Can they handle the truth?

[fluffyhamster]

Are you a student? - Yes, I'm taking the Discourse Analysis evening classes with Professor Lalo Schiffrin.

Now you're showing your age, Fluffy. I thought only old farts like myself would know who Lalo Schiffrin is, not to mention apparently appreciate his stuff. I've got some great old LP's with some of his best work. I know he's still around, but suspect few people under the age of 40 have heard of him.

Well, movies such as Dirty Harry, Enter the Dragon and Mission Impossible would've introduced his work even to younger audiences.

I checked out his website and saw he was the arranger for the '3 Tenors' concert; I also discovered that there is only one 'f' in his surname, so no relation to Deborah.

[lolwhites]

I just came out of my Advanced class and though I don't have any gems of bizarre English that Metamorfose asks for, they had some pretty bizarre grammar explanations for me e.g.

You should say "My train will leave at one" because it's the future.
No, you should say "My train leaves..." because it's a fact.
Teacher, which one is better?
Is it better to say "my train" or "the train"?

Basically they've been taught in the "There Is One Best Grammatical Way To Say It" school of thought. These guys are supposed to be sitting CAE this June...

N.B. these errors are for illustrative purposes only and I don't plan to write any books about them

[Metamorfose]

I think I got it, let me make it clear that I asked this for didatical reasons, not to amuse or print it and make fun of them, I just wanted to see what kind of problem you face on your daily task, soon I'll start teaching the 'some' x 'any' affair to an intermediate group, how long it will take will mainly depend on how much they have been taught (and how much I will take to re-arrange some thinghs.)

José

[lolwhites]

I know you did, Meta, hence the

[LarryLatham]

Basically they've been taught in the "There Is One Best Grammatical Way To Say It" school of thought.

Unfortunately for them, this is a very large school. Teacher training as it is done presently, it would seem, leaves a great deal to be desired.

Larry Latham

[Metamorfose]

Unfortunately for them, this is a very large school. Teacher training as it is done presently, it would seem, leaves a great deal to be desired.

That's why we are here! Trying to make sense and find a way forward, in the future people will look back at us and will try to find other ways to carry on from the point we ventured

No-one said it will be easy and I know a lot has to be done, sometimes I simply want to blow it, sometimes I am quite hopeful that we are pushing new frontiers

José

[woodcutter]

As a rule, teachers adopt a special tone of voice reserved for talking down to people. I have never heard a student copy it. They can blot some things out.

A direct method school has nearly 100 per cent student communication with a native speaker, correcting mistakes. The question should hopefully be natural, and the answer should be natural, apart from sometimes being extended in an unnatural way in order for practice to be gained with new items.

In the mainstream class, there is a lot of talk in groups and pairs, where the input from others is not only highly flawed, but flawed in a similar way to the hearers interlanguage - likely to reinforce mistakes, especially in a monocultural classroom. There also seems to be the idea around that any kind of successful communication in such activities is a positive thing, even though we can get by in a restaurant roleplay by pointing, licking lips and rubbing tummies.

[fluffyhamster]

As a rule, teachers adopt a special tone of voice reserved for talking down to people. I have never heard a student copy it. They can blot some things out.

A direct method school has nearly 100 per cent student communication with a native speaker, correcting mistakes. The question should hopefully be natural, and the answer should be natural, apart from sometimes being extended in an unnatural way in order for practice to be gained with new items.

In the mainstream class, there is a lot of talk in groups and pairs, where the input from others is not only highly flawed, but flawed in a similar way to the hearers interlanguage - likely to reinforce mistakes, especially in a monocultural classroom. There also seems to be the idea around that any kind of successful communication in such activities is a positive thing, even though we can get by in a restaurant roleplay by pointing, licking lips and rubbing tummies.

I'm not sure what your first paragraph is referring to (and don't much care for the sound of it anyway), so I'm picking up/attacking this thread again only from where you've come back into it. Hope that's OK with you. (reassuring wink)

I like the way that 'questions should hopefully be natural, and the answer...apart from sometimes being extended in an unnatural way' (by the teacher) seems to be being assumed to constitute flawless input, which is all ironically (=you yourself didn't actually intend for any amusement to ensue at your expense) with the mainstream class, in which the input from everyone other than the teacher is "flawed". Well, it goes without saying that learners will make mistakes, but there's really no excuse for a native speaker to not get it right. (smug wink)

Yes, multilingual classes offer certain advantages. ("I like being patronized - do you? You've changed me into a duck-billed platitudinous" wink)

No, genuinely communicative approaches pay attention to form as well as functional effect, so orangutan-like behaviour and coping/avoidance strategies (of the language, by the orangutans - not avoidance of orangutans by people) won't occur or be encouraged to the total exclusion of the language in the classroom at least (and besides, what's so hard about ordering some food, unless you want something fancy?). ("You really should read up on the CA sometime" wink).

[lolwhites]

In the mainstream class, there is a lot of talk in groups and pairs, where the input from others is not only highly flawed, but flawed in a similar way to the hearers interlanguage - likely to reinforce mistakes, especially in a monocultural classroom. There also seems to be the idea around that any kind of successful communication in such activities is a positive thing, even though we can get by in a restaurant roleplay by pointing, licking lips and rubbing tummies.

In a class of only 10 students (and mine are more like 20) the only way for the students to get in enough speaking practice is to work in groups or pairs. It also draws them more reserved students out of their shells as it's easier to speak up in a small group than in front of a crowd. Not all of their input will be from a native speaker, however they can check on each other and ask me for clarifications ("Teacher, Yoko said 'X'. Is that correct?"). Successful communication is indeed a positive thing; the student who is obsessed with accuracy to the point of hardly saying a word in case it's wrong will never progress in speaking. Unless your sole interest is accuracy and hang fluency, there are very good pedagogical reasons for group and pair work. If I'd been taught that way it might not have taken be 8 years to develop any confidence in speaking Spanish.

Earlier Woody chided some of us for our "behaviouralism". Now he seems to be suggesting that the students should only get their input from the teacher, who says things correctly, and not from each other as they might pick up each other's mistakes. How much more behaviouralist can you get?

[fluffyhamster]

Earlier Woody chided some of us for our "behaviouralism". Now he seems to be suggesting that the students should only get their input from the teacher, who says things correctly, and not from each other as they might pick up each other's mistakes. How much more behaviouralist can you get?

Also overlooked is the fact that the students might in fact sometimes (be able to) correct each other, or, if not always correct, at least help rather than hinder each other.

That being said, if you want to learn a language from scratch, or improve beyond a certain point, a large classroom probably isn't the best place to go or remain in. Self study (early on at least, to help plant "seeds"), (then followed and in conjunction with) 1-2-1, immersion, and romance (genuine "1-2-1 immersion" LOL! ) are more the ways to go, I feel. The classroom is ultimately a bit of an "intermediate trap" (based on "tourist trap" formation processes/metaphors), perhaps.

[LarryLatham]

A question for you, gentlemen:

When students practice speaking in a classroom, exactly what is it that they are suppose to be practicing?

Larry Latham

[fluffyhamster]

"Ideally", the actual language as it is spoken, not an abstraction of it. Achieving this necessarily involves paying attention to real patterns in connected discourse, and arranging (that) the learners (are familiar with the thus analyzed language text) so that they can go onto practise in similar social arrangements (number of people, proximity, turn-taking, script itself etc).

The short answer from all this is, basically, that they are practising to speak as they should in the real world (or as closely as possible). To add a "Dogme" quality of allusion, rehearsal, improvisation, yelling "cut" as well as "action" to allow breaks, and retakes are all fine to do, but amidst all this there should be at least one performance of which we could say, "That's a wrap, print it".

To move from movie to printing allusions, it would be satisfying for the "scriptwriter" at least if "print" of the movie bore a close resemblance to the original script/screenplay: it would certainly assist in the printing of a mass-market screenplay to accompany any release of the actual filmed and completed movie (replete with soundtrack that people like to see reproduced exactly, and themselves often also memorize sizeable chunks of).

BTW the "scriptwriter" isn't ultimately the teacher but the English language!

[LarryLatham]

"Ideally", the actual language as it is spoken, not an abstraction of it. Achieving this necessarily involves paying attention to real patterns in connected discourse

Really? This sounds awfully good, but think about it a bit more. Think about the way native speakers actually converse. Are we asking our students to practice that...precisely?

Larry Latham

[Lorikeet]

A question for you, gentlemen:

When students practice speaking in a classroom, exactly what is it that they are suppose to be practicing?

Larry Latham

I presume you'll let me answer this, Larry, even though I wouldn't classify myself as a gentleman. . When I have my students speak together in class, my goal is communication. I want them to be able to understand each other. I want them to be able to get across their ideas. I want them to learn how to figure out why someone else isn't understanding, and how to do what's necessary to make them understand. I do different things in my classroom, but once a week I have them discuss a topic in groups of three for about 20 minutes. The goal is purely communication.

[lolwhites]

What do I want them to practise? Lots of things:

Conversational interaction, transactions, fluency, confidence, pronunciation...

Most of all I want then to get used to the idea of speaking for an audience - not just repeating phrases but speaking to someone who needs to understand them and understanding the anwer back. Negotiation of meaning is what it's sometimes called.