Question:
When I got on to the Internet I was disappointed by the lack
of discussion by SLA and applied linguist people. I
thought that applied linguistics star was in the
ascendant, because there was a dialogue between theory and experiment and
linguistics was on the wane, not being scientific.
But there is much more activity on LINGUIST.
Michael Sharwood Smith talked about the differing attractions
of the poetic and scientific points of view of language learning. I think
there is a more basic issue. The difference between learning/teaching
a language and daily life. (?) Before we start talking about poetic and
scientific approaches to language learning, I think we have to talk
about what we know in daily life and how it is different from the
situation learning a second language. I am probably more of the
rationalist than most of you in daily life, but even I have beliefs about
daily life which I don't question, such as ideas about my family,
society et cetera.
What makes learning and teaching languages interesting,
important or whatever is the fact that none of the beliefs we
ordinarily carry around with us can be assumed to be true. We have
to question our relations with the people we interact with and our
understanding of ourselves. This is a philosophical doubt about
meaning and being that precedes arguing about what we know and
how we know it.
To go into the classroom to act scientifically presupposes that
anything we are doing makes sense. Before we start doing scientific
research we have to think how we can couch our experiences in
language that makes sense.
I'm sorry this doesn't make sense, but I am posting it
anyway.
No SLA people seem to be writing about what interests me most
about learning and teaching language. That it is very confusing.
It throws you round like a roller coaster.
Answer:
This make more sense than the humble discourse that you produced
presupposes. But tecahers are treated by the self referential literature
of lang teaching (the most of it) like "noble savages": "what you do not
know make up with intuition": I have pointed it out on a different
occasion that such an approach leaves a student astray as since we as
teachers do not know what and why is it what we are doing the learners
who also have no idea just jump into the blind: a kind of ALM approach...
repeat after the model: the key is under the dog
The dog is above the key
The key is under the matt
The matt is above the key...
Pretty comprehensible??
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