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Textbooks with a pinch of salt | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5775 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 9 of 21 15 December 2010 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Sorry, that was not clear, I should have chosen my words more carefully. I meant I'd have a hypothesis of my own as to what was happening.
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| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5122 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 10 of 21 15 December 2010 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
But isn't this how most language is taught? At least in my experience, basic rules are presented, then when an exception or irregularity to that rule comes up, it's explained. I don't know that every exception needs to be explained when the initial rule is learned. And actually, I don't even know how you could possibly be presented with every rule and every exception at once. Look at how a child learns "muerto". Very often they start out by trying to say "morido", and learn "muerto" through a correction made by the parent(s). R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5775 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 11 of 21 15 December 2010 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, of course not, but it should get explained at some point in the course! If I know you are going to explain it all I can relax and let you pick the right time...but that is not what's happening here. Take the "rule" that you dont use the indefinite article after Ser with professions. I have NEVER seen the exceptions to this rule presented in a textbook written in English, not even university level Grammar books. I found them in publications actually IN Spanish.
Of course not. But that's just the point- any decent textbook covers irregular past participles at some point, the same does not apply to what I am talking about. Moreover everybody seems to be copying the same old flawed rules...I'm not impressed with the available textbooks in English. I was pleasantly shocked by the jump in standards I encountered when I first read ELE publications in Spanish...but I had to go to London to find them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5439 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 12 of 21 16 December 2010 at 1:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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On this forum, one of the members has posted an excellent program for the German case system. You may have run across it ;) I do not know whether the program is comprehensive. I don't know that it will lead me infallibly to the proper case usage in every event. Nor do I care. Baffled by the tables in my books, my previous approach to articles and adjective endings was to take them at random and hope for the best. If I have a simple, well laid out program that lets me get it right on purpose a decent percentage of the time, I will have the makings of a framework. When I get it wrong, if it is pointed out to me, I will at least have some idea of how to ask about why.
To answer your question explicitly, I will take the flawed rule that lets me start using the language and building a framework to refine over the comprehensively correct rule that I don't know enough about the language to understand yet any day of the week. On a side note, how many children say, "he goed" before getting the correction, "he went"? Even in one's native language, flawed or overgeneralized rules provide a framework for future fluency. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5218 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 13 of 21 17 December 2010 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
And you're right. Actually that's what I tell my students all the time: rules usually work, so you must follow them -- but they're an afterthought addendum to every language, so it is always to be expected finding exceptions. When you're advanced enough you'll be able to do without the rules, and before that point they'll work for you, not against you... most of the time :) Of course, I wouldn't give anyone a rule without giving them an idea of how many exceptions there are as well. But obviously this is not a rule in itself, just common sense. The point is, unless your source tells you how accurate a rule is (accuracy defined as total cases vs exceptions), the only way to find that out is seeing it fail and counting yourself. Given that, you'll never know if you would have done better with or without the 'accuracy: unknown' rules. Not in advance, at least. When in doubt about the accuracy of a rule, present your rule to a knowledgeable speaker and see what he says about it. It will save you the frustration you described. I remember once a friend asked me when to translate but as 'sino' and I couldn't give him a rule on the spot. The next day he asked his Spanish teacher and then checked the rule with me. It was good, it was simple, and it was 100% accurate, so I incorporated it to my repertoire :) Edit: style. Edited by mrwarper on 17 December 2010 at 5:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5218 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 14 of 21 17 December 2010 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Or, in short: follow the rules because they're your friends.
Except if they were written by idiots. To find out if the rules were written by idiots, ask your friends :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5775 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 15 of 21 18 December 2010 at 5:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There's a Spanish guy on another thread whose English is almost flawless (and has an almost native fluidity to it!). It seems he doesn't try to learn English, and doesn't study grammatical rules; he just reads things that interest him, writes what he needs to, and has interesting conversations in English. His English is *much* better than my Spanish and he had a lot more fun along the way (which hardly seems fair). You all make good points, but given the above I just can't help thinking I need to have a think about what I am doing, including maybe ditching the textbooks.
Edited by Random review on 18 December 2010 at 5:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5218 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 16 of 21 18 December 2010 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You mean slucido, yes, his English is good, but if you let me tell you, I think you need to improve your estimation of other people's abilities. I'm not talking about slucido alone: I remember once you said you thought I was an English native, or that some Swedish guy spoke better English than you because in his website he differentiated sickness from disease and some other finesse and you said he seemed more clear on the subject than you... still, neither of us are natives so we are almost certainly bound to lack fluidity when compared to you. Then again we might not, but I don't think there are so many people (in statistical terms) that speak so good English. As I said many times, the only reliable test of somebody's abilities is to see him in action, for real. If you don't know for a fact that he's better than you at XYZ, just wait until you know for sure. I know it's the opposite of what most people do, trying to impress (and being impressed by) others with their inflated CVs and stuff, but remember: they only pull it off because you let them :) Anyway, about slucido's method (or lack thereof), your 'not fair' claim :) and comparison to others... I started to learn English as a pre-teenager when it was part of my general education. That worked for me because I was a good student, so I stashed my English knowledge because I knew (at the time I firmly believed what some adults told me) I'd use it some day, just like calculus, algebra, biology, and pretty much everything else. So, when I had to put my English to real use (in England) I was pretty much ready, even if I still had lots of room for improvement. As it turned out, this is not valid for most people, who simply forget what they study unless they put it to immediate use. What kind of learner are you? You're the only one to know for sure. Assuming the worst case scenario -forgetting much of what you don't use-, slucido's reasons are the only effective ones when studying a language, because they're the only ones that keep you doing what is necessary. Actually, in a way, that's how I use English nowadays (besides classes and translations, of course, but I don't really count that as using the language): watch movies and series, read books and stuff on the internet, and (very) occasionally talk to interesting people who don't speak my language well enough. Just the common things common people use it for, only looking up stuff, etc. in addition (something I do in mother tongue as well anyway). And incidentally, that's how I plan to use my other languages, and that's what I try to get my students to do: get hooked up on stuff that's interesting to them, because otherwise most of them simply won't study or will forget lots of things in the interim between their classes and their Erasmus year/whatever, or after they're done with that. The language barrier naturally remains high if you never get advanced enough, but you can jump it. The thing is, if you're not really interested in contents you never progress beyond a certain point, and the language barrier eventually becomes too high to keep jumping. Still, using the language is good to *eventually* reach an extremely advanced level or remain there, but to get there in the first place, structured study is way faster, just as it is for everything else. Learning by doing is possible in every field, but with the possible exceptions of taking maggots out of holes with a stick and other 'easy' tasks, it is always better if someone knowledgeable takes you by the hand and helps you. Did we not that, we'd have no civilization or making no progress whatsoever because we'd be too busy re-discovering everything ourselves. Edit. Addition: The more complex the field, the more obvious this becomes. For example, think about how Newton and a few other guys had to invent pretty much everything in Physics and how we now learn (ahem) all of it plus a lot more in just five years. You could devote your entire life to re-construct the whole Physics field, or... Just be careful about whose, or rather, what indications you follow :) Edited by mrwarper on 18 December 2010 at 1:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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