The Language Learning Curve May 23, 2012
Posted by cantueso in language.trackback
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The graph shows how beginners learn.
The vertical represents knowledge and the horizontal is months.
Over the years this curve repeats itself with long lulls followed by weeks or months of easy progress.
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They start at zero, learn very much in a short time, get stalled after about three months when the typical lag between theory and practice begins to restrain their intake. Why learn new words when you cannot put them together to make a sentence ?
So they will quit.
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The problem is that all beginners prefer to memorize the names of things. For this reason popular language courses are based on picture books.
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And so, after a year or two or five or six (or more, here in Spain) students still can’t line up a sentence of more than 5 words. They are sitting on a pile of vocabulary junk :
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The problem is in the verbs. Learning how to handle verbs takes long and has to be done continuously for about a year, as if it were some reflex-developing game.
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>>>>> The photos are by ghD.
>>>>> The drawing of the kid with the yellow cap is from a Gary Olsen cartoon
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Yes the verbs. In Latin and Spanish I had to keep a declension chart in front of me and could never automatically insert correct tense ending. However, both languages have very few irregular verbs compared to English and verb construction in both languages make more sense than English.