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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| lancemanion Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5571 days ago 150 posts - 166 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Thai Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 32 29 August 2009 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've been reading your old posts. Very interesting. Could you expand a little bit on this? Mostly I'm interested in how reading and writing would fit into one's study plan, if one's main goal is conversation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lingua Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5575 days ago 186 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 10 of 32 30 August 2009 at 12:07am | IP Logged | |||||
My "Linguamor" posts cover pretty much all I have to say about learning from understanding (comprehensible input), so I won't repeat that here. If your main goal is conversation, I'd recommend watching a lot of TV. As for reading, I'd definitely recommend that you do that too. Reading has always been a significant source of input for me. It's great for acquiring vocabulary and idiom. Read what interests you. I don't have anything to say about writing. I've never specifically "practiced" it, and I've found that if I know the language and I can read it, then writing poses no problem. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lancemanion Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5571 days ago 150 posts - 166 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Thai Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 11 of 32 31 August 2009 at 1:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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Would you recommend writing as a good way to improve grammar, do to it being lower pressure than
conversation? I wonder, because I've heard this before. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lingua Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5575 days ago 186 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 12 of 32 31 August 2009 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Grammar is acquired from input. Output is a product of what you already know. If you want to practice what you already know, and you're concerned about the pressure of conversation, then I see no reason why writing would not be an alternative. However there is another one - talking to yourself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 13 of 32 31 August 2009 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's a rather strong statement, and one I don't think Stephen Krashen himself would agree with (he is on record describing himself as a "monitor learner"). First up, seeing as you use the term "acquired" rather than "learnt", I'm assuming that by "input" you mean "target language input". I learned most of the grammar of Spanish and of Scottish Gaelic starting with the rules and producing in a "monitor learner" way. I internalised ("acquired") this grammar through meaningful production, not through exposure to input. For a long time there was nothing I could understand that I couldn't say myself. (That's not to say that I haven't since learned things through exposure that weren't taught in the courses/books I started with, but this was very much a later stage thing.) So while we could argue for hours about which way is more efficient, neither of us can say categorically that the other method doesn't work. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lingua Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5575 days ago 186 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 14 of 32 01 September 2009 at 12:45am | IP Logged | |||||
I would say that you learned grammar rules and vocabulary. You then used this learning to produce output. Your own output, and any input you got in response, could then have served as input for acquisition. However I'm not saying that you cannot have internalized from output, only that the output is a product of what you already know, either acquired language, input that has just been provided, or grammar and vocabulary learning. Having said this, I must say I have never observed a language learner who has acquired the grammar, meaning being able to use it correctly in spontaneous conversation, without having had quite a bit of exposure to the language. And how well the learner has learned the grammar usually corresponds quite well with the amount of exposure to the language. Language learners start out using language that is grammatically inaccurate and gradually improve their grammar as they have more exposure to the language. Edited by Lingua on 01 September 2009 at 5:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lancemanion Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5571 days ago 150 posts - 166 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Thai Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 15 of 32 01 September 2009 at 1:41am | IP Logged | |||||
I've never been able to talk to myself consistently, so it doesn't work too well for me. In my mind, being corrected by a teacher should work well too, but in reality it doesn't help me very much. Eventually I develop good grammar through tons of exposure and use, but I'm searching for ways to make it happen faster. I had a Thai teacher who said essay writing improves ones written and spoken grammar, and gets one to form longer sentences. And I've seen several posts in asian language forums about writing improving grammar. I know you're sort of tapped into the teaching theory community, so I thought you might have heard of this specifically. Either way, it sounds like it's worth a shot. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lingua Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5575 days ago 186 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 16 of 32 01 September 2009 at 5:42am | IP Logged | |||||
I think writing will help with improving grammar only if you have something you want to express and then have some way to determine the correct way to express it. I once taught English to students in a public school. Writing essays had been a regular part of their English learning, and in accordance with the curriculum they wrote essays in my class. The quality of the English in the essays varied, but there were always grammar errors, and the language usage reflected the native language of the students, often so much so that I would not have understood it if I had not known the students' native language. However there were always a few students who wrote English that was very much better than that of the other students. These students were invariably students who had spent a year in an English speaking country as an exchange student. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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