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Reading vs Speaking revisited | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5811 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 9 of 14 20 November 2011 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't believe it's possible to be a native-like reader of a language you can't understand when spoken, because all the evidence from brain scans is that natives "hear" what they read as if it was said to them.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4572 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 10 of 14 20 November 2011 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
One reason for this is the huge differences in grammar between Japanese and most European languages. When I am reading I see the whole sentence and can analyse it step by step and get what it means, but when I am listening I have to ask people to talk slower or repeat themselves to be able to do that. When I am writing I can take my time to properly structure my sentences, but when I try to speak I stumble, because I might have started speaking with the wrong word order or used a very unnatural structure. Another reason lies in the peculiarities of the Japanese writing system and of my approach to learning it. I used James Heisig's book "Remembering the Kanji" to learn the writing and the meanings of Kanji, or Chinese characters used in Japanese. In Heisig's method the pronunciations or readings of Kanji (most Kanji have multiple readings, and they aren't always entirely predictable) are not taught in the initial stages, so that the student can memorize them later or learn them from context as parts of words. Because of this when I read I occasionally run into situations where I can guess the meaning of a word from the Kanji in it, but have no idea how to pronounce it. I bet Chinese learners of Japanese run into this problem a lot, since they are already familiar with the characters, but might not know their actual Japanese pronunciations. And outside languages that use Chinese characters similar situations may occur with cognates (e.g. all the Latin and Greek words in European languages), especially if the language you are learning has a less than straightforward orthography. And finally, although this is not the case with me, but pronunciation plays an important role. Having a perfect grammar and a vast vocabulary won't help people understand you if your accent is completely undecipherable. I have read of an American historian who could write articles in Chinese, yet whenever he tried to speak he would always confuse the tones and hardly make any distinctions between some consonants, like sh and x, or ch and q. So, while the extreme version of the statement does sound unrealistic (if your reading and writing ability are native-like, then you should have at least some speaking and listening ability), it is perfectly possible to have a huge disparity between those abilities. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4665 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 14 20 November 2011 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Other:
If had had to make one of the choices given I think I'd just forget the whole thing and take up stamp collecting. Either I'm going to master the language all the way or it's not worth my time to do it at all. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6503 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 14 21 November 2011 at 10:56am | IP Logged | ||
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I would prefer being mediocre in all skills to being half excellent, half nothing at all.
If I couldn't get that then I would probably go for the written skills because I actually read/write more than I speak/listen (except in Danish and to some extent English). But then I would also buy (or make) a small sticker stating that I was 100 % deaf to avoid stupid questions in languages which I couldn't understand any longer because you lured me to answer in this poll. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4597 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 13 of 14 05 December 2011 at 9:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I love literature, and I love to read. I love writing just as much, and i can't imagine living in a world without
these delightful oxygen molecules :P In an ideal world, which I try my best to attain at all times, I would choose being native-like in all four skills. But if I had to choose between either oral communication or written, I'd definitely choose oral. You can listen to news on the radio or tv rather than read it, and you can ask for directions if you're stumped by signs, but nothing can substitute actually speaking with and communicating with people on almost any subject. I imagine it would get pretty lonely having a book as your only companion. I can't imagine life without books, but I can't imagine life without people even more. Besides, there are audio books out there now too. It would also be very tedious to have to write to communicate, rather than just say it. Hope that didn't sound too melodramatic :P But seriously, isn't the essence of language the spoken word? 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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