Cainntear wrote:uncertaingoblin wrote:RE: intellectual snobbery in language learning (great way to put it, btw) there's nothing imagined about it. The hobby is plagued by it. I'm a bit surprised anyone would claim there's anything "imagined" about that.
I didn’t say it didn’t exist. You weren’t merely claiming it existed — you were accusing most of the members this forum of being intellectual snobs and gatekeepers, not to mention an entire branch of academia.
The express goal all of us here have is to help others learn language more quickly, efficiently bind enjoyably. This is also the goal of the thousands of SLA researchers who look at language in all is complexity.
You have insulted us and them.If we have to choose which is the harsher gatekeeper, oversimplification or overcomplication, I am again shocked that anyone would believe that is oversimplification.
One of my great bugbears (as regulars will attest) is when insufficient detailed advice is given, learners fail, and because they did what they were told, they take it as a personal failing — “I must be a bad learner". I talk about the evil of “blaming the learner” a lot. If a method leads to frequent failure to learn, it's the method's fault, not the learner's.
Oversimplification leaves lots of scope for failure and no way for the learner to sort themselves out when they fail.I'm not Krashen. I do not believe there is only one way to learn a language. What I believe is this:
Language learning is deeply personal and tied to identity. People must search not only for the language they genuinely want to learn but also for the method. I think the way we truly learn languages is when we find a way that we enjoy engaging with the language; maybe that's input for some, and the deliberate study of grammar for others. For whatever that's worth, there it is.
Then why insult people who want to explore the strengths and weaknesses of that variety?
Wow. Quite a reaction - In order to provoke such an unhinged rant, I must have unknowingly called you out for what you are. We can just ignore each other from here on out. Good luck.