[Swedish, basically]   

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Lack of updates lately

I'm so sorry for not letting you guys know; I've been home in Sundsvall for a week. I've been relaxing and spending time with my beloved family.
I promise to post more stuff soon, being back in Umeå again.

Oh, don't forget to check out the new MP3-files for the three last posts :)

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posted by Eikei at Tuesday, April 17, 2007

1 Comments:

  • Thank you for offering to help everyone at 43 Things learn Swedish. I've read the posts so far and listened to the mp3s. It looks like you're making a good start at teaching Swedish. Jumping in and doing what you can to help others makes so much more sense than waiting to get a degree in teaching and a paid teaching position.

    I have an idea for what a great foreign language course could contain, based on my experiences of learning to read a little of a few foreign languages, and studying sometimes by some methods, including school classes, where I didn't learn much at all.

    1. The text should provide at least one sentence for each word introduced, to introduce the use and meaning of the word in context. That includes even the words whose use seems most obvious. To someone who already knows a language, word lists with definitions are useful information by themselves, because the words can be plugged into sentences where any similar word would go. A beginning student of a language has no sentences to drop words into. Of course, word lists are practically necessary for getting started, but why not sneak some higher-level language teaching in past learners' mental blocks in the process?

    2. If a word has any gender, number, or inflections other than the very most common that a child learning the language would assume (as children learning English sometimes say "teached" for "taught," "a dice" for "a die," etc.) then there should be enough example sentences given for learners to pick up which gender, tense, etc. the word has. It doesn't have to be a whole paradigm for every word that has inflections, just enough to indicate which inflections to use. If that information is provided in the form of memorable sentences that are also models of good usage for forming more sentences, that would be great for teaching a language more quickly. That information can also be provided in abbreviations in word lists, but you want to lead students into not relying on memorizing information in that form.

    3. For every grammatical rule you state, at least two sentences should be provided: one for the form you take as a starting point, and one to show the transformation applied.

    4. Provide a translation of each sentence, but it can be on another page or down the page a bit if you want to push learners to think of a translation themselves before they read yours. "The sentence method" of language learning where the teacher speaks and writes in whole sentences of a foreign language without ever translating or breaking them into words is a gimmick of impressive extremism. Not all learners will need a translation for every sentence, but if someone falls behind or comes into the middle of course, it helps a lot.

    5. This is the best part of what I'm proposing: After giving a series of sentences that establish some use for each word, ask the reader how to say other things in Swedish that can be formed from the same words and grammar combined trivially differently.

    For instance, if I were teaching English and introducing the words horse and cow: horse /ho@s/ (häst) "They live on a farm and have two horses." cow /kau/ (ko) "They have a cow they milk." Then I'd write in Swedish, translations of those sentences and the question: How would you say in English that they live on a farm and have two cows? Then I'd provide the answer on the comments page.

    By making it so trivial, it would trick the learner into thinking in English and taking a guess, which would probably be right. That's a giant leap in practical language instruction away from trying to teach the student to form sentences only on his or her own, from rules and disconnected memorized lists of parts.

    Sorry for going on so long.

    By Blogger Sonny, At April 21, 2007 11:59 AM  

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