I'm interested in the "empirical evidence" showing that students
best access their intuitions about language through studying
another language, especially since I didn't seem to fit into
that category.  When I studied French, I received As but never
did figure out what an indirect object was.  THEN I studied
syntax, and then when I studied Latin, lots more clicked, as
it did when I studied Italian on my own.
 
Some of my grammar students do say that they have learned
something about English grammar from studying Spanish,
but I wonder whether that's not just because in a foreign
language class, students are taught grammar more explicitly
and more intensively, or maybe they just don't remember
what they learned as children? (Most of my students will
swear they were never taught grammar, or at the most, they
vaguely recall lots of lines going in all directions, i.e.,
diagramming, although they can no longer do it, they say!)
 
Kathryn Gunderson
Department of English
California State University, Hayward
Hayward, CA  94542
Office Phone:  510-885-3245
EMail: [log in to unmask]
 
On Tue, 3 Feb 1998, Mieke Koppen Tucker wrote:
 
> >. . . Most knowledge of language
> > is deeply subconscious. It seems especially difficult to get people to
> > stand outside of language and look at it scientifically, especially since
> > you have to use language itself to talk about the data. I have noticed
> > that a lot of students have genuine difficutly accessing their intuitions
> > about language;
>
> As usual, Joanna has made some very thoughtful and acute observations.
> I believe (and there is some empirical evidence to back this view up)
> that students can best access their intuitions about language through
> another language.  For that reason alone, it is a pity that the
> reading-translation method of foreign language study has fallen in
> disfavour (althought there are some good reasons for that too).
> However, there is still the study of classical languages that allow
> students to compare and contrast and discover what in many ways they
> already know.  Vatican II has a lot to account for.
>
> Mieke
>
> Mieke Koppen Tucker
> Bishop's University
> Lennoxville, Quebec, Canada
>
> . . .
> > Feeling secure about explanations that are
> > gotten in this enterprise can only come from looking very carefully at the
> > entire verbal (and other) systems of the language in question, as well as
> > looking for support for those explanations in many languages of the
> > world.
>