3 ms·
Emphasise speaking. We tend to focus on reading, oral understanding & writing. Those fit easily into "sit down and study for 45m" format. Speaking doesn't, and
by dalbasal 6y ago
Emphasise speaking.
We tend to focus on reading, oral understanding & writing. Those fit easily into "sit down and study for 45m" format. Speaking doesn't, and can feel uncomfortable or contrived in classroom settings. One of the big reasons "immersion" often leads to fast breakthroughs is because it comes with a lot of natural speaking. That's often the bottleneck.
You don't stop and think of the correct grammar, words or whatnot when speaking. You just try to make yourself understood as best as you can, with whatever language skills you have. Even 200 words is something. Engaging that intuitive improvisation can be really helpful.
- bluejay2 6y agoI have a different take. I would say don't worry about speaking at all, at least not in the first several months. It will come when you are ready. Focus on understanding messages from comprehensible input (be it from books, movies, whatever). Speaking is hard, and the anxiety caused by forced speaking (for example, the type you find in a lot of high-school language classes) can be a barrier towards language acquisition. In a nutshell, I subscribe to the Input Hypothesis that Stephen Krashen writes a lot about on his site sdkrashen.com. (Under that hypothesis, the gains from immersion, when they arise, are because of the higher amount of interesting, comprehensible input that is directed at the learner, rather than an increase in the learner's output) Yes, at some point you'll need to work on pronunciation but that is something different than the type of extemporaneous speaking we are discussing here. But this probably only goes to show what another commenter pointed out, which is that there is a lot of conflicting advice out there.