What the H is a sentence?

[fluffyhamster]

What diffeerence does it make if Spanish is closer to English unless we are channeling pretty much everything through our L1.

Why the objection to "channeling"? And even if you yourself object to it or are closed to its possible advantages, it is almost certain that it is something students will do; and who isn't surprised, excited, relieved almost when an item in the L2 matches almost exactly soundwise (and obviously meaning-wise!) an item in their L1? It makes (has to make) the learning, the later recall, easier.

Did I need to say all that? And was I the one who brought the subject of Spanish being easier up (in inexplicable support of the strange assertion that it's being easier is "proof" that 'learning language in a classroom is' (has to be?!) 'generally an artificial business')? And am I now the one who now seems to be saying just the opposite, that the differences between languages don't matter just so long as a Direct Method is used?

We all know L2 learning differs from L1 learning in various ways; we also all know that a classroom environment is never quite the natural environment(s) that it seeks to recreate/recontextualize (we are always at least one Russian doll outside the real, core one!); and we all know that some languages may come easier to certain learners for a variety of reasons (the main one probably being the relatedness of their L1 and L2).

The only thing we aren't sure of (well, everyone apart from you it seems, woody), is how to make the SLA efficient - does real language help? That has remained the focus, despite the strange and mystifying directions this thread has sometimes threatened to start going off in.

Learning language in a classroom is generally an artificial business, absolutely unlike 1st language learning, and the fact that Spanish is learned five times faster than Korean by English speakers is iron-clad proof of it, at least for Indo-European tongues.

I'm not sure if Spanish is always learned 5 times faster than Korean by all English speakers, but that surely has more to do with the relative familiarity of Spanish compared to Korean for such learners; and it might also be due to the fact that if Korean is anything like Japanese, there are reams of ever more polite forms of grammar that has helped spawn a whole TKF/SL industry (which is probably in its infancy, and sees no need as of yet to alter its methods). That is, I am wary enough of "communicative" teaching in the west, but am even more wary of it as imported into Asia!

Which brings us to the start of this post again...just thought I'd save you guys clicking back a page.

[fluffyhamster]

I spent 4 months in Mexico. At tht end of it I could chat in bar, after a fashion. I have been two years in Korea, and I am hardly at the same level. This is because I already knew a huge amount of Spanish - ie I knew English (and a little French). My task as an adult learner was to knock the edges off my English and replace them with Spanish ones.

[fluffyhamster]

Anyway, let's not get distracted! We were talking primarily about learning English in/through/as/whatever English, and wondering to what extent it should be consistently presented as a natural language.

Making learners jump through hoops will surely get them thinking that English is so difficult compared to my own language! Why oh why do they insist on saying blah blah when a simple 'Yes' would do?! Ah well, I just have to accept it, <<sigh>>... (If the teacher explicitly states that this is all 'just for practice, people don't really talk like this', I can only imagine what the students might think...which leads me to imagine that teachers don't make it as explicit as they should and/or change their ways, which is precisely the problem, and the point here).

I'm tired of acting like what other teachers choose to do or not do is a huge problem for me personally, but I do feel that a principle is at stake, and am surprised that anyone could miss what that principle is. If there is a gap between the language and the method, there is, I would argue, no approach worth mentioning in sight.

[fluffyhamster]

Please, somebody, anybody (even woody), tell me I'm not turning into the Henry Widdowson of Dave's, pleading away at length about what sometimes might not be, in the final analysis, very much at all!

[woodcutter]

Oh, I was kind of hoping that I could finish, cos there was enough to deal with as it was!

You said before, FH, that the opportunities for constructing sentences would come later in one of your lessons. OK, but then, if you feel, as I do, that extending out sentences is a good thing, it still only amounts to one opportunity missed. The unnatural nature of the process may be a boon - the process can be halfway between "listen and repeat" and a free construction. Therefore the mind must be switched on, and yet there has been an amount of modelling to make use of. You have told me twice now on this thread that it is a waste of time, and I consider my previous post to show a proof that it is not.

Now I grant you, some students do not like to do it. Others, usually nice, studious ones who do well, do not even need to be prompted. I myself, of course, always take every chance I get when I am a student to make a sentence, whether I am parroting or not, rather than say "yeah" and wait a good while for my next chance to open my mouth. Outside of the method school I seldom insist on my students doing it, because language teaching is a very strange profession, certainly not 100% concerned with teaching language in the best and most efficient way possible. If I encounter a problem giving people a helpful kick up the behind, who in this world is going to back me up?

And as I say I feel that as adults we are going through L1 most of the time, and we are seeking little unnatural tricks to speed up the unnatural process. ie Channeling through L1 is indeed to be embraced, especially if the languages are similar. I would have thought that someone like Pinker ought to agree with me, for he believes that our natural abilities to learn have been switched off in our relative dotage! Therefore many of the side issues that may need teaching, currently fashionable in ESL essays, are things that
students bring into the classroom with them and we do not need to spend our valuable time on - L1 and life will account for them. We consistently patronize people and think that we must teach them everything about everything. I will insist to you that method-bred students are not notable for talking funny, yet some methods are certainly incredibly narrow in what they address.

Here in Korea by the way, I am often surrounded by a wife, in-laws, niece and TV all using the native tongue. I converse with them, but they do not set out to help me as they would a child. Without the benefit of any formal instruction, (self-study aside) however, my progress has been painfully slow compared to Mexico, where I lived with various English speaking reprobates. There are many people like me in East Asia, drowning in natural input and going nowhere fast. If I go to a class, I want something more!

Spanish, we can all agree, I hope, is learnt much faster than any Asian tongue by us English speakers, though exactly how much faster is hard to say. If we learn as children learn, from scratch, if we are to "think in the target language", then I do not see why that should be so. Children learn them both at the same rate. OK, perhaps the vocabulary would be easier to get, but that isn't enough. For me it has been 6 times more difficult, at least.

[LarryLatham]

I feel that as adults we are going through L1 most of the time, and we are seeking little unnatural tricks to speed up the unnatural process. ie Channeling through L1 is indeed to be embraced, especially if the languages are similar. I would have thought that someone like Pinker ought to agree with me, for he believes that our natural abilities to learn have been switched off in our relative dotage!

I have been having a little trouble figuring out just what your position is, woody, but now here may be a good clue.

Are you saying that learning a 2nd language as an adult is an unnatural act, no matter how you do it? And is it then your position that since it is unnatural to begin with, it is best done with methods that expose students to unnatural English...under the asumption that students will learn more (practice 'correcter') grammar that way, and will be able to figure out what is natural for themselves later?

Is that what you think?

Larry Latham

But I still have questions! Exactly what do you mean by "going through L1" or "channeling through L1"? Is that another way of saying that students often translate English to their native language? Or that they often learn words by comparing them to words in their L1? Or is it about something else?

[fluffyhamster]

That seems to be what woody's saying to me too, Larry.

I can see your overall point, woody, and if I hadn't read the books I had at the beginning of my career, had had better trainers, were slightly different character-wise, I suppose I could have seen the attraction in it, and I honestly don't think it wouldn't be any great evil if I'd ended up ( ) using methods similar to what you're espousing (and you may recall that, in relation to "relative effectiveness" on the "Atreju", was it, thread, I said that's what important is if your students are satisfied, which as we all know, is often more to do with a good matching of teacher and student and teaching/learning styles than any inherant superiority in the method). But, "unfortunately", that didn't happen for me in the course of my career. I sometimes wish it had, because (and please don't take this the wrong way!), I think it would've made things a lot easier for me. (Who knows, I might've been a teacher trainer by now!).

The thing that really caught my eye in your post was the word 'patronize':

We consistently patronize people and think that we must teach them everything about everything.

I know that you are saying that it is patronizing to think students can't tell "practice" from "real" language, but you must admit, isn't it also "patronizing" to be constantly reminding students to give you "fuller" answers (like such a teacher knows best!). Ah, no, wait, I was forgetting, your students are so used to giving "full" answers that explicitly needing to remind/patronize them isn't an issue anymore in your classes!

But that just makes me wonder even more (because me and Larry at least have said that we do meet students who give full answers whenever inappropiate, or at least think or "recall" that this is a risk), is practice divorced from genuine communicative function useful? You say hardly a moment goes by when you are not taking 'every chance I get when I am a student to make a sentence, whether I am parroting or not', but I think that if a student is not engaging their brain in thinking about the function of the form, the reason for saying it, for saying anything at all (even just a 'Yeah'), there is really no point in them opening their mouths, and they could well end up confused, blathering idiots. (I say that not 'cos I am a hyper-cognitivist, but because I want the student, when they open their mouth, to be saying real English/language, even if they might not have heard or read the required general form in any explicit shape-and-sense before!!! ~ although obviously, I'd be striving to give them all the English they'd ever need, no less and no more [to reverse the more usual 'no more and no less' ]).

[woodcutter]

Of course I am not saying that students must be exposed to unnatural language because we learn in an unnatural way. I am saying that adult learners are engaged in a process of conversion, for the most part (the mechanics and extent of this is beyond me, but I base the belief on what I have said concerning spanish/korean). The techniques that may be helpful for adults may have nothing whatsoever to do with what works for pre-school children learning L1. They may seem "unnatural".

We are only talking here about a question such as

"Did you see the postman yesterday?"

being answered by "Yes, I saw the postman yesterday" or "Yes, he's an ugly git isn't he?", but "Yeah" being frowned on as an answer. If the first answer is slightly unnatural, that's unfortunate, but it does, as I said provide modelling. I insist, I swear, I vow - students from the method program do not talk generally like that outside class, they are not so silly. They are not confused, blathering idiots. (FH, Why keep talking in the abstract?) The machine like students that Duncan and Larry meet and I do not are not necessarily casualties of a method, they may simply be people who have been taught that "YOU MUST USE A FULL SENTENCE OR IT IS WRONG", and such iron fisted rule mongering about the language itself goes on in many classrooms, but not in mine. I think my technique is the very opposite of patronizing - it is an opportunity for a piece of helpful practice given with the hope that the students can see that! Constantly reminding them to do it might seem patronizing, exactly, that I do not do! I need THE METHOD to take that responsibilty, to be cruel to be kind, so that I can be a lovable teacher, and not make 'em cry like Revel sometimes does!

[LarryLatham]

I am saying that adult learners are engaged in a process of conversion...

What kind of conversion, woody? What are they converting from, and what are they converting to?

Larry Latham

[woodcutter]

Did I just not say that I dunno?

However, small children learn all (spoken) languages at the same rate, and I contend that adult English native speakers learn germanic/romance tongues five times as easily as completely foreign ones. We learn all of them with a dodgy accent. Therefore I suppose we are always somehow peeling pieces off of what we already have and plastering on new ones, rather than learning from point zero.

[LarryLatham]

Yeah, but that makes it sound like adult learners are really trying to change what they know (L1) into something new. I don't see it that way. A second language is an addition to knowledge, not a conversion. Peoples' first language remains intact. It may be that knowledge of any language makes learning a new one different than learning the first one, simply because you don't quite begin from zero. You already know about symbolism, about the arbitrary assignment of meaning to certain collections of sounds (words), about the existence of grammatical constraints and allowances, and have some idea about the nature of communication and what that means to life. Perhaps that's what you mean when you talk about "channeling through L1".

All this is true, and it is also true that some languages may be easier to learn for speakers of certain L1s than others. Although I can't speak to the problems of Japanese or Korean speakers, since I have no knowledge of either of those languages, I can say that Chinese speakers shouldn't really have all that much problem with English grammar, and my experience with them bears that out. Chinese and English share many points of overall grammatical principle, though, to be sure, they are hardly the same. The differences, however, are not that hard for Chinese speakers to grasp (and vice versa). Much the same could probably be said for Spanish speakers, and speakers of quite a number of the worlds' six thousand languages. Some other languages, for example the American Indian language, Navajo, are so different from English in grammatical principle, that speakers of those languages will surely have great impediments to overcome in learning English.

I believe many of the problems adult speakers have come from being taught. I think it's the way we teach it that causes some of their problems. (Well, I wouldn't place all the blame on teachers, nor would I suggest that teachers make it impossible. Clearly, some students are able to overcome whatever barriers they may encounter...even poor teaching.) This is not because teachers are malicious, but rather because we just haven't figured out how to do it well. And I do blame traditionalists in the education establishment, including certain teachers, for obstructing possible advances in that arena.

Child learners are physiologically different from adult learners, as you and others have pointed out so often. So no matter what we do as teachers, the process of learning for adults is going to be different than for children. But it also is the case that children are not, strictly speaking, taught. They observe, and hypothesize, and experiment. They have no choice. We parents or friends have no way to talk to them, since they do start from zero. I believe there may be something powerful in that process of observing, hypothesizing, and experimenting that we teachers have not learned to exploit because we're too busy forcing our students to model, practice and produce. And many educators insist that this is the only way to do it. But I feel compelled to ask: How do you know that?

I don't think we can expect adult learners to copy the methods of child learners exactly, precisely because they are not children physiologically, emotionally, psychologically, or experientially. Nor do I believe adults can match the spectacular speed of child learners. But I do wonder if there isn't something which ought to be available to adult learners if only we teachers would allow them to exploit it. Unfortunately, for both them and us, by the time they get to be adult learners, they have already been so indoctrinated with received wisdom about how to do it that we run up against the situation where we have two kinds of people who resist change: students and teachers. Change, even if it could be genuinely tested, may not bring about that much improvement, but I sure would like to see someone try.

Larry Latham

[woodcutter]

Obviously I feel that although we peel off and replace, a copy of the orignal is maintained.

I find Chinese a little easier, I agree, it is the grammar that is the main thing.
That doesn't contradict what I have said.

The third part of your post, Larry, seems to take no account of what has been written here. You seem to think that you are an original voice in the wilderness crying out for people to take note of how children learn, when in fact ESL text books never stop banging on about it, even though the consensus is that adults are very different. Traditional methods, on the other hand, receive a constant and vitriolic hounding from academics, and it seems from the history books that the early eighties were the high point of (academia inspired) teaching "naturally" as if adults learned like kids, and time was of no object. If the pendulum has moved away from that a little, I believe it is no thanks to academia, but simply due to the blatant impracticality of that in the classroom somehow filtering through those thick ivory walls.

"Mad max" Berlitz, as FH called him, started his schools around 1870. The method in those schools was highly communicative. This was when the gentlemen at Harvard and Cambridge favoured grammar translation. Direct method teaching became popular, but didn't work well in school classrooms, (too big, too naughty, too young no doubt) and lost popularity. However the direct method gang have been soldiering on, trying to teach through communication allied to common sense pedagogical techniques, while university led education has been through all its strange answers-to-everything, based on flawed research and theories, like audio-lingualism, suggestopedia, the natural approach and now a terrible confusion named the "communicative approach", which only seems to have one concrete factor, communicate!, which the method schools have been doing all along, and continue to do, now, 130 years on, cos it still works.

[woodcutter]

There are many forms of method school technique though, (not all direct method, and not all viewed with love by yours truly, though if they can find the students good luck to them) and Berlitz rather oddly does claim to be simlar to child L1 learning, even though it ain't!

(I confess it's a bit much to blame academia in general for suggestopedia as well)

[LarryLatham]

You seem to think that you are an original voice in the wilderness crying out for people to take note of how children learn, when in fact ESL text books never stop banging on about it, even though the consensus is that adults are very different. Traditional methods, on the other hand, receive a constant and vitriolic hounding from academics, and it seems from the history books that the early eighties were the high point of (academia inspired) teaching "naturally" as if adults learned like kids, and time was of no object. If the pendulum has moved away from that a little, I believe it is no thanks to academia, but simply due to the blatant impracticality of that in the classroom somehow filtering through those thick ivory walls.

I guess I must have fallen asleep sometime at the end of the '70's, then, and hibernated all through the '80's insofar as language teaching and learning is concerned, woody. I am not aware of any methods in use during that time that even approximated what I think we can usefully distill from how children learn and apply to adult language learning, regardless of what methods of the '80's might have been called. I recognize that an adult classroom is not "natural" and do not call for any "natural" methods now. Heaven knows there is already way too much of treating adults like they were children in classrooms by teachers who should know better. Adult learners are normal adults in every respect. They're just trying to learn English. But I also know that English is not that difficult as languages go. Look around you at the masses of people who speak it successfully. Not all of them are geniuses. Why, then, do we meet so many students who have been studying English in EFL/ESL classrooms for ten years or more who cannot carry on even a simple conversation in a limited subject area? How can we claim to be doing things well when so many of our students have so much trouble with a language that should not be that hard for them? The status quo is due for some scrutiny.

As for Berlitz...all I can say is that the methods used there are shockingly antiquated, and have been thoroughly discredited by most accounts. I once went for a job interview at a Berlitz school (many years ago), and while I was waiting, I overheard a class in progress through an open classroom door. I was so outraged at what I heard the teacher doing that I left before my interviewer could speak to me. I wanted no part of Berlitz...at least at that particular school.

Larry Latham

[Lorikeet]

As for Berlitz...all I can say is that the methods used there are shockingly antiquated, and have been thoroughly discredited by most accounts. I once went for a job interview at a Berlitz school (many years ago), and while I was waiting, I overheard a class in progress through an open classroom door. I was so outraged at what I heard the teacher doing that I left before my interviewer could speak to me. I wanted no part of Berlitz...at least at that particular school.

Larry Latham

In 1969 when I first came out to San Francisco looking for a job, I had a "training session" at Berlitz. (This was after my M.A. in Linguistics with a minor in TEFL, which was a rarity back in those days.) I wound up coaching the other "teacher" who was taking the class with me, because he didn't know anything. Then they gave me a class of Japanese businessmen I was supposed to teach pronunciation to. I went through the sound patterns of English for a couple sessions, and quit the job to take a real one that actually wanted a professional and paid for it. My experience with Berlitz