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Adopt a language parent - literally? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6392 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 9 of 12 20 February 2014 at 12:46am | IP Logged |
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How is it possible that I agree with both of you? :D
Anyway, when I speak about natural learning, I guess I need to underline more clearly that it's about comfort rather than ease. Effort and mindfulness rather than strain and pressure. I'm only wary of those who speak about learning naturally/like a child if they are selling something, really. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5561 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 10 of 12 20 February 2014 at 2:03am | IP Logged |
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Easy, we don't agree in principle, just in the way we emphasize certain points. And because I'm right. :P
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6498 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 11 of 12 20 February 2014 at 1:54pm | IP Logged |
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The thread started out asking whether it was a good idea to get a 'language parent'. For adults such persons would normally be called 'mentors', but whatever you call them it simply must be better to have one-to-one conversations with a qualified native (or near-native) speaker then it is to share the same person's attention with twenty other students displaying vastly different degrees of commitment and skills. The one thing which 'parent' suggests beyond the 'mentor' term is that your conversations should be simple and childlike, and I don't think that's a good idea if you see yourself as a cultivated reasonably savvy adult person.
The preceding messages have diverged in another direction, namely mainly conscient versus mainly inconscient (or 'natural') learning. OK, children don't know a thing about grammar, but they can't drive cars or write essays either. Maybe they remember better than me, but I analyze better then they do. So I'll just see the stuation from an adult learner's angle. An extreme conscious learning process would consist of dictionaries and grammars and phonetical analysis sessions, and at best it would result in eminent linguists with poor practical skills - simply because you can't construct idiomatically and situationally correct phrases fast enough for practical conversations, and the sources I listed simply don't give all the relevant information (or at least it would be spread over a whole library of books and articles). A moderately conscious learning process uses both dictionaries and grammars to prepare you in ways that makes it possible for you to deal with genuine materials in your target language. This is not just a question of knowing some word meaning beforehand, but also knowing what to look for in the way sentences are constructed, atypical or idiomatical uses of words etc. So here the emphasis is not on constructing things directly from words + rules, but rather on letting conscious knowledge become automated by applying it on practical language samples and use in practical situations. And there is certainly a large amount of inconscient absorption going on during this process too, but mostly within the limits set by the things you have learnt consciously. I belong in this category, hurray. And I didn't even need a magical hat to put me there... A moderately inconscient learning process would primarily be based on concrete texts and podcasts and TV and films and babbling teachers, but with frequent recourse to structured tools like grammars and dictionaries. The use of anki and wordlists and green sheets and all the other things I use to make my language skills conscious would however be kept to a minimum. I think much modern pedagogics has tried to move in this direction, with mixed results. My guess is that you need a lot of exposure to use this strategy efficiently (especially with exotic languages), and also that you may end up with less passive knowledge, but more training in using the things you do know. And finally there is the fanatically inconscient learning process, where you deliberately avoid using the formal tools and techniques you have at your disposal, but instead try to learn like a child. The child learns single pieces of information from practical situations and then proceeds to forming rules with either very limited OR very wide scope, and as these hypotheses are sequentially shot down or clash with competing rules some kind of inconscient rule based system arises (like in the mathematical discipline called chaos theory). However I personally fail to see why this process should run more better just because you refuse to consider information sources which would resolve most of your doubts on the spot. Maybe kids have to do it that way, but they also spend all their time during several years to form the requisite inconscient system - and they loose most of their neural connections in the process. So I can see some kind of sense in a moderate semi-natural strategy, but no reason at all for emulating the learning process of a child in every respect. So are 'language parents' a good thing? My answer is that as an adult it would be better to get a cultivated mentor, but you have to be quite lucky (or rich AND lucky) to find the right person. And if the pupil in question turned to be me, votre humble serviteur, then even a mentor would have to be somewhat linguistics savvy because I would ask for information in terms inspired by my previous studies. Or in other words, I would be a nuisance... Edited by Iversen on 20 February 2014 at 2:06pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4961 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 12 of 12 20 February 2014 at 2:48pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you for the lucid analysis, Iversen. I mostly stick to type II when learning
exotic languages and to type III when learning languages with a heavy vocabulary discount (should we create a word for this?) or after reaching an intermediate level for the exotic ones. On the other hand, much of the 'unconscious' learning I do is only possible after years of average, indirect readings on linguistics, especially phonetics and morphology. For example, if I read a sentence ქალის კაბა and I know that ქალი means woman, I don't need to explicitly read that 'Georgian is a left-branching language'. Multiply this to a much larger extent for when you get loads of sentences with literal followed by proper translations in an Assimil book, and you'll have an idea of how much of a boost someone with a background on linguistics has. We who have been on languages for too long usually don't realize that. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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