Example of future and conditional tenses of probability in a chart from FSI Basic Spanish:
In the parlance of this course, Past I is the preterite and Past II is the imperfect past.
It's an example of a useful chart or table; and as Cainntear said, a case where the future tense is explicitly taught as indicating probability.
How to use 'input' (without even saying 'Krashen')
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Re: How to use 'input' (without even saying 'Krashen')
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Re: How to use 'input' (without even saying 'Krashen')
luke wrote:It's an example of a useful chart or table; and as Cainntear said, a case where the future tense is explicitly taught as indicating probability.
Right, though 'probability' is an expression of the likelihood of events that haven't yet occurred. They are explicitly about the future.
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Re: How to use 'input' (without even saying 'Krashen')
Cainntear wrote:Leif wrote:L1 learners are exposed to far more L1 input, and that input is simpler in its grammar and vocabulary, when compared to a typical L2 learner. That means they can pick up the fundamentals from exposure and context.
Not really. Much of the exposure that infants are exposed to is very complex stuff, and baby talk is actually a very small part of their input.
Oh yeah? So small children know about car components, such as the flywheel, carburettor, spark plugs, clutch and so on ? And they know about aphids, crane flies, vine weevils, leather jackets, ectomychorrhizal fungi, decomposing fungi, dry rot, wet rot, death caps, field mushrooms, horse mushrooms, mortgages and mortgage loans, interest rates, non fungible tokens, shares, investment returns ? I could go on. And don’t say you don’t know most of those words, you know others relating to your interests. Children engage in play, using more restricted vocabulary, and that play is a fantastic, non consequential way to practice language.
And you listen to a small child talk, you note how clearly they speak, and that’s how they speak to each other. I’m not even considering ‘baby talk’. People do not talk to small children in the same way they talk to other adults.
And small children are very literal, I’m sure that has a role in the difference between adult and childhood language acquisition.
Of course you’re going to tell me that your eight year old says things like “Excuse me father, but would you mind terribly if we rearranged our discussion planned for later today, I’m afraid I’m having trouble isolating the source of the problems with my BMWs clutch, the flywheel seems okay, but the ECU diagnostics tool keeps signalling an unexpected behaviour.” . If that is true, then I concede defeat …
Cainntear wrote:Leif wrote: However L2 learners have already acquired a lot of grammar concepts via their L1, so they can often learn much of the L2 grammar more quickly. Where L2 learners might struggle is when the L2 has novel constructs not present in their L1, such as the consonant templates used in semitic languages, or the cases used in German, Russian, Finnish and other languages.
Yes, and then there's the problem of kicking the L1 structure out of your head, which is harder than often claimed.
That’s where previous language learning experience comes in, and personality. See below.
Cainntear wrote:There's an interesting phenomenon around the whole thing of confirmation bias which has been investigated by psychologists. There are simple games like saying "I don't eat apples, but I do eat lamb." "I don't eat pears, but I do eat pork." and then people have to work out the rule for themselves and test them out. Then they get convinced that the rule is about one thing, and even having tested the hypothesis and found it disproven, they continue to test the same hypothesis. We used to play those games myself in a choir I was in at university, and I've experienced being the one who's repeatedly testing a disproven hypothesis, and it's useful that I'd been through that, because I found the same tendency when trying to work out a rule in a language -- I was ignoring all the evidence that the rule was wrong and trying to find evidence it was right again and again. Adults are not predisposed to learn new rules... particularly in language, because the rules they've been using have a lifetime of evidence proving them right.
That’s a sweeping statement. The human brain is more than capable of learning new rules. In my mid fifties I learnt Microsoft Windows Presentation Framework, a C# framework that is complex, and quite hard to learn. I produced some world class libraries distributed for free.
As stated elsewhere in this post, children appear to be better at learning implicitly, from experience and context, Adults have to pay more attention. The fact that some adults live in an L2 and never go beyond basic speech, whilst others such as Richard Simcott can master multiple languages such that they can be mistaken for a native speaker, tells us that it doesn’t come naturally for adults, but it can be done.
I have spent well over a thousand hours listening to and analysing French audio input. I have spent hundreds of hours studying German. I have an organised, methodical mind, and determination. I am slowly learning how to learn an L2. I’ve gone down rabbit holes, such as Duolingo and Dr Evil’s miracle snake oil aka Comprehensible Input. Gradually I’m figuring out what works for me.
Cainntear wrote:Leif wrote: I find French grammar largely straightforward, it is very similar to English, and easily learnt from input. I do forget some verb forms, such as a subjunctive, but that’s just because I might never hear the subjunctive form of a verb such as requérir. German on the other hand is very unintuitive, and I have to dissect example input, and use online explanations. I find the location of verbs in sentences confusing. Cases are not easy. I’m not sure how useful grammar instruction would be other than a basic overview. Certainly tables are of no use. It takes time to internalise the underlying meaning associated with cases and sentence word order. That cannot be taught.
Ah, but I think you're pigeonholing grammar instruction. Tables were not invented for humans -- they were invented for paper. Tables are two-dimensional, paper is two-dimensional; verb paradigms are at least three dimensional (person, number, tense) and that means that if you want to model the three dimensions, you've got to have the tenses for a particular verb on consecutive pages, and I've never seen a book that does that, because the writers don't really get the notion of navigating dimensions -- to them, tables are like that because that's what verb tables do.
As I think I said, MT taught grammar without getting bogged down in technicalities, and he covered things in an 8 hour Spanish course that actually went beyond what I'd done in 5 years of high school French by that point.
Yes, a pragmatic non-technical approach, presumably little bits taught here and there with lots of worked examples to let it sink in.
Cainntear wrote:The German course was limited because MT himself had fixated on the verb system as being important in language, and I suspect that may be because he learned Polish and German in his childhood and then went on to learn French, Italian and Spanish, so he never saw the real issue of the complexity of noun declension, and didn't realise how important (and difficult!) it was for learners of German. But because he taught grammar by meaning, not by how it looks cleanest on paper, he got through an awful lot, and people who learned did so very quckly.Leif wrote: For me grammar instruction should not normally be a separate task, apart from a primer.
You say this, but then you say this.Leif wrote: Rather the student seeks an explanation when they cannot figure out the meaning of a sentence. Memorising verb conjugations can make sense.
A "primer" implies that it's something you do before working with input, but then you're suggesting that grammar is consulted only if the learner can't work it out for themselves.
No, I suggest that grammar should not normally be a separate task, apart from a primer. At the start of studying a new language, the student reads a basic language grammar book to give them an idea of the concepts they will meet. Then they look up grammar when needed. It is akin to reading a map before a journey, then checking it as you go along. I did that with German. It meant I knew for example that the definite article changed depending on the role of the noun in the sentence. Then as I progressed, I would look up the grammar as and when I did not understand a sentence.
Cainntear wrote:Leif wrote: However, I’m a moderately experienced language learner. Learners of their first L2 probably need more guidance. In that case more formal instruction might be useful. But I’m not an L2 teacher, and I do not speak from experience of teaching others an L2.
But there is another factor, the elephant in the classroom. School language teaching is predicated on examinations. Students are expected to know certain concepts, and words. Thus the focus is on producing the required phrases as and when needed. Understanding, on an unconscious automatic level is not required. If the student mumbles out the phrase after consciously constructing it, they’ll get the goldfish. For myself, as a self taught learner, the aim is to understand native day to day speech and not pass exams. If I make mistakes of grammar roughly consistant with an average native, and I cannot conjugate obscure tenses, that doesn’t bother me.
OK, but that is an elephant in the classroom, and we're not talking about learning in schools. The only reason I bring up things in schools is because they're the places where there is some form of repetition and control of variables. We can assume that 20 kids in one classroom are doing all the same superficial activities and therefore we can say that if more than half of the class isn't understanding, there's a problem in the activity, but even 100 people doing the same self-access materials don't give us that same clarity, because they may not have understood the instructions, so any problem could just be solved by giving clearer instructions. When we get to self-directed learners not following a course, we have even less control of variables as any difference in outcome could theoretically just be about the choice of book/film/computer game they've chosen to use.
With regards to the study I mentioned of successful learners, it was motivated by the input-heavy move in schools and they were specifically accounting for this. The pro-CI crowd would claim that their teaching was better, but that the exams were far more focused on "learned" knowledge than "acquired", and the study was aiming to find out whether that was genuinely true. The study found that people who did well in the technical grammar stuff did well in the plain usage stuff (comprehension etc) regardless of teaching style. i.e. people who did well in classes without explicit grammar were people who could work the grammar out for themselves. People who didn't do well were people who couldn't.
They had deliberately eliminated the possibility that the findings were confounded by the test favouring a particular style, because this was seen as a very important thing in determining education policy in England at the time.
The usual claim by the input crowd was that if it worked for the top of the class, it would work for everyone given enough time, but that was never backed up with data. Did people who failed to identify the grammar patterns explicitly ever get command of them? The evidence all seemed to be saying probably not.
Some of us can learn without explicit grammar instruction, but do we learn quicker without grammar instruction, or do we learn quicker with it? As far as I can see, we learn quicker with it, and I've not seen any statistics to say this isn't the case, even from people who will earnestly give a seemingly rational explanation for why it should be better.
I do agree, and neurological studies have shown that the effectiveness of procedural memory declines with age, being a maximum during childhood, This could explain why children are so good at learning ‘naturally’ i.e. unconsciously from context. And conversely. adults are better at learning consciously or explicitly. It also provides evidence for Dr Evil’s snake oil being balls.
I’m not suggesting no grammar instruction. An experienced self learner looks up grammar when needed. Explicit grammar look up as you go along is probably much quicker than trying to guess as you go along. The reality of a classroom of mixed ability students. and the need to encourage, cajole and coerce students into working, and passing a common exam, means that you need to teach grammar. However, it should be done gradually, not a whole load of tables written on a board. and then exercises, rather a short explanation of a point of grammar and then some exercises to help the children learn and understand. I suspect you agree.
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Re: How to use 'input' (without even saying 'Krashen')
Leif wrote:Of course you’re going to tell me that your eight year old says things like “Excuse me father, but would you mind terribly if we rearranged our discussion planned for later today, I’m afraid I’m having trouble isolating the source of the problems with my BMWs clutch, the flywheel seems okay, but the ECU diagnostics tool keeps signalling an unexpected behaviour.” . If that is true, then I concede defeat …
Rather eerily, my brother's highly precocious son did once knock at his parent's bedroom door and say: 'Excuse me, if you don't mind I'm trying to sleep and you're talking VERY loudly,' Then he closed the door and went back to bed. I don't say this is normal for a four year-old, but he is a rather eccentric boy.
Leif wrote:No, I suggest that grammar should not normally be a separate task, apart from a primer. At the start of studying a new language, the student reads a basic language grammar book to give them an idea of the concepts they will meet. Then they look up grammar when needed. It is akin to reading a map before a journey, then checking it as you go along. I did that with German. It meant I knew for example that the definite article changed depending on the role of the noun in the sentence. Then as I progressed, I would look up the grammar as and when I did not understand a sentence.
I heartily concur with this. Sometimes I've been very sparing in what I've learned grammar-wise before commencing a language. The truth is you really don't need a great deal to start finding your way and trying to cram it all in before starting proper is unwise. I do glance at other more advanced grammar, but put it out of my head until needed. Unless a person has a photographic memory they're going to need to keep consulting bits and pieces all the time.
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Re: How to use 'input' (without even saying 'Krashen')
German Word order is best learned through some simple grammar: find out whether you are looking at a subordinate clause, and if so then push the finite verb to the very end of it... even that means that you have forgotten the beginning of the clause (a real problem for interpreters!). Dutch: same tendency, but less strictly enforced - which doesn't make it easier to handle.
In other languages the big question is when there is inversion. In Danish we use Diderichsen's boxes: there is a subject box before the finite verb box, but if there is some evil intruder (for instance an adverbial) in that box then the poor subject has to seek refuge in the first box after the verb.
General rule: find a simple explanation that explains 80% of the cases and learn the exceptions later - like the list of things that can provoke inversion in French (words like ainsi). One more use of the clever Pareto principle...
And do use tables at an early stage, but don't try to learn them by heart from day one. And do write them down yourself - it is not enough to read a list, you have to somehow get actively involved with its items, and copying them by hand is the absolute minimum. Making example sentences or an example collection will be more efficient.
As for iconic Michel Thomas: I'm glad i didn't had him as my teacher. The more I hear/read about his methods the less I like them. Learning one form at any one time? I would be bored to death...
In other languages the big question is when there is inversion. In Danish we use Diderichsen's boxes: there is a subject box before the finite verb box, but if there is some evil intruder (for instance an adverbial) in that box then the poor subject has to seek refuge in the first box after the verb.
General rule: find a simple explanation that explains 80% of the cases and learn the exceptions later - like the list of things that can provoke inversion in French (words like ainsi). One more use of the clever Pareto principle...
And do use tables at an early stage, but don't try to learn them by heart from day one. And do write them down yourself - it is not enough to read a list, you have to somehow get actively involved with its items, and copying them by hand is the absolute minimum. Making example sentences or an example collection will be more efficient.
As for iconic Michel Thomas: I'm glad i didn't had him as my teacher. The more I hear/read about his methods the less I like them. Learning one form at any one time? I would be bored to death...
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Re: How to use 'input' (without even saying 'Krashen')
Leif wrote:Cainntear wrote:Leif wrote:L1 learners are exposed to far more L1 input, and that input is simpler in its grammar and vocabulary, when compared to a typical L2 learner. That means they can pick up the fundamentals from exposure and context.
Not really. Much of the exposure that infants are exposed to is very complex stuff, and baby talk is actually a very small part of their input.
Oh yeah? So small children know about car components, such as the flywheel, carburettor, spark plugs, clutch and so on ? And they know about aphids, crane flies, vine weevils, leather jackets, ectomychorrhizal fungi, decomposing fungi, dry rot, wet rot, death caps, field mushrooms, horse mushrooms, mortgages and mortgage loans, interest rates, non fungible tokens, shares, investment returns ? I could go on.
Yes, you could go on, but then you would be discussing things of similar linguistic complexity.
Most of these vocabulary items are not really any more linguistically complex than a toothbrush or a skipping rope/jump rope. They are simply describing concepts that a child doesn't know and that their brains are not sufficiently developed to understand.
What do you mean by a "non consequential way"?And don’t say you don’t know most of those words, you know others relating to your interests. Children engage in play, using more restricted vocabulary, and that play is a fantastic, non consequential way to practice language.
And you listen to a small child talk, you note how clearly they speak, and that’s how they speak to each other. I’m not even considering ‘baby talk’. People do not talk to small children in the same way they talk to other adults.
Right, that is (to use your own words) a sweeping statement. You are stating something as if all people are the same. There are cultures where it's unusual to speak to a child until and unless the child has started talking first. In such cultures, children start speaking smuch later that in cultures where adults speak to infants.
But these children do indeed start talking, and they have only had input at full adult complexity as the adults round about talk to each other. In cultures where children are spoken to deliberately, the kids are still exposed to a lot of input, but they have the additional tuned input and are encouraged to interact. The interaction appears to lead to earlier language development. Parental correction at just the right time is may even been an integral part of that (but the research I mentioned on that had a sample size of one, so it doesn't prove anything, but hopefully informs future research).
And small children are very literal, I’m sure that has a role in the difference between adult and childhood language acquisition.
Of course you’re going to tell me that your eight year old says things like “Excuse me father, but would you mind terribly if we rearranged our discussion planned for later today, I’m afraid I’m having trouble isolating the source of the problems with my BMWs clutch, the flywheel seems okay, but the ECU diagnostics tool keeps signalling an unexpected behaviour.” . If that is true, then I concede defeat …
Of course I'm going to tell me that, because I am clearly so utterly deluded that I would believe that. Well, the "me" in your head is maybe that kind of an idiot, but I happen to be a real person, and you have assumed that I believe things that I don't, because it's easier to dismiss the things I haven't said than the things I have. I have been talking about what input they are exposed to, and if they're sitting on their mothers' laps when the mum's are having a girls' night in watching a Hollywood romcom, they will be exposed to the input of a Hollywood romcom. If that romcom has such a bad script that it includes "excuse me father, but would you mind..." then they will have that as input. They won't say it, but they'll have it as input.
Cainntear wrote:There's an interesting phenomenon around the whole thing of confirmation bias which has been investigated by psychologists. There are simple games like saying "I don't eat apples, but I do eat lamb." "I don't eat pears, but I do eat pork." and then people have to work out the rule for themselves and test them out. Then they get convinced that the rule is about one thing, and even having tested the hypothesis and found it disproven, they continue to test the same hypothesis. We used to play those games myself in a choir I was in at university, and I've experienced being the one who's repeatedly testing a disproven hypothesis, and it's useful that I'd been through that, because I found the same tendency when trying to work out a rule in a language -- I was ignoring all the evidence that the rule was wrong and trying to find evidence it was right again and again. Adults are not predisposed to learn new rules... particularly in language, because the rules they've been using have a lifetime of evidence proving them right.
That’s a sweeping statement. The human brain is more than capable of learning new rules. In my mid fifties I learnt Microsoft Windows Presentation Framework, a C# framework that is complex, and quite hard to learn. I produced some world class libraries distributed for free.
It's a sweeping statement, but it is a genuine human trait that has been observed in psychological studies. Yes, we can learn new stuff -- I wouldn't have gone into teaching if I didn't think that was true. The thing is that we need to take extra steps to overcome the difficulty in learning new rules.
And at the risk of going off-topic... well, if we're talking about programming languages, then it would be more analogous to talk about architecturally distinct languages than just frameworks and libraries.
Quite often you can get a very good guess at a Python programmer's first language from their use of language contructs, as a lot of self-taught Pythonistas use whatever structures they did in C or whatever and never even look at comprehensions and other semi-declarative or semi-functional constructs.
No, I suggest that grammar should not normally be a separate task, apart from a primer. At the start of studying a new language, the student reads a basic language grammar book to give them an idea of the concepts they will meet. Then they look up grammar when needed.
But what if the primer is so effective that you never need to look it up? That's pretty much what MT did -- give the student tasks that get the rule internalised. He staged his introduction of tasks in such a way that you had a reasonably solid idea of concept N before he introduced concept N + 1, and he'd go back to revisit and integrate the old with the new before it was forgotten, so you never needed to go back and look anything up.
It is akin to reading a map before a journey, then checking it as you go along.
Is it, though? Grammar rules aren't "routes" -- they're things that are repeated in lots of different circumstances. If I have to walk through marshes, I can be taught to do that, then later when I have to walk through a marsh in a different place, I'm less likely to sink into one and die.
I did that with German. It meant I knew for example that the definite article changed depending on the role of the noun in the sentence. Then as I progressed, I would look up the grammar as and when I did not understand a sentence.
...
I’m not suggesting no grammar instruction. An experienced self learner looks up grammar when needed. Explicit grammar look up as you go along is probably much quicker than trying to guess as you go along.
Yes, but this goes back to what I was saying about my old philosophy of "learning [parts of!] the grammar book" so that I could look them up in my head when needed.
There is actually a very small conceptual difference between looking things up in a book and having the book in your head so that you can look it up quicker. But then you've got MT where you almost never have to look up at all, but it's OK that it takes you time to get the answer. From experiencing that, I've switched to trying to learn everything in smaller bits and not needing to look it up -- and that's what I mean by learning grammar: learning, not memorising.
The reality of a classroom of mixed ability students. and the need to encourage, cajole and coerce students into working, and passing a common exam, means that you need to teach grammar. However, it should be done gradually, not a whole load of tables written on a board. and then exercises, rather a short explanation of a point of grammar and then some exercises to help the children learn and understand. I suspect you agree.
Yes... except for the "gradually" bit. You can teach grammar much much quicker, because dropping the tables means you don't have to memorise tables at all, and you don't have to look them up. The amount of time this saves is considerable.
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Re: How to use 'input' (without even saying 'Krashen')
Iversen wrote:As for iconic Michel Thomas: I'm glad i didn't had him as my teacher. The more I hear/read about his methods the less I like them. Learning one form at any one time? I would be bored to death...
Really? Why would you be bored to death by learning the language faster?
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Re: How to use 'input' (without even saying 'Krashen')
Cainntear wrote:Iversen wrote:As for iconic Michel Thomas: I'm glad i didn't had him as my teacher. The more I hear/read about his methods the less I like them. Learning one form at any one time? I would be bored to death...
Really? Why would you be bored to death by learning the language faster?
I don't think there's any real evidence he teaches it any faster or that people learn it faster. He personally 'taught' Woody Allen French, who mentioned it on an interview he did on France Inter....in English with an interpreter and an earpiece. I tried Michel Thomas's Spanish and got so annoyed and bored with it I stopped. His constant irked manner in correcting is irritating.
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Re: How to use 'input' (without even saying 'Krashen')
Cainntear wrote: You can teach grammar much much quicker, because dropping the tables means you don't have to memorise tables at all, and you don't have to look them up. The amount of time this saves is considerable.
The important thing is not how much time the teacher saves, but how fast the learners learn the relevant forms - and serving them chaotically (or dripwise in slow motion with lots of interruptions à la M Thomas) and with no access to any simple overview allowed may be popular among some teachers, but I simply don't believe that it is faster or more efficient. There may be pupils who hate tables so much that trying to convince them of their advantages would make them run screaming away, but I might also have learnt to speak some of my languages earlier if I hadn't hated roleplay and enforced inane pseudoconversations with clueless fellow learners so much, but that's the price for having an attitude.
My attitude to tables is that they are a splendid invention and should be used from the beginning of any language learning process.
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Re: How to use 'input' (without even saying 'Krashen')
Le Baron wrote:Cainntear wrote:Iversen wrote:As for iconic Michel Thomas: I'm glad i didn't had him as my teacher. The more I hear/read about his methods the less I like them. Learning one form at any one time? I would be bored to death...
Really? Why would you be bored to death by learning the language faster?
I don't think there's any real evidence he teaches it any faster or that people learn it faster.
Well my experience was that I learnt basic Spanish far faster than any other language I'd ever been taught. I have no doubt MT's method is fast, even though it is absolutely only a start -- I definitely learned a lot from the OU after it.
I tried Michel Thomas's Spanish and got so annoyed and bored with it I stopped. His constant irked manner in correcting is irritating.
Oh, I get that. I could see lots of faults in his teaching, but I saw enough good from it that I can put up with those.
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