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excessive reading and writing sentences = pointless
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icnelly

Joined: 25 Jan 2006
Location: Bucheon

Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 2:29 pm Post subject:

postfundie wrote:

Quote:

. Basically, input equals output

in some ways....yessssss I couldn't agree more....but in reading you are only doing input....speaking and being able to handle situations that come up requires that you've had the right input....reading a book doesn't quite give you that....

I guess I don't see reading as only input: what about information indexing, abstracting, personalizing, etc? A great way to practice speaking fluency through reading is to have the students read a story and then retell it in their own words. That's just a simple idea, but I think there are many ways to incorporate reading as a supplement to the primary functional/communicative goals.

Reading is not necessary to learn how to speak L1, and I don't think any writers/resources are saying that it is necessary; I think they tend to say it helps a learner's progression.

Quote:

If only he had a teacher to shove reading down his throat then he could interact with his friends right? or maybe if he would just write more sentences after school then he could watch some movies and understand them???

I know you don't mean this literally, but method does matter, and integrating reading as a step towards cetain goals (active communication, and generative capability) works.

Postfundie, you're right, reading isn't going to be a magic pill for interaction/communication, but neither is the current trend of teaching function. What about functional deficiencies we see teaching day to day right here in Korea? You have students who can say, "My name is ____, I'm fine, and you?", but are lost when you ask them some other simple question.

Edit: early morning additions

postfundie

Joined: 28 May 2004

Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 8:19 pm Post subject:

Quote:

and integrating reading as a step towards cetain goals (active communication, and generative capability) works.

Postfundie, you're right, reading isn't going to be a magic pill for interaction/communication, but neither is the current trend of teaching function. What about functional deficiencies we see teaching day to day right here in Korea? You have students who can say, "My name is ____, I'm fine, and you?", but are lost when you ask them some other simple question.

yeah this is partially what I'm after..reading is no magic pill and in some cases I'd say it's a waste of class time.....even my arch enemy DDebulliesman has stated that book use is often just the appearance of learning taking place......

Consider this if you are taking Korean classes...this is an ivestment of time and money and if some teacher uses that time to have everybody read an article that's in the book...then it irritates the hell out of me....I can read that crap at home in my free time...what I need from her is to listen to what I'm saying and work the weird foreign englishy sh it out of it......like this....to give me replacement vocab for the crap I'm saying wrong.....

As for my illiterate boy example....I don't think you can just attribute it to L1.......

There 's a story out there of some American woman who married and Egyptian and went off to Egypt...the hubby had to go away on a business trip or whatever and he left the wifeey home with his family for 6 months out in the boonies....she had NOOOO English for 6 months...when he came back she was not only fluent but had an Eyptian Arabic accent....during the time she was starved for English but got none of it....my guess is she spent most of her time in listening and interacting, not reading....

Woland or anybody else heard of this story????????? I saw it some older western lady talking about it in a lecture on Korean TV and a fellow teacher said he read an article about it while doing his masters' degree program at Monetery.....

cubanlord

Joined: 08 Jul 2005
Location: In Japan!

Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:19 pm Post subject:

postfundie wrote:

Quote:

I really didn't want to weigh in at first as I wanted several others to input their opinions. Now that is has been done, I will insert facts.

I haven't heard of that story, though, it would be extremely rare to have someone after the age of adolescence become 'fluent', as you say, in a new language. I would love to get a link for this (hint).

There have been isolated cases/experiements where feral people were found and attempts were made to get them to speak the language. Unfortunately after numerous attempts, only a few hundred words were learned by the said people (Read an introduction to language by rodman, fromkin, and hyams for more information).

Someone early references two different sources (Krashen and Elly). Please, do not only insert the citations as those two have numerous publications. Please, give us the source of the information.

Reading is proven to be an effective tool in acquiring a language. SLA researchers such as Gass, Selinker, and Krashen (among so many others) have conducted experiments and have shown that reading does increase one's lexicon and contributes to syntax acquisition. For a recent research experiment on reading and its influence in SLA, I'd recommend the following article which can be obtained for free:

Pigada, M., & Schmitt, N. (2006). Vocabulary acquisition from extensive reading: A case study. Reading in a Foreign Language, 18(1).

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/2b/4b/0f.pdf

THERE REALLY IS NO disputing the power of reading (pardon the pun). Any one of us can attest to the potency of it in our native languages. There are so many things learned in context that it would be assinine to state that reading has no impact on SLA.

Now, this is not to say that you can just hand a beginner a book and say have at it. That is not correct. Copious amounts of vocabulary must first be learned before a person can begin to read. Just like you need to learn to walk before you can run.

SLA follows Krashen and Terrell's (1983) natural order hypothesis, that is (in a nut shell), that langauge is learned in a predictable pattern. The Natural Order Hypothesis � states that �grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable order� (Krashen and Terrell, 1983, p. 28 ). This does not apply to all learners learning a language. Instead, it refers to what the general population experiences during language acquisition.

The morpheme order studies (Gass and Selinker, 2001) reaffirm the natural order hypothesis in great detail in Gass and Selinker's book entitled SLA. These things have been researched to death and have become common knowledge among the educated ESL/EFL community. Note that I say educated as to not include the casual "teacher" in Korea. Rather, I use it to refer to those that are educated in ESL/EFL pedagogy through means of self-study, graduate work, etc.

Gass, S., & Selinker, L. (2001). Second Language Acquisition (2nd ed.) Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Krashen, S., & Terrell, T. (1983). The Natural Approach: Language Acquistion in the classroom. Hayward, California: The Alemany Press.

Pardon my typo's, errors, and poor organization in responding to everyone. I am in a hrry.

postfundie

Joined: 28 May 2004

Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2007 5:41 am Post subject:

Quote:

haven't heard of that story, though, it would be extremely rare to have someone after the age of adolescence become 'fluent', as you say, in a new language. I would love to get a link for this (hint).

There have been isolated cases/experiements where feral people were found and attempts were made to get them to speak the language. Unfortunately after numerous attempts, only a few hundred words were learned by the said people (Read an introduction to language by rodman, fromkin, and hyams for more information).

CL that's a big post and I want to talk about it...but in bits...

Feral people are interesting but most of them die quite quite soon and too much time is spent on getting them to act 'normal' or pottie trained at least so I can see why they wouldn't have time for vocabulary acquisition...

as to the story of the woman in Egypt well I'm still looking for that one...but if and when I or somebody finds it, there should be a lot of points of discussion...

I'm sure that there are other cases of immersion or total immersion as an adult...sounds really rare though....It'd be a great challenge and I'd love to give it a try...yeah

I need to take a look at those other studies you posted on reading....

icnelly

Joined: 25 Jan 2006
Location: Bucheon

Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2007 3:39 pm Post subject:

cubanlord wrote:

postfundie wrote:

Quote:

I really didn't want to weigh in at first as I wanted several others to input 1. their opinions. Now that is has been done, I will insert facts.

2. I haven't heard of that story, though, it would be extremely rare to have someone after the age of adolescence become 'fluent', as you say, in a new language. I would love to get a link for this (hint).

There have been isolated cases/experiements where feral people were found and attempts were made to get them to speak the language. Unfortunately after numerous attempts, only a few hundred words were learned by the said people (Read an introduction to language by rodman, fromkin, and hyams for more information).

Someone early references two different sources (Krashen and Elly). Please, do not only insert the citations as those two have numerous publications. Please, give us the source of the information.

Reading is proven to be an effective tool in acquiring a language. SLA researchers such as Gass, Selinker, and Krashen (among so many others) have conducted experiments and have shown that reading does increase one's lexicon and contributes to syntax acquisition. For a recent research experiment on reading and its influence in SLA, I'd recommend the following article which can be obtained for free:

Pigada, M., & Schmitt, N. (2006). Vocabulary acquisition from extensive reading: A case study. Reading in a Foreign Language, 18(1).

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/2b/4b/0f.pdf

THERE REALLY IS NO disputing the power of reading (pardon the pun). Any one of us can attest to the potency of it in our native languages. There are so many things learned in context that it would be assinine to state that reading has no impact on SLA.

Now, this is not to say that you can just hand a beginner a book and say have at it. That is not correct. Copious amounts of vocabulary must first be learned before a person can begin to read. Just like you need to learn to walk before you can run.

SLA follows Krashen and Terrell's (1983) natural order hypothesis, that is (in a nut shell), that langauge is learned in a predictable pattern. The Natural Order Hypothesis � states that �grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable order� (Krashen and Terrell, 1983, p. 28 ). This does not apply to all learners learning a language. Instead, it refers to what the general population experiences during language acquisition.

The morpheme order studies (Gass and Selinker, 2001) reaffirm the natural order hypothesis in great detail in Gass and Selinker's book entitled SLA. These things have been researched to death and have become common knowledge among the educated ESL/EFL community. Note that I say educated as to not include the casual "teacher" in Korea. Rather, I use it to refer to those that are educated in ESL/EFL pedagogy through means of self-study, graduate work, etc.

Gass, S., & Selinker, L. (2001). Second Language Acquisition (2nd ed.) Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Krashen, S., & Terrell, T. (1983). The Natural Approach: Language Acquistion in the classroom. Hayward, California: The Alemany Press.

Pardon my typo's, errors, and poor organization in responding to everyone. I am in a hrry.

1. I think some facts were presented, but the recent publications you bring are great!

2. Check this qoute from:

http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/printindex.php3?main=fa/critical-period

"In The Age Factor in Second Language Acquisition, David Singleton concedes that in second-language instruction, "younger = better in the long run." But this is a general rule with plenty of exceptions. The exceptions include the 5 percent of adult bilinguals who master a second language even though they begin learning it when they are well into adulthood, long after any critical period has presumably come to a close."

So there is some research and evidence that people master languages after adolescence.

krjames

Joined: 06 Jun 2006
Location: Suncheon

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:05 am Post subject:

For what it's worth, I always felt that reading was a good way to develop conversation. It helps develop a fluency and sense of 'feel'. Someone above mentioned 'automaticity' which is important. In an efl environment reading gives the student the opportunity to spend more time at his/her own pace practising the language. I am surprised how few of my friends read or want to read anything in english. It doesn't seem to have occurred to them that reading a story is a valid exercise. Of course everybody here 'studies' english. (I understand the economic aspects around learning english) I just wish the idea of practising the language was more widespread. I have met many people wanting to practise conversation and saying they don't want to read. Reading is just a part of the learning process, as well as a skill in itself. Like writing. Still can't read a korean kindergarten book... Cheers ps; don't believe the 6 months to fluency story at all!

ajuma

Joined: 18 Feb 2003
Location: Anywere but Seoul!!

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2007 3:10 am Post subject:

I've been trying to encourage my high-level students to read more...novels are ideal, but not "literature" which is often boring and uses archaic lanugage. Any suggestions for some good novels for them? Authors? Titles?

cubanlord

Joined: 08 Jul 2005
Location: In Japan!

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2007 4:36 am Post subject:

icnelly wrote:

1. I think some facts were presented...
2. Check this qoute from:

http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/printindex.php3?main=fa/critical-period

"In The Age Factor in Second Language Acquisition, David Singleton concedes that in second-language instruction, "younger = better in the long run." But this is a general rule with plenty of exceptions. The exceptions include the 5 percent of adult bilinguals who master a second language even though they begin learning it when they are well into adulthood, long after any critical period has presumably come to a close."

So there is some research and evidence that people master languages after adolescence.

Hi Ice,

Yeah, my bad. There were a couple of facts in there. Thanks for the link! I'll read it in a bit.

I wouldn't say 'Master' as it is EXTREMELY rare for an adult to master native-like pronunciation in the language. I guess the label 'master' would depend on what exactly we are talking about (e.g. syntax, semantics, the ability to converse intelligibly, etc.).

cubanlord

Joined: 08 Jul 2005
Location: In Japan!

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2007 4:50 am Post subject:

krjames wrote:

For what it's worth,
I always felt that reading was a good way to develop conversation. It helps develop a fluency and sense of 'feel'.

I can soooooooo attest to this. I must admit, 3 years ago, I had a terrible grasp of English. Sure, I am still not great Laughing

by no means, but man, I really have improved. You should read some of the stuff I used to write! Shocked

The fact is, I never read when I was younger because I always had to worry about where food was going to come from. I always had to worry where we were going to live next (shoot, I was working at the age of 12). I never had anyone at home pushing me to read or further myself. At school (fucking public education in America...), I became a master of learning how to manipulate loop holes in the system, especially when it came to reading in English class (yet, somehow, I STILL managed to get an A or B in English honors Shocked

). Sure, some of it was my fault, but fault also lies in the education system as well. How the HELL can someone pass 10th, 11th, and 12th grade English (honors) with an A or B without reading one freaking book?! Shocked

AND.....I never had to read (well...much) while in the university. It wasn't until a few months before I came to Korea that I realized I really needed to do a complete 180. I started studying English grammar again to make sure I was prepare for the kids here. Then, once I got here, I decided to further my education. So, figure, I have been REALLY reading for...say....the past 3 and a half years. Man.....if I had only read when I was younger....

Anyways, (sorry for the pathetic and boring story) the point is that reading REALLY helps further language development, mostly (from personal experience) at a subconscious level. This is, in my opinion, where true acquisition takes place.

Again, sorry to bore you! Very Happy

icnelly

Joined: 25 Jan 2006
Location: Bucheon

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2007 7:30 am Post subject:

ajuma wrote:

I've been trying to encourage my high-level students to read more...novels are ideal, but not "literature" which is often boring and uses archaic lanugage. Any suggestions for some good novels for them? Authors? Titles?

Here are some links to resource pages with readers (it's a start, right?):

reading resources 1

reading resources 2

I know there are series of published graded readers: these are specifically for EFL/ESL students. Here's a list site from the British Council:

British Council Korea

Also, here is a great link to an article about writing graded readers, but it also goes through the history of readers, types of readers, and current trends/problems:

Writing Graded Readers

ajuma

Joined: 18 Feb 2003
Location: Anywere but Seoul!!

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2007 7:48 am Post subject:

Thanks for the suggestions. I know about the graded readers, but most of them are "classics" which are kind of boring IMHO. I was thinking more along the lines of mystery-type books or romance...but not really the Harlequin type. I need something that will appeal to guys as well as girls. Who is that mystery author that starts his/her titles with letters? If I remember correctly, they're short and filled with dialogue....

cubanlord

Joined: 08 Jul 2005
Location: In Japan!

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:30 pm Post subject:

ajuma wrote:

Thanks for the suggestions. I know about the graded readers, but most of them are "classics" which are kind of boring IMHO. I was thinking more along the lines of mystery-type books or romance...but not really the Harlequin type. I need something that will appeal to guys as well as girls.

Who is that mystery author that starts his/her titles with letters? If I remember correctly, they're short and filled with dialogue....

Oxforrd Bookworm Series is the way to go! They are wonderful books for intermediate level students!

postfundie

Joined: 28 May 2004

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2007 10:52 pm Post subject:

Quote:

I always felt that reading was a good way to develop conversation. It helps develop a fluency and sense of 'feel'. Someone above mentioned 'automaticity' which is important.
In an efl environment reading gives the student the opportunity to spend more time at his/her own pace practising the language.
I am surprised how few of my friends read or want to read anything in english. It doesn't seem to have occurred to them that reading a story is a valid exercise. Of course everybody here 'studies' english. (I understand the economic aspects around learning english) I just wish the idea of practising the language was more widespread. I have met many people wanting to practise conversation and saying they don't want to read.
Reading is just a part of the learning process, as well as a skill in itself. Like writing.
Still can't read a korean kindergarten book...
Cheers

ps; don't believe the 6 months to fluency story at all!
_________________

I get the sense that you are talking out your arsse....reading is fine for higher levels...in that case I'd Never argue against it....A lot of people want to practise conversation because the opportunities to talk to a native speaker who has the patience to listen (let alone any significant amount of time on his or her hands to listen to an extended conversation)to what you are saying and to correct you, are rare and can put a dent in the pocket book....at Kybo and other places are books for all levels with Korean on one side and English on the other.....reading those is a great idea and can help you build your vocabulary....fine and dandy but it's not interaction with a real person who will provide you with correct and more natural sounding sentences to replace the odd ball things foreigners say....

Also have you ever spent six months learning an L2, totally submersed, with ample hours of interaction with people helping you to learn that language???? If not then shut it.....

postfundie

Joined: 28 May 2004

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 12:23 am Post subject:

Quote:

Now, this is not to say that you can just hand a beginner a book and say have at it. That is not correct. Copious amounts of vocabulary must first be learned before a person can begin to read. Just like you need to learn to walk before you can run.

walk before you can run.......this is what irritates me about a lot of the korean classes I take (and lot's of English Text Books..even popular ones I like, for example "Market Leader")....the copious amounts of vocabulary have not been learned and instead teacher kills time by going down the line and having students read out loud......ahhhhhhhh....and the ones who do the reading and even write nice little sentences often can't use them or tell the class what they 've wrote if I ask them....

gypsyfish

Joined: 17 Jan 2003
Location: Seoul

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 1:02 am Post subject:

ajuma wrote:

Sue Grafton

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