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Just how exactly do you learn Gaelic? | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 33 of 35 26 October 2011 at 1:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||
"Learn the rules, apply them and see where you went wrong." It seems like we agree on this, but the missing step here is "learn when to apply them" or "learn how to chose between them". That's my problem with the concept of drilling -- drilling is by nature repetitive and mechanical, and by not forcing you to choose, it's an incomplete way of learning. What sets Michel Thomas apart from other teachers isn't his mnemonics, it isn't his personality, it's the way that he put everything together so that the learner had to chose which structure to use. He's a perfect example of "integrated reconciliation", an idea put out by David Ausubel which really isn't given the recognition it deserves today. The core idea is that information isn't really learned until it's integrated with everything else you know, so combining (reconciling) different parts of the learning has to be a core part of the syllabus, not an afterthought. Superficially simple and obvious, yes, but completely against mainstream educational practice. If a student has a problem, the normal reaction is to isolate that problem and work on it while excluding everything else. But this isn't worth a damn, and won't change a thing, unless it's actually integrated back with everything else. You can drill a language point until you're blue in the face, but you'll still make the error in real-world usage if you don't integrate it with everything else. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chris Heptaglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7123 days ago 287 posts - 452 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Indonesian, French, Malay, Japanese, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Korean, Mongolian | Message 34 of 35 26 October 2011 at 6:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It depends on the kind of drilling we are talking about here. Translating from SL into TL is a particularly exacting task, requiring many lingustic choices to be made. It isn't enough just to know the foreign words for the English words. Instead you have to make decisions based on correct idioms, levels of language etc.
I wouldn't discount mechanical drills, however, as long as they don't simply become mindless repetition. Mechanical drilling can help with fluency, if - and as I see it we agree on this - if the language structres and choices are understood at a conscious level. Learning first, then drilling later, with a purpose seems like a very reasonable proposition to me. I don't really like the drills in FSI because the audio-lingual method misses out the step of understanding the grammar, and why you are saying what you are. Is that the kind of drill you are referring to? I'm not a big MT fan, to be honest, so I can't really comment on his way of teaching. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 35 of 35 26 October 2011 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That is true, but what you are describing isn't a drill. A drill is by nature repetitive -- you do the same thing again and again. If you label translation of a prose passage as a "drill", then the word drill no longer means anything different from "exercise", and would be surplus to requirements.
Well, the problem I have with that is the number of people I've heard complaining that they "know" the right answer, but still say it wrong. They go back to drills and other exercises, but they still say it wrong. Heck, just yesterday I heard someone say "that depends of..." (something-or-other), and I went "that depends..." and she said "on (something-or-other). What did I say?" It's a mistake that she knows she makes, and she'd spent a lot of time on it, but once she was in a natural conversation, she reverted to the French pattern. Some people manage to learn from drills, I'll grant you that, but a lot of people fail to learn. I say people who learn from drills are learning because of themselves as individuals, but that people who fail to learn from drills are failing because of the drills. Drills contain all the information, but they do not teach it, because they do not prompt the learner to adopt an appropriate strategy. How so? An effective teaching technique is one that encourages the correct way of approaching the subject matter. However, the most efficient strategy for completing drills is to treat it like a puzzle, not a linguistic task.
I would agree with you completely that practicing without really knowing the whats and whys is a waste of time. But even if you have had an explanation, drilling is still an inefficient way to teach/learn. Practice needs to varied, and drills by their nature aren't. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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