Hope everyone had a good holiday. Nice to see that I read and posted about the wrong article the first time…
Firth and Wagner wrote on second language acquisition and the problems non-native speakers have with communicating in new languages. Easy enough to understand since we’ve all (I’m pretty sure) have been in this boat.
Hymes and Long (pg. 287) both have theories involving language learning as a form of social interaction. Farther down the paragraph, Gass and Varonis have a similar idea stating, “active involvement is a necessary aspect of acquisition, since it is through involvement that the input becomes charged and penetrates deeply.”
After I read this, I thought, “Is this a new concept that just came about in the last couple of years?” I sure hope not. I find it hard to believe that one can become fluent in a language without ever practicing it outside an academic setting.
Is this possible? I don’t think so. From first hand experience, conversations within the classroom are much more structured and forced than outside conversations.
I feel that if all you ever do is practice with a book open and someone instructing you, you’ll never learn how to really communicate with the locals.
Also is it possible to learn a language without ever visiting the language’s home country?
Firth and Wagner mention, a few times, about native speakers “dumb down” their speech for non-native speakers to understand them. These simplified conversations, in my opinion, are a double-edged sword. They can help the non-native speaker get better acquainted with the language. However, they can inhibit conversational and vocabulary growth. So my question is, how do you find a happy medium when speaking with a non-native?
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