Comment on Bad Concepts Repository

Mon, 08 Jul 2013 16:03:19 GMT

I don't think that we disagree all that much. We both agree that there are some people who are able to learn structural rules implicitly without explicit instruction. We typically call these people "good at languages" or "good at music". Our main disagreement therefore, is how large that set of people is. I happen to think that it is very large given that everyone learns the grammatical rules of their first language this way, and a fair number of polyglots learn their second language this way as well (Unless you deny the usefulness of Pimsleur like approaches). If I understand you correctly, you think that the group of people who are able to properly learn a language/music this way is smaller, because it often results in bad habits and poor inferences about the structure of the language. I would endorse this as well - grammatical texts are useful for refining your understanding of the structure of a language.

Well in that case, what do you need a phrasebook for? You can, after all, learn a language simply by immersion, with nothing other than the data itself to guide you. If you're going to have any preliminary or supplementary instruction at all, it surely may as well be in an organized fashion, aimed at increasing the efficiency of the learning process by directing one toward correct theories and away from incorrect ones -- which is exactly what grammar books do and phrasebooks don't do.

Because it is scary to learn to swim without arm floats even if there is someone else helping you (I think that phrase books are analogous to arm floats). Other than that I would agree with most of this. If you want secondary instruction in a language then you should probably use a grammar book and not a phrase book and I may return to Westergaard after I have taken some composition lessons. Also I would go one step further and say that not only is it possible to learn a language via immersion, it is necessary, and any other tools you may use to learn a language should help to support this goal.

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