Note: this doesn’t address all my issues with hardcore Immersion-Only orcs. There are plenty of other issues but I’ve left them out for brevity.
Stephen Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis has merit and I make a sizeable part of my learning routine “input” like reading short stories and listening to songs.
But when I use learning software or workbooks, those materials also contain comprehensible input. They contain complete sentences and paragraphs where I fill in the blank, and the words are given context. So it tests my knowledge and provides contextual input at the same time. When I do verb drills in a workbook, I’m seeing those conjugations used as part of complete sentences so I’m being exposed to contextual input right there.
CI devotees also tend to horribly misconstrue language learning materials, claiming that the voices in software are “robotic” and “aren’t representative of how people actually talk” but I find that to be wildly inaccurate. I can pull up Babbel and find conversations that are fairly real, and make a very useful bridge to podcasts where native speakers converse (one of my main sources of learning atm). With MemRise they even have video snippets of native speakers swearing.
Also, there is no evidence that input-only learning works better for anyone, but CI devotees circumvent the scientific need for evidence by claiming that testing isn’t an accurate way to measure language acquisition. How convenient!
Lastly, it’s worth noting that the same people who claim you should learn entirely from consuming native content still have no qualms using flash cards, which is the exact opposite of immersion: words with 0 context whatsoever. Mattvsjapan sure sells a lot of flashcards for a guy who claims you should learn via immersion.
Despite the glaring flaws in their arguments, immersion-only devotees have no problems disrupting online discussions and insulting everyone who uses a learning material. Who cares if teams of PhDs put together useful material based on decades of careful study? The immersion-only guy watched one Krashen lecture and suddenly became an education genius! I just don’t see anyone besides immersion learners with that attitude.
In other words, they’re obnoxious and have literally 0 support for their claims, even contradicting themselves. What’s worse is they’re trying to give advice to beginners asking for good materials to learn a language.
[link] [comments]
from Language Learning https://ift.tt/PyJBqhQ
via Learn Online English Speaking
Comments
Post a Comment