Job Discussion Forums

[jfurgers]

Excellent point Is650. I get frustrated sometimes when my students always think that they need to go back and take more grammar classes whenever they feel like they aren't understood or that their speaking skills aren't getting better because of the fact that they sometimes have difficulty talking at work.

Recently however some of the students have been telling me that they want to focus only on speaking because they KNOW that their knowledge of grammar is fine.

Every area is important.

[TheLongWayHome]

I'm not saying that sweating through grammar rules will help students to speak. This is high school style language 'learning'. There are ways to incorporate grammar without rolling in and saying, 'Today we're going to study every rule of the present perfect'. It comes down to how you present it. Fluency comes from a sound knowledge of structure, not the practice of 'fluency'.

Critical to language learning, or the learning of any new skill is the process you use to learn it.

[jfurgers]

We have to agree to disagree on your last point that fluency comes from a sound knowledge of structure, not the practice of fluency. Fluency comes from speaking in natural, real life situations, NOT from grammar and sitting in a class with a book in front of you.

Little kids can speak before they ever take a grammar class. They HEAR the language over many years in a natural, real life setting. So many students think the same. OH!!!! I have to learn the structure and AFTER that my speaking will be beautiful.

Not true. I see it again and again at the college. EVERYTIME the result is the same. You don't need a Ph.D to SEE that students need a real life situation where they can practice conversation.

Real life situations aren't always structured and hardly ever follows a set pattern like you'll find in a classroom which is why so many students develop a false sense of confidence and why they feel bad once they are put in a real life situation and all of their knowledge of the structure and rules fail to help them.

Take Bruce Lee for example. He was basically a street fighter who would take pieces of the different martial arts and conbine them. He realized that practitioners of a particular system followed PATTERNS so he developed a system that followed no pattern.

One of the reasons he was able to take out guys who had been practicing a certain style for 40 years was because they didn't know how to respond to his style that followed no pattern.

In other words, the systems that followed paterns, he would say, would get you killed in REAL LIFE. He said the system you study must work in a REAL LIFE situation on the streets.

Same with students. They don't know how to respond to people talking in real life because they have spent all of their time in a classroom having a book in front of them instead of practicing some real life English with native speakers.

My point, Grammar alone will never help one speak a language in real life. They have to go out and eat with a native speaker, Discuss politics or religion or other hot topics that people talk about in real life if they ever want to speak.

"The things we have to learn before we do them, we learn by doing them". - Aristotle

"The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet." - Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield

[geaaronson]

I would like to throw my few words in.

The essential problem, as Phil K sees it, is that there may be an essential dichotomy between a student's book learning of English with all its arcane rules and the spoken language. Yes, there is sometimes a difference and for those of you who hold multiple degrees, and I include myself as one of them, the ability to perform in our chosen fields does not necessarily complement the level of our academic achievements. Just check out Donald Trumps past TV shows in which several episodes those without advance business degrees surpassed those with them.

I have seen many an incompetent boss or colleague with PHd credentials
whose arse and elbow were misplaced.

When working in Merida for a language school I found the solution to K's problem, namely also test the students for their conversational abilities. This was done at the end of the term by a teacher from another classroom so there would be no charges of favoritism.

[TheLongWayHome]

[MO39]

I think we all basically agree on what will help our students to learn to communicate effectively in English, but, perhaps due to our different experiences as teachers, we end up empasizing different parts of the learning process. Except for very young children, who are often able to pick up a second language by just being exposed to it, I firmly believe that language learners need both an understanding of grammatical and phonetic structures and opportunities to use them, both in the classroom and in real-life situations.

That's how I learned Spanish, though I had to wait till the summer after my junior year in college to encounter the language in real-life situations, when I went to Mexico to study at the UNAM. At first, it was difficult to hold conversations with my new Mexican friends and the family I was living with. By the end of the summer, when I was able to hold a telephone conversation in Spanish on a public phone on a noisy street in Mexico City, I realized how much I had accomplished in a little over two months! But without the firm foundation of grammar and vocabulary I had acquired in high school and college, I don't believe that this would have been possible.

[jfurgers]

Points taken long way home and Mo39. I hope I didn't sound like grammar isn't important. I'm focusing on the area I work with which is conversation and pronunciation skills. ALL areas are important. Classroom is necessary for writing, reading, pronunciation, and yes even conversation.

I just think that conversation is the one area that needs to be practiced in the classroom and some real life situations (if possible) outside of the classroom.

[MO39]

I agree completely!

[jfurgers]

I try so hard to help my students with conversation because they need it so much since they're living and working in the States and the thing that really bothers me is that they really think that they should be able to speak after one semester.

They feel bad when after a semester they can't communicate the way they want with the North Americans and I try to explain to them that learning another language takes years, especially the speaking part.

My wife studied for years in DF and still couldn't speak well, but now since she's been living and working in the States for ten years she speaks great. The accent is still there but she can now communicate with us Gringos.

She still has many mistakes when she writes because she hasn't taken many writing courses sine she's been here. I'm hoping our move to DF within the next two months will help me speak better Spanish. I can speak bad broken Spanish but I can't get into a political or religious debate in Spanish.

[MixtecaMike]

It's no big dichotomy, practice what you want to do. If you want to speak a language, concentrate on speaking, prefereably with native speakers. If you want to do well in your exam that has loads of multiple choice grammar and vocab questions, well practice that kind of exercise. If you want to clean somebody's mother's house for a dollar an hour then practice giving a big smile and saying "Yes mam" while you clean her filth.

My point earlier inthe discussion was that don't just assume because you as a teacher want to communicate orally then that's all your students will want or need.

[jfurgers]

Point taken.

[Kootvela]

[jfurgers]

My students for the most part tell me they need to work on conversation because they are living and working in the States. But there are some who have plans to go to a university so their focus needs to be on listening and writing.

You have to really know English in order to sit through three hours of lectures in university classes and take notes at the same time. I think we all agree...every area needs to be worked on.

My friend just came back for Korea after staying only three months and he told me that he had to teach grammar, grade papers and then explain to the students why he made the corrections.

Well, he had no idea how to explain to the kids WHY he made the changes or why what they wrote was wrong. He would just tell them, if it sounds wrong then it's wrong. Poor explaination but he has no training in teaching grammar.