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Observing your own children learn | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Vlad Trilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member Czechoslovakia foreverastudent.com Joined 6365 days ago 443 posts - 576 votes  2 sounds Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese | Message 1 of 2 29 October 2007 at 7:41am | IP Logged |
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Professor Arguelles,
I know there are more and more questions that are being asked, so maybe you will not have time to answer mine, but: Now that you are teaching your own children such different languages and are also seeing how their natural language acquisition process is going, did you observe anything in the way that they learn that could be of any help to language learning in general? in other words, what are the key features of the way that children learn so fast and in such a perfect way (especially the pronunciation) ? you are a language professional so I'm really excited to see your point of view. Thank you and best regards Edited by Vlad on 29 October 2007 at 7:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7037 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 2 of 2 04 November 2007 at 7:42pm | IP Logged |
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The key feature of the way my sons learn languages is the fact that they are curious about everything and have prejudgments about nothing. Ardaschir (going on 5) loves to draw symbols and shapes, and so he enjoys writing Chinese characters and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Avaldamar (2 1/2) is more inclined to rhythms and musicality, so he loves chanting the beautifully inflecting patterns of Latin grammar with me. They are not worried about the fact that they are simultaneously undertaking the study of many different and difficult languages. They have no concept of this. They are only pursing that which interests them. It interests them because it interests me, and this raises the principle of imitation in effective learning. It is also obvious to me that a principle of competition is also an effective motivator in learning as Avaldamar wants to do things with me that are beyond him simply because he sees me doing them with Ardaschir, and if I want to get Ardaschir to do anything, all I need to do is mention that Avaldamar seems to be better at that doing that thing. The principle of comparison has already come into play for Ardaschir in terms of French, Latin, and Spanish as he thrills at discovering similarities between them. They do not yet have much patience for listening to languages that they do not understand at all, but they sometimes ask me to play such and such a “funny” language, and indeed the principle of humor and enjoyment is very obvious in their learning. I would emphatically say that they possess a good many identifiable and favorable features as language learners, features that we unfortunately outgrow as we age. Strangely enough, however, I have not observed that the initial pronunciation of new and different sounds appears to be markedly easier for them than it is for older learners.
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