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Language classes do NOT work | ||
Tags: Class Learning | School Education | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6338 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 73 of 116 17 November 2013 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm sure there are, but they are probably afraid to answer. Putting FSI up against Assimil is a no-brainer. But how about a high school class vs Assimil? Which do you think will yield better results?
Sounds like you don't know what FSI is. He's talking about the full time government run school, not the free program online. Edited by leosmith on 17 November 2013 at 7:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 3961 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese | Message 74 of 116 17 November 2013 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
Really? In my classes, I always make an effort to check whether the people on the other side of the room are on task, and I find that they almost always are. I don't really understand what you mean by "making dialogues" though. I might give the students a framework or starter for a conversation, but writing a dialogue and practising it is something I would only ever do with absolute beginners, because it's not real communication, it's just a fluency exercise. In my experience, give the students something to talk about that they find interesting, and the only L1 they'll use is occasionally to ask each other for a translation.
It's an option, but there's a world of difference between a good professional teacher and someone who simply speaks the language. Let's imagine you're having a conversation and you aren't sure how to say something and get your grammar all wrong. Any native speaker will be able to correct your grammar fairly easily. It might not occur to the non-teacher to allow you to correct it yourself, which is usually a better way of learning than just being told the answer. It also might not occur to the non-teacher that the resulting phrase might be grammatically correct, but not how a native speaker would phrase the same thing. The non-teacher is probably going to be less able to quickly think of a more appropriate phrase, as well as showing you a few different contexts in which it can be used. It almost certainly won't occur to them to then steer the conversation in a way that actually forces you to use the new phrase in a real conversation, helping future retention. And people not trained in teaching (and some that are) have a habit of trying to teach you language by explaining it to you, which is generally a recipe for disaster. I'm not suggesting that there's not great value to be had from simply speaking to native speakers, but it's different from a one-on-one tuition session with proper feedback. I'm also pointing out that just because you have a teacher doesn't mean that you can't call the shots in terms of what you talk about during your sessions. In fact, this is the best way to do it, because that's how you get the language to talk about the things you actually want to discuss. Simply chatting to a native speaker is useful but in a different way. Personally, if I was going to go down this route, I'd do both at the same time. Use a professional tutor for decent feedback and a conversation partner to practice the things I learned in my tutor sessions. I'd also wonder how much cheaper a non-teacher would be than a teacher anyway. I can't imagine many people are going to give their spare time away for significantly less than they earn in their day job, and given that language teachers aren't particularly well paid in the first place, I doubt you'd get a huge discount by paying a non-teacher to chat to you. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4495 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 75 of 116 17 November 2013 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes? That still consists of lots of drilling and exercises in classroom situations. I'm not saying it's not effective, more that many people here won't enjoy that sort of thing. Eventually people do get a lot of fluency, the question is whether you could use that time more effectively than "repeat this material 100 times over until you want to barf". I am not sure that is conducive to good motivation within students, but for what it is designed to do, yes, it is useful. What I'm arguing here is that people who want to learn languages on their own and don't have the luxury of enrollment will do better by self-study than by classroom teaching. FSI drilling is a different ballgame and you know that. Edited by tarvos on 17 November 2013 at 7:30pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 3961 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese | Message 76 of 116 17 November 2013 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
When was the last time you were in a language classroom? Drilling is generally used minimally nowadays. It's certainly no longer common for the teacher to listen to each student say every new piece of language before moving on. I can't comment on the FSI, but I'd be very surprised if the bulk of their lessons wasn't proper communication with creative free practice with the language. And based on the ones I've used, the self-study software relies extremely heavily on drilling and behaviourist techniques that have taken something of a back seat in the last 30 years in (good) classrooms. There's absolutely no scope to deviate from exactly what you've been told to say in these programs. I like Pimsleur, but there's nothing even vaguely creative involved. You're just being drilled for fluency and pronunciation of set phrases. Which is why it should ideally be supplemented with conversation practice where you can play around with what you've learned more freely. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4495 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 77 of 116 17 November 2013 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
The last time I was in a classroom was a year ago, and that was at the AF - where drilling was not used. But that had the trouble of conversations with other people who are equally bad at the language, which is also not something I enjoy particularly and is expensive. I did not know that the FSI had changed in the meanwhile. I also have never used Pimsleur. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 3961 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese | Message 78 of 116 17 November 2013 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not sure it has, I just assume it has, because I'd assume they'd be up to date with the latest research in second-language acquisition. Pimsleur's just one example. I've also used Michel Thomas and Assimil, but by their very nature, these products don't let you be creative and deviate from the language presented. Anyway, here's an interesting blog post from Scott Thornbury about his 90 minute conversation sessions in Spanish with a non-teacher. I think the key aspect is the note taking and subsequent feedback, rather than just the conversation itself. Edited by I'm With Stupid on 17 November 2013 at 7:55pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6385 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 79 of 116 17 November 2013 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6385 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 80 of 116 17 November 2013 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
1 person has voted this message useful |
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