Chapter 4: Balance Your Learning - Learn through Speaking and Writing PDF

productiue skills Chapter Balance your learning–learn through 04 speaking and writing Listening and reading are called the receptive skills because they involve receiving input, while speaking and writing are called the productive skills. In general,...

productiue skills Chapter Balance your learning–learn through 04 speaking and writing Listening and reading are called the receptive skills because they involve receiving input, while speaking and writing are called the productive skills. In general, producing language is more difficult than receiving it because when producing it, choices have to be made about which words to use and which grammatical constructions they occur in. According to the principle of the four strands, which we follow in this book, over one quarter of the time in a well-balanced language learning program should be devoted to the productive skills of speaking and writing. This includes developing fluency in speaking and writing. Note 4.1: Do children learn languages better than adults? Elastic When considering this question, it is important to distinguish between learning a second language and learning a foreign language. Learning a second language involves learning a language while living in a country where the language is spoken. Children do this very well, and generally the younger they are, the better their learning will be. Learners are much more likely to acquire a native-like pronunciation of the language if they begin learning a second language at a young age (before six or seven years old). Learning a foreign language occurs in a very different situation. There is not usually a strong need to learn the language, There are not a lot of opportunities to meet and use the foreign language, motivation needs to be very high, and the time available is usually very limited. When learning a foreign language, adults have some advantages: they are better at aiming for long-term goals, at keeping working at the learning, and they often have learning skills and strategies that they have already practised in other learning. Adults are also better able to reflect on their learning and take personal control of it. How can you learn a language through speaking? The quickest way to begin speaking in another language is to memorize useful phrases and sentences. The very first phrases and sentences should come from the survival vocabulary which includes greetings, expressions of politeness, the language needed for shopping and moving around, numbers, the language needed in a restaurant, and brief descriptions of yourself, your work, and your reasons for being in the foreign country. 24  Activity 4.1: Memorized sentences and dialogues Write the sentences you want to memorize on small cards with their first language translation on the back. Ideally, you should get some help with pronunciation of these phrases and sentences before working on memorizing them. When memorizing, look at the first language translation and try to recall the foreign language phrase or sentence. Activity 5.1 describes how to use word cards. The phrases and sentences should be ones that you can use immediately. Table 8.5 contains a list of situations that you could use to prepare short dialogues to memorize. Deliberate memorization is fast and long-lasting and makes material readily available for language use. As your proficiency in the language develops, it would be useful to set up a regular conversation group of learners (and hopefully including a native speaker or two) who meet to practice conversation. During these conversation sessions, you can work your way through a list of situations you are likely to be in, doing small role plays of these situations. Each situation should be practiced several times, two or three times in one session, and then once or twice in increasingly spaced subsequent sessions. In an ordinary conversation, a native speaker is unlikely to correct a foreign language learner if what the learner says is understandable even if not correct. It is therefore useful to find someone who is both willing and capable of giving you corrective feedback about your speaking. It is also useful to decide on a particular focus for correction, such as the pronunciation of a certain sound or the use of a particular grammatical feature so that the corrections are not overwhelming. Activity 4.2: Role play Role-play activities involve two or three people working together acting out the parts in a common situation such as going to the doctor, buying things in a shop, seeking directions, ordering food in a restaurant, and starting up a conversation with a stranger. Each person in the pair or group takes on a different role and they act out the situation. At the end of each role-play, the players should comment on how they could improve what they just did. Then they should immediately do the role-play again adding in the improvements. If it is possible to do it a third time straight after that, then that is a good thing to do. The same role-play should be practised again two or three times in later sessions. If the topic is carefully chosen, role play activities prepare you for spoken language use. Chapter 4 / 25  Activity 4.3: Prepared talks It is worth developing short talks that you can write out, memorize, get checked, and then practice. These can include topics that you would be likely to talk about with other people, for example, the work that you do, your hobbies, interesting things that you have done in the foreign country, your family, and what visitors to your country should go to see. Another useful activity involves imaginary mental conversations. This activity can be largely silent but there is value in speaking aloud (although not in public places!). The activity involves imagining a conversation with a real person who you can visualise, perhaps a movie star. You simply practice speaking to them in your mind, polishing the conversation until you are happy with it. When you are studying by yourself, speaking is the hardest skill to develop because of a lack of opportunity to talk to others. You need to do your best to find these opportunities through direct contact with native speakers or other learners and through electronic contact using programs like Skype. How can you learn a language through writing? There should be three kinds of writing in any language course you take. The first kind of writing is done carefully, with the help of a dictionary if necessary, and focuses on accuracy. Someone else who is proficient in the language should correct it so that you can get feedback about the accuracy of your writing. The second kind of writing should focus on fluency, and the most useful activity for doing this is 10 minute writing (see Activity 6.3). The third kind of writing (see Activity 8.1: Issue logs) focuses on quantity of writing under careful conditions and does not require feedback on the language, although it would be useful to get it. Activity 4.4: Read and write Writing is easier if you bring a lot of knowledge to what you write. Choose a topic that is relevant for you, read about it in your first language and in the foreign language, and then write about it, using everything that you have read. Instead of just reading and writing, you can listen and write, or watch, listen and write (watching a movie before writing for example) (see Activity 7.1: Linked skills activities for a similar kind of activity). 26 The time-on-task principle says that the more time you spend on an activity, the better you will be at doing it. The more you practice, the better you become. All the four skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing, improve with large amounts of regular practice. You will not only learn the particular skill, you will also improve your vocabulary and grammar. In the two previous chapters we have looked at learning through using the language. In the next chapter, we look at a different kind of learning–deliberate learning–which makes up the third of the four strands of a well-balanced course. Chapter 4 / 27