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6 year old girl FLUENT from TV!! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 57 of 67 18 July 2009 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
If you handle yourself with any grace, I might. But if you're going to keep throwing your toys out of the pram, I don't see any reason to. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ashley_Victrola Senior Member United States Joined 5708 days ago 416 posts - 429 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Romanian | Message 58 of 67 18 July 2009 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's nice that you think she was crazy. Since you didn't read the thread carefully, I try to catch you up on a few points: The OP said his views and said that they were similar to Kato Lomb's. I pointed out that they weren't. He was trying to say that she never used dictionaries or something to that effect and I told him that wasn't true. And I did say essentially what was in your "nonconventional/conventional" post. All of my info came from reading her book. I am neither pro or anti Kato Lomb. Also I've said multiple times, which you don't know because you didn't read the posts (which is ok because it is, after all, 7 pages) that tv can be very helpful. But one is not going to be able to gain fluency just from that due to the interactive component of language. And when one does reach a high level, they usually have some outside input or experience with another language in that language family and so on that gives them an extra edge. I don't think it's a good thing to base one's learning method around especially if it is just their L2. Not only that I don't think it's the most efficient way at all. Edited by Ashley_Victrola on 18 July 2009 at 8:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6449 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 59 of 67 18 July 2009 at 11:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Ashley, I meant it in a nice way about Kato. I would have used some other expression but I have the flu (I don't know which kind) and I feel like crap. So apologies to anyone I might have offended. Except Caintear haha. I'm kidding, dude.
I was looking for that little Algerian boy who learned French by watching TV, I couldn't find him (this was in the 90's) but I found many others from Algiers, Netherlands and the surrounding barbarian areas who learned French this way. The stories are similar (a bored child) results vary depending on time spent watching TV, general education and perhaps aptitude (or attitude). I do like to read. I am perhaps taking this a little too much to heart but were it not for TV I'd most likely be a monolingual Croat with perhaps a decent knowledge of French (thanks largely to the efforts of my mom). My English took off only after I started watching satellite programming. My mom bought probably the first satellite dish in town from her meager savings (at the time a whopping 1,000 DM). After this I got interested in foreign books and things just happened. a random article about two Algerian children who learned German this way. Deux petits Oranais ont appris l’allemand grâce à la télé ADEL ET SARA , ENFANTS GermanOPHONES PAR LA GRACE DE LA TELE 20-06-2008 ORAN, 18 juin 2008 (APS) - Agé de dix ans à peine, Adel Bendaha est un enfant qui parle couramment l'allemand. Sa petite sœur Sara, 6 ans, à force de l'imiter,a acquis la même capacité que lui, celle de manier avec aisance un parler aussi complexe que celui de la langue de Goethe. Sa tignasse noire fournie ne le différencie guère de la masse d'enfantsqui gambadent bruyamment dans les rues d'Oran mais ce don fait d'Adel un enfant unique, devenu l'attraction du toute la ville. Ses parents sont pourtant des Algériens qui n'ont jamais appris l'allemand, selon leurs propres aveux. Cette facilité qui permet à Adel de corriger la prononciation de certains adultes qui ont pourtant vécu longtemps en Allemagne, son père l'explique par une "addiction" aux programmes (pour enfants) des chaînes allemandes, les seules qu'il a pu capter, il y a quelque années, avec sa parabole à cause d'une bizarrerie technique. "Au début, je ne comprenais rien à ce qui se disait dans les émissions de ces chaînes, mais par la suite, j'ai pu saisir le sens des mots et construire ensuite des phrases", dira Adel. En constatant que son fils usait de mots d'allemand, son père l'a cru un moment "possédé" et voulut même le présenter à un "Taleb" (guerisseur). Et à entendre le petit Adel et sa sœur Sara tenir une conversation en allemand avec un confrère ancien professeur d'allemand dans un lycée d'Oran et membre de l'association des Germanistes, les curieux ne s’empêchent pas de les en féliciter chaleureusement. Cette prestance et cette assurance, Adel l'a acquise au fil des années,et aujourd'hui et après des années passées à l'école, il a appris à écrire en allemand et son père voulait même l'inscrire au Goethe Institut. Naturellement, l'idole d'Adel en football c'est le joueur allemand Klose et il supporte la Mannschaft, l'équipe nationale allemande, qu'il espère voir couronnée du titre de champion de l'Euro 2008... (APS) link A Macedonian who learned Italian by watching TV. "E a Treviso l’idioma della comunicazione è proprio il dialetto. Al lavoro, a scuola, in paese, giovani o meno tutti lo parlano. Per potersi inserire gli stranieri non hanno alternative. Muhbil è macedone e da un anno frequenta la scuola media: «L’italiano lo avevo imparato guardando la televisione. Ma appena arrivato in Italia non capivo tanto la lingua che parlavano i miei compagni di classe: era dialetto»." link One passing comment - why it might not "work" in larger, richer countries. I was bored to death and TV was my main source of entertainment and this seems to be the recurring theme (kids from smaller or poor countries getting hooked on modern entertainment). A socialist country kid who discovered anime. They might as well have fed me crack. I wasn't trying to learn Italian (or German). I just kept showing up in front of the TV. I managed to learn Italian and I was only able to watch TV during the summer months. The kids in happier countries have too many distractions. The only way I can see it happening is with the anime generation, if they're crazy (or alienated) enough. After I moved to the US, I spent six-seven years enjoying mostly American programming. I got fat and I stopped reading books and even watching the news. I like it here, btw, but this is one reason why most people from "large countries" never learn any languages. Most adults (and even kids) would not be willing to spend several thousand hours watching something they do not understand. This is true even for poor countries and one reason why many end up speaking only a broken language. The jump from Croatian to Italian is a significant one and even more so from Arabic or Albanian to German so your comment about related languages may apply only as far as the learning time is concerned. One of your comments is a good one. The speaking competence and other active skills come last but they do come. One needs to overwhelm the passive side and it slowly creeps up on you. One obviously also needs to eventually start producing the language. If you're impatient to start speaking, writing etc. you might want to work on these skills separately in order to speed things up. TV is "input" and it should eventually be accompanied by extensive reading of classical and modern literature in the target language (for "best results"). Now excuse me while I go pass out. 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 60 of 67 19 July 2009 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
And herein lies one of the biggest problems: one of the key stages of language death is the first generation that stops using it. They understand perfectly, but they can't string a sentence together, because they are only ever given the opportunity to speak in the new dominant tongue. I've met very many of these and the phenomenon is well documented worldwide, so production is not a guaranteed side-effect of exposure. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5901 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes | Message 61 of 67 19 July 2009 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I find this fascinating. I also don't get the opportunity of speaking English very often. Perhaps 10 times in the same number of years. Yet I can express myself fine in it. I do read though substantial amounts of good books in English, and watch TV in it as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6449 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 62 of 67 19 July 2009 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The two don’t compare well.
Heritage speakers are exposed to a very stinted household speech with a few family members who often have their own ideas what language their kids should be speaking. Some may even have a negative attitude towards their former country. They are failing even though they ARE producing language. TV vocabulary is richer and larger – family members don’t discuss the mating habits of African animals or long range artillery at 150 wpm. A lot depends on the person’s interests. The learner does not have to be a child. TV stuff is very “cool” and the kids actively seek content. No one’s forcing them to do it and they still spend countless hours watching TV. If their friends don’t care, then it’s their little “secret” – what do they know, anyway? Parents speaking in front of their friends in a weird accent are often a source of embarrassment. Watching TV kids are exposed to adults, children, cartoon characters etc. speaking the language. They’re also exposed to the written language and constantly see commercials about, among other things, cultural products. Heritage speakers move away and often don’t seek language contact (until they regret it). It’s ultimately about time on the job and the quality of exposure. Some parents are wizening up and buying children’s programming packages. An important limiting factor (for children) is that one can find easily accessible, rich, attractive (and preferably free) content in many target languages only in certain areas and only for some languages. An adult, or young adult can make his own language learning bubble. A kid can’t. On the other hand kids don’t care about learning the language, they only seek the content. This is in its own way a great advantage. An adult can obviously (I hope it IS obvious) supplement TV watching with audiobooks and other types of content and occasionally use a dictionary to figure out the meaning. Adults are unfortunately often too cheap with their time and money to take advantage of their freedom and prefer to moan about the kids and their natural sponge-like properties when it comes to language learning. Edited by reineke on 19 July 2009 at 5:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6779 days ago 526 posts - 536 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 64 of 67 19 July 2009 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
What a misconception! They understand perfectly? No they don't. To understand perfectly requires an enormous amount of exposure to the language. One would not come anywhere near meeting that requirement if the only input is a parent or two. Like Reineke said, they understand a limited amount of the language because that's all they get. Anyway, you Cainntear are guilty of the strawman fallacy! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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