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There are four language skills to master:
Speaking, listening,
writing and reading. Of these listed, by far the most
difficult is the ability to speak or express ideas in a foreign language.
Listening or the ability to discern words and sentences and understand the
spoken word comes next. Finally, writing is more difficult than reading,
since it requires mastery both in style and grammar.
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Over the course of many centuries, teachers and students have struggled with the
method that would best be used to introduce these four language skills to
somebody who desired to become proficient in a foreign language. In past
centuries, and in many countries prior to World War II languages were taught in
a purely mechanically way. Students learned grammar and vocabulary first,
and then tried to combine their knowledge and experiences to create meaningful
sentences, or comprehend when spoken to or when reading a foreign text.
The shortcoming of this method, as many even today can testify, has been the
inability of the student to be both engaging and understanding his native
speaking partners.
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Rote
memorizing is long gone and these days more attention is given to a
method called total immersion. Its purpose is to create an environment
that would be as close as possible to a real life situation. For over one
hundred years a typical example of this school of teaching has been the
Berlitz
method. When you study with Berlitz and according to Berlitz, your teacher
should not talk to you in your native language at all and is obliged to only use
the target language. It seems that younger students do much better when
their teacher used this method whereas older students feel a strong need for the
teacher to use their native language in certain areas, especially when dealing
with grammar.
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We've already mentioned that one of the assumptions of the total immersion
method is the effort to simulate the natural circumstances that exist in the
target foreign country. Another assumption is that we all should learn
languages in the same way children do. The supporters of this theory say
that children learn by listening, not by learning grammar rules or by a sheer
drill. This is only partly true. First, children already listen to the
language in their mother’s womb. Once they are born, they keep hearing it
all the time for one or two years before they start speaking. Essentially,
they have one-on-one classes several times a day … day after day. And even
with this kind of attention, it takes three years of constant exposure to the
language before they start speaking it proficiently. We can never simulate
such conditions for any adult language learner. Moreover, children learn
the language more in tones than in words. They perceive the language as a
song that has a certain melody. That is why their accent is always perfect.
Nobody can later repeat this unique situation.
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