|
 |
The "flow" of fluency - by Idahosa Ness | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5231 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 25 of 38 11 December 2011 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
If you look at dialects of Spanish, you will notice all types of phonetic phenomena. And it's the same in English. Just today I was listening to an British accent on the radio and I found it a bit difficult to understand. As I said earlier, the fundamental problem is not so much the actual phonetics but the fact that we are not used to a manner of speaking. I'm sure that certain Britons must find forms of North American English difficult to understand. Edited by s_allard on 12 December 2011 at 6:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5667 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 26 of 38 11 December 2011 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
In Dutch, the n in -en is almost always silent. That is especially challenging for English speakers who "really want" to pronounce those n's to complete the word. And almost every Dutch verb ends with -en in the infinitive, and most nouns form the plural with -en. So it is very common. I am told that Dutch students are taught to pronounce the n. But the only time I seem to hear the n is when Queen Beatrix reads the Throne Speech in the Dutch Parliament. In other words, it is pronounced in very formal and deliberate speech, but rarely in conversation. So I have, with a great deal of difficulty, taught myself to drop the n, but it still sneaks in all too often. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jarvis1000 Diglot Groupie United States want2speakthai.com Joined 4689 days ago 74 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English*, Thai Studies: Spanish | Message 27 of 38 12 December 2011 at 12:16am | IP Logged | |||||
I find this in Thai...I feel part of the issue with Thai at least is that they have 3 levels of vocabulary and conversational vocabulary is a completely different set of words than Formal vocabulary vs the royal. For example, you = Khun(common), Thaan(formal), Pra ong(royal). And its not just a few words. Almost the entire vocabulary changes at each register and does not have a relation to the common register. I don't know if Mandarin or cantonese is the same or not though 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5231 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 28 of 38 12 December 2011 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
It remains to be seen what the long term results will be like, but I signed up to be a beta tester for Brazilian Portuguese. I know that here at HTLAL we see our fair share of kooky ideas. Some people may recall some time ago that young fellow who tried to go without sleep for 72 hours (I think) while listening to Michel Thomas Russian tapes. That experiment quickly crashed and burned.
This Rhythmic Repetition Method seems much more serious and not just some newfangled flash in the pan. There are credible theoretical foundations. The founder is trained in linguistics and in music. And since he actually teaches English, he has the opportunity to actually experiment in the classroom. The initial results seem very encouraging. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5812 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 29 of 38 12 December 2011 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
However, it still exhibits one of the core properties of fads as identified by Wilfried Decoo, in that it "draws its originality and its force from a concept that is stressed above all others." However, with most methods:
However, Ness is throwing out absolutely everything but his core concept. He's throwing out not only the things that don't work in mainstream teaching, but also the things that do. I find this kind of dangerous. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5231 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 30 of 38 12 December 2011 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I will withhold judgment about whether RPT is a fad until I have more evidence. In the meantime I think it's interesting to to see the convergence of this method with the work of Dr Olle Kjellin who is very well known here. I should point out that whereas much of Dr Kjellin's work seems oriented towards correcting improper pronunciation (accent addition not reduction, as he terms it), the RPT method is aimed at beginners. And, of course, RPT places particular emphasis on the use of rhythm. One sees why this approach is somewhat targeted towards musicians and music fans.
Both methods do emphasize the importance of neurological processes in the development of good pronunciation. I will admit to not being able to follow all the technical discussion about the neural pathways, but there is no doubt that Dr Kjillin knows what he is talking about. There is certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence that these methods do work. To wit, here is something I saw on the net about using nursery rhymes to teach American English pronunciation: "Using Nursery Rhymes to Teach American English Pronunciation Patterns October 26, 2009 By susan Nursery rhymes can be fun and effective way to teach American English pronunciation patterns. That’s because nursery rhymes can be used to model the syllable stress, sentence stress and intonation patterns of spoken English. The repetitive nature of rhymes can help adults learn the rhythm of the language that is so important for a natural sounding accent. Rhymes also provide short phrases that can be used to demonstrate linking and reductions. Dr. Olle Kjellin, a neurologist and language teacher from Sweden says that students must repeat a phrase 50-100 times in order to get a phonological “feel” for it. If that’s true, the repetitive nature of rhymes can be used to achieve this in a fun way. Here is the popular nursery rhyme Jack & Jill marked with sentence stress. The CONTENT and FOCUS words are highlighted. JACK and JILL went UP the HILL, To FETCH a pail of WAter; JACK fell DOWN and BROKE his CROWN, And JILL came tumbling AFter. Here it is again marked with sentence stress + the schwa vowel sound in reduced syllables. JACK ən JILL went UP thə HILL tə FETCH ə pail əf WAter JACK fell DOWN ən BROKE his CROWN ən JILL came tumbling AFter American children learn the rhythmic aspects of English using rhymes, songs and poems. These should work for adult learners too." source Edited by s_allard on 12 December 2011 at 6:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fomalhaut Groupie United States Joined 4704 days ago 80 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 31 of 38 12 December 2011 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
yeah the science behind it is solid; do we not do the same thing? Shadowing is a repetition of native speaking to pick up speech patterns and melody, is it not?
this is the same thing, but with music. My German has gotten much better since i've started to listen to rap, and rapping along with it was at first actually physically impossible for my muscles to do, but after practice, it's possible. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5231 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 32 of 38 13 December 2011 at 5:03am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I have just returned from a two-hour workshop in advanced Spanish (C1/C2) level at a local university. It was one of the worst learning experiences in my life. I don't know if that qualifies as mainstream, but it certainly was terrible. There were 7 students including myself. One person hogged the floor for most of the class. The teacher was this very young recent graduate from a Spanish university who was here as some teaching assistant paid by the Spanish government. This young woman had obviously no training in pedagogy and knew nothing about managing a group of adults. After a short examination of verbs SER and ESTAR where most of us learned nothing new, we spent the rest of the time taking turns reading and commenting a newspaper article downloaded from the Net. I kept asking myself: "Why am I here?" What am I learning? The whole thing was such a waste of time, especially since I had to listen to that person next to me go on and on. It was like sitting in on a private class between the teacher and this student. In two hours, I think a spoke a total of 5 minutes. A total waste of my time.
All this made me think that Idahosa's idea of incorporating rhythm and rap into the language learning process can't be worse than what I have just lived through. It would be certainly more fun and probably more useful Edited by s_allard on 13 December 2011 at 3:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
