Folse: Vocabulary Myths/Teaching Language Classes Online

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tractor
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Re: Folse: Vocabulary Myths/Teaching Language Classes Online

Postby tractor » Fri Jun 04, 2021 2:57 am

Le Baron wrote:
tractor wrote:
Le Baron wrote:In his discussion of teachers insisting upon the use of monolingual dictionaries (his myth 7) I wonder how true this is in reality outside of ESL teaching; or even how true within it.

I've had several teachers who professed this myth, both in Spain and in Norway. It may have been a fad in the nineties.

Blimey. How odd. What made them insist upon this?

They even said bilingual dictionaries were harmful to our learning. I think the idea behind it was something like this: "You should learn to think in the target language. Don't make translations in your head. The definitions in a monolingual dictionary are more accurate than in a bilingual one, and give you a better understanding of the word and how it is used, and develop your vocabulary faster." I don't think any of the students bought into this, and we continued to peek in our bilingual dictionaries behind the teacher's back. Strange thing is, some of these teachers were otherwise excellent teachers, in spite of this rather bizarre idea. It's like telling a carpenter that he should never use the hammer nor the saw, only the screwdriver.
Last edited by tractor on Fri Jun 04, 2021 9:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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rpg
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Re: Folse: Vocabulary Myths/Teaching Language Classes Online

Postby rpg » Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:06 am

I see the thing about monolingual dictionaries in language learning communities all the time. People frequently talk about "graduating" to a monolingual dictionary. To me, monolingual dictionaries have their place: they may be more complete since they have a far wider audience (= more resources), so they may contain entries not found in bilingual ones. For example, the DRAE for Spanish is really good and I end up consulting it pretty regularly, especially for regionalisms and phrases. But I will always take a good English definition if available; it's going to give me faster and more accurate understanding.

I have read a bit of SLA research already so none of these myths in the post are new to me. I do wish teachers would take care with the one about studying similar vocabulary at the same time, though. I recall first learning the French words emmener and amener at the same time, in a section of French in Action that rather unhelpfully told me that they're easily confused. Well, great. Now you've just ensured that I associate these words with each other & get confused! Would have been much better to teach emmener first and only add amener at some time later. Or now in German in a Lingoda class I learned the words for fruit and vegetables (Obst and Gemüse) at the same time and immediately started mixing them up, since I would hear the two words together and not know which was which.

I also appreciate the one about guessing from context. Even though this is how I must have learned a lot of L1 vocabulary, it took a very long time and required a very good level of the language to execute on. I think most learners read harder books in their L2s than they did when learning L1 (in terms of how much vocabulary is unknown) and have had far less input (= exposure to similar contexts/ability to predictively fill in blanks) and so guessing from context isn't always as effective. I suspect in practice it really means that people end up not fully understanding the word/phrase/sentence and just moving on.
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sporedandroid
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Re: Folse: Vocabulary Myths/Teaching Language Classes Online

Postby sporedandroid » Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:20 am

rpg wrote:I also appreciate the one about guessing from context. Even though this is how I must have learned a lot of L1 vocabulary, it took a very long time and required a very good level of the language to execute on. I think most learners read harder books in their L2s than they did when learning L1 (in terms of how much vocabulary is unknown) and have had far less input (= exposure to similar contexts/ability to predictively fill in blanks) and so guessing from context isn't always as effective. I suspect in practice it really means that people end up not fully understanding the word/phrase/sentence and just moving on.
I tried to read Moby Dick as a native English speaker. I encountered more unknown words than I’m used to in English. I sort of just ignored or guessed them. When I actually looked up some unknown words I was surprised at how bad I was at guessing some words. I thought I knew what humbug meant, but I guess I don’t.
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