|
I find it odd that noone is talking about context when they refer to learning a first-language.
How do you teach a dog English ? You don't just say the word sit a million times. You say 'Sit' then you push their rear to the ground, you give them a treat for sitting. Then they stand up and you say "Sit" again. if the don't sit, you repeat it, then push their rear to the ground, and give them a treat. Then when they finally learn that "Sit" means to sit, they do it on command.
It is all about the context when you learn your first language. I don't, for a second, subscribe to the fact that you can not learn a second language the way you learned your first, because the way you learned your first was "That man is Daddy, that girl is Mommy, that shiny red thing is a Ball" And once you have the nouns, the verbs can be taken out of context from immersion. if someone said to a child "Daddy has a Ball" they will understand the concept of the verb "has." From hearing it in several different contexts, they will learn when to say "has" and when to say "holds" and when to say "catches" etc.
The only difference after you have learned your first language, is that you now have something to cross-reference with, which actually slows down the learning process, since you now have to translate everything you say in your head before you say it.
This is also why you can't just sit down with an audio cassette of people speaking russian and suddenly know how to speak russian. There is no secondary sensory feedback to give you that context.
|