Postby iguanamon » Fri Jun 08, 2018 12:43 am
Years ago, I remember one of our members here and at HTLAL, Ari, mentioned not having spoken very much in Cantonese before landing in Hong Kong and got up to speed fairly quickly. He may not have spoken much, but he did practice speaking a lot while studying. So, what is output? Is it defined by only having interactive conversation with a native-speaker? Does it include self-talk, reading aloud, drills. shadowing, chorusing... and maybe an occasional conversation once every three or four months?
We almost never get the full picture here. Does someone who claims they learned a language by watching television really just watch television? Do they never, ever speak to themselves or practice speaking and writing until the magical day when they happen to meet a native-speaker and then sound indistinguishable from a native-speaker? We may never know the full story.
I have languages which I speak often and regularly- Portuguese and Spanish; less often- Haitian Creole; infrequently- Lesser Antilles French Creole; and not at all- Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol, though I do write in it from time to time and given my Spanish and Portuguese base, I can pronounce it easily. I'd say that my experience is pretty much the norm and maybe even above the norm here as most of us live and work in our native-languages and probably don't have regular speaking opportunities.
To my way of thinking, even with limited conversational opportunities available, what's important is practice, being ready and prepared to speak. One of the reasons I like those old DLI courses is the drills and the pauses provided to speak. Pimsleur is good for getting a learner "active" in speaking. I am often very disappointed when I see a learner post about how they've used audacity to eliminate the pauses in these courses. By doing this, they are only hurting themselves by cheating themselves out of the opportunity to practice speaking. The other methods- reading aloud, shadowing, chorusing and self-talk are all important. No, it won't make a learner be a perfect speaker, but a learner will be much quicker at getting better when the opportunity arises for having taken the time to be prepared and practice.
Each skill reinforces the other in language-learning. The more skills practiced regularly, the more connections and pathways are created in the mind to associate and produce language... at least in my experience. If I learned a "dead" language, I'd still want to be able to pronounce it and practice speaking- as much as possible.
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