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Fixing fossilized, critical errors | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Volte Triglot Pro Member Switzerland Joined 1037 days ago 2909 posts - 167 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Esperanto Studies: Latin, German, Japanese, Polish Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 24 18 August 2007 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been asked to help another language learner with Italian. This person has a somewhat small but workable vocabulary, and can manage everyday tasks and communication in Italian. However, she makes some extremely serious grammatical errors, such as treating verb conjugations interchangeably (ie, 'sono' (I am) instead of 'era' (he/she was)), which sometimes causes quite a lot of confusion, and certainly doesn't please her. She also makes more minor ones, such as treating grammatical gender as entirely arbitrary, skipping grammatical concords of gender and number, wrong/missing/extra prepositions, etc. This goes as far as changing the last vowel on people's names, when she doesn't do anything of the sort in English.
Background: she's been learning Italian, on and off, for over 25 years. She's taken a number of courses, lived in an Italian-speaking area for most of a decade, has a large amount of access to native speakers, etc. Despite this, she was entirely unfamiliar with even the concept or name of the subjunctive when I happened to mention it a few months ago. Extensive reading isn't an option, due to physical constraints. Pure exposure doesn't seem to be enough either. Beliefs about being incapable of language-learning seem to play a role. She hasn't stuck with either Assimil or Michal Thomas, and to the extent that she used them, she generally didn't speak out loud or shadow, despite repeated encouragement to do so. I'm frankly at a bit of a loss of what to suggest. Her comprehension is quite good, though not 100% perfect; she can, and has, read books, watched TV shows, had long conversations, etc. The major problem is her output. How can she improve it, and stop treating major parts of the Italian language as absolutely arbitrary in ways which they are not? This is a matter of significant importance to her, so there is at least some motivation on her part to do so; assuming that motivation isn't the major problem, what techniques would help? | |||
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 957 days ago 550 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 24 18 August 2007 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | ||
If she wants to start speaking correctly, I imagine she'll need to start speaking correctly aloud. This entails not only absorbing correct sentences, but producing them. If she isn't willing to repeat already-grammatically correct phrases, it will be difficult for her to learn to produce them on her own - particularly with a lifetime of saying things her own (incorrect) way. | |||
 Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 1375 days ago 503 posts - 6 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 24 18 August 2007 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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A fossilized error is the same as a bad habit. In order to fix it, first it must be recognized. Then it must be replaced with a correct form.
So, first of all, is the learner capable of fixing her own errors? Does the learner know what the errors are and what the correct usage is? If so, then the learner needs to remain aware of what is coming out and be willing to stop and fix it right away. If not, then the learner needs to allow others to correct her and she must repeat the correct usage while making a mental note or even a physical note. If the learner is not accepting of corrections, then my last suggestion won't work. | |||
| Volte Triglot Pro Member Switzerland Joined 1037 days ago 2909 posts - 167 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Esperanto Studies: Latin, German, Japanese, Polish Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 24 19 August 2007 at 6:30am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for the advice, Keith; I like your definition of fossilized error, and it's given me some things to think about. The learner knows how to correct -some- of the errors. For instance, I'm fairly confident that she knows the difference between sono, sei, siete, etc. I'm less confident that she knows how to correct many of the more minor ones. I'm also less confident that she'd be able to consistently pick the right tense at present, even ignoring mood (ie, the subjunctive). Her active use of Italian is primarily in the form of conversation, almost always with native speakers, where having her stop to correct errors would work, barely, if they were rare. Given that it tends to take her a matter of seconds to think of the right form, and there are usually quite a few mistakes per sentence, it's not entirely feasible to do it this way. She allows corrections, occasionally repeats them, and then goes on to make the same mistake, often within a minute, as if the correction had no impact, the majority of the time. I wonder how trying to combine the above approaches would work - ie, to walk her step-by-step through some basic constructs, in a Michael-Thoman-like way, insisting on oral responses, asking her to think, go slowly, and, when necessary, making corrections. | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 1301 days ago 3473 posts - 491 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Latin, Norwegian, Esperanto, Russian, Icelandic, Albanian, Gaelic (Irish), Serbian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 24 19 August 2007 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Without being too provocative (I hope) I would say that Volte's acquintance is a good exemple of what can happen when a language learner totally ignores grammar during his/her learning process, relying solely on subconscious processes to sort out the problems . When the person has become sufficiently good at communicating it may seem like an insult to suggest that he/she needs to revert to an earlier phase to correct an error, but it may still be the case.
There are errors that just concern one word or expression, and these can be corrected by being conscious of the problem AND correcting it every time it occurs. However errors that concern wide areas of the language have to be treated as such, and that means formulating the problem in syntactical terms. Of course the important thing is not to learn the terminology itself, but to give the problem a label and refer to the rules that have been formulated about the correct use of the language. For instance you have to introduce the notion of grammatical gender to make sense of where to use -a and -o, - it is no longer enough just to wait for nature to run it due course and expect thing to sort themselves out. After all the present state is a result of waiting for that to happen, and it didn't happen. I'm not saying that the person has to relearn the whole grammar, but if he or she doesn't want to take a more technical, detailed look at what is wrong then there is not much hope of changing those bad habits. Edited by Iversen on 19 August 2007 at 12:33pm | |||
| therumsgone Diglot Groupie United States frodolives.wordpress Joined 1135 days ago 71 posts Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, German, Italian | Message 6 of 24 19 August 2007 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | ||
I think this lack of shadowing and speaking out loud may be what is causing some of the problem. I noticed a huge difference in my Spanish when I started saying everything out loud. For me, there was a difference between constructing my own grammatically imperfect Spanish and repeating correct Spanish. | |||
| Zhuangzi Nonaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Canada lingq.com Joined 1626 days ago 646 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, French, Japanese, Swedish, Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 24 19 August 2007 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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People have poor habits because they do not notice the language when they hear it. This ability needs to be developed.
It is very difficult to correct people when they speak. In my experience they just go back to whatever habit is ingrained. I also find the study of grammar rules not tremendously beneficial unless combined with a meaningful context. Ask your friend to write, or even to say things , record them and transcribe them. Correct the writing. That is a footprint of her speaking pattern. Highlight every incorrect phrase, and change it into a correct phrase. Deal with phrases, not words. Explain why, in this phrase or that, a certain form of the word is used. Ask her to learn these phrases. Ask her to read the corrected text out loud 5 times. Ask her to focus on phrases. Ask her to look for similar phrases when reading or listening, to start noticing these patterns in meaningful contexts. Tell her that it is not a matter of learning rules, but of training her brain to naturally produce correct phrases. Her will power , her determination to change, will greatly influence success, as will a routine of practice that leads to her noticing the phrases when she hears them and reads them. If she can train a new series of networks in her brain she will gradually speak more naturally or more correctly. It is not a matter of her being wrong, or unintelligent, but rather a matter of activities of neurons in her brain that she can influence through certain practice routines and will power. The conjugation tables and rules can play a small supplementary part in this transformation of her brain, but only a minor part, in my view. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Triglot Pro Member Switzerland Joined 1037 days ago 2909 posts - 167 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Esperanto Studies: Latin, German, Japanese, Polish Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 24 19 August 2007 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Zhuangzi: Excellent post. It mirrors a bit of what I've observed and thought, very coherently, and puts together some concrete ideas where I'd previously had vague ones. I'll give it a try. Do you have any suggestions on how to present corrections without her feeling that her output was 'wrong', which can and does distract her from learning correct versions?
Iversen: I didn't consider your points provocative. For what it's worth, she didn't ignore grammar during the learning process, to the best of my knowledge - at least, not entirely. If anything, I think that her use, and perhaps even knowledge, of correct grammar has gone down while her ability to actually use the language has increased, as she shifted from studying it and about it to using it with only occasional study. I agree that there's some value in detailed, technical approaches, and I may suggest this to her to a limited degree; the major problem with taking this as a large part of the approach is that I really doubt she'd do it. To the best of my knowledge, she's no fan of abstract models of any sort - even using them, much less building them. (That is - I think that the occasional table of conjugations, and explicitly discussing verb tenses has value, but I'd be extremely surprised if something like your excellent outline of how you approach grammar would work for her). FSI, therumsgone: I've found shadowing a huge help personally. Right now, it's not uncommon for her to change sentences to an incorrect form even while repeating them. Creating entirely correct sentences will take a better grasp of the grammar than she currently has; it's the desired end result, but probably not a feasible current step. I think input is important, but she's had a lot of "premature output" for a pure input or repeating approach to be successful, as evidenced by the fact that she's had a significant amount of input over a period of -years- and still makes such extremely serious mistakes. She's found shadowing off-putting as she has a fairly strong accent - it's not problematic (to her, or in communication with her), nor her focus, but it makes it very difficult for her to shadow, as her vowels, prosody, etc, are quite different from a native Italian speaker's. Thanks to all of you for your advice! |
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