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Language Two
Learning a second language can be exciting and productive ... or painful and useless. One's efforts can end in the acquisition of native-like fluency or a stumbling repertoire of sentences soon forgotten. The difference often lies in how one goes about learning the new language and how a teacher goes about teaching it. To be successful, a learner need not have a special inborn talent for learning languages. Learners and teachers simply need to “do it right.”
315 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 28, 2020
Good advice for language teachers and learners
The first thing to say about this is that the English ‘acquired’ by its authors is itself far from flawless; however, the book counsels us against correcting people’s mistakes so I’ll say no more about that. Otherwise, its practical conclusions could be summarised in a few paragraphs and are mostly a matter of common sense (notwithstanding the fact that they have largely been ignored by education systems in the English-speaking world, which is notoriously terrible at learning other languages): create a positive atmosphere, don’t worry too much about formal grammar, as far as possible use natural language situations and concrete, ostensible ‘referants’, allow learners to get used to hearing a language before expecting them to speak it, etc. The rest of it, though interesting in places, would be needed only by serious students of linguistics.
It’s not really rocket science: language teachers (and for that matter learners) should, as far as lies in their power, re-create the conditions experienced by a child learning their mother tongue. The nearer they come to doing that, the greater the chances of achieving fluency.
The first thing to say about this is that the English ‘acquired’ by its authors is itself far from flawless; however, the book counsels us against correcting people’s mistakes so I’ll say no more about that. Otherwise, its practical conclusions could be summarised in a few paragraphs and are mostly a matter of common sense (notwithstanding the fact that they have largely been ignored by education systems in the English-speaking world, which is notoriously terrible at learning other languages): create a positive atmosphere, don’t worry too much about formal grammar, as far as possible use natural language situations and concrete, ostensible ‘referants’, allow learners to get used to hearing a language before expecting them to speak it, etc. The rest of it, though interesting in places, would be needed only by serious students of linguistics.
It’s not really rocket science: language teachers (and for that matter learners) should, as far as lies in their power, re-create the conditions experienced by a child learning their mother tongue. The nearer they come to doing that, the greater the chances of achieving fluency.
Displaying 1 of 1 review