Generic Grammar Course? (was RE: Why students do not study Ru ssian anymore)

[Udut, Kenneth]

Speaking for myself,
I'd prefer to learn Russian
by 'picking it up' - but since the
materials currently out there are
*mostly* in the form of language
descriptions for Russian,
[and I can't find a person to
help me with my Russian using
TPR or "The Silent Way", which
I would really love],
knowing what all
of the descriptive
features mean,
that is,
knowing
all of
the possibilities
that are out there -- all
of the possibilities *without* being
stressed out with lists of vocabulary, specific
declensions and conjugations, proper word orders for
a *specific language* -- would be a tremendous boost in that
when the time came that I was to learn a language like Russian,
it wouldn't matter if the teacher was using sentence
diagramming, or Total Physical Response, or
sending me to Brighton Beach NY to
work my way through purchasing
a dozen perogi and a CD,
or using 'communicative
methods' or Field
Linguistic
techniques,
because
then,
there
would be
less chance
that I would be
thrown.

It's all in retrospect,
of course, because I
*have* had to attempt to
pick up an understanding
of language analysis;
I've had to struggle
through the descriptions
of the cases, with minimal
examples, and I can say,
it drives me batty.

Pimsleur is at least helping
in that it doesn't bother
describing the grammar, but
it *is* teaching it.

I'm definately of the majority
that you describe here.  Were
the resources greater, I would
avail myself of them.

But, in the meantime, I have to
make do with what's around, and
analyzing patterns from large
bodies of words, trying to
identify the prefixes and suffixes
to help gain skills in identifying
mysterious words, working with
Pimsleur to help automate my speech,
working with "How to Read Russian"
type books to help be able to go
through a simple newspaper without
choking -- this eclectic approach -
a nibble here, a bite there - is
all I'm able to manage at this point.

I've got together memory systems,
written programs during spare time
at work to analyze Russian texts and
large lists of words (I have one list
that's just over 1 million unique
Russian words) so that I can
find out patterns to focus on,
I've got the Russian TV blaring when
I'm at home, I correspond in Russian
(badly) with a few online friends,
practice on several mailing lists...

Frankly, it's a pain!

[I'm personality type INFP, so if
you know anything of Myers-Briggs,
you'll know that analyzing is *not*
my forte - it's a survival
mechanism that is used badly :-) ]


-Kenneth

-----Original Message-----
From: Elizabeth B. Naime [mailto:elspeth at FALCON.CC.UKANS.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2000 3:30 PM
Subject: Re: Generic Grammar Course? (was RE: Why students do not study
Russia n anymore)

[...]
But it is also a different sort of knowledge than actually using a
language.  Some students find it distracting.  The skills needed to write
a linguistic description of a language are often NOT the skills needed to
write a learning grammar of the language.  Language learning and language
analysis are not the same thing.  Some people, and you seem to be in this
group, really like to approach language "rationally":  these are the
cases, these are the rules, this is the word order... many people,
probably a majority, learn better from "picking the language up" in actual
use than from memorizing tables.  I wonder what the best approach for both
types would be?

Elizabeth Naime  <elspeth at ukans.edu>

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