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Other pathways for acquisition... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5821 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 9 of 11 20 June 2010 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
More importantly, the inside of your brain is not shaped like a book, so what is written down is often fundamentally incompatible with human thinking. Consider verb conjugation tables. A sheet of paper is 2-dimensional. How many dimensions does a conjugation have? We can define it as 3, 4 or more. The first two dimensions are labelled Person and Number. So our basic grammar table takes a single value from the 3rd dimension, Tense, and puts it on one table. Another value of Tense goes on another table. But then if we start looking at it, depending on the language we have other possible dimensions: Aspect, Mood and Voice are the ones I can think of just now. We cannot lay out that matrix on paper without de-emphasising certain elements and emphasising certain other elements in the process. Even within a table, the tabular structure doesn't always reflect the links. Consider that the Spanish "tú" and "ellos" forms are both derived from the "el" form -- a table doesn't force the learner to notice this. The layout of tables often separates the declarative and subjunctive forms, when in most languages they are closely related. And the links are not just like a big multidimensional grid. The past subjunctive in Spanish links the usual tense-agnostic verb ending rules with the 3rd person plural preterit form. The rules are messy, and while you can structure teaching around them implicitly (cf MT Spanish), trying to learn directly from these rules independently would be mind-bogglingly difficult. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6348 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 10 of 11 20 June 2010 at 10:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In Solity's work on MT, he talks about the concept of minimal differences by using a table (156).
State of the world 1(Pablo is a drunk) State of the world 2(Pablo is drunk) Action A está (choose "estar") Action B es (choose "ser") The learner wouldn't know the infinitive until later on. What benefit would there be to make this mathematical? There are only 2 choices, A and B. And if the MT concept of minimal differences is used(I don't know the history of "minimal differences" in language learning), then keeping it simple like the aforementioned matrix is, I think, pretty straightforward, not requiring extensive work on math or decision theory. Edited by Kugel on 20 June 2010 at 10:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aras Groupie United States Joined 6568 days ago 76 posts - 83 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 11 of 11 02 July 2010 at 12:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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I prefer a more grammatically-oriented approach, as well. While I'm obtaining the grammar, I seek out input-output materials myself, a la radio, tv, conversation, writing etc.
Although I'm a student of chemistry myself, math, the sciences and philosophical subjects are of great interest to me and I enjoy mathematics immensely. This makes a preference for grammar-heavy texts rather unsurprising. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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