Why rush to only speak incorrectly?

Content Forum
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Well, I see we have some blank posts in this thread…

From the article: “…if you want to genuinely master a foreign language”

It’s incredibly pointless to argue about what you should learn first if you don’t know your objective. If I suddenly learned my job was going to be transferred to China in 4 weeks… You better believe that I’m learning some phrases.

Noodles with chicken. Extra spicy.
Are you sure that’s chicken?
Where’s the bathroom
I live at…
Where can I find XXX (as in the grocery store)

If you’re sitting at home learning French and you’re not going to live in France anytime soon… sure, read and listen all day long.

Read quickly, this post will self-destruct in 2 days

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I never understood the “silent period” idea of forcing people to remain mute. When I go to a country where I can’t speak the language well, and the locals can’t speak my language at all, then isn’t it better for me to use my few words badly than for us to be unable to communicate? A mixture of broken grammar, minimal vocabulary, and a bit of hand waving can usually get a message across. The two counter arguments I always hear are:

(1) You have to understand what the other person is saying back to you. True, but people tend to adjust what they say back to you in order to match your level in their language.
(2) You will get into “bad habits” that are hard to break. I have never seen that happen other than with people who willfully stop putting in effort to improve. So long as you keep working at it, you keep improving.

From personal experience, the positive feeling I get from having managed even basic conversations has always spurred me on to learn a lot more, and improve my conversational abilities, so that conversations can be even deeper next time I visit the country. Whereas I have met no end of people who could - if they tried - manage at least a basic conversation, but remain mute due to their feeling they aren’t “good enough” yet.

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“From personal experience, the positive feeling I get from having managed even basic conversations has always spurred me on to learn a lot more”

What a fantastic point. The 2 biggest motivators for me being in a German speaking city – getting my point across in German for for basic stuff and (for me at least) feeling incredibly stupid when I don’t understand what people are saying (this happens less and less nowadays… usually in Swiss German).

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Most language learners are not in the country where the language is spoken. If they are visiting the country it is certainly fun to try out a few phrases. However, for any meaningful communication, most people will be better served using English if they don’t know the local language. I am not saying one should try to learn a few phrases, but rather that it does not really lead to much in the way of language learning unless it is followed up with a long period of input based learning.

I also doubt that speaking early creates bad habits, and have never understood the forced “silent period” strategy. When to speak should be a matter of individual choice, as well as opportunities and needs. There is not need to speak early, and it can be an imposition on the patience of the native speaker.

Speaking early will not ingrain bad habits, in my view, but a lack of sufficient input leads to a poor level in the language, as evidenced by ex-pats, or immigrants, who develop a limited range of survival phrases they can use. When I lived in Japan, most ex-pats could say hello, goodbye, wonderful, bad, two beers, beautiful etc. in Japanese. However, only those who invested time and effort in input activities advanced to any degree of fluency,

You need a lot of words and phrases to be fluent and to communicate meaningfully. These can only come from outside, from input. We don’t have them in our head. Nothing wrong with speaking early but it is not necessary and not a strategy for language learning. For many people, input activities, reading, listening, watching movies etc. are rewarding activities in their own right, and they do prepare us for speaking. When to speak is a matter of personal choice.

I will not be doing a lot speaking for the first few weeks of my Korean challenge, although I will inflict my Korean on any Korean speaker that comes within range here in Vancouver, even though I may not understand most of what comes back at me. This is not communication so much as showing off. I do it because I enjoy doing it, but not with the thought that it will advance my Korean a lot.

I am hoping that my present level in Korean is not that far off a level where I can start meaningful interaction with Koreans, and when I reach that point, I will talk more. But that is my preference.

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The motivation for most people to learn a foreign language is to be able to use it, usually for travel or business purposes. The other situation is people trying to learn the language of the country they’re living in.

In my experience, many people believe that the reason they have been unable to learn a foreign language is because they haven’t had an opportunity to use it. And they believe that the way to get good at speaking a language is to practice speaking a language. There’s also a bias towards receiving things from teachers. Students somehow feel more comfortable getting a list of vocabulary from a class than they do finding new vocabulary in books on their own.

All that being said, it is a struggle to convince people that they need input in order to be able to speak well. You’ve got people who think they need to memorize their grammar textbook, and you’ve got people who just want to “practice speaking”.

As for the “silent period”, that was never a recommendation, it was an observation. When children move to a new country, they usually just listen in the beginning, and they don’t say much until they can communicate reasonably well in their new langauge. The “Natural Approach” or comprehension-based approach to language learning recommended that students not be required to produce language early on, but there’s no prohibition on it. The recommendation is not that people be restricted from speaking early on, but rather that they not be required to do so.

Even AUA in Thailand doesn’t absolutely ban students from speaking, as I understand it anyway, it’s just that student speaking is not part of their program for some time. The students there are living in Thailand, so they’re obviously going to be using Thai outside of class.

However, as some people have mentioned, it’s possible to develop a fear of speaking due to the fear of “not being good enough”. This seems to affect many people - and I’ve felt it too. But that’s where a good tutor can help. It’s a lot easier to talk with a sympathetic tutor than it is to try and speak to somebody out in the world.

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kimojimoa,

Wow - it’s very difficult for me to imagine how speaking Thai outside of class while in Thailand could delay your road to fluency. Plus, if you live in Thailand, I imagine that it would be very motivating to try to communicate in Thai, regardless of how badly you did it.

I saw something from them called, I believe, Crosstalk. I’m not 100% sure what the deal was, but it seemed to focus on how to communicate at low levels of proficiency.

I’m not super familiar with their program, so I guess I shouldn’t say more about what they do or don’t do there. But, in general, most approaches to comprehension-based language learning don’t ban students from speaking - they just don’t force students to do it.

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I cannot imagine a school saying you can only learn in the classroom. Unreal.

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“I cannot imagine a school saying you can only learn in the classroom.”

You can only learn by giving them money :wink:

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Yeah, it’s so unreal sounding that I can’t help but wonder if that’s really the case. If it’s accurate, I would love to hear their reasoning - it just seems bizarre. I’ll try to spend some time on their website next time I have a few minutes. I’ve watched some of their videos outlining how their classes work, but I don’t remember hearing anything about discouraging people from trying to speak outside of class.

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@kimo

In any case, very interesting. I doubt that remaining silent for the first 20 week does you any harm. It is just the imposition on my freedom that would get to me.

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Ah, ok, I see, silent for the first 600 hours. I wonder if that’s specifically aimed at English speakers - perhaps they have different guidelines for people from different language backgrounds. I imagine speakers of tonal languages would get the hang of it much quicker.

That being said, living in Thailand, it’d be pretty hard to avoid using Thai unless you just spoke English everywhere you went. They’ve been doing this a while though, so I guess in their experience, people do best when they refrain from speaking and focus on comprehension for the first 600 hours.

I would actually probably do that to if I were going to learn Thai. I had a look at the language a few years ago, and my conclusion was that I’d be best off listening for a couple hundred hours before really trying to speak much just because of the difficulty of the spoken language for me as an English speaker.

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What language do they speak during this 20-week silent period, or is it proper silent period?

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Hmmm, I find this all a bit odd. Rather than dismiss it as oddball stuff, I guess I’ll have to wait until I have more time and get into their reasoning a bit more.

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Well I am going to dismiss it as oddball stuff right now.

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To me, it sounds like a good business strategy…

Using Thai = improving without taking classes
improving without taking classes = spending less time in class
less time in class = less money for AUA

telling students that “thou shalt not speak Thai” and providing a “learning detriment factor”
= spend even more time in class = even more money for AUA

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“…even the founder lamented that his Thai was “forever ruined” by practicing early.”

The founder tells a story to “prove” that his approach is necessary. That´s not a big surprise, since every “alternative method” comes with anecdotal “evidence” that seems hard to believe.

“If I go out and practice early on my own, I’ll forever sound like an American and forever mess up subtle differences between tones.”

Short version: I´ve tried both the “speak early” and the “silent period” approach and I don´t think it makes a difference.

Long Version: Actually, I had a “silent period” in French. I listened for more than 600 hours and only had one or two short conversations before I went to France a few months ago. French is easy to pronounce for Germans (the sounds are pretty much the same) but despite all that, somebody asked me “C’est quoi comme accent? Belgique? Allemand? Néerlandais?”.

I started learning English when I was 8 or 9 years old and our classes had a “grammar exercises plus speaking from the beginning”-type of approach. By the age of 18, I was still unable to pronounce the th-sound and the american R (we studied British English though) so yeah…I had an obvious German accent. My accent improved quite a lot since then, even though I still don´t sound like a native speaker.

You can listen to two of my recordings if you want to. I don´t think there´s a big difference between my “speak early language” (English) and my “silent period language”(French). I think that in English there are sounds that I pronounce incorrectly, while in French I mispronounce words but I´m able to make the sounds (tu le monde instead of tout le monde). Overall language proficiency and phonetical similarity seem to be much bigger factors than “speaking early vs. having a silent period”.

(I recommend skipping the first 2-3 minutes because these are unscripted monologues and it takes some time to “warm-up”.)

French: Login - LingQ
English: Login - LingQ

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“And everyone has pet-phrases that they like to use in every language”

For sure! I have one Austrian colleague who puts ‘more or less’ into almost every sentence. I have another who uses ‘you know’ about three times per sentence.

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Merci pour ce petit feedback, Kimojima :slight_smile:

“Some say that speaking too early effectively shuts off some of the subtle hearing that would normally remain by observing the Silent Period. And hence, makes it impossible to re-produce those sounds correctly.”

Is there any evidence for that claim? This is big news (if it´s true^^)

“Perhaps these materials by Gabriel Wyner could be a method to help cure that.”

That sounds interesting. I´m having a hard time finding materials about pronounciation.

@Colin " I have another who uses ‘you know’ about three times per sentence. "

Hmmm…I intentionally use “fillers” like “you know”, “to be honest”, “kindaaa”, “in general”, “in my view” and whatnot in order to sound less annoying and more proficient.^^

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PS: I think that “keeping it simple” might be a good idea to avoid fossilization. If you´re unable to say “I would buy a car if only I had enough money to buy one” you can just say “I want a car but I don´t have money”.

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@ Paule

Your English sounds very good. Maybe I will record one of these things in German.