicitly perceive how the language is used in that very area and b) to enhance the incorporation of these elements in our own language performance. In other words, noticing leads (or can lead) to improved performance. Returning to Mexican usage of hasta (discussed in the wiki page on Mexican Spanish). I feel that if I had not read the article on the subject, I would not really have paid much more than passing attention to what I experienced. I probably would have just assumed that the salesperson or myself had simply made a mistake or misspoke. Actually, I think the whole thing is akin to that experience that we all have had when hearing an idiom that we have seen written but never heard. Sort of an aha moment when we suddenly say to ourselves, "Wow, that's how it's used." The other key point here is that some sort of systematic or formal effort is necessary to break out of the fossilization trap whereby we may speak quite fluently and make ourselves understood whilst unknowingly making terrible mistakes and, above all, not fully using the resources of the language. Edited by s_allard on 07 December 2010 at 11:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 56 07 December 2010 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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My own personal experience is very similar to yours, but I've met a lot of people who are not interested in being corrected and who aren't receptive at all. A lot of people are awful at noticing details like that too, even when someone points it out. Many people continue to make the same mistakes for years and years, incapable of noticing when people either overtly or covertly correct them, or simply incapable of caring about it at all. It's surprising how many people are entirely satisfied with just getting by.
I hear things like "je suis à Montréal pour deux mois" all the time, and I expect the English-speaker to have made a mistake. If they seem receptive, I'll correct them, but most people don't care. I remember correcting a Chinese homestay student we had. Once, she said "one year, two time" and I corrected her by saying something like "oh, so you go twice a year", and she simply repeated "yeah, one year, two time", as if I were wrong. What are you supposed to do then? Personally, I constantly ask questions and wonder about details when learning languages. Since answers either confirm or contradict my assumptions, they are that much easier to remember. Mais force est de constater que la majorité des gens s'en fout éperdument. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 8 of 56 07 December 2010 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
If we don't improve or correct ourselves by noticing our mistakes... then how else do we improve? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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