Korean Job Discussion Forums

[silver]

I found out this article on the web. It makes some sense to me. How about your opinion? Anybody with the young learners experience?

Teachers often expect children to produce fully formed correct pieces of language but it takes years of exposure to language, mainly listening and speaking, to produce this kind of accuracy, especially in spontaneous talk. When young children first start to speak their own language they naturally speak in meaning chunks � saying one word or one phrase at a time. They do not produce perfectly formed words and phrases. Even native speaking adults � in spontaneous situations � talk in meaning chunks rather than composing full sentences in real time.

It is worth discussing what implications this has for teachers of young learners, e.g. don't insist on full sentence responses.

[Butterfly]

It probably depends on how young the children are, and how strong their filters are. I know there has been some research in different ages, and their responses and ways to learn languages but I cant be bothered to read it to be honest, because I teach adults.


Basically, I'd agree, probably up until 8-9 years old, that teachers should not attack students confidence in learning a language by insisting on perfect sentences.

After that age, people become too aware of themselves to acquire a second language in the same way that they learned their mother tongue, after all that starts pretty much at six months old. A language should then be taught on a structural basis.

But I might be wrong.

[kangnamdragon]

I have said many times that the best way for them to learn is the same way we learned....gradual listening, then speaking, then reading and writing.

[Butterfly]

Not a debate I have the motivation to get into really, I probably should but I've done all the language acquisition studying I'm going to do, and can't be bothered with more.

This is not light reading, but very interesting.

You need Adobe reader.

http://www.cels.bham.ac.uk/resources/essays/Muller2.pdf

The classroom and the home where we learned our first language are very different places with different dynamics, also age is a factor I believe though I'm not sure of the scale where the effective filters come into play.

[kiwiboy_nz_99]

Well, I've done some sla reading too and I disagree. There is no reason not to work with complete sentences, it's very helpful. The only way it would be detrimental is if the students are made to feel uncomfortable if they fail. I don't go for a lot of live time correcting of grammar, but I go for worksheets that present the material thoroughly. Then when the grammar and vocabulary are familiar, there is no problem working with sentences. They don't even have to be spontaneous, they can be memorised dialogue, then on to variations. It's better for students to learn what a correct sentence feels like by saying it, than explaining with a lot of theoretical grammar concepts.

[shevek]