Speaking of Skills

Let us consider the four main language skills to be reading and listening (receptive skills) and writing and speaking (productive skills). Usually receptive skills precede productive skills. For instance, a baby must listen for years before it can speak and a child learns to read (at least the letters) before he or she can learn to write.

Learning a foreign language isn't exactly the same as learning your mother tongue. For one thing you can use your mother tongue to make comparisons, draw conclusions and so on. Also, your experience of the world informs you when learning a foreign language. A baby has nothing to draw on but trial and error, stimulus and response, and imagination to fuel its emerging cognitive abilities.

On the other hand, besides eating and sleeping a baby has absolutely nothing else to do but watch and learn and gradually piece together its view of the world. Even a small child has many other distractions: friends, playing, tv, possibly other school subjects. It's even more difficult for adults as they have responsibilities and obligations in and out of work, their families to think of, and so on.

Besides this adults have a history to bear in mind. Perhaps they were unsuccesful at language learning at school, perhaps they were highly successful--either will reflect on their current learning. Maybe they had a wonderful teacher who made them love the language, or maybe a horrible one who made them hate it. Perhaps they love or hate the language their learning for cultural or political reasons. In other words, they carry a lot of baggage around with them, to use a tired old cliché.

We're Back!!!

Hello Everyone,

Well we're back, after a long long holiday. School started back in September and we're nearly in November and this will be the FIRST entry of the academic year!!! No problem, better late than never.I'd like to set the tone this year by offering suggestions to help you to become a better language learner.

Learning a language is quite different from learning other things. On the one hand, it's a "knowledge" subject. You may learn grammar (including some grammatical terminology: adverbs, prepositions, phrasal verbs, and so on). You'll need to learn vocabulary, rules of usage, etc. On the other hand, it's a "skills" subject in that you'll need to be able to DO something: read and listen as well as speak and write.

One can easily argue that this "skills" aspect far outweighs the "knowledge" aspect, after all, many people go for an entire lifetime without even learning to read and write let alone grammar rules, and yet are capable of communicating all their wants and needs. That is an extreme case, but it exemplifies the power of "doing" OVER the power of "knowing."

One of my favourite stories is about a former student, Catarina. If you asked her to contrast the use of the present perfect and past simple...she wouldn't have a clue. Her colleagues could contrast the two easily. Give them an exercise and Catarina would consistently get over 90% right, while her classmates would only get 40 something percent!!! You tell me, who the better language learner was!!!

Keep that in mind when you're revising your grammar rules. Next time, more on learning strategies. Have a great week, Fernando