Be careful, this forum can damage your English.

mistakes:
I want to "wind up" all my present learning processes into 3 steps:

- " Hitting books " As a result, find out new "expressions." Read "sophisticated" sentences "many many times" until I make them "un-sophisticated."

Michal you are a good identifier of pointing weaknesses.

This is great that you started to read English books. When I compare your latest messages with the earlier ones, I can see that your English has improved considerably. However, you should be more selective about what you read. You wrote that you have to reread complex sentences many times before you can understand them. If your books frequently put you through the ordeal of rereading sentences, it means they are too difficult for you. It would be better if you chose simpler books, providing you with input that is one step beyond your current knowledge of English. Such input, called in linguistics "comprehensible input" (input that you can comprehend), is said to facilitate language acquisition much better than input which is too difficult and incomprehensible.

So get easier books, which you can read faster and understand better, rather than striving hard to finish yet another page of whatever you're reading now.

Jeff Hook asked this rhetorical question:
How can students achieve fluency without using what they've studied?

For me, it is not a rhetorical question - it is a question.

When I went to high school, I started learning English seriously. But I started speaking in English only after two years of very hard work. During these two years I accumulated competence and I avoided speaking. In the long run, I have learned to speak English fluently.

to Jeff Hook:

I'd like to know which statement in my initial message you disagree with. I presented the following reasoning:

1. Students' brains produce sentences on the basis of the input they have received. (Sometimes they may produce sentences by means of applying grammar rules, but not all the time.)

2. Input is received by reading and listening.

3. When you write or say something, you also read it or hear it.

4. When students write or say incorrect sentences, they also read them or hear them.

5. Their brains receive the incorrect sentences as input, and are prone to produce incorrect output based on those sentences.

"Man, oh man alive," there's much more than those terse summations of your "ethos" with which I disagree. Overall, I see you as completely ignoring the role of an active intellect in the language acquisition/conscious learning and study process. (I HAVE read Krashen, to whom "Lenneberg" referred, and Krashen talks about the difference between "acquisition" {which is more of your "imprinting a tabula rasa," "mind as a learning organ," "don't think about conscious grammar rules" type of phenomenon} and conscious learning and study of actual "mechanistic" rules.)

Yes, input schimput. But Tom, there's much more than the non-conscious "physical" receipt of this vaunted "input" by a "learning organ"! To me this scenario of yours sounds so physical I half expect to hear the students' brains belching and making other "digestive" sounds as they're passively receiving input, like cattle feeding at a trough of silage! I'm talking about ACTIVE Ss who are PROCESSING that magical "input"! I'm talking about Ss PRACTICING, STUDYING, REVIEWING, AND LEARNING that input, not about the input "bonding" with their neurons in some purely biophysical way, as if the Ss are acquiring a nice English language "sun tan" by lying on a table under a language sun lamp, fully passively, while they allow English "input" to soak into their "skins" as if it were ultraviolet radiation! "Please!"

I'd think # 5 would be the point with which I'd disagree, as it seems not to allow for any "active processing" by competent students, and to suggest the "robots unable to divert from an erroneous tangent" images which I included in my last message in the thread. Granted, you do qualify your assertion by including "prone"... but...

I'M TALKING ABOUT PROCESSING!

> Overall, I see you as completely
> ignoring the role of an active intellect in the language
> acquisition/conscious learning and study process.

Listen there, Jeff. :-) Antimoon encourages learners to read a lot (reading is a great source of "input"). Do you think reading is a passive, thoughtless process? I'll go out on a limb here and assume you don't. On top of that, we recommend that learners ANALYZE every sentence CAREFULLY and pay ATTENTION to interesting words, phrases and structures.

What you seem to imagine when you hear me talk about "absorbing input" is some sort of "hypnopaedia" or another scheme where learning is completely effortless, and so does not require the use of an intellect.

What we have labeled "absorbing input" is an intellectually demanding process. You can't be a "mindless automaton" if you're reading in a foreign language!

> I'm
> talking about Ss PRACTICING, STUDYING, REVIEWING, AND LEARNING that
> input, not about the input "bonding" with their neurons in some purely
> biophysical way, as if the Ss are acquiring a nice English language
> "sun tan" by lying on a table under a language sun lamp, fully
> passively, while they allow English "input" to soak into their "skins"
> as if it were ultraviolet radiation! "Please!"

Where exactly did I write that the process of comprehending a foreign language is effortless?

The only effortless thing about it is that once you expend the effort to understand X English sentences, you don't have to work on every sentence you want to produce -- you don't have to consciously apply grammar rules. You become able to produce correct sentences without thinking about their correctness.

This is the basic difference between our techniques and what is done in English classes. There, the focus is on producing sentences based on conscious rules, and on practicing the application of those rules.

> I'd think # 5 would be the point with which I'd disagree, as it seems
> not to allow for any "active processing" by competent students, and to
> suggest the "robots unable to divert from an erroneous tangent" images
> which I included in my last message in the thread.

Point 5 is a conclusion drawn from points 1-4. If you disagree with point 5 without disagreeing with any of the points 1-4, you are negating the laws of logic. :-)

If "robots" are students who produce sentences without "active processing" (which you seem to equate with "applying grammar rules"), then you are a robot, too (you speak English without consciously applying grammar rules). So I suggest you drop this rather pejorative label.

I will say one more thing: If a student does NOT produce sentences "intuitively", but solves a "logical puzzle" every time and figures out the "solution" by applying "formulas" for the correct use of grammar structures, recalling definitions of words, etc. THEN producing mistakes cannot do him any harm.
(The mistakes "pollute" his intuitive knowledge, but he doesn't use his intuition, so it doesn't matter it's incorrect.)

I hope you now understand my views more clearly, and I'd be interested to know where we disagree.

> What we have labeled "absorbing input" is an intellectually demanding
> process. You can't be a "mindless automaton" if you're reading in a
> foreign language!

Yes, I owe you an apology. As I read my

"Overall, I see you as completely ignoring the role of an active
intellect in the language acquisition/conscious learning and study
process"

now I cringe. That was an absurd mischaracterization of the type to
which I objected in replying to your alleged "sophistry." The
"completely" was unjustified. However, that misstatement was not
malicious, and I'd told you I'd been "rushing." I HAVE erred in my
wrong (and stupid) characterization of the response of an active
intellect to "input" as wholly passive. Active "processing" by such a
learner may indeed be a "given."

> Point 5 is a conclusion drawn from points 1-4. If you disagree with point 5
> without disagreeing with any of the points 1-4, you are negating the laws
> of logic. :-)

Tactics, schmactics. I grant that learners' minds, subconsciously or
consciously, are confused by a conflict of forms. I was merely
recording my belief that a conscious mind intervenes at that point and
"resolves the conflict," by consciously studying, comparing,
etc. I suspect neither conscious learning nor acquisition alone can
fully account for any student's achievement of fluency.

Of COURSE the students (I hope you'll pardon my substitution of this
archaic term "students" for your "students' brains"... ... ...) ARE
"prone to produce incorrect output based on those sentences." My
comment just reported that I was less pessimistic than you seemed to
be about the extent to which the students would be adversely affected
by such errors in practice, etc.

I therefore think active student participation, production, and practice have great value. I concede instructors must guarantee students will only be asked to produce what they can, (although, as Vygotsky said, they also must be challenged to "build a scaffold" from what they've already mastered to new skills in their "zones of proximal development"). I concede the students must be given adequate input before they can produce. I think truly professional instructors must be able to assess their students' abilities, to ascertain what skills the students have acquired, to plan an appropriate course of study which guides the students towards fluency in a logical sequence, and then to assure the students are able to travel along that path.

I readily admit I'm certainly not such a professional but I think good teachers can bring these values to a student's attempt to acquire English fluency. At a minimum, a discussion of these factors might suggest how students who are teaching themselves might strive to organize their own study. Some logical sequence, some "plan," seems essential.

I suspect that the discussion between Tom and Jeff is full of deep misunderstanding on both parts.

Tom's ideas about teaching English are based on language courses in Poland, conducted by Polish teachers of English. The students usually don't read in English (not enough input) and they usually are asked to speak in class (output in advance of sufficient input).

Jeff's ideas about teaching English are based on languages courses in an English-speaking country, conducted by native speakers of English. The students live in English-speaking society (lots of input all day long) and they are _?____?__ in class (perhaps well-controlled output based on sufficient input).

I ask Jeff to describe what his classes look like. This is the missing part in the discussion. Perhaps Jeff's students have so much input that the issue of sufficient input never arises, and so Jeff rightly concentrates on teacher-guided practice.