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kiwiboy_nz_99
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Location: ...Enlightenment...
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 Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 4:08 am Post subject: |
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| They labour away at TOEIC and the other advanced books and tapes; |
This is one important aspect of the answer. The TOEIC is a listening comprehension test, the answers are given by ticking multiple choice boxes. It is a truism of languge learning ( and probably all learning ) that the student develops the ability that they are drilled in. In this case, the ability to select multi choice answers when given verbal stimulus is what is being practiced. Needless to say, this has almost nothing to do with the skills of communicating verbally in English.
Another poster made a good comment also, the speed of progress through the "language items" is way too fast. Take for example personal pronouns. There are many many ways that this aspect of language is applied in real English communication, yet most textbooks presume to cover this deep deep item in one unit. Courses need to slow down and go deep into structure and application. Also, language items are separated out for teaching. Maybe there is some necessary practicality in this, but when designing exercises one should be testing for a range of skills, not homing in on one item.
One more thing. Language items usually carry an array of characteristics. One facet that is often missed is collocation, the words which language items are related to. To make a very simple example, it's not enough to know that the word "fun" is non-countable abstract noun. You must know that this noun "collocates" with the verb "have" and "be" but not "do".
Another problem is that ( as educated teachers I'm sure you are all well aware ) whenever a student encounters "comprehensible input" they form or modify a "language hypothesis". So, when a student learns that the noun "sun" can be transformed into the adjective "sunny", and that the root "sun" in "sunny" expresses the same quality of "sun-ness", they form a language hypothesis. Thus we get "Are you funny?". This is a reasonable statement given the language hypothesis that has been formed. It is our job as teachers to assess when a false language hypothesis has been formed, and step in and use grammatical theory to break the erroneous hypothesis. So, it's not enough to say,"No, we say 'Are you having fun?' ". We must highlight how in this particular case the root "fun" in "funny" does not behave like "sun" in "sunny". In this case "funny" means humorous, and is not related to the "fun" of the root word.
"Aquisition" means the natural and instinctive forming of rules through exposure. This is effective and desirable when the rules formed are accurate. "Learning" is the conscious engagement with theoretical rules. We should allow for aquisition where it is working, as it is much more efficient, but we must be able to analyse where a false hypothesis has been formed, and step in with theory to break that false hypothesis.
I feel that language teaching is a much more complex undertaking than we give it credit for, and should be approached at a very deep level. Unfortunately this approach is not supported by our bosses as they have no idea of time that this requires, and they hope to speed their students through to the finishing line. If more solid technical and theoretical foundations were laid in the early years, the student could indeed speed up rapidly in the latter years of learning. Unfortunately there is no provision for the foundations to be laid properly. Anyone who read here will know I'm not christian, but here's an apt little quote for y'all.
"The wise man built his house upon the rock" |
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