LANGUAGE EXPLORER

Hello everybody

Sorry it has been a long time since my last podcast. I’ve been busy lately so I haven’t had time to make one. Today’s podcast is a bit scientific as I have just been reading a book I was given on linguistics. In this book it mentioned the work of Dr Stephen D. Krashen. http://www.sdkrashen.com/ and I have become very interested now in his work.

What is interesting for me is that Dr Krashen has published his ideas in 1981 on language acquisition and learning and I did not know that some of my ideas are similar to the language learning theories he has written about.

In Linguistics, “acquisition” means “the act or process of achieving mastery of a language or a linguistic rule or element”:

We talk of “child language acquisition” and “second language acquisition” for adults.

The interesting ideas he has written about can be read on the website http://www.sdkrashen.com/SL_Acquisition_and_Learning/index.html

What was interesting for me was that Dr Krashen talks about language acquisition and language learning as being different.

When I see some of the ideas of successful language acquisition and learning, I can see the way I have been learning French over the last 17 years, German over the last 7 years and more recently Chinese and Spanish.

In my case, I had been forming my ideas independently, as I have never heard of Stephen Krashen until yesterday.

Here are some of the things that make for a successful language acquisition and learning student.

Some characteristics
 good students pay attention to form
 they monitor their own and others’ speech
 they are prepared to guess
 they always attempt to communicate, to get their message across
 they are willing to appear foolish
 they look for practice – initiating conversations
 they attend to meaning – by attending to context

Important strategies
 clarification/verification of language
 monitoring progress
 memorization words and phrases
 guessing the meaning
 deductive reasoning from situations
 practice-learning on their own

I hope you found this podcast interesting. I am on holiday in Germany for a week, so I will make a podcast in a week’s time. See you soon – bye

PS. Here is an interesting blog I found:
http://languageinstinct.blogspot.com/2006/10/oral-and-aural-skills.html

 

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Hello everyone, good evening.
Alan here from England, and this time I’m speaking without a text again. It’s always interesting for me to just speak without a text, because this is how we speak normally when we speak with friends or with, mm, people we know or work with, and sometimes with my podcast I like to do this because it makes it more natural.

When you’re speaking with a text, it’s not quite the same as when you’re speaking just from your head, if you like, speaking aloud, as you would when you’re speaking with friends and family. And of course it means that you can hear when I pause, when I think about things a little more, and then when I decide to say something. And for those of you who are learning English, I think this makes it more interesting - maybe more difficult to understand, but also mmm, you can hear when I stop a bit, then start again. And that is how conversations go.

When someone reads from a text we just follow the words on the paper, or on the computer screen of course. But when you’re speaking normally, you’re thinking of the words in your head and then you say them. And of course this cannot be continuous, it has to have some small stops and starts, and this I think demonstrates that it’s useful when, mmm, people are learning English and they can hear that a native speaker would also sometimes stop and think about what they are saying before they say something more.

And I have people asking me quite often, how can they understand native speakers better? For instance, they may watch the news to TV or listen to the radio and the speakers are very fast when they speak and they don’t always things, …, the words are sometimes complicated. And I say to myself, well, you know, when we watch TV, watch the news, all the words are prepared before, They need to get as much information in as short a time possible and so they choose the words carefully and they say them rather fast.

And I think this isn’t a very good way for people learning English to improve their English.

Of course the can hear new words and things, but it may be a little off-putting to hear someone speaking very fast on TV.

Other people has said to me that I don’t speak as fast (here) as I do normally because they are used to hearing teachers, maybe, speaking very fast. But I say, not all English speakers, native speakers, speak quickly. Some people speak a little slower. And I don’t think that my “normal” speed is very slow but do not think it is very fast either.

So my advice to those of you who are listening to me speaking and wanting to improve your comprehension, your understanding, I say listen to this podcast a few times and listen to when I make my small pauses and when I start speaking again .

And you can see very easily when I think about what I am saying and when I decide to say something that I’ve thought about.

So I hope this podcast has been interesting for you – it’s just me speaking, talking, chatting without a text. See you next time, excuse-me, bye for now

 

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I hope you like my guitar piece which I played this evening and a nice sunny evening in England

 

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