3563. On the Way We Adults Learn a Language. So Great, Look!

Do you need to learn a language? I do. English. I’m working on it. 

Now I can help you by giving more advice from the scholar we’re treating about on our last posts, H. D. Brown, who is an ace at learning and teaching languages. 

So now we could think that children, young ones, infants actually, have a lot of facility to learn a language, right? But if we are adults… So what? Adults have a great potential to learn and grab a language. 

Our author puts, “(S)hould you, like a kid, try to pick up language subconsciously? The answer is a qualified yes. As an adult now, you most likely analyze yourself too much. Your tendency is to memorize, focus on grammar rules, translate from one language to the other, and do just about everything except subconsciously acquire it. You’re probably learning facts about the language at the expense of learning to use it. And one sure way to fail at learning a foreign language is not to use it for genuine communication.” (page 21 from the book we’re analyzing on the last posts from this blog). 

Thus we adults can learn… and also acquire the language we want to learn, as Stephen Krashen said (1981). And that is a nice piece of news. 

Even more, we adults may have qualities that facilitate learning a language: self-control, self-assessing, self-correcting, self-discipline, self-help, creativity, intuition, flexibility, planning, experience or life experience, a lot of knowledge, learning strategies that we have acquired over the years, skills and abilities, will power, perseverance, mental processes also acquired over time… I can assure you I have seen that in the classroom of adults. 

As well we can acquire the foreign tongue for example whilst reading a book which is a bit above our level: we may be devouring that nice foreign language without noticing it, or not much noticing it. 

Have a nice week. Next time I could say further things about this stupendous learning field. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

3658. Language Facts or Communication in Class?

  I teach English to adults. It’s so great … and demanding.  Adults have some characteristic way of learning the language. For example they tend to focus on specific grammar patterns and ways of saying things in the target language. Well, it’s something I also do when learning that language myself. And it is something I cannot change. It is something we can take advantage from, anyway.  Even in that way they can learn quite a lot. You know, it doesn’t matter they would ask me questions in class that show they are focusing on grammar. It’s ok. It’s ok ever if also we as teachers facilitate there is plenty of communication in English in class.  I mean, do not confine as a teacher to teach grammar and language facts, but provide a lot of communication in class.  When some newcomer arrives at one of those groups of mine – and I’m thinking of one specific group – that new student says kind of, Oh I can see my classmates have a lot of fluency while in my case … Why do the other students have
Read more

3659. Learning a Language by (Just) Reading You Said?

  A lot of people want to learn a second or foreign language. Me too. So do I.  At the same time I teach that language I’m learning and acquiring, namely English.  And you may know that I often say that reading books and graded readers help learn and acquire those target languages. Indeed. It’s my experience, plus Stephen Krashen says it’s so, even he pinpoints and says that fiction is better than non-fiction.  Ok now I can say that only after having read a lot and used the dictionary also a lot can you learn many a word. Hundreds of them, perhaps thousands.  Only then some or many words get stuck in memory. Well, maybe you'll learn a lot of vocabulary by other means. Then you can use them when speaking or writing in the target tongue. Because you’ve gotten a massive tank of lexis.  Of course there are more words you can understand than the ones you can use when communicating. Passive vocab is ampler than active vocab.  Then you can remember many words. And use them. And perhaps it
Read more

2064. Connecting people from different countries

Image
Something we teachers of English or other languages have to bear in mind when teaching adults is that the students should learn and practice communication, and we shouldn’t confine our classes to give them facts of the languages.  Also in kids’ case.  The point isn’t for them to know information about the language, yet to learn how to communicate in that language.  Thus we could plan our classes with that aim.  I state all this because we could dedicate a long time to teach facts, information, something nearly dead, say.  In this way, besides we contribute to connect people from so varied countries. It’s something brilliant, isn’t it? / Photo from: people-happy-cheering bachflowerssingapore wordpress com
Read more

2551. Agradecimiento a TeacherLingo

Image
Desde la bonita Granada, España, agradezco mucho al equipo de TeacherLingo por la publicación de las entradas nuevas en mi blog.  ¡Muchas gracias! Ojalá sirva a profesores noveles y a todo el que lo lea. / Photo from: nature-landscape-beautiful-photos-best-desktop-landscape-hd-wallpapers-widescreen www hdwallpaperscool com. the picture is not Granada necessarily
Read more

708. Communication unites us

Image
One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, “one of my current students yesterday told me she had met an American small gang this summer, in their vacations. Her level is advanced. They made friends with one another. She had fun at communicating in English with people her age. She told me they met up together some days to have a drink in one of the bars of the town, at dusk. When she wanted to say a word she didn’t remember, she did something very interesting: she explained the idea, the concept of the ‘missing’ word, by approximating the meaning, paraphrasing the meaning, using examples, explainig the use for the thing, using mime. This strategy is presented by Rebecca Oxford (1990) Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know . Boston: Heinle and Heinle Publishers. It was fun, she said. She did achieve to set a natural communication with those girls and guys.” / Photo from: welive2care com. girl talking on phone
Read more