Historically I've always been really frustrated by the sort of practically useless phrases you often get fed in the early stages of language learning. I just want to speak! To chat! Give me things I can say to people! Lately, though, I've changed my mind a bit, because the more languages I've dabbled in, the more I've come to appreciate that basic conversational phrases are the most likely to break the conventional rules of the language, and that having a roster of random vocabulary to formulate into sentences like "The giraffe runs towards the red strawberries" often makes it easier for me to get a feel for a how a language functions more quickly.
Maybe (definitely) this is a factor of me maturing, and having a better understanding of how language works than I did when I was 10 years old and learning French. Don't get me wrong, it depends on your goals, and I totally understand the frustration of studying for 3 months and feeling like you couldn't go grocery shopping in the TL. I've been there. But our brains are primed to accept the first things we are repeatedly exposed to as rules, with differences encountered later as deviations. Commonly used stock phrases are often more likely to deviate from the general rules, and I'd much rather be in the position of having drilled in useful rules with goofy but easy to remember vocabulary than useful vocabulary that won't scale. I also recently was sorting through some old children's books, and realized how similarly they're structured, and how dialogue tends to be much more based in general rules of speech, even when articulating things that older speakers would word more efficiently, but less predictably.
Idk if this is a hot take for people here or not, but I feel that I became much more efficient when I learned to stop worrying and love the silly vocab.
[link] [comments]
from Language Learning https://ift.tt/widAVT1
via Learn Online English Speaking
Comments
Post a Comment