Comments on: Languages are “Caught”, Not “Taught” http://l2mastery.com/blog/linguistics-and-education/methods/languages-are-caught-not-taught/ How to Learn Languages the Fun Way with John Fotheringham Mon, 06 Jun 2016 13:08:00 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.2 By: John Fotheringham http://l2mastery.com/blog/linguistics-and-education/methods/languages-are-caught-not-taught/#comment-8041 Tue, 01 Mar 2016 03:48:43 +0000 http://l2mastery.com/?p=2218#comment-8041 Yes, yes, yes! I could not agree more.

]]> By: leoboiko http://l2mastery.com/blog/linguistics-and-education/methods/languages-are-caught-not-taught/#comment-8039 Mon, 22 Feb 2016 16:08:00 +0000 http://l2mastery.com/?p=2218#comment-8039 I think “test culture” is a general problem of modern society; we put too much emphasis on courses, tests, certifications as a proxy for competency. You’re supposed not to try to do anything before spending years in preparation (and shelling tons of money), which is miscalled “education”. There’s this sense that one should not not even try to e.g. read Voltaire without first submitting to five years of banalities about how to ask for directions to the post office. And all this time one could be reading Voltaire from the very start (or reading Asterix, or chatting up boys in Paris, or whatever it is that you want to do with the language).

I think it’s our mission to actively undermine test culture. Instead of evaluating people on tests, we should evaluate them on real work (e.g. instead of TOEFL scores, look at their English-language weblog or something). And instead of giving language learners a set course to follow, we should help them find compelling input, and *then* help them make sense of it. That is, instead of teaching a grammatical pattern, and then citing an example from Harry Potter, we help them read Harry Potter, and then elucidate the grammatical pattern when it comes up ~and~ they’re ready to question it.

The counter-intuitive point is that you have to encourage students to forgo perfection and accept partial understanding (as Kató Lomb puts it, “It’s much more of a problem if the book becomes flavourless in our hands due to the many interruptions than not learning if the inspector watches the murderer from behind a blackthorn or a hawthorn”). In this, too, the problem is to fight test culture: you’re not being graded, relax and enjoy it.

]]> By: Stanzzii http://l2mastery.com/blog/linguistics-and-education/methods/languages-are-caught-not-taught/#comment-8025 Mon, 04 Jan 2016 18:54:00 +0000 http://l2mastery.com/?p=2218#comment-8025 I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I was recently reading up on classical style education was taken aback when proponents of classical education sneer at pretty much any creative way of looking at something. I mostly have “absorbed” my languages through novels and media (French, Spanish, some Italian, some Dutch), so there you go!

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