What we need in language learning...
...is (probably) fewer people with differing opinions about it.
On a more serious note, I spotted this blog post quite a while back and just never got round to finishing my thoughts on it.
The poster had three main points, and I quote...
What we need for language learning is the following.
1) Convince learners that they need to leave the learner content behind as soon as possible. i.e. within 3-6 months.
2) Stop wasting money on text books, schools, conferences, linguistics research, language teacher training, and spend the money on transcribing all the wonderful content that is available free of charge on the Internet.
3) Show learners how to find content of interest, and how to learn from it, meaning mostly listening to it in a concentrated fashion.
In an ideal world, I agree. In fact, I feel that the first and the third are particularly important. However, where schools still force students to learn a language they may not necessarily want to learn, I think that research and training is still important to a certain extent. After all, who is going to show learners (1) and teach them how to go about doing (3) if the teachers themselves have no clue?
On a more serious note, I spotted this blog post quite a while back and just never got round to finishing my thoughts on it.
The poster had three main points, and I quote...
What we need for language learning is the following.
1) Convince learners that they need to leave the learner content behind as soon as possible. i.e. within 3-6 months.
2) Stop wasting money on text books, schools, conferences, linguistics research, language teacher training, and spend the money on transcribing all the wonderful content that is available free of charge on the Internet.
3) Show learners how to find content of interest, and how to learn from it, meaning mostly listening to it in a concentrated fashion.
In an ideal world, I agree. In fact, I feel that the first and the third are particularly important. However, where schools still force students to learn a language they may not necessarily want to learn, I think that research and training is still important to a certain extent. After all, who is going to show learners (1) and teach them how to go about doing (3) if the teachers themselves have no clue?