SpeakYourMind - a thread of its own

After all the comments back and forth about Callan - I am curious to hear what people might think of this alternative. SpeakYourMind.

Developed about 15 years ago and continually updated, it offers a logical solution to many of the complaints about methods like Callan. "Light years ahead of but not miles away from", is one way it has been described.
Of course it doesn't have the name recognition like Callan and no, it isn't on Oxford St., but what I'm inviting here is some deeper inspection. www.speakumind.com

"Light years ahead of but not miles away from" is a terrible description and contradicts itself. Both light years and miles are measurements of distance. A light year happens to be 5,878,625,373,183.61 *miles*.

The site says the method encourages speaking as the primary mode of instruction or practice. I read an extremely convincing and very simple rebuttal of this idea, which always sounds good on paper, on AntiMoon, I think: they pointed out that speaking with mistakes encourages you to remember the mistakes rather than the corrections in the future. It isn't as bad if you have a one-on-one teacher who has the time to correct you constantly but it's still very inefficient.

"speaking with mistakes encourages you to remember the mistakes rather than the corrections in the future"
That's an idea that simply does not stand up - I'm surprised to still see it in circulation. It suggests that every word uttered makes an indelible impression and excludes the possibility of 'learning' or any kind of improvement. When I speak French, I often remember mistakes I've previously made and I can remember the correction too if it was helpfully provided, so they become mistakes I manage to grow out of.
The brain is not a tablet we scratch on, and if the right kind of correction and useful input is available, mistakes are likely to occur as a stage of learning.
I'm also a bit puzzled by the claim that 'speaking as the primary mode of instruction or practice ..... is very inefficient.' Many students have spent years at school in book-based 'non-speaking' classrooms and end up with very inadequate results. As most people have 'speaking' as a priority it's no surprise that methods like SpeakYourMind have so much appeal. If schools like that survive and grow there must be something to it.

"I'm also a bit puzzled by the claim that 'speaking as the primary mode of instruction or practice ..... is very inefficient.' Many students have spent years at school in book-based 'non-speaking' classrooms and end up with very inadequate results. As most people have 'speaking' as a priority it's no surprise that methods like SpeakYourMind have so much appeal. If schools like that survive and grow there must be something to it."

I don't disagree with the rest of your reply but I need to address this because you've misunderstood me. Classrooms are literally useless (and sometimes counterproductive.) "Speaking" is an improvement but you need to be more specific. A one-on-one prolonged session with a teacher is extremely precious and perfect for learning. In fact, as long as you're imitating native speech, speaking is absolutely necessary to improve your pronunciation and level of comfort with the target language.

When I hear about "speaking" methods, however, I usually get images of people stabbing in the dark, making their own structures, adapting a rudimentary foreign grammar into their own language, etc. This hindered me for years and it's absolutely something someone needs to move beyond.

Hello there, native.
I see where you're coming from but I don't want to get stuck in a rut of arguing opposing postions based on blind principles. Classroom lessons can be literally useless, but there are a number of reasons why this should occur: a) the teacher is uprepared, incompetent or unenthusiastic b) what is being taught is of no interest or relevance to the students in the first place c) the teaching programme is out of step with students' needs or abilities d) the school organises classes with no real consideration. However, when these facors are reversed, those of us lucky enough to have any experience of it will know that classrooms can also be very effective and rewarding.
You're right about lots of 'speaking methods' where people do stab in the dark. The well-branded communicative aproach has produced generations of teachers who think that turning the light on is harmful to the stabbers and just let them keep stabbing and rarely hit target.
There is the need to move beyond this structurless way of teaching which so often disappoints students' expectations, but I wouldn't want to throw the baby out with the bed-pan by eternally condemning all teacher-fronted teaching methods as 'useless'.
I know that personal experience is no basis for making generalised truths but years ago I did a short course in Spanish before leaving for Central America. In fact the teacher followed a course that sounds along the same lines as the Speakyourmind method as how I understand it.
There were about six of us in the class and none of us wanted to read or write so we never did, devoting all lesson-time to oral work. The course was structured in a way to help you see how that what we had learnt before was connected to what we learning now and lesson to lesson I really felt I was going somewhere. I didn't do enough to learn more than survival Spanish but that was fine for me at the time. We were lucky enough to have a really good teacher who managed to make lessons a lot of fun - the fact I still remember many incidents from lessons (and rememer a lot of the Spanish we did) makes me appreciate how important personal interaction is when it comes to learning something.

Anyway - that's my say. To come back to the point though: if you feel classrooms can never be appropriate places for learning, what do suggest? (given that for practical reasons very few people would be able to do one-to-one courses?)

Sorry - I meant to say 'throw the baby out with the bath water.' Why throw agood bed-pan out?

In TEFL there has been a lot of throwing out babies with bath water. Teaching grammar doesn't help people learn to use it perfectly - let's stop teaching grammar altogether.
Free conversation is an inefficient way of 'learning' - remove it from the syllabus.
Drilling is not always effective - let's abandon it completely.
Dictations are pointless - never do them at all.

I feel there are too often teaching-attidudes that exclude balance, insight and common sense (and respect for students) in favour of this year's fad.

I think it's not quite as black and white it has been implied. There are no methods that suit everybody.

Some people do indeed learn by there mistakes, hence the expression "The best way to learn is through our mistakes". This is not written in stone, but more of a generalisation.

For example, 'bus' in Portuguese (oniBUS) sounds like 'ugly woman' in Japanese (busu). In my Japanese lesson for Portuguese speakers, when I pointed to the woman with a flashcard of a bus and said "There is an ugly woman", it led to a lot of laughter and now I remember both 'bus' and 'ugly woman' in Japnese.

Mac, in your most recent dissertation in this thread, your first paragraph is spot on imo. More often than not the teacher has a greater influence than the material being taught. If the pupil cannot associate in any manner with the subject matter, they will be unlikely to take interest.

Matt, what are your suggestions other than stop doing everything? although you may have a case with your opinion of free converation classes, I've found that many students at this level are more interested in having the chance to speak English in a controlled environment that to develop their skills.

The most important issue in my experience of teaching English in Brazil and Japan is to make it interesting. If you don't engage the pupils, you are likely to fall short.

Hello, Russconha.
I am not proposing 'no grammar', 'no free conversation', 'no drilling' or 'no dictations', 'no correction': these are some of the 'laws' that method a) might enforce in response to perceived failings in method b).
I think all the above activities are valuable, although over-emphasised or thoughtlessly implemented they can become ineffective and the cause of frustration. A course that can provide this blend and with teachers who can balance it to suit the learners they have will probably be the most likely to succeed. Maybe SpeakYourMind is like that - it seems to describe itself along those lines.
I really liked your example about the bus and the ugly woman. I can still remember the German word for 'cleaning lady' from a school-lesson more than twenty years ago because it happened in a very funny context. This kind of teacher-inspired engagement demonstrates how misguided the anti-teacher approach is that Native' and others adopt.