Maxwell's actions

[gthomson]

At 17:19 +0000 07/03/01, Emily Tall wrote:
>  No doubt there are still
>some retrograde programs that cram you with grammar and then go on to
>literature, but what about all of us who have embraced communicative
>competence and "Golosa"!

Yes, within the past two or three years I have met American students
in Russia who said they didn't start using Russian for communication
until their third year or study. That reminded me of the experience
of my thesis co-supervisor at Indiana U in the 1960s. One disgruntled
American student in Russia claimed that his Russian professors in
America couldn't communicate in Russian (I might add, he himself was
unusually proficient in Russian).

>    Speaking of "Golosa," I wouldn't be as hasty as some of you in
>saying that one or two years isn't enough to "communicate" and that we
>should stress things like cultural understanding, understanding of the
>way the language works, and so on. As I tell my students, they can
>communicate after one or two semesters--but at a certain level.

Certainly two semesters before engaging in considerable spontaneous
communication could be called a slow start. One semester sounds more
reasonable. Perhaps university language courses for language majors
simply need to be more intensive at the outset. That might solve
Maxwell's problem--language majors, early on, have a semester of
intensive language learning. Remember in Andrea Nelson's dissertation
how the learners were starting to use Russian spontaneously at the
end of the eight week intensive course? Since not all students can
afford to go to a special summer program, each university would need
to provide such an intensive program as a regular  semester of work.
With such a foundation, students should graduate with functional
communication ability in Russian or any other language, assuming the
intensive course emphasizes actual language use.

Greg Thomson

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