I’ve transcribed one of the Steve’s audios called independence.mp3 that is on this link http://www.thelinguist.blogs.com/how_to_learn_english_and/page/5/
Here is the text without any change:
And that’s their change these are the glasses is reflective of him are talking little about the importance of being an independent learner and in this is one of the major attractions of" days learning to understand the subject August the video on on what I consider DB advantages of listening and reading as opposed to focusing on output and it has a lot to do with the importance of being independent because if you are worried about your output at an early stage in your language learning if you want to practice output who are you not practice with multiple don’t want to talk to someone who can speak very well organized very few words I don’t like it when someone comes to me and says can I practice my English on you and SSE can’t say anything and I think it’s an unreasonable expectation of some so you end up with a teacher and again I think is unnecessary to to be dependent on a teacher if you want to practice your output on someone you have UR dependent on their goodwill that they are going to be patient and listen to you and try to understand what you’re saying and speak slowly and and stay within the range of the limited number of things that you can talk about I prefer not to do that I prefer to build myself up to a level where I can have a conversation with someone him were not in the end and you never know what their reaction is going to be any something where patients and people are not patient soul learning via input focusing on listening and reading makes you more independent and I got some major major advantage I don’t need to go to trigger I can if I want but I don’t depend on the Junior and the other thing about teaching scenario is your traditional classroom is one of dependence the learner is dependent on the teacher and the teacher decides what the activities are going to be and I know from having been on this list serve the community of English teachers they spent a lot of time talking to each other about how nice it was that they introduce poetry or that they brought up some subject in their class on critical thinking which forced the Mariners to question some aspect of our society and force them to be critical thinkers but maybe he and those learners were not interested in poetry run interested in the subject that you wanted them to become critical thinkers of about Mr. or Mrs. teacher so I think that invading one of the major disadvantages of our classroom is that the learners are so dependent they just walk in there and sit down and wait for the teacher to take over the big advantage of input-based learning is that you are in charge you will decide what you listen to you decide if you’re going to spend the next hour listening or reading or going through flash cards or writing or if you choose to contact if you do have a language exchange partner you can also contact the language exchange partner but once again once you’re depending on someone else’s goodwill you are no longer quite so independent soul I think a major major advantage of input-based learning is the fact that you become independent and I think that and I was one of the things in my book it is so important to cultivate that.capacity to be an independent learner to explore the language on your own cost of a surprise to people who are you soon as they run in the first difficult in a language they want it explained why is this on our form now in Russian you why is it that you’re in CA by other not too.so rude to eat well that just isn’t really isn’t a lot of things that people asked questions about at an early stage they eventually figure out themselves and order again I find now that I’ve been in Russian not been doing it for four years now in our day mostly listening and reading occasionally reviewing a grammar book but I find it very useful novel to go back to my beginner books when I used to flip through and ignore the grammar because I couldn’t remember to make sense of it and now I get to walk through that book it takes me probably a needle between half an hour and an hour to go through the whole book are greatly but I find offensive confirming and nailing down all of these rules that were meaningless blur stupid for because my emphasis is being building up my own category through all my listening and reading activities at and being willing to live with a certain amount of uncertainty in and the lack of clarity and in the tax as of now as an independent learner I choose all to go back there and try and nail down some of the grammar some of the grammar has already become second nature to me but I do often often pick up some of the soul is to make this point that one of the major advantages of what appears to be a passive way of learning is that you become independent you’re not forced to sit in the classroom were the teacher is going to have you role-playing and soul or order a yarn that is great debate with the Canadian Canadian benchmarks system which is this thing that has been developed in Canada over 10 years and I’ll been committee meetings and people driving around the countryside and and they insist that any immigrant who is learning English is obliged to learn as long as the government staying forth using a system called task-based learning which means that the learners as the classroom pretends to be a nurse or check out person in a supermarket or whatever other casting aside the teacher decides order may say okay but you got when you last class for everyone but you know what kind of opacity one act out but the point is that the decision on what to do in the classroom is with the teacher and so the big advantage of input-based learning is that you will decide what the learning task what the learning subject matter is going to be a dad is a big advantage because if you can develop that ability to be an independent learner you will succeed more quickly than if you remain in the position of independent learner thank you for listening
