|
 |
Learning a language only through speaking | ||
Tags: Speaking | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| shane4real Newbie Taiwan Joined 3533 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Studies: English | Message 17 of 19 29 March 2015 at 9:42am | IP Logged |
|
I use an app called Social Language. They've got tons of native Chinese speakers that can chat
& practice with you for free. I also had a friend in China said that they all use it. It's like a language exchange and social platform for Chinese & English speakers. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 18 of 19 31 March 2015 at 2:35am | IP Logged |
|
Well, of course you can, I know a few exemples. However, they all had some knowledge
of the language before going to the country, usually with speaking being their worst skill. One really got from lower intermediate German to B2/C1 during half a year of dishwashing and spending his free time in German as well. One got from nearly no French to pretty fluent (like B2, from the sample of her speech I heard). Many got from intermediate-quite good to near native English, French or Spanish. The last group were people from my highschool and I can remember seven success stories without trying too hard. I'd say about one tenth of my old highschool is being sent abroad for at least a few months, more often a year and usually learns the language well. THe earlier exemples were older. But I agree with Ari that the long term stays' usefulness is turning into an excuse for many (you can't learn French without living in France, so why bother.) and disappointment for others (those who just expect to magically breath in the language without any work or even living in a language bubble in the country). And it is turning into a little bit unclean business with many language schools selling overpriced intensive courses abroad presenting it in a way that leads people to believe you'll get from zero to awesome in a few weeks just because you'll be in the country. Learning only through live communication is actually a very common thing among the immigrants, even though few learn the language to high level if they got to the country after the age appropriate to being thrown into a native school. But there was recently a nice topic about someone having troubles "due to focusing too much on speaking" which meant he had used Pimsleur and MT only. Of course those courses, despite being heavily oriented on speech, are just beginner courses, not a full value immersion. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3535 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 19 of 19 31 March 2015 at 3:30am | IP Logged |
|
It can be done, but I've personally never seen good results - most people just want to
know enough to get by so they can (relatively) quickly get to the point of conversing but their grammar is abysmal and their vocab is pretty domain specific. I worked for a small company where there were few people in the country trained for the sort of work we did so we would often hire people from eastern Europe or India and we would get a lot of people who barely spoke English if at all. For a few of them I found out what language they spoke and we developed a chart of common questions and answers and put it in both English and their language (through the use of google translate). After about a year they were able to communicate, but never really well. I think this could easily be overcome if they put the effort into it to learn about grammar and so forth on their own, but as I said in my experience most people have a lot of other things to worry about so if they know enough to get by - they are more than happy with that. 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
