Question:
No one reacted to my speculation that learning a language is possible,
but learning how to learn a language may not be possible. I also
suggested that learning a language is a top-down, meaning-driven
affair, but learners are not able to acquire language learning
strategies on the same basis of purposeful, metalinguistic action.
I was hoping that people would argue the opposite because this is what
I feel actually. Negotiation of meaning, for example, is not just a
way to learn a language but is an aspect of language itself. I don't
wish to recognize a distinction between learning a language and
learning how to learn a language.
Meanwhile, I am glad that Isa Kocher believes in correction. The
support for correction from across the theoretical spectrum suggests
the idea you can learn something about your own language learning
transcends the different ideas about how language learning takes
place. If at the same time, learning about language learning is not
different from language learning, then perhaps the differences between
the various theories of how learning takes place can also be
transcended.
Answer:
For clarification:
Are you saying that the efforts of learners to derive meaning from
language input is a metaliguistic activity which results in language
learning? Are you also suggesting that linguistic competance and mastery of
the prosodic elements of a language are "knowledge" components which are
inductively and unconsciously acquired as learners struggle to derive
meaning? Is the meaning-driven affair of language learning a
necessarily conscious one?
If the search for meaning is conscious then that might make it part of the
"How to learn" rather than simply "Learning" category. While people who do
search for meaning, lexical and otherwise, may be good language
learners in general, people are able to learn their L1 without much
attention at all, to meaning or to anything else. If we look at the linguistic
behaviour of children, we will note that they are more intereseted
on a consciouus level of being understood themselves than in
understanding others. Of course, I do not blame the wee things for
their egocentricity. However, we can see the same thing in teens and
adults, but perhaps to lesser degrees. Teens and adults wish to be
understood, but are very selective about who they spend their
efforts trying to understand. I think we learn a great many things
about language without trying to find meaning, but that we may learn
a gret deal more if we do search for meaning - by attempting to
negotiate meaning, for example.
For this reason I think it is NB to maintain the distinction between
learning a language and how to learn a language.
Nida has cited cases where naturalistic L2 learning has taken place in
Africa by men who have moved for one reason or another to an area where a
different language was spoken. These men said that they expected to
learn the TL without significant attention to it. They expressed
a belief that if they listened to the language long enough they would
come to understand it and soon enough be able to speak it. This bears
some similarity to L1 acquistion and is in strong contrast to "educated,
literate societies in which members are convinced that all "good"
learning must take place in a school or be based upon some validated
pedagogy.
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