English will often stress a syllable and make the vowel longer to change the meaning or emphasis of the sentence or utterance. Consider I like eating fish. If I stress I, it could indicate that even though no-one else does, I like eating fish. If I stress fish, it suggests I particularly favour fish over other foods. If I stress eating, it might suggest I’m not keen on fish per se, but I find them tasty when on my plate.
This is quite unlike French for example. And it is one reason English people usually sound English when speaking French.
It is possible German does this too. Or perhaps I’m talking nonsense.
So, I am an American… And the er in butter is not a schwa in America. I think we are talking about the same thing though because it is a schwa in British English.
If you say “Must I?” Or “I must…”. Does the I “Ich” sound the same? Sometimes it sounds like the e in eat, and sometimes it sounds like the i in it. Which are very different in English.
Is it really a sound between the two that I can’t quite hear?
Does the one exclude the other
But yes, we do this, too. And the example you provided could be translated to German 1:1.
To my ears the e in eat and the i in it sounds the same, with the only difference beeing the length. eat is long, it is short i sound. “Ich” is pronounced the same both in “Ich muss …” (I must) and “Muss ich …?” (must I).
This makes sense if German has a sound between the two sounds, but doesn’t actually have the two sounds. Eat and it are not the same sound to me at all, but when foreign people speak English, they often pronounce them very similarly. I have noticed this with many different people from different languages.
I agree. And in my Larousse English French dictionary, the vowel sounds are represented by different IPA letters. I believe the IPA spellings of each word are identical in standard English and standard American.
Than our german i is probably really some sound located between those two. I haven’t spend any time with getting into the IPA system yet, but if you want to trust wikipedia on it the short i is like the i in ink and the long i is like the first e in evening. From my perception this is correct.
This is the german wikipedia article regarding IPA. Liste der IPA-Zeichen – Wikipedia
It lists the signs in alphabetic order with examples from different languages as well as audio samples. Could be useful. (The english wikipedia article unfortunately doesn’t provide this but I guess the “flavour text” isn’t all too important in this case anyways).
No, the opposite is “study grammar” or “memorize vocabulary” or any other activity other than “trying to understand a TL sentence”. Was my idea really that confusing? Did you really think I meant not trying to understand is a way to laern?
There are many things that are not scientific theories and are also not religion.
Most of life is not subject to rigorous scientific testing. Anyone’s ideas about how learning occurs are not scientific theories, because humans are too complicated (and too different) to have a scientific theory about.
Yes, CI theory suggests that studying grammar is useless. The idea of a “natural order” implies that some things are more difficult to learn (not impossible) in the wrong order.
The thread has moved on to more interesting topics. Enough about CI.
Your summary was indeed confusing as trying to understand a sentence in the target language is nothing exclusive in what Krashen proposed and basically just a summary of what it means to learn a language. Therefore study grammar or memorize vocabulary is no contradiction to what you have written.
It is very vague, too, which is my main criticism in regards to Krashen as well as to your summary.
It is simply not clear what exactly is meant. If I read text that is comprehensible and try to understand the sentences this includes its structures, which means I will not only make assumptions about the meaning of unknown words but also how the way the sentence is build (its grammar) contributes to the expression of that specific meaning. Is this no form of study grammar? And as others stated before isn’t the repetitive encounter of words in texts I read also a form of memorizing vocabulary? In the end the words end up in my memory, aren’t they.
Where do you draw the line between study and acquire? How much different words must the texts I read contain so that me starting to remember certain words due to repetition does not count as memorizing vocabulary?
With the exception of scientific theories, as in linguistics.
Yes, scientific theories are often useless in real life, since as you suggest, real life is too complex, However, Krashen put forward a scientific theory, and as such it must be testable, and falsifiable, otherwise it is no more than opinion or dogma.
Unfortunately his theory makes very definite statements, which he claims to be facts, for which he has presented no proof, and which will mislead second language students and teachers.
And you are mistaken that science cannot study learning. The famous study of how we forget over time is fully reproducible. SRS tools are based on reproducible science. We know that babies can recognise every single known human vowel and consonant in their first few months, but this ability has gone by the time they are two years old. We know that people can be trained to learn a new accent. There are countless reproducible studies that relate to learning and production of a second language. It’s just that most aren’t that useful in the classroom.
One more reason why his theory should be discarded.
And yet the idea is highly contentious.
Rather than focus on unproven scientific theories, doesn’t it make more sense to study how polyglots actually learn second languages? In practice they use a range of methods. Some like evening classes, some like grammar books, some like flash cards, some use shadowing, all make use of loads of input, and so on.
As @Obsttorte has said, each person has to learn how to learn i.e. discover empirically the methods that work for him or her self. In my own case, I have made huge improvements in my French, but I don’t yet know if I will ever reach a level where I can communicate in French almost as well as I can in English. I don’t even know if that is possible without regular contact with native French speakers. As for German, I was 59 when I started to study the language, and simply reaching a lower intermediate level is a struggle. I was led astray by Krashen’s theory, but then again, I have taken up several new activities over the last ten years, and I have often gone down rabbit holes which with hindsight I could have avoided.
In discussions of the CI theory, “study” often means “rote memorization” of vocabulary (SRS) or memorizing information about the language (grammar definitions and grammar rules). In those discussions “acquire” is used to contrast, to mean becoming fluent without doing those things.
In English, “study” means “memorize information”, but “study how to” means practicing a skill. You don’t get good at a skill (violin, ballet, riding a bike) by memorizing information. CI implies that language students can “acquire a new skill”, without memorizing info.
Of course I can be mis-interpreted, if I use one sentence in written English! If I could sit down with you for an hour in person, I could do better.
I don’t know “exactly what is meant” in regards to Krashen. Maybe you are expecting a detailed, precise decription (a real “scientic theorem”) that does not exist. Personally, I have no interest in such a theorem. I don’t expect Krashen to provide an exact, detailed plan for what every student should do in every situation. As far as I know, there is no such plan.
I got some good ideas about language learning from Krashen. They helped me improve my own language study. Thousands of other people also got some good ideas too. Steve Kaufmann likes some of Krashen’s ideas, and repeats them (along with his own ideas). I am happy to learn from anyone.
Don’t get hung up on words like “comprehensible”, or falsely define the method based on your interpretation of “comprehensible”. K didn’t start with the word “comprehensible” and build a learning theory around the word.
Thanks for this information. I have wasted time and effort on some things. This is a good warning – that I shouldn’t assume it works because Krashen likes it.
