Defining the Speaking Threshold Kernel (Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies) Language Learning Forum

Defining the Speaking Threshold Kernel
Tags: Number of words \| Speaking
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Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies

28 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4

victorhart
Bilingual Tetraglot
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Message 25 of 28

22 October 2014 at 7:07am | IP Logged

Sorry if I missed something, but how are the kernels developed?

I've developed a completely original method (coursebook with CDs and many games) for
beginning Brazilian students of English and guided the development of a similar method
for beginning students of French.

One of the concepts that underlies these methods is teaching the most frequently used
words in the respective languages, and we selected the words using language corpora.
For example, for English we used the British National Corpus. I'm guessing you are all
familiar with this, but thought I'd mention it just in case.

The other, even more important underlying concept is getting students speaking right
away, creating their own original meaningful sentences. We do this using the games. I
believe these two core concepts--teaching most frequently used vocabulary (rather than
having a chapter on all manner of clothing, for example) and getting students
producing their own meaningful sentences from the outset--greatly speed up the
learning process, allowing students to tackle authentic materials and spontaneous
conversation much more quickly.

The kernel concept seems to bear some relation to these ideas, even if tangential.
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rdearman
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Message 26 of 28

22 October 2014 at 10:50am | IP Logged

s_allard wrote:

Some time ago I stated here at HTLAL that with 300 around unique words of active vocabulary one could start speaking French.

When I first floated this idea here, all hell broke loose, and my idea was the object of much scorn, ridicule, derision and contempt. I was told in so many different ways that with 300 words, all one can do is grunt, point, make awkward sentences using many circumlocutions and, according to one poster, jump up and down like a crazy monkey. At times, I've been accused of being a troll in disguise.

But I don't hold a grudge, and I'll let bygones be bygones. I've moved on. In fact, with some colleagues and friends I created a somewhat pompously named Polyglot Speaking Kernel Working Group.

So basically you're selling something, and in a few months time books stores and Amazon will be flooded with the "Kernel" method of language speaking.
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s_allard
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Message 27 of 28

22 October 2014 at 1:59pm | IP Logged

rdearman wrote:

s_allard wrote:

Some time ago I stated here at HTLAL that with 300 around unique words
of active vocabulary one could start speaking French.

When I first floated this idea here, all hell broke loose, and my idea was the object of much scorn, ridicule,
derision and contempt. I was told in so many different ways that with 300 words, all one can do is grunt, point,
make awkward sentences using many circumlocutions and, according to one poster, jump up and down like a
crazy monkey. At times, I've been accused of being a troll in disguise.

But I don't hold a grudge, and I'll let bygones be bygones. I've moved on. In fact, with some colleagues and
friends I created a somewhat pompously named Polyglot Speaking Kernel Working Group.

So basically you're selling something, and in a few months time books stores and Amazon will be flooded with
the "Kernel" method of language speaking.

I usually don't respond to what I call d_____, but the temptation here was too good to pass up. Rather than
responding in a constructive manner to my attempt to demonstrate an idea with concrete examples, here we
have a typical example of intellectual vacuity.
1 person has voted this message useful

s_allard
Triglot
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Canada
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Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
Studies: Polish

Message 28 of 28

22 October 2014 at 3:30pm | IP Logged

victorhart wrote:

A good question. I won't go into the minute details of the process of refining the kernel but the basic starting
point was the question: What minimum elements of grammar and vocabulary are necessary to be able to begin
speaking, that is making complete sentences and interacting with native speakers?

I strongly emphasize the grammar component because it is very hard to count grammatical knowledge in terms
of words. While it might seem obvious that one can simply take the first 300 words of a frequency word list, I
believe that it's a lot more complicated than that.

What we are doing is looking at samples of actual conversations to see what words, in various functional groups,
are most frequently spread over the samples. This is not the same as pure frequency in the total data set. What is
important is how widespread the word or grammatical unit is.

There is a huge difference between spoken and written language. Spoken language is grammatically much
simpler and relies considerably on the immediate context and pronunciation to convey meaning.

When you look at a number of authentic conversations, you begin to see the common patterns. How to
incorporate these patterns into categories such as Connecting words, Adverbs, Adjectives, etc. can be
complicated. In our French kernel, there are relatively few adverbs because most adjectives can be transformed
into adverbs with the suffix -ment. Nouns can be made into verbs and vice versa. We have not included plural
and gender markings of certain forms because they are easily derived, but this is precisely the kind of
grammatical skill that the learner must master.

To list 56 verbs just by their infinitive form says nothing about what it takes to master usage of these verbs. But
the general idea is that if you the learner know these verbs well, you have enough to start building complete
units of meaning around them.

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