Ron's ESL Blogs

Hello Ron,

I’d like to discuss with you the following issues:

1. Is it easier for foreign learners to study English through their native language explanations of English pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary?
2. Do you support the method of intuitive English immersion for teaching and learning English?
3. Do you think a foreign language (English) should be learned the same way as a native language is acquired by a pre-school child? Are there substantial differences in this regard?

Below I’ve prepared just a draft of my thoughts on those issues. I want to develop my draft into a good article. Can you express your thoughts on those issues?

CAN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (ENGLISH) BE LEARNED EFFECTIVELY THE SAME WAY AS A NATIVE LANGUAGE IS ACQUIRED?

Foreign learners especially adults need to learn English in realistic communicative oral and written exercises (that is to practise with real life content).
Some English language courses, schools and teachers advocate the “natural” or intuitive immersion method of learning English. This method excludes the use of a native language in learning English, and concentrates on listening to English conversations and texts and later speaking in English, but grammar is dealt with superficially through brief explanations of grammar points that occur in listening material.
There is no adequate grammar practice in exercises with communicative content to develop solid grammar skills to reduce grammatical mistakes by learners. Grammar is the weak point with this method. Followers of this method claim that pre-school children learn to speak their mother tongue this natural way through constant listening to their native speech and speaking practice, without learning grammar rules and without practising grammar exercises. By that logic a foreign language can be learned even by adults effectively the same way as a mother tongue by little kids. I do not share this view because there are substantial differences between learning a foreign language and native language acquisition, and between kids’ and adults’ learning processes. It’s worth noting that little kids learning to speak their mother tongue are exposed to hearing only their native speech constantly every day and do not hear any foreign language and there is no other language interference as they think in their mother tongue only.
It takes them several years even under ideal conditions to speak their native everyday language fluently although their advanced grammar and vocabulary knowledge may be limited.
At school children still have to learn the grammar of their native language to master it proficiently.

Learning a foreign language, especially by adults is a totally different matter. Everyday listening and speaking in a foreign language by adults living in their native countries are quite limited at best and often absent for some periods of time, and they think in their native language and there is a native language interference in learning a foreign language (in terms of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary). A person can think only in the language that a person knows best.
I believe without knowledge of grammar rules and adequate grammar practice in exercises with communicative content it is impossible to speak, understand and write in a foreign language correctly. Therefore learning a foreign language must include adequate grammar learning as well.
In my view it is easier for foreign learners to study English through their native language explanations of English pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.

Sincerely,

Michael Shelby

When teaching beginners, usually the following steps apply:

1) Use some games to teach very basic, easy vocabulary.
Flashcards, for example, can be both fun and effective.

2) Teach the sounds of the English alphabet.
English is pretty tricky, in a way, since the same letter can represent many different sounds!

This can be VERY confusing for beginners, especially if they have just learned the English alphabet.

For example, they have just learned that “e” is pronounced like the “e” in “bed,” and “a” is pronounced like the “a” in “hat.”

Then you read together a simple short story that uses only the simple, common words . . .
Like “make” and “take,” which immediately violate that rule, don’t they?

It’s true you can (and should!) teach the different spelling patterns, and how they are pronounced. (In our example these are the silent “e”, and the long “a” sounds.)

But you can’t really do it all at once.
The step-by-step approach is the way to go — one sound at a time.

Start practicing reading with simple, one-syllable words, such as: box, fox, cat, hat, bed, pen, and so forth. Introduce new sounds gradually .

Wait with the common yet complicated words such as “are,” “have,” “would,” and “know” until the student is comfortable with the simple, basic sounds.

It’s true these are very common, important words in the English language, but when taught at the wrong stage they can provide unnecessary spelling confusion.

You can always teach them a bit later on, when the student is more confident.

This sort of gradual approach will bring the best results within the minimum amount of time, by far.

Ola Zur is the editor of Really Learn English Vocabulary and Easy English Grammar, an illustrated guide to English.

Many, many ESL students are not making enough progress in their English here in the United States, especially in Los Angeles. There are many immigrant families here. The government and the state have spent so much money trying to improve their English skills. We’ve been running so many ESL classes for so many years, but many students still cannot speak and cannot write.  Normally three years should be enough time to learn a language in a country where the language is spoken. What happened to students’ learning and what happened to our teaching?

One reason, I believe, is that students have not received enough input. According to research, an average ESL student learn 2,500 new words a year.  When I tell this to my students on the first day of the class, they are all surprised. They think that will be too many words, and they can’t remember that many new words.  Actually it only means 7-8 new words a day.  If they are learning English every day, they are learning that many new words.  Then the next question is how to remember new words.  Again according to research, the new word must be seen 7-9 times in different context in their reading before the students can remember the word and know how to use the word. Here we can imagine how much reading students need to do. Are they doing that much reading? If not, they are not receiving enough input. Doing exercises takes them a lot of time. Some exercise may not be worth it if it is taking students too much time. The same amount of time to be spent on reading might be more effective in improving their English.

ESL students’ essays are full of mistakes and hard to read. To improve their writing, we carefully plan our lessons to teach them how to write, correct their mistakes, and make them do all kinds of exercises. To our dismay, we found that their writing does not always improve much. Why? Well, there might be problems on our side. We may not be focusing on essential things that we should focus on.

Teaching them how to write is important, as is correcting the mistakes in their essays. However, one thing that is more important is that students must be given enough reading assignments. I saw some syllabi that require students to read only 50 pages one semester. That is probably not enough for any level. ESL students must be given enough, appropriate and interesting reading materials. Our experience tells us that when a student reads more, he or she will write better.

When we talk about writing, we often talk about the writing at discourse level. We talk about the organization of an essay, how to write an introduction and a conclusion, a thesis statement, coherence, and so on. This is definitely correct and it is what we should do when we teach writing, especially at high school and college levels. However, when it comes to ESL writing, we may have to deal with it differently. The writing problems of ESL students are different from the writing problems of students of native speakers. ESL students’ writing problems are mostly at sentence and word levels. They have problems with spelling, grammar, and word usage.

One big difference between ESL students and students of native speakers is that native students can speak English and ESL students cannot. When you can speak English correctly, generally you can write English correctly. The problem may be only how to organize sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into an essay.  ESL students may have learned writing skills in their native language.  They have ideas and know how to structure an essay, but their problems are grammatical errors. They don’t know how to write a sentence correctly.

For ESL students, we don’t need to worry about their writing skills at discourse level because they can be transferred from their native language.  What they need help with is at sentence level. They need to learn how to write a sentence correctly. They should be allowed to make mistakes and learn from mistakes. They need to understand what sentence is wrong, and possibly why it is wrong. Once they learn how to write sentences correctly, they don’t need to be taught how to organize an essay because that knowledge can be transferred from their native language.    -Ron Lee