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Is spoken language really taught? | ||
Tags: Language Teaching | Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5434 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 17 of 26 22 April 2010 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Kudos, Hypersport, you have my vote. Very inspiring. By the way, LauraM, your comment about the use of tags in German questions is very important. I'm sure a lot of languages use similar devices that function basically to keep the flow going.
Many of us would probably agree that as language buffs, we feel a great sense of satisfaction when we can conduct a conversation, even a short one, and get it all right. Like Hypersport, I sometimes set out with a couple of phrases or idioms that I want to use. Then I look for opportunities to use them. A couple of months ago I learned "ni muchos menos" in Spanish for "not at all" or "pas du tout" in French. I love using it. Sometimes I even throw in "ni muchísimos menos" when I can. Since conversational language is often quite formulaic and repetitious, I believe strongly in the strategy of memorizing entire phrases or short dialogs, so-called "chunks", until one really gets a feel for the language. I'm always amazed how native speakers react when I throw out just a few words that are dead-on. Of course, the right accent helps a lot, but it's not essential. The only problem is that people start talking a mile a minute and I have to figure a way to get out of the situation. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 LauraM Pro Member United States Joined 5356 days ago 77 posts - 97 votes Studies: German Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 26 23 April 2010 at 6:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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s. allard, you are so right!
I actually write down everyday phrases that I use in English and I hired an Austrian I met online to translate them for me. I can carry on lengthy conversations with my almost-two-year old, LOL, and even Germans assume I'm native. So when they chime in and do the mile a minute thing you mentioned, they are baffled by my inability to process the conversation in a timely fashion. I am as fluent as a 3 year old and I'm used to doing all the talking. I desperately need to develop and refine my processing and response skills! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hypersport Senior Member United States Joined 5885 days ago 216 posts - 307 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 19 of 26 23 April 2010 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Laura and s allard, sounds like you both have a good approach. Keep after it!
Laura, amazing isn't it when natives assume you know more than you do and come at you with lot's of bits and slang that you've never heard lol. The hardest part I think is developing your ear for all of those different ways of speaking that people have. I brought back a couple Mexicans at work and they're both young, they speak a lot of slang and I'm having to re-adjust my ear as it is so different than how my other Mexican friends speak. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6947 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 20 of 26 23 April 2010 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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s_allard and others, thanks for your interesting replies.
hypersport's long post was particularly interesting and inspirational, but it also raises an interesting question. If that's what it really takes to learn to speak a language well (near-native), do all of us have the time and inclination to put in quite that much effort? What school system can ever hope to impart that level of knowledge unless knowing that foreign language is a do or die for the particular society? Which leads to the question of how to accomplish lesser goals in an optimal way within the available time. Somewhat contradicting the spirit of s_allard's original post, I did not find transitioning from the more bookish to intermediate-level spoken language all that big of a deal on the two occasions in my life when I tried, with English and, much later, Spanish. On the other hand, consistent with what he says, accent fossilization reigns supreme in my case. Given these experiences, for me the main justification for focusing on the spoken language ahead of the written one while starting out in a language would be the issue of fossilization. I may not want to speak right away, but some day I might, so with enough scientific evidence - that unless one enters a language in a particular way, one is bound to fossilize the accent, perhaps some of the grammar and usage, and maybe even a lower eventual level of listening comprehension - I would certainly be willing to change my habits drastically. Needless to say, the relative value I may assign to the four language skills for a particular language will generally differ from the goals that would be set for a school or university language course, and even for me the numbers may change over time. Edited by frenkeld on 24 April 2010 at 6:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5434 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 21 of 26 25 April 2010 at 12:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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Frenkeld's post raises an interesting point about the impact of starting the study of a language from the written form. Now, this applies probably only to languages using the latin script. I've always noticed that learners inevitably tend to pronounce a language improperly because they are reading the language as if it were their own. Of course, this produces horrendous results that have to be "unlearned". Even a language that is quite phonetic, like Spanish, is not to be pronounced as if the letters represented English language sounds, that we know. But I think we inevitably tend to read through the lens of our native language.
People who just "pick up" a language orally always have a better pronunciation because they are not confused by a writing system. They just imitate sounds they hear. But can one really avoid using a written form? Should one use phonetic transcriptions systematically? I don't have a ready answer, but I would think it's important to highlight very early how a language is really pronounced relative to the writing system. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6947 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 22 of 26 25 April 2010 at 10:52am | IP Logged | |||||
For commonly studied languages there are many readily available audio-visual materials, both didactic and authentic, so even the learners who choose to study primarily from textbooks and reading materials would normally still at least listen to some dialogs, even as reading consumed most of their language exposure time. This should eliminate some of the more egregious misconceptions about the spelling system of the target language, but probably not much more.
This would seem to suggest Pimsleur (or the like) may be the safest starting point in a new language as far as the accent goes, since it is entirely audio-based. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 23 of 26 25 April 2010 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
"Always" is a very strong word. One of the most common types of learner error in the pronunciation of any language is the "falling together" of two sounds that are distinct in the target language but sound similar to the learner. Purely aural learners have to have input or a correction from a teacher or they might never notice that these are different sounds. This is an error that's very difficult to fix late on, as you have to take all the words you have previously learnt that contain one of the two sounds and relearn them with the correct one. If you don't do this, then your accent stops improving. I started learning Spanish by ear with the Michel Thomas course. One of the weird quirks of that course is that he teaches a bit about spelling without any reading or writing. I was very surprised how effective that technique was -- the spelling tells you the phonemes, but because you've not got your head down in a book it doesn't seem to distract as much from correct pronunciation. I would never go for phonetic transcriptions in a language that is written in the Latin alphabet personally -- it's impossible to do with much accuracy. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5457 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 24 of 26 25 April 2010 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
They are a great help when learning English. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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