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What is the role of writing in learning to speak?
When we mention that we have not used a course manual for years, many learners are surprised and sometimes confused. Since most of our learners have a college and/or university education, they are used to seeing progression in a book or course manual. They know what is left to be done and understand the progress made.
But why don't we use a textbook? There are several reasons.
The first is at the level of our personalization. Certainly, we have an educational grid that gives very specific objectives to understand, memorize and reuse for each level. But our experienced teachers have developed their material over the years. Thus, depending on the challenges encountered, they can come up with a lesson plan that will have worked for this very specific reality. For the rare cases when teachers encounter a new situation, several sources provide tools to help them with their preparation. The Internet is full of references that are just as interesting as they are relevant. This flexibility is our strength. It is of course possible to include with a manual textbook, but it will be less present.
The other is at the level of our emphasis. As we specialize in conversation, the textbook certainly has its place, but it is less important than for writing courses. Written support will always be part of the tools used to learn a language; new vocabulary, verb tenses, grammatical structures, etc. are all well illustrated in written support. But it should be used in moderation, otherwise, we may end up with some type of problem. For many learners, this is the case for Spanish-speaking learners who learn French, they will tend to read all the letters making up words. As is the case for Spanish, usually, one letter equals one sound, they do the same when learning the target language. This results in errors that need to be corrected.
We see this type of error particularly with French since this language is particularly creative in writing a particular sound in several ways. For example, the "o" sound can be written:
- O (Eg: commun)
- Au (Eg: loyauté)
- Aux (Eg: animaux)
- Eau (Eg: rideau)
- Eaux (Eg: rideaux)
- Ot (Eg: îlot)
- Ots (Eg: îlots)
- Os (Eg: dos)
So, for a learner who is used to reading all the letters making up a word, there will be confusion in the pronunciation of certain words. Furthering the problem, we see too many learners who will tend to want to read in the target language as a practice. While this is good for spelling, building vocabulary, and seeing how sentence structure is built, reading will tend tends to reinforce pronunciation errors.
To limit this type of error, we encourage "auditory" media such as video, radio, or conversation. In all of our courses, a significant portion of class time is spent in conversation. Several objectives are planned for these conversational activities, whether they are directed or not. But in addition to these goals, there is also the development of vocabulary, sentence structure, fluency, and listening comprehension, because to follow a conversation, you must of course understand what is being said.
But for many of our learners, their class time is the only opportunity they have for practice - and sometimes this is only once or twice a week. We encourage them to go out into their environment and use what they have learned. But especially for the lower levels, not many students will do this. They will be afraid of making mistakes, of not being understood. But it is precisely by making mistakes that they will learn. The more they speak, the more structures they hear, the more they become committed to memory and eventually reused. Error is the very basis of learning a language orally.
It is for this reason that we have created our conversation workshops. These workshops are not lessons, but opportunities to practice and to 'make mistakes' with learners who have the same objective as us: learning to speak.
But again, there is a question of balance. Can you learn a language without taking a course and just immersing yourself in the environment and talking? This is a great way to approach this, but it too has a risk; learning of bad structures. The "corrective" level is aimed precisely at learners who have learned the language by practicing in their surroundings without the supervision of a good teacher. What type of error are we talking about? In English, we see the "They was" rising in popularity instead of saying "They were". Another example is: There are vs they are.
In conclusion, the use of writing, as for many things in language learning, is a tool to be used in moderation. By being aware of the errors that can occur with this type of support, learners can take them into account and favor other more "practical" or auditory means to continue building their linguistic skills.
If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me.