Hi, my comments about the crows path - in relation to doubts about
the efficiency and enjoyment of language methodology led Greg to
reply
"Sounds like Zen in the Art of Second Language Learning
" .....
....but surely it's plain simple common sense, not Zen
, that
tells us that as more words can be used in a meaningful manner, the
easier it becomes to communicate effectively.
The vocabulary (language) development process tends to start with
people feeling the need to write down some essential foreign words
(and phrases) together with their translations - before trying to
remember them. A lot can be said in favour of this initial approach.
It’s a logical method that leads to a quick understanding of a few
essential words and phrases. More importantly, it almost always
encourages learners to build on their initial successes.
However, despite achieving some early progress, this very narrow and
shallow approach to language acquisition soon becomes less
effective. Learners, understandably, often abandon the idea of
keeping such basic vocabulary notebooks after a short while. They
soon realise that vocabulary (language) expansion goes way beyond
any mechanical ability to reproduce single translations from memory.
“Word Surfing” (WS) was created to overcome the weaknesses of this
traditional, short-term approach to vocabulary learning … and
replace it with a much more practically useful, long-term vocabulary
development strategy. It’s design transforms a standard vocabulary
notebook into one that gives learners the ability to move away from
translations, and that encourages them to actually start using their
chosen new words as soon as possible. A wider-ranging, motivating
and active strategy can then start to develop at a time when
learning by translation becomes inefficient or even counter-
productive.
Organisation, learner independence and motivation are central to the
WS Concept, which is designed to appeal to those with a positive
desire to improve their language skills. The modern world certainly
offers plenty of opportunity to speakers of more than one language
and the incentive to develop multi-lingual skills has probably never
been greater. Only fifty years ago most people didn’t have the
chance to travel much and the vast majority of conversations could
only be with people who spoke “their language”. Opportunities to
learn a newlanguage …and work abroad - were very limited at that
time when compared to today. There was a much smaller pool of
available language teachers and a far smaller selection of good
resources. The incentive to learn a foreign language at that time
was understandably low for a lot of people.
Language teachers, faced with such circumstances, might well have
felt the need to follow highly structured " crow-like" courses that
fed students with a large spoon - full of something that might not
really appeal to their own individual taste buds. It’s also
understandable that so much time has traditionally been devoted to
early L1 explanations of L2 grammar structures. After all, the
method of emphasising early teaching and testing of grammar usually
produces (almost) acceptable and (reasonably) rapid results.
However, most teachers and students are now presented with a far
better set of circumstances. More and more language students, even
the relatively poor, have real opportunities to travel and work in
different parts of the world. Those who want to stay at home often
have the chance to communicate with others in different languages on
the internet. A much larger pool of capable teachers together with a
huge number of excellent resources are available to them. Nowadays
the incentive to learn a foreign language is understandably a lot
higher for a lot of people.
Under these circumstances, traditional methodology can develop into
something more flexible, meaningful and motivating. Word Surfing is
an additional resource that can complement expanding learning
opportunities and help learners to improve more independently
outside the classroom.....
...and hopefully enjoy flying a bit faster than the crow.
Will McCulloch
Vocabulary Developer
http://www.wordsurfing.co.ukhttp://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordsurfing/ Sent by
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