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Learning from non-natives | ||
Tags: Non-native Speakers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 9 of 19 14 August 2012 at 7:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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Classes (and coursebooks) are an entirely different matter altogether. Or more like, there's a huge difference between fluent non-natives and non-fluent ones ie basically fellow learners.
I think here in Russia the latest trend is to offer several classes per week, one of which taught by a fluent Russian (mostly grammar) and the other(s) by a native speaker. Seems sensible, especially if the two actually collaborate and complement one another. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 10 of 19 14 August 2012 at 10:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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A large portion of my language learning consists in analyzing writing and speech, and there I would certainly prefer using materials produced by natives - but preferably natives who care about the way they express themselves. This is especially important with speech, and one of my misgivings about courses is that you will hear your fellow students for more time than your teacher. Of course I won't close my ears if somebody speaks about interesting things in L2 English on TV (it happens all the time!), but when I listen to speech in order to absorb speech patterns, intonation and interjections most native speakers are better role models than even accomplished second language learners.
It is another matter with grammars. I have in some cases both grammars written by foreigners and by natives, and there is no reason to prefer the latter. Especially grammars written IN the target language have a tendency to waste a lot of energy on minor details and forget the important things, simply because the natives who buy books about their own language are supposed already to master the main features of that language. And textbooks? Well, I'll leave that to those who use them consistently, but I found Chung's assessment of different text books above quite interesting. I would expect that natives could produce more correct texts, but the big issue in my opinion isn't the quality of the texts, but the tendency in newer text book systems to dumb everything down and deliberately hide the things you really need to learn. Edited by Iversen on 15 August 2012 at 2:56am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4847 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 11 of 19 14 August 2012 at 11:37am | IP Logged | |||||
As a black American, I would find that rather impressive. But I digress... :D 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Umin Triglot Newbie Germany despairedreading.worRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4547 days ago 37 posts - 52 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Japanese Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 12 of 19 14 August 2012 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I found the perfect combination in how I first learned Japanese at the university: the teacher in charge of grammar,
listening comprehension (from tape) and translation was German, the teacher for conversation was Japanese. I think it's good to have a native speaker for speaking or if you have questions considering small details regarding the actual usage of single expressions, but for the general grammar etc. I feel it's probably better to be taught by somebody with the same native language as the learner. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 13 of 19 14 August 2012 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
To make it clear, the key word is "trying" as this teacher doesn't do a good job of it by using obtuse explanations and just unconventional methods overall. If he/she doing so successfully, that'd be a different story. Edited by Chung on 14 August 2012 at 5:30pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 14 of 19 14 August 2012 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
I actually like hearing non-native speakers every now and then, especially when they're not native speakers of German because they give me negative examples to compare the positive example of a native speaker with. I don't like negative examples for grammar or syntax, but they make it easier for me to figure out where phoneme boundaries are and how prosody works in a language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| nimchimpsky Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5611 days ago 73 posts - 108 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English | Message 15 of 19 14 August 2012 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It is perfectly possible to develop native-like intuitions. If there weren't any non-natives with native-like intuitions than native teachers would be doing a very bad job indeed.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4699 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 16 of 19 14 August 2012 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
And that is a good answer. Trying to find the reason for every bit of grammar is a waste of time, just accept it as it is and move along. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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