TWALT is the future

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 10:44 pm

Anyone seen Eddie Izzard's routine about the old fashioned way of learning languages? Plenty of satires on that around!

Londo Molari · Post by **Londo Molari** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 4:16 am

You know what? There is a really naff, pretentious book on language learning out there called 'Joyful Fluency'. I have ranted about it elsewhere in the past. Anyway, it has all the usual nonsense in it that avoids any sort of real language learning. Well, in the section on using props (props, I ask you!) the author states that glasses are good and Groucho Marx ones work best. My arse!

Londo Molari · Post by **Londo Molari** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 4:21 am

Oh and TWALT is not satire! It is far closer to the truth than I would dare to admit!

No, no! They'er after me! It's the ESL Gestapo knocking on my comfy chair! You don't know what they make you do if they catch you! You have to do 'heads shoulders knees and toes' for 4 hours a day, they play the ABC song on a looped tape all night at you on full volume and then you have 'readjustment' sessions where you have to sit ina circle with other detainees and throw a ball to one another saying 'My name is Londo and I love Krashen', 'CLT is the work of genius' - throw ball - 'I renounce grammar translation' 'Chomsky is god...' It gets worse! You have to eat lunch with a group of Japanese elementary school children and pretend that you are enjoying it convincingly....

AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 9:36 am

Perhaps you just need to avoid children? Is grammar translation really the way forward with tiny-tots?

Personally I don't mind playing the goof-ball, except that the students (of all ages) think that I am a right *beep*, and can't see the cunning Krashenite craft in my "chuck the sticky tomato" game. They wound me.

Londo Molari · Post by **Londo Molari** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 1:48 pm

With tiny-tots, no. By definition you can only translate when you have two languages to ork with. Tots don't even have one. So go ahead and knock yourself out with your CLT! BUT toss it out as soon as they enter primary, if not sooner! As soon a they haev skills in one language ten they can do GT in that and another.

Teaching tots. Urgh! What a horrible prospect! Anyway you can say and do what you want - they just look at you vacantly and carry on playing with their plastic bricks.

coffeedecafe · Post by **coffeedecafe** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 9:42 am

Urgh! What a horrible prospect! Anyway you can say and do what you want - they just look at you vacantly and carry on playing with their plastic bricks.[/quote]...

not knowing that the teacher had fiendishly arranged for fortune cookie type slips of paper to be embedded in their clear plastic blocks. on one side is a simple saying in english. on the other is a word in [pick your native language] and the english translation and pronounciation. years later the young student all of a sudden hears a sentence and says, "oh! so that is what that means."
-to walt, with love.

Londo Molari · Post by **Londo Molari** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 3:39 am

They say there's many a true word spoken in jest, and I believe that there is more truth in coffee's attempt at sarcastic humour (which, of course, I never allow myself to be drawn into...) than meets the eye. I wouldn't be surprised if some pseudo-educationalist didn't take your suggestion at face value, make a set of bricks with words on and then sell them for loads o' money! After all, the 'play games, sing songs, in fact do ABYTHING else rather than teach the language explicitly and the language will just be acquired as if by magic'. My hairy arse! Snake oil the lot of it!

Londo Molari · Post by **Londo Molari** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 6:41 am

Right! I now have a patent out on 'Londo's Magic Language Bricks' so it's my idea now even though it isn't. I'm going to tell the Japanese that it will make their kids fluent in English just by playing with them. So, if you are ever on a beach in the tropics and you see a smug guy smoking a huge Cuban cigar, drinking vintage Bollanger and being oiled all over by six dusky local nymphettes...that'll probably be me, and it was all down to yet another language learning con-trick that some poor saps with more money than sense bought into. Well, with all the crap already out there, noone's going to notice another one are they?

coffeedecafe · Post by **coffeedecafe** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 7:23 am

oh, but your pained and contorted and twisted conscience. no wonder you feel the need of healing from 6 dusky nymphettes.
since this may be too heavy a load to carry by yourself, maybe you need a partner- or an initial public offering of shares!

Londo Molari · Post by **Londo Molari** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 2:56 am

Londo Molari · Post by **Londo Molari** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:16 am

UP! Just for Revel!