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The concepting of noticing | ||
Tags: Corrections | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7095 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 9 of 56 07 December 2010 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | ||
Indeed - and it was a simplistic assumption of mine to assume that everyone thinks like that. Unfortunately, (or maybe it is really fortunately) my primary contact with language learners is this site, where I imagine the majority are actually interested in the detail. Edited by Andy E on 07 December 2010 at 10:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5858 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 10 of 56 07 December 2010 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||
A Dutch-Canadian friend who has been a university professor in Canada for 35 years recently used the expression "Nobel Price". Dutch uses the same word for prize and price, and he had not noticed the difference in English in 35 years. He was very surprised when I mentioned it, and could hardly believe it. I am starting to "notice" in my Dutch studying some of the kinds of things you refer to. For example, the English word "play" has several rather-unrelated meanings. Play with a toy. Play a role. The joint has a lot of play (it is loose or it is worn). Dutch uses spelen and spel for the same three rather-unrelated meanings. And I have noticed several other similar Dutch<>English examples for words with two essentially-unrelated meanings. That sort of thing will show up in a dictionary, but is not too likely to show up in a grammar book. I find that "noticing" these things is quite motivating, suggesting I am making progress. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5978 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 11 of 56 08 December 2010 at 11:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Focusing your attention can help in several scenarios, as pointed out above. When I'm trying to teach people pronunciation, I first focus on pointing out where two different sounds exist that they might have previously thought were only a single sound. Once I've clearly told them that there are two important sounds to hear, they need to go find a lot of audio to listen to while focusing on listening for those sounds.
The other one is grammar. Sometimes there's a subtlety that isn't totally necessary for a first approximation of the meaning of the sentence, but if you focus on noticing that subtlety when it occurs, then you can learn it through reading. For instance, if you look up just the accusative adjective endings in German, and then try to watch for accusative cases while you read, you'll slowly see more examples of that. With your heightened attention, you are gathering more "comprehensible input" about that grammar feature, whereas before you might have just considered it irrelevant and ignored it (because I find German to be totally comprehensible even when you ignore the adjective endings). So, I tend to use noticing like this for any language feature: 1) figure out what hard-to-distinguish or hard-to-understand features exist, focusing on some small subset. 2) consume lots of input while concentrating on finding examples of that feature. 3 persons have 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 12 of 56 08 December 2010 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||
Eliciting corrections is indeed an important part of acquisition. Luckily, we are not at the mercy of native speakers' good will when it comes to corrections. There are many ways to elicit natural corrections without the native speaker even knowing it. When I'm not sure about a grammar point, or say pitch in the case of Japanese, I use it in conversation, so as to elicit a response from the speaker on the same topic. This way, I get to hear exactly the way they use it, and I simply repeat it or use it again the right way. When I use a phrase I'm not sure about, I'm effectively putting myself in "notice mode". As I try to elicit the right kind of response, my sense awareness is further heightened. The subtle, indirect correction I receive will be that much more striking and I won't forget it. 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 13 of 56 08 December 2010 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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To add to the excellent posts by Arekkusu and Doviende, I would just say this idea of noticing is probably more important for spoken than written language. I see this heightened awareness as a sort of "listening for" certain things not only in the speech of others but in our own speech as well. So, for example, when we are corrected we should immediately and subsequently explicitly use the corrected form so that we don't make the mistake again.
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| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5463 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 14 of 56 08 December 2010 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | ||
I have been to almost every French language meetup in Montreal in the past month but I can safely say that was not me you were talking too because "Je suis à Montréal depuis seulement un mois. - et je compte y rester jusqu'au printemps". Plus I don't believe I would have made that mistake : ) 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 15 of 56 09 December 2010 at 5:41am | IP Logged | ||
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The kinds of mistakes that I mentioned here very insidious and are not in a sense mistakes at all because they are totally legitimate forms in French and in Mexican Spanish. With reference to the French example, the only reason I use the term mistake is because the meaning was not what the user intended.
The point here is that one can speak fluently and correctly from a grammatical perspective and yet convey the wrong meaning. The real problem is that one is often totally unaware of these kinds of mistakes because there is nothing wrong grammatically. 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 16 of 56 09 December 2010 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||
I think it's a coincidence that there happens to be another grammatical structure that means something different -- it's not like the speaker knows that "je suis... pour..." is correct and opts for that structure, he's only using it because it's a word-for-word translation. It's a mistake, alright. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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