Krashen and "Krashenite"

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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby luke » Mon Oct 03, 2022 3:05 pm

Le Baron wrote:More to mean: should you engage a tutor you'll likely unravel a lot of these things far more quickly, because such a person can unravel problems in those enumerated areas which a learner might never decipher or will take a long time to. Discovering things you don't know about is hard.

That sounds a lot like the reasons someone might engage a grammar book or a dictionary. You don't sound very "Krashenite" to me. :o
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby einzelne » Mon Oct 03, 2022 3:06 pm

Lesson 10. Conversation, which on the surface appears to be one of the most basic forms of communication, is actually one of the hardest to master.

A seasoned Foreign Service officer, who had learned several languages to a high level, was overheard to remark that engaging in [b]conversation—particularly in multiparty settings—was the ultimate test of someone’s language ability.


For many of our graduates, a fundamental part of their work involves taking part in ordinary and informal conversations with host country officials and business, cultural, and community leaders on a variety of personal and professional topics. Yet of all the tasks graduates carry out at post in the foreign language—articulating policy, conducting interviews, managing offices and local staff—ordinary conversation is the one area of language use in which they unanimously claim to experience the most difficulty, noting specifically problems in following the threads of conversations in multigroup settings. Many officers report that they would much rather give a speech or conduct an interview than be the only non-native surrounded by native speakers at a social engagement such as a dinner party or reception (Kaplan 1997).

Interestingly, such reports appear to fly in the face of some of the assumptions of the language proficiency level descriptions of the Interagency Language Roundtable and ACTFL, which relegate “extensive but casual social conversation” to a relatively low-level speaking skill while raising professional language use and certain institutionalized forms of talk to a higher level.

The properties of ordinary social conversation imply that language learners need to practice at least all of the following:

- following rapid and unpredictable turns in topic,
- displaying understanding and involvement,
- producing unplanned speech,
- coping with the speed of the turn-taking, and
- coping with background noise.

Participants in conversation must at once listen to what their interlocutor is saying, formulate their contribution, make their contribution relevant, and utter their contribution in a timely way, lest they lose the thread of the conversation. Unlike most other typical face-to-face interactions, no individual can successfully “control” a free-wheeling multi-party conversation.

 In a sense, conversation is more about listening than about speaking, especially when the conversationalist is either trying to determine where the interlocutor might stand on certain important issues or is searching for an opportune moment to make a particular point. A former director of the Foreign Service Institute, Ambassador Lawrence Taylor, used to remark that Foreign Service officers need to be able to conduct what he called “educated assertive gossip”—educated, because the officer needs to be informed about (and able to discuss) anything of importance to that culture and time; assertive, because the officer must search for opportunities to make points that further the interests of the United States; and gossip, because the officer needs to be able to follow the interlocutors into any topic or turn of thought (or joke or tale) that may arise. 

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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Le Baron » Mon Oct 03, 2022 3:26 pm

luke wrote:That sounds a lot like the reasons someone might engage a grammar book or a dictionary. You don't sound very "Krashenite" to me. :o

Call me a neo-Krashenite or something like.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Dragon27 » Mon Oct 03, 2022 4:21 pm

Le Baron wrote:'Tutor' for me means any person or source able to shed light upon obscurity and ease the burden of learning.

I highly doubt, though, that this was the definition used by s_allard in the quote anitarrc was responding to:
In all these cases, the help of a native tutor is indispensable.

You don't have to hire native tutors, but you can certainly put google and linguistic references to good use.


Le Baron wrote:Isn't it true that TL learners very often say: 'I can understand the news, some documentaries, TV shows even speeches or formal debates, and read books, but when the natives start talking among themselves it's often gibberish to me!'?

And where does this off-hand stats come from? 'often say', 'often gibberish'. Sure, TV is TV, and is not a full replacement of the actual everyday familiar speech, but it's not that far-off either. If you can watch TV and understand 99% of everything said, I'm pretty sure that you will not have too much difficulty adjusting yourself to the native speech of people around you once you're in the country. 2-4 weeks mentioned above isn't a bad guess, and certainly not worse than other estimations mentioned in this thread. It is the same language, after all, not a different dialect, more of a different register. There will be misunderstandings, you may blank out on entire sentences, etc. But with a preparation like that, it's perfectly doable.
If you want to understand the everyday language, you should listen to everyday language (by being in the country or talking to people and what not), but if you don't have the opportunity/desire - TV, Youtube and similar sources are your next best bet. You've said:
none of which completely resemble natural speech

But so what? Nothing completely resembles natural speech except for natural speech itself. It can still be good enough for you purpose.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby TopDog_IK » Mon Oct 03, 2022 4:23 pm

rdearman wrote:I have watched hundreds of hours of Korean and it hasn't worked for me. So yes, I for one would like to see some proof.


What is your current level of Korean? Were you watching with subtitles? If so, were they Korean subs? Were you focused on understanding the shows?
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Querneus » Mon Oct 03, 2022 4:31 pm

Le Baron wrote:
anitarrc wrote:I urgently need a tutor for East Belgian dialect it seems.

Seriously, I never had a native tutor in my life, unless you count my 10 months of participating in an evening course with a Mexican 40 years ago.
I wonder how I ever learned French. English,German, Spanish, Portuguese and even my own language (partially forgotten) if native tutors are indispensable.

What do you mean that your 'own language' is partially forgotten? No-one ever really forgets their native language. It is impossible to have used a language as the medium with which to have come to awareness and of age, then for it to just vanish out of your head. And if this language wasn't the language you used for those important things, it's not your native language. Simple as that.

? It's perfectly possible to partially or even extensively forget your native/first language. The keyword you want is "language attrition". It's common among immigrant children.

Dragon27 wrote:
Le Baron wrote:Isn't it true that TL learners very often say: 'I can understand the news, some documentaries, TV shows even speeches or formal debates, and read books, but when the natives start talking among themselves it's often gibberish to me!'?

And where does this off-hand stats come from? 'often say', 'often gibberish'. Sure, TV is TV, and is not a full replacement of the actual everyday familiar speech, but it's not that far-off either. If you can watch TV and understand 99% of everything said, I'm pretty sure that you will not have too much difficulty adjusting yourself to the native speech of people around you once you're in the country. 2-4 weeks mentioned above isn't a bad guess, and certainly not worse than other estimations mentioned in this thread. It is the same language, after all, not a different dialect, more of a different register. There will be misunderstandings, you may blank out on entire sentences, etc. But with a preparation like that, it's perfectly doable.
If you want to understand the everyday language, you should listen to everyday language (by being in the country or talking to people and what not), but if you don't have the opportunity/desire - TV, Youtube and similar sources are your next best bet.

An example source would be the lesson 10 quoted by einzelne in the post right above, which was taken from FSI's "Lessons learned from 50 years of language teaching" (1999, I think).
Last edited by Querneus on Mon Oct 03, 2022 4:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Cainntear » Mon Oct 03, 2022 5:00 pm

Dragon27 wrote:
Le Baron wrote:Isn't it true that TL learners very often say: 'I can understand the news, some documentaries, TV shows even speeches or formal debates, and read books, but when the natives start talking among themselves it's often gibberish to me!'?

And where does this off-hand stats come from? 'often say', 'often gibberish'.

I think the important point your missing is that Le Baron isn't trying to prove a universal hypothesis, but rather disprove one -- it only takes one counter-example to disprove a hypothesis, and the burden of proof is far lower.

Le Baron doesn't give a specific example, true, but the question you've got to ask yourself is this: "can I honestly say I have never heard anyone say this?"

If not, then Le Baron's point must stand.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Le Baron » Mon Oct 03, 2022 5:08 pm

Dragon27 wrote:
Le Baron wrote:'Tutor' for me means any person or source able to shed light upon obscurity and ease the burden of learning.

I highly doubt, though, that this was the definition used by s_allard in the quote anitarrc was responding to:

Thats why it has 'for me' after the word 'tutor'.
Dragon27 wrote:
In all these cases, the help of a native tutor is indispensable.

You don't have to hire native tutors, but you can certainly put google and linguistic references to good use.

That's almost exactly what I said isn't it?
Dragon27 wrote:And where does this off-hand stats come from? 'often say', 'often gibberish'. Sure, TV is TV, and is not a full replacement of the actual everyday familiar speech, but it's not that far-off either. If you can watch TV and understand 99% of everything said, I'm pretty sure that you will not have too much difficulty adjusting yourself to the native speech of people around you once you're in the country. 2-4 weeks mentioned above isn't a bad guess, and certainly not worse than other estimations mentioned in this thread. It is the same language, after all, not a different dialect, more of a different register. There will be misunderstandings, you may blank out on entire sentences, etc. But with a preparation like that, it's perfectly doable.

'Where are the stats??!' 'Where's the evidence?!' I can't point you to a journal article or a spreadsheet or an equation to satisfy that requirement. It's based upon me having been learning languages for several decades and among other people and asking questions out of curiosity. Seeing it in books and TV programmes. It's almost a standard 'trope' that people learn the language, then meet the people who speak it in real time and go 'eh? How come it's somewhat incomprehensible' Have you never heard about that?
Dragon27 wrote:If you want to understand the everyday language, you should listen to everyday language (by being in the country or talking to people and what not), but if you don't have the opportunity/desire - TV, Youtube and similar sources are your next best bet. You've said:
none of which completely resemble natural speech

But so what? Nothing completely resembles natural speech except for natural speech itself. It can still be good enough for you purpose.

Yeah, but also specifically said that many people don't have the luxury of getting into conversations with natives in TL environments and that watching TV/YouTube is valuable as an input resource. So levelling the above criticism at me is fairly pointless. The actual point I was making is not that this sort of input is 'useless', but that it might not be a good idea to just rely on bald input.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Le Baron » Mon Oct 03, 2022 5:13 pm

Querneus wrote:? It's perfectly possible to partially or even extensively forget your native/first language. The keyword you want is "language attrition". It's common among immigrant children.

No, I don't want that 'keyword'. I already know about that and it's a completely different thing. This is children having their language displaced before it gets a chance to become properly embedded. At that point it's no longer the native language it's a 'heritage language' or however people will describe it. No-one loses the language they have come of age using and would use to e.g. interact with family, friends because they always spoke in that language.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Le Baron » Mon Oct 03, 2022 5:20 pm

I'll add... I knew an Iranian fellow here who lived more than half his life in the U.S. (after leaving Iran at age 18 in 1980) and he used to claim he'd 'forgotten how to speak Farsi'. All the time. 'Can't do it any longer...!' Then when we were renovating his house a woman came round from a company selling management software and he'd invited her in because she was also Iranian (and lovely) and by dint of some cupidinous miracle he was speaking Farsi with her.
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