Question:
I liv in the country of the language I'm learning. I can read
pretty much anything that comes to hand. I can understand
anything broadcast on the radio. ... but
as to speaking it I seem to be completely stuck. People sort of
manage to understand me but I got to that stage two years
ago and I'm still at that stage.
I'v tried asking in book shops for books on "How to learn
a language" and the answer is always "Which language
are you learning?" at which my heart falls cos I know that
that means that they havn't even sniffed at a book on
general learning techniques.
Answer:
I'm responding to your original message, tho I read through the
thread, since it seems less confusing.
There is a debate among linguists - theoretical and applied - about
whether and how general learning strategies operate in second language
learning. This doesn't mean that there might not be good general
advice about second language learning however! It does mean that it's
often difficult to evaluate the advice - especially when it conflicts.
For example, some people insist that only authentic materials are
useful while there are still others who insist that at least at some
stages and in some contexts specially created texts are appropriate:
who should we believe? No one really knows.
In the situation you describe a number of points came to mind. You
say that your listening and reading comprehension are good but that in
interaction with other speakers you make enough gross grammatical
errors to impede comprehension. One way to move forward on this one
could be controlled interaction - do you have a teacher? Maybe
conversation exchange sessions with someone what wants to learn
English? In a controlled conversational exchange you can more easily
govern the type of feedback you get - you can ask your partner to, for
example, make explicit reformulations of things they don't understand
- to make explicit corrections of grammatical errors - to give
explicit cues when repair is needed and commentary on why.
If one of your problems is with the case system then there are a
couple of things that may help you. First you can drill old fashioned
wise on the declension of nouns just to make sure you know the forms
adequately. Second, you should make sure that when you learn a
preposition you _always_ learn what cases of the noun it governs and
with what senses. If it's too late for this in the sense that you
already have a large stock of prepositions and are uncertain about the
cases they govern, then start to systematize the knowledge - make a
table showing the prepositions and the cases they govern and what
senses are attached to a preposition case pairing. Formal grammatical
work like this does work for some learners but it will only translate
into fluency if you then practice what you have tabulated by
constructing sentences and eventually by using the constructions.
Another thing that may help if your collocuters are cooperative is to
make a habit of asking people when you are in doubt "Sorry, should I
say '...' or '...'?" In conversation, if people do offer you
correction or guidance always reformulate correcting your error -
don't just plunge on to the next sentence.
Getting stuck at a certain point in second language learning is normal
- in the literature it's sometimes called fossilisation. For some
learners certain forms fossilise early and persist long after they
have a mastery of very complex situated language use. For some reason
people aren't surprised by the fact that accent (phonological
interference) persists in second language learning - indeed many
people insist that it can never be eradicated perfectly - but people
are surprised that grammatical aspects of learner language persist.
If you would like to learn something about applied linguists' views on
language learning strategies, I recommend _Strategies in Learning and
Using a Second Language_ by Andrew Cohen published by Adison-Wesley -
it's accessible I would think. Certainly it could be read by
undergraduates, language teachers, and I don't think it would be very
difficult for the interested language learner. There is increasing
reference to the importance of _reflective_ learning from language
teachers and some indication of what people have found it useful to
reflect on may help you.
Of course one hopes that eventually correct and fluent speech becomes
a habit - almost a memory of the tongue as someone here put it, but
that may take a very long time. I have met non-native speakers of
English who have had decades of daily exposure to the language with
daily opportunities to speak in natural situations and some of them
never achieved very high levels of fluency. On the other hand I know
of people who struggled for years and then "got it" - the light came
on and they broke through to fluency.
I don't think in general that taking a break from the language much
helps - though it may help in your particular case to devote some time
to listening and to reflecting on what your comprehension stratgies
are. When I was a begining latin learner I noticed that I could, in
simple texts, ignore quite a bit of morphological detail - cases etc -
and rely on context and cotext to translate adequately. This learning
strategy - or non-learning strategy - caused me problems when the
texts became more complicated and when I was confronted by tasks
requiring explicit grammatical knowledge. Maybe your comprehension
relies on some strategy that takes the load of recognising the
morphological detail in what you hear and read? If it does, directed
listening comprehension may prove helpful.
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