4.0481 Language Learning (5/116>

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 13 Sep 90 16:37:26 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0481. Thursday, 13 Sep 1990.


(1) Date: Thu, 13 Sep 1990 8:46:44 GMT+0400 (23 lines)
From: Judy Koren <LBJUDY@VMSA.TECHNION.AC.IL>
Subject: RE: 4.0470 Learning Languages, Part II

(2) Date: Thu, 13 Sep 90 13:32:43 BST (15 lines)
From: Douglas deLacey <DEL2@phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: 4.0470 Learning Languages, Part II

(3) Date: Thu, 13 Sep 1990 11:53:24 EDT (49 lines)
From: TVICKERY@SUNRISE.ACS.SYR.EDU (Tom Rusk Vickery)
Subject: RE: learning foreign languages

(4) Date: Thu, 13 Sep 90 09:48 EST (10 lines)
From: John Dorenkamp <DORENKAMP@HLYCROSS>
Subject: Grammar

(5) Date: Wed, 12 Sep 90 23:31:53 -0400 (19 lines)
From: jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Joel D. Goldfield)
Subject: "Learning foreign languages"

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 1990 8:46:44 GMT+0400
From: Judy Koren <LBJUDY@VMSA.TECHNION.AC.IL>
Subject: RE: 4.0470 Learning Languages, Part II

The main advantage of learning a foreign language is that it teaches you
that your own is a cage, that you are not interpreting the world through
a crystal-glass window, and that other peoples think very differently
from you and your compatriots. If you haven't at least tried to learn
another language, you have to be a poet to realize the thickness of the
bars on the cage, or even that they are there.

Sometimes, on those very rare occasions when I have nothing else to do
and am not too tired to do nothing, I try to map the meanings and
connotations of a word (it always turns into a word-cluster) from Hebrew
into English or vice versa. Of course I have yet to find an exact
translation, but the exercise is usually illuminating.

What I find puzzling is the implication, in people's comments so far,
that U.S. students aren't required to know a second language even to
study History. Excuse me, I grew up in Britain. How can you get by
studying History without knowing at least one European language plus
Latin?
Judy Koren
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------28----
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 90 13:32:43 BST
From: Douglas deLacey <DEL2@phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: 4.0470 Learning Languages, Part II

Surely this debate is a bit late? The right time to learn languages
is when you are very young. In the good old days here Latin was taught
at primary (yes, PRIMARY) school. My kids didn't seem to learn anything
at primary school; it was all free self-expression and play. So Sheizaf,
let your kids make the most of this experience; when you've finished at
Michigan go to the Sorbonne or Berlin! I have several fully bilingual
friends (results of mixed marriages). It is not clear that in any
other educational area they seem deprived in comparison to me. It
is perfectly clear that I am infinitely poorer than they in the
languages area.
Douglas de Lacey.
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------55----
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 1990 11:53:24 EDT
From: TVICKERY@SUNRISE.ACS.SYR.EDU (Tom Rusk Vickery)
Subject: RE: learning foreign languages

Skip's notion of having professors of English teach some grammar in the
hope that secondary English teachers would learn a bit and teach it to
their students misses, I think, the mechanism by which the study of
grammar is useful.

Several centuries ago , while a high school English teacher, I did a
survey of all the research that I could find on the teaching of writing.
I was amazed to find that there were no data supporting the notion that
the study of grammar improved one's ability to write. The ability to do
grammar exercises seemed to be a skill independent of the ability to
write well. I began to observe my own students more closely and found
that, indeed, there were students who could do all the grammar exercises
and yet could not write worth a damn. I will always remember the
student who tried to persuade me that an ungrammatical sentence was
correct because she could diagram it. [By the way but aside from the
present discussion, the only thing that seemed to correlate positively
with writing was reading. Good writers seemed to read a lot more than
poor writers.]

Now back to Skip's point: I suspect that the reason that the study of,
say, Latin helps one learn grammar in a way that is useful in
understanding one's own language is that one must learn Latin grammar in
order to read and write the language. Kids already know English and
they can study grammar as a separate discipline, with little or no
impact on the way they use the language. Similarly one can learn to
speak a modern foreign language through verbal interaction with people
who speak that language; one learns a tacit grammar just as our kids
learn a tacit English grammar.

I shared the experience of others who found the study of Latin valuable
in understanding and using my own English language. I had studied
Spanish briefly as an oral exercise and without formal grammar without
much success, but the study of Latin in high school made a remarkable
difference. In one sense it was like learning the first wordprocessing
program. Having learned Scripsit, PerfectWriter was easy, and
WordPerfect was an absolute snap. I found the knowledge of Latin
helpful in studying German, French, and Greek, although Hebrew was a
different can of worms.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* Tom Rusk Vickery, 265 Huntington Hall *
* Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244-2340 *
* 315-443-3450 TVICKERY@SUNRISE.ACS.SYR.EDU *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

(4) --------------------------------------------------------------14----
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 90 09:48 EST
From: John Dorenkamp <DORENKAMP@HLYCROSS>
Subject: Grammar


Re Skip Knox's

>How about the English professors teach a bit of grammar?<

Which grammar(s)?
(5) --------------------------------------------------------------32----
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 90 23:31:53 -0400
From: jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Joel D. Goldfield)
Subject: "Learning foreign languages"

I like the President's Commission report (1979) on the scandalous state
of language teaching in the U.S. The communicative compentency aspect
still needs work, especially in the public schools, but higher ed is no
exception. The ACTFL/ETS oral (& other) proficieny guidelines have
helped, but nothing will take the place of competent teachers who feel
just as comfortable teaching the oral language as the written one.
Dartmouth College, William & Mary, Allegheny, Wheaton and others seem to
be making great strides: they have peer tutors who concentrate on the
oral language and faculty members who integrate all four skills in
dramatic fashion into their classrooms. Some test results have recently
been reported in _The Ram's Horn_ (Dartmouth College) and seem rather
encouraging.
Regards,
Joel D. Goldfield
Visiting Scholar, Duke U.