on the native qualities

[Dr Yoshimasa Tsuji]

The "intuitive knowledge" of the language belongs to what I call
the "basic grammar". Just think how a person picks up a language:
   1. starts listening to the mother's voice some months after pregnancy.
   2. concentrate very intensely to listening/understanding mother's voice
     up to the age of two or more. (Both my son and I began to speak one
     year later than average children and became chatter-boxes because we
     spent more time for understanding).
   3. spend three or four years only for language acquistion, training
    oratory muscles and the skill of parsing structural phrases.
   4. spend most of the time for conversational skills rather than
      reading/writing up to the age 10, roughly speaking. The total
      vocabulary in command is very few (I would think less than 20,000),
      but they are all very important words. The same word is practised
      more than a hundred times.
   5. When a child acquires the reading skill (I need to confess very
     few of us have a habit and find pleasure in reading), the vocabulary
     increases dramatically (will master all the words in Shorter Oxford
     Dictionary or Ushakov's Russian dictionary, both in two bulky volumes,
     in a matter of a few years), but the basic knowledge of the language
     won't change much since literary/formal words are simple words even
     computers can cope with.
When adults/adolescents begin learning foreign languages, they start
from stage 5 because teachers usually lack the skill that are developed
in stages 1 to 4. The "intuitive knowledge" is developed in stage 4.
Students find it extremely boring if forced to engage in excercises
with extremely limited vocabulary. Average students learning (they are
not learning, but "studying"!!) Russian here in Japan cannot
pronounce, say, "mezhdu 15.45 i 18.52" in natural speed because
numbers are not worth learning if only translation matters.
  Another situation that prevents one from acquiring the second
language comes from a mistaken idea that teaching foreign languages
should be conducted in academic institutions where professors
engage in rare or purely theoretical aspects of the language.
Teaching a language is like teaching tennis or driving a car.
Theory helps, but practice, practice, practice... and practice
with experienced coaches. ( I am sure those efforts will never be
rewarded in academic life. You need to write a thesis before
you finish your school days!)

Cheers,
Tsuji