Automatic Language Growth

An interesting article that I stumbled upon, regarding language learning via intensive listening. Interesting read, but it raises a few questions. Here are a few salient points:

"The Listening Approach, which is known in more recent years as Automatic Language Growth, is the method which states that any attempt to speak or even think of the language to be learned before automatic speaking comes, will cause damage and limit final results."

If adults learn a language thorough an intensive year of listening, they will be able to know how the language sounds and how it should be used. Adults will be able to learn the language naturally and then will be able to express themselves fluently even with clear pronunciation.

Adults are more conscious of language and are thinking of sentence structures, substitutions, rules, translations, and grammar. Thinking about these things prevents adults from speaking naturally, like native speakers of the language. Confusing the grammar of their own language with the grammar of the language they are currently learning."

Let's forget for a moment that the article itself is poorly written and only skims the surface of ALG. It raises a few questions in my mind.

Sure kids learn via listening to the conversations around them to be sure, but do they never speak? If they're still infants, yes. But what about later, when they are able to speak? Is the 6 months prior to when a child starts speaking that 6 months the author is talking about? Consider further that an infant is experiencing many things in his or her environment for the first time. They may have no predisposition to a given situation and so must build their language structure from the ground up to frame their understanding of it.

So what about when it comes to adult learners? Yes, listening helps. But the problem that adults suffer from is that they already have a fully formed language system in their heads. Any listening they do will necessarily have to go through that system before it can be analyzed and digested, because it is via language that we interact with our environment. I'm sure that I'm not the only one that thinks in their head, IN ENGLISH, "What the fuck?" when I see something WTF-worthy, even if I'm immersed (as I am) in a foreign environment.

Yes, a learner will be able to forge connections between what they hear, the context they hear/see it in, and establish an analogue in their native tongue, but it's just as likely that errors will crop up as well, causing fundamental misinterpretations. Perhaps the year-long intensive listening program helps with that, forcing corrections as learners catch onto their errors as their language ability improves, further internalizing this new structure?

This turned into a lot longer post that I had intended. In defense of the article, it's written for a school, most likely as an advertisement of their methods, or at least an an interest piece in the landscape of language learning. As well, my ideas are a reaction to the article itself, without further investigation into a more academic explanation of ALG.

I'm also procrastinating making a lesson.

Read the original article HERE.