intuitive labels for verb conjugations

[Mark Kaiser]

At 01:01 PM 4/2/99 -0500, Katya Hirvasaho wrote:
..snip..
>We are on the threshold of
>revolutionizing language learning entirely.  Most of us complain that
>American students are not very good at memorization.  Why continue to force
>them when we now have the technological means (Internet, satellite
>television and audiovisual materials) to expose students to large amounts
>of input of the actual language and culture. It is a fact that all people
>listen and read their native language every day vastly more than they
>speak.  It seems to me that this should be the premise for foreign language
>teaching also.

We can all agree that technology provides wonderful new opportunities for
getting authentic language materials to the student. (I must note, however,
that until very recently, the student has played a fairly passive role
vis-a-vis the technology (how many of us really consider button clicking an
activity that leads to acquisition?). I would agree with Katya that we are
on a threshold of something revolutionary (IRCs now and speech recognition
software in a few years), but that is years away from widespread
application and evaluation of their effectiveness.

I disagree more with Katya's (implied) minimalization of the differences
between L1 and L2 acquisition. Our L2 students will never have anywhere
near the exposure to the target language as the L1 learner has (as I recall
a child of 4-5 uses something like 3,000 - 4,000 words per day), nor does
the L1 learner possess the analytical skills available to the adult L2
learner. I can't imagine why we would choose to not use those skills to
compensate for the relatively low exposure to the language.

Mark Kaiser
Berkeley Language Center