Postby Le Baron » Wed Apr 13, 2022 11:53 pm
We had a language lab at school with audio-lingual methods and tape machines controlled by a tutor, but I didn't like them. It was like being trapped on a merry-go-round where you couldn't get off. I was glad when more class-based interaction was used; a mixture of direct method and explanation. With listen and repeat it's not necessarily that the format is bad (so long as it isn't the sole content of a course), but that ultimately it's too rigid in terms of engagement. I'm not against the principle, it being founded on sound principles of behaviourism, but it's only part of the story. Along the way you need to find your own groove when learning a language, this is the only way you can creatively 'take ownership' of the material as it were. Make it your own.
You don't just need random force-feeding or mass-feeding of ready-made 'correct' sentences, but you really do need large-scale vocabulary exposure. And to be TESTED on your own terms for exactly what you've been learning in small blocks. To test yourself and to be tested by others, quite a lot. Not just call and response for reaction, which is partially necessary, but also for creative recall. If anything should be drilled it is vocabulary, probably more than fixed sentences beyond the very common fixed structures.
Ideally I would promote a mixture of some audio-lingual with a less structured input system and also testing yourself by speaking/writing short passages and interaction. Drilling is good for reflexes, but perhaps less so for creative sentence building.
I've looked around at the apps and online courses which now dominate language teaching and find them wanting. Many are not even attempting to do anything new in the way old systems were designed around research. Any half-decent old book can teach you the grammar they offer and even then a lot barely go past A2-B1. So they're weak on grammar, weak on input/content which is drip-fed very slowly and don't offer any drilling of anything. They seem to be an expensive con. I'm sceptical about whether people really learn languages from these apps.
5 x
Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
- Jonathan Swift