Tag: Reading

What does mean Reading? “Reading” is the process of looking at a series of written symbols, visual images, and deriving meaning from them. When we read, we use our eyes to get visual images and written symbols (letters, punctuation marks, and spaces), and we use our minds to turn them into lines of words, sentences, and paragraphs that tell us something.

Reading is defined as a cognitive technique that includes deciphering symbols to reach which means. It is a lively system of constructing meanings of words. They with a purpose enables the reader to direct facts in the direction of an aim and focuses their interest. Although the reasons for reading may also range, the primary purpose of reading is to recognize the text. It is a wondering process.

It permits the reader to use what he or she may additionally already understand, also known as previous information. During this processing of statistics, the reader makes use of strategies to apprehend what they’re analyzing, uses topics to arrange ideas, and makes use of textual clues to find the meanings of the latest words. Each of the 3 components of studying is equally vital. Let’s test the additives!

It is making which means from print. It calls for that we:

  • Identify the words in print – a procedure known as the phrase reputation.
  • Construct expertise from them – a procedure is known as comprehension.
  • Coordinate figuring out phrases and making that means so that studying is automatic and correct – an achievement called fluency.

Sometimes you could make meaning from print without being able to perceive all of the phrases. Remember the last time to procure a notice in messy handwriting? You might also have understood it, even though you could not decipher all of the scribbles.

  • The Last Tape

    The Last Tape

    “The Last Tape” Story wrote By Nan Pinkston, Stone Mountain, Georgia.

    The bustle of the hospital was a welcome distraction as I opened my new patient’s chart and headed for her room. My son, Eric, had just brought home a disappointing report card, and my daughter, Shannon, and I had argued again about her getting a driver’s license. For the next eight hours, I wanted to throw myself into helping people who I knew had much more to worry about than I did.

    Rebekah was only 32, admitted for chemotherapy after breast cancer surgery. When I entered her room it took me a moment to spot her amid the bouncing forms of three giggling little girls.

    I told Rebekah I would be her nurse and she introduced her husband, Warren; six-year-old Ruthie; four-year-old Hannah; and two-year-old Molly. Warren coaxed the girls away from their mother with a promise of ice cream and assured Rebekah they would return the next day.

    As I rubbed alcohol on her arm to prepare it for the intravenous line, Rebekah laughed nervously. “I have to tell you I’m terrified of needles.”

    “It’ll be over before you know it,” I said. “I’ll give you a count of three.”

    Rebekah shut her eyes tightly and murmured a prayer until it was over. Then she smiled and squeezed my hand. “Before you go, could you get my Bible from the table?” I handed her the worn book. “Do you have a favorite Bible verse?” she asked.

    “‘Jesus wept.’ John 11:35.”

    “Such a sad one,” she said. “Why?”

    “It makes me feel closer to Jesus, knowing he also experienced human sorrow.”

    Rebekah nodded thoughtfully and started flipping through her Bible as I shut the door quietly behind me.

    During the following months, I watched Rebekah struggle with the ravages of chemotherapy. Her hospital stays became frequent and she worried about her children. Meanwhile, I continued to contend with raising my own kids. They always seemed either out or holed up in their rooms. I missed the days when they were as attached to me as Rebekah’s little girls were to her.

    For a time, it had seemed Rebekah’s chemotherapy was working. Then doctors discovered another malignant lump. Two months later, a chest X-ray revealed cancer had spread to her lungs. It was terminal. Help me to help her through this, I prayed.

    One day when I entered her room, I found her talking into a tape recorder. She picked up a yellow legal pad and held it out to me. “I’m making a tape for my daughters,” she said.

    I read the list on her pad: starting school, confirmation, turning 16, first date, graduation. While I worried how to help her deal with death, she was planning for her children’s future.

    She usually waited until the early hours of the morning to record the tapes so she could be free from interruptions. She filled them with family stories and advice trying to cram a lifetime of love into a few precious hours. Finally, every item in her notes had been checked off and she entrusted the tapes to her husband.

    I often wondered what I would say in her place. My kids joked that I was an FBI agent, with my constant questions about where they’d been and who they’d been with. Where, I thought, are my words of encouragement and love?

    It was three o’clock one afternoon when I got an urgent call from the hospital. Rebekah wanted me to come immediately with a blank tape. What topic has she forgotten? I wondered.

    She was flushed and breathing hard when I entered her room. I slipped the tape into the recorder and held the microphone to her lips. “Ruthie, Hannah, Molly this is the most important tape.” She held my hand and closed her eyes. “Someday your daddy will bring home a new mommy. Please make her feel special. Show her how to take care of you. Ruthie, honey, help her get your Brownie uniform ready each Tuesday. Hannah, tell her you don’t want meat sauce on your spaghetti. She won’t know you like it separate. Molly, don’t get mad if there’s no apple juice. Drink something else. It’s okay to be sad, sweeties. Jesus cried too. He knows about sadness and will help you to be happy again. Remember, I’ll always love you.”

    I shut off the recorder and Rebekah sighed deeply. “Thank you, Nan,” she said with a weak smile. “you’ll give this one to them, won’t you?” she murmured, sliding into sleep.

    A time would come when the tape would be played for her children, but right then, after I smoothed Rebekah’s blanket, I got in my car and hurried home. I thought of how my Shannon also liked her sauce on the side and suddenly that quirk, which had annoyed me so many times, seemed to make her so much more precious. That night the kids didn’t go out; they sat with me long after the spaghetti sauce had dried onto the dishes. And we talked without interrogations, without complaints late into the night.

  • Grandma and The Paper Girl

    Grandma and The Paper Girl

    “Grandma and The Paper Girl” Story wrote By Ella Duquette, Syracuse, New York.

    I squinted against the afternoon sunshine, looking out the window for the paperboy. Ever since a stroke had weakened my legs I hadn’t been able to get around so well. I depended on the paper to keep me up to date with the world from which I often felt disconnected. When the paper came late, I got edgy. Finally, I saw someone coming down the street. A girl, no more than 10 or 11 years old, hurled a rolled-up newspaper toward my screen door. It landed with a thud.

    “Just a minute,” I called out the window. “where’s the usual carrier?”

    “I’m the carrier now, lady,” she said, hands on her hips.

    “Well, the old one used to bring the paper into me.”

    “Oh, yeah? well, I can do that.” She came in and plopped the paper onto my lap. I got a better look at her. Frayed shorts and a cropped top and it wasn’t even summered yet. She tossed back her shoulder-length red hair and blew a huge pink bubble.

    “I hate bubble gum,” I said.

    “Tough beans,” she said.

    I gasped. This snippy little thing needed to be taught some manners.

    “The children around here call me Mrs. Lee, after my late husband.”

    “Well, you can call me Kristin,” she said with a sassy tilt of her head, then bounded down the steps.

    Just what I need, I thought. nothing was easy anymore. Simple tasks like dusting and doing laundry were an ordeal these days. And baking, which I used to love, was far too much trouble. My husband, Lee, and most of my friends had passed on. Lately, I had found myself wondering why the Lord had left me behind. It was clear to me, anyway, that if young people today all acted like that smart-alecky paper girl, I had been too long in this world.

    Kristin’s attitude didn’t much improve over the following weeks. Still, I had to admit she never missed a day or forgot to bring the paper inside to me. She even took to sharing some small talk when she stopped by. She came in from a wicked rainstorm once and pulled the paper out from under her coat.

    “H of a day, huh, Gram?” she said, handing me the paper.

    I could feel the muscles in my jaw tense. “Do you talk like that just to shock me?” I asked. “And I’m not your grandmother.”

    “I just talk to all my friends.”

    “Not in this house, you don’t,” I shot back. “In my day you’d have your mouth washed out with soap.”

    She laughed. “you’d have some fight on your hands if you tried it, Gram,” she said.

    I threw up my hands. Why do I even bother with you? I wondered as she strutted down the street.

    But she started coming by after her paper route and other times as well, chitchatting happily about school, her friends. Each time she left it was as if a radio had been turned off. One day a bundle of newspapers slipped from her hands onto the floor and she uttered a dirty word. Instantly she clapped a hand over her mouth and said, “Oops! Sorry, Gram.”

    Well, she’s learned something, I thought, smiling secretly.

    I dug out some of my old photographs and outfits, thinking she might like to see them. She never tired of my stories of growing up on a farm, how we had raised our own food and washed our clothes by hand. All this girl needs is some pushing, I thought. Why else would she keep coming back when I was always fussing at her over her clothes or talk? God, is that why you’re keeping me around for Kristin?

    She showed me her report card when I asked one afternoon.

    “This is awful,” I said.

    “I do better than lots of kids,” she snapped.

    “You’re not ‘lots of kids.’ Have a little pride in yourself.”

    “Oh, Gram, you make such a big deal out of things,” she said. But I kept after her about her grades.

    A short time later Kristin gave up her paper route and shifted her visits to after school. I didn’t ask why she kept coming to see me because—though I wouldn’t have been caught dead admitting it her visits had become the highlight of my days.

    Once she told me, giggling, about some of her friends who had been shoplifting.

    “That’s nothing to laugh about, young lady,” I said. “Shoplifting is stealing, plain and simple.”

    “Well, I didn’t do it.”

    “All the same, you could be guilty by association. Your reputation goes with you all your life, you know.”

    “Oh, Gram, stop preaching.”

    “If you don’t like it, there’s the door,” I declared. But she didn’t leave. In fact, we spent more time together. Still, we had our moments. Like when she baked a cake, then sank down on a chair without laying a finger to the mound of dishes.

    “Come back here and clean up after yourself,” I ordered.

    “No way. I’m not putting my hands in that sink. It’s gross.” She had just polished her nails a ghastly purple.

    “Tough beans!” I blurted. She laughed. Mercy, I thought. Now I’m starting to talk like her. But she did the dishes that day and many another. I taught her how to bake fresh bread and my famous apple pie. It was wonderful to smell those familiar smells coming from the kitchen again.

    One Sunday Kristin stopped by. “You didn’t go to church dressed like that, did you?” I asked. She glanced at her shorts and t-shirt. “All the kids dress like this.”

    “I’ve told you before, Kristin, you’re not ‘all the kids.’”

    “Well, I suppose you think I should wear one of your old outfits, complete with hat and long white gloves!” she flounced out the door, only to come back a moment later. “I’m sorry, Gram,” she said, giving me a quick hug. “Forgive me?”

    How could I not? Making up with her seemed as natural as making up with one of my own daughters after a fight. Gradually, Kristin started dusting and cleaning up around the house, without the slightest hint from me. She even did my laundry. It chafed at my pride to let her do things I had done for myself all my life—but she was insistent. And this was the same girl who just a short while earlier wouldn’t put her hands in a sink of dirty dishes!

    “How about I set your hair?” she asked one day. “My mom taught me.”

    This was too much. “I’m not so old and helpless that I can’t take care of myself.”

    “Oh, don’t be so stubborn. Come on, Gram,” she wheedled. For the first time, that nickname didn’t annoy me. I gave in, and she proceeded to work several different lathery formulas into my short locks, not letting me look in a mirror until she was done. I had visions of my hair dyed the same awful purple as her fingernails. I was amazed to find it soft, shiny, and still blond. “You’re good at this,” I said, and Kristin beamed.

    I was even more impressed when, shortly after graduating from eighth grade, Kristin brought me a scrapbook filled with certificates of academic achievement.

    “See, I told you-your wasn’t like everybody,” I said, hugging her. “You’re special.” It was wonderful to see she valued my approval. But the best part was seeing she was pleased with herself.

    I still didn’t think much of her study habits. She insisted on keeping the television on when she did homework. I couldn’t fathom how she could concentrate with all that racket.

    But then there was a lot I couldn’t fathom about Kristin’s world. “Gram, do you know there are eight girls pregnant in the freshman class?” she told me. I gasped. “And that’s nothing,” she continued. “In some schools, they have police guards and metal detectors and just about everybody smokes, drinks and takes drugs.”

    I shuddered. It’s so different nowadays, Lord. How can I help her deal with all these things I know nothing about? Then I thought of how far Kristin had already come, and I knew the best thing I could do was to keep being there for her, as she always was for me.

    One evening Kristin brought over a cake mix. “I’m going to bake us a super-duper double-chocolate cake, Gram,” she announced.

    “No way,” I said. “Shortcuts won’t make a cake as good as from scratch.”

    “Oh, come on, Gram. it’s easier this way.”

    “Don’t ‘oh, Gram’ me, young lady. Easier isn’t always better and in this house” She broke into laughter the laughter I had come to know so well and in a moment, I joined in.

    Kristin shook her head and took my hand. “I don’t know what it is, Gram,” she said. “We hardly ever agree on anything and you make me so mad sometimes. But I always come back. I guess I must love you.”

    Who would have known that when I looked out the window for the paper carrier that afternoon five years ago I would end up finding my best friend?

  • A House for Katherine Red Feather

    A House for Katherine Red Feather

    “A House for Katherine Red Feather” story wrote By Robert Young, Bozeman, Montana

    Ten years ago, if you told me I’d give up the business I spent my life putting together to go build houses on Indian reservations instead, I’d have said you were nuts. the Seattle-based loungewear company I started with a partner was cranking out a profit. At 33, I had just married my longtime sweetheart, Anita. I wanted to slow down, have a family, savor life and the rewards of success.

    Then I saw that headline.

    I was in New Mexico on business and picked up a local paper called Indian Country. There it was on the front page, like an epitaph: “Elders Freeze to Death.” How could such a thing happen here in America, the richest country in the world? I tore out the article and stuck it in my pocket.

    That night in my hotel room, meetings done, I read the story again. it seemed so tragic. Somebody the government, the tribal council would no doubt do something to make sure it did not happen again. Still, I tucked the clipping into my briefcase instead of throwing it away. Why I had no idea.

    Two weeks later, another business trip. Another headline staring at me from the local paper. “Taos Woman Starts Adopt-A-Grandparent Program for Aging Native Americans.” According to the article, on reservations across the country, thousands of elderly native Americans struggled not just to make ends meet but simply to stay alive. At the end of the piece, there was a number of people interested in volunteering to call. I didn’t stop to think. I just picked up the phone and dialed.

    Soon I was matched with a “grandparent” Katherine Red Feather, of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. I dropped her a note introducing myself. “I am 78 years old,” Katherine wrote back, “and blessed with thirteen children and seven grandchildren. I am so happy to learn I now have another grandchild! Do you have a wife and children of your own? I hope so, as they are one of the most wonderful gifts the Great Spirit can give a person in this life.”

    I told her about Anita, and how she was indeed a godsend. Then I asked Katherine if there was anything I could send her. “Yes,” she wrote. “If it’s not too much trouble, I would very much appreciate a bottle of shampoo and some aspirin. Thank you for your generosity, Grandson.”

    Grandson … Katherine was really taking this program seriously. But shampoo? Aspirin? Why wouldn’t she have such basic items? I decided to visit the reservation after my next business trip and look in on Katherine.

    Pine Ridge Reservation encompasses the two poorest counties in the United States. So the letter from the Adopt-A-Grandparent program had informed me. But I was not prepared for the reality of that poverty. Rutted dirt roads, dilapidated shacks, rusted-out automobiles with entire families living in them…. The dwellings I passed wouldn’t keep a person warm on a chilly fall night like this. In the Dakota winter, temperatures sometimes plunged to 60 degrees below zero. How could people freeze to death on a reservation? The answer was right before my eyes.

    Katherine’s “house” was a small, busted-up trailer pushed against the body of an old school bus. The trailer door opened and a delicate-looking woman wearing slacks and a simple patterned sweater emerged.

    “Grandson! Come in out of the cold.”

    The trailer was dark and barely big enough to turn around in, but the three people sitting by the wood stove stood when Katherine led me inside. “This is Robert,” she announced. “My new grandson. Robert, these are my children. They are your family now too.”

    Katherine must have seen my confusion. “The Great Spirit has chosen you to be a part of my life,” she told me. “We are one family in his eyes.” We sat down to a simple meal of white bread and beans heated on a propane stove.

    There was no running water, so Katherine needed to carry it from a well out back. it was next to an outhouse with a black flag flying overhead. “To scare away the rattlesnakes,” she explained. “They think it’s a hawk.” Katherine took such pains to make me feel at home that it was only at the end of my visit two days later that I could bring myself to ask her, “Isn’t it hard for you to have to fetch wood and water every day?”

    Katherine took my hands in hers. “I know how my life must look to you, Grandson, but all of us here live this way. I’m no different than anyone else.”

    I couldn’t stop thinking about Katherine once I got home to Seattle. The days grew shorter and colder. I looked out the window of my cozy apartment and imagined my new grandmother in that tiny trailer, huddled over her smoky little stove.

    “She needs to be in a place that will keep her warm,” I told Anita one night. “A place where the wind doesn’t blow through the chinks in the walls. Katherine needs a real house.”

    A real house. The moment those words left my lips, I knew what I had to do. At the end of that summer, I took two weeks off and went back to Pine Ridge. Anita and a handful of friends came with me. We were going to build Katherine a house. None of us had built so much as a doghouse before, but I figured that with a simple floor plan and plenty of enthusiasm, we could get the job done.

    Word got around the reservation. Dozens of Katherine’s neighbors and family members pitched in. Toward the end we worked round the clock, my car headlights trained on the site. Finally, the last nail was driven. Katherine’s tribal chairman said a prayer of thanks, and there was a big celebration. It was the first time Katherine had all her relatives together since the Red Feather clan had been divided and made to live on two different reservations years back. She welcomed them all into her house, her eyes brimming with tears of joy.

    Anita squeezed my hand, and I knew what we had done here was bigger than anything I could ever hope to achieve with my business. At last, I understood what Katherine meant about all of us being one family.

    Back in Seattle, I tried to concentrate on my work. Katherine would be safe and warm this winter. But what about all the neighbors who’d pitched in to build Katherine’s house, only to go home to ramshackle trailers? America has about two million tribal members, and some 300,000 of them are without proper homes. What about all those people?

    Building frame houses like we had done for Katherine was impossible. Too expensive and labor-intensive. I had to come up with a design that was warm, inexpensive and easy to build. A little research and I came across straw bale houses. Built from blocks of straw covered with stucco, they’re ideal for reservations. The straw is plentiful on the Great Plains and provides extremely effective insulation.

    Getting straw bale houses built on a large scale, though, would take the organization. A huge investment of time and energy. Time and energy I wouldn’t have if I kept my day job. I sold my half of the business and started a new venture, the Red Feather Development Group, to help native Americans get decent housing. Eventually, Anita and I moved to Bozeman, Montana, in the vicinity of half a dozen reservations.

    To think, none of this would have happened if I hadn’t seen those headlines 10 years ago. Even then I’d known someone would look after elders like my grandmother Katherine. I just never expected that person to be me. But that is how the Great Spirit works.

  • "Helped" A Dog Named Cheeseburger

    “Helped” A Dog Named Cheeseburger

    An inspiring story about a homeless man, his dog named Cheeseburger and how they helped one woman on a hot August day. The Story Wrote By Marion Bond West, Watkinsville, Georgia.

    “I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly, but I had been feeling far away from God lately like he wasn’t really hearing me. A case of the spiritual blues, I guess. The sweltering heat didn’t help August here in Georgia can get pretty unbearable. It was 100 degrees today, and really sticky. I turned up the air conditioner in my car full blast, ready to head home from my errands. That’s when I saw the dog.

    He lay on top of a lumpy Army-green duffel bag right on the walk outside Applebee’s restaurant. No shade. Sleeping, or at least I hoped he was. Why he could be dead in this heat! I pulled in and found a parking spot. Then I hurried over to the dog. I bent down. “Hi, fella. You thirsty?”

    I love dogs and they like me. But this one he was medium-sized, black, graying around the muzzle opened one eye, then shut it and turned his head away from me. Deliberately. His tail didn’t budge.

    He had a collar, and by the way, he was guarding the duffel bag, I figured he was waiting for his owner, who was no doubt sitting inside the restaurant in air-conditioned comfort!

    I stormed into Applebee’s, ready to do battle. Right away, I spotted the owner. He sat alone at the counter, a tall glass of iced tea in front of him. Longish wavy blond hair and a goatee. Thin, like he didn’t always get enough to eat. He was wearing jeans that had seen better days, but they were clean, though his hands had what could have been faint paint stains. He seemed to sense me coming and turned on the stool to face me.

    “That your dog?” I demanded.

    “Yes, ma’am, he is.”

    “He’s in the sun and has no water. I imagine he’s hungry too.” I must have raised my voice because some people stared at me. “Dogs like me, but he wouldn’t even open both eyes when I spoke to him.”

    The man broke into a slow, easy grin. he slid off the stool. “That’s because he hasn’t been properly introduced to you. Come on. I’ll do the honors.”

    Introduced? I followed him outside.

    He squatted down next to the dog, who sat up and fastened his eyes onto his owner. His tail came alive.

    “Ma’am, I don’t know your name.”

    “Marion.” I bent close to them.

    “Marion, I’d like you to meet Cheeseburger. Cheeseburger, this nice lady is Marion.” The dog looked right into my eyes and offered a paw.

    I took it. “Hi, Cheeseburger,” I said.

    He licked my hand and his tail shifted into high gear.

    “And I’m Johnny,” the man said.

    “Johnny, I’m afraid he’s thirsty.”

    “Oh, he’s okay,” he said. “this spot was shady when I left him here just a few minutes ago.” Johnny picked up his duffel bag. “We’ve been together for nine years. See, his collar has my cell phone number on it, and he’s been vaccinated.” Johnny moved his bag beneath a Japanese maple tree and Cheeseburger settled down there beside it, in the shade.

    “How far do you live from here?” I asked.

    “Not far,” he said. “Back in those woods across the street. We have a good tent.”

    “But couldn’t you go to a shelter?”

    “They won’t take Cheeseburger, and I don’t go anywhere without him,” he said. Each time he said Cheeseburger, the dog’s tail flopped back and forth joyfully.

    “Johnny, I’m not going to be able to drive off without getting Cheeseburger some food and water,” I said. “It’s not you. It’s just, well, I have this thing about dogs…”

    “Okeydoke, if it’ll make you happy,” he said. “I’m going back in now and finish up my drink. It was nice to meet you, Marion.”

    I zipped into Walgreen’s and came back with a bowl, a big bottle of cold water, a small sack of dog food and a bone. Then I went in and fetched Johnny from the restaurant. “I thought you should be with me when I give the food and water to Cheeseburger,” I told him.

    “Okeydoke,” he said. Cheeseburger stood as Johnny and I approached. I set the food down and he nibbled at it mostly to be polite, I think. He did lap up quite a lot of water.

    “I guess he was thirsty,” Johnny said. “Thanks. I’m not going to start giving him bottled water, but don’t worry, I take really good care of him.”

    “And who takes care of you?” The words flew out of my mouth before I could stop them, and I knew they sounded sharper than I intended.

    Johnny didn’t seem to mind. “Here’s the way it works,” he said gently. “Every morning me and Cheeseburger step out of our tent and look up at the sky. And I say, ‘Lord, we belong to you. We trust you. Take care of us another day. Thank you.’ And then at night when we lie down to sleep, I look out at the stars and say, ‘We still trust you, God.’” He smiled again—that slow, easy grin.

    I smiled back. there was just something about his eyes I liked. “Maybe I’ll see you and Cheeseburger again sometimes,” I said.

    “Okeydoke. I and Cheeseburger come here or head over to McDonald’s most mornings. Then we walk down toward the post office. I’m a painter by trade, hoping to find some work.”

    There was a genuine peace about Johnny, even in the face of my unkind accusations.

    I fished around in my purse and found a twenty. “Could I give you this?” I asked hesitantly, not certain how to go about it.

    He didn’t reach for the bill, just kept looking at me with that contented expression. “You don’t have to. We’re doing pretty good.”

    “I’d like to. Very much.”

    “Then I thank you, Marion. God bless you.”

    I got back in my car and turned on the air conditioner. At the red light, I leaned forward and gazed up into the blue cloudless sky. “Lord, I belong to you. I trust you. Take care of me today. Thank you.”

    The light changed. I pulled out onto the highway, feeling refreshed, not so much by the cool air but by an unmistakable peace, the same peace I had seen in Johnny’s eyes.”

  • Annie’s Soldier

    Annie’s Soldier

    Annies Soldier

    Annies Soldier, written By Elizabeth Hassee, Greenwood, Indiana.

    “Mom!” my 10-year-old daughter, Annie, shouted as she burst through the front door after school that falls afternoon. “I just got a letter from a soldier!”

    Annie’s teacher had given them a project: Write a letter to a U.S. serviceman or woman in Iraq. Annie had worked hard on a big picture of a red, white and blue cat. On the bottom of the page she’d written, “Be safe, and thank you.”

    I’d cautioned Annie not to get her hopes up too much. “There are a lot of soldiers over there,” I told her. “And they’re very busy. I’m sure they’ll appreciate hearing from you, but you might not get an answer from them.”

    “That’s okay, Mom,” Annie had said. “It was fun making the picture.”

    Now Annie pulled the letter from her schoolbag and read it to me.

    Hi, my name is Scott Montgomery. I am a sergeant in the South Carolina Army National Guard currently stationed in Kuwait. Two weeks ago in Iraq, on a mission just north of Baghdad, my truck was hit by a bomb. A piece of shrapnel struck me in the arm and I had to be rushed to the hospital. I had two operations and was feeling pretty sad. While I was recuperating, someone gave me an envelope addressed to a U.S. soldier. I found a beautiful handmade card from you. It brought a big smile to my face to know that a young girl in Indiana took the time to wish good luck to someone she doesn’t even know. Thank you, Annie. You really brightened this soldier’s day. I hope you get a chance to write back. Take care, Scott.

    “That is so cool!” Annie said. She raced upstairs to show the letter to her sisters, while the words she’d just read echoed in my head. Kuwait. Baghdad. Trucks. Bombs. Shrapnel. The kinds of words I read every day in the paper, along with another one: Casualties. I instantly liked the young man who had been thoughtful enough to write back to Annie to make her feel so special. But to be honest, I was worried. My daughter was a sweet little fourth grader. Her world was small and, I hoped, protected. Scott was a man in the middle of a war where people were getting maimed and killed. A conflict that adults argued about every day…on TV, the radio, even in our own church parking lot. The ugly realities of war were nearly everywhere. Did I really need to expose my 10-year-old to them? Wouldn’t the world find her soon enough?

    “She’s going to grow up fast enough as it is,” I said to my husband, Jim, that night. “War is the most horrible thing in the world. Does she have to learn about it now, when she doesn’t even know that Santa’s not real?”

    “Look,” said Jim. “We’re the ones who taught the girls that we need to support the troops over there. Annie’s just putting that idea into action. She can learn from this. It is scary, true. But you’re never too young to do the right thing.”

    The next day after school, Annie showed me a letter she’d written to Scott. It was short, but I could see the work she’d put into it in every carefully lettered word. Dear Scott, I’m in fourth grade. I’m in gymnastics twelve hours a week. I like Sponge Bob and using my dad’s computer to play office. Annie. “That’s nice,” I told her, and she sent the letter off.

    Starting almost immediately, the first thing Annie did when she got home from school or gymnastics class was to check the mailbox. Three weeks passed. I figured Scott wasn’t going to write back.

    “Don’t feel bad,” I told Annie one afternoon following another fruitless check of the mailbox. “Scott’s a soldier. He’s got all kinds of things to think about over there. Writing you a letter right now might not be so easy for him.”

    “I know, Mom,” Annie said, her voice upbeat as usual. “But I can still think he’s going to write back. I can hope.”

    A month flew by and I hoped Annie had moved on. Then one day a package with a military return address showed up. Inside was a bracelet made of rope, a small stuffed camel and another handwritten note from Scott. Every guy in my unit wears a bracelet like the one enclosed, it read. Annie immediately wrapped it around her tiny wrist; it was a perfect fit. She went to bed that night with it on, and the camel tucked in beside her. I peeked in on her later. Her face, bathed in the soft pink glow of her half-moon nightlight, was peaceful almost beyond imagining, so opposite of the way our world was now. How would she react if Scott or someone in his unit got hurt or worse? I went to bed more worried than ever.

    “Christmas is only a month away,” Annie said the next morning at breakfast. “Let’s send Scott a holiday goodie package. We can put cookies in it. The frosted cut-out kind. And Chex Mix. You can’t have Christmas without Chex Mix.”

    Christmas in Iraq. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine it. Broiling heat. constant danger. And homesickness. I opened my eyes and saw Annie staring at me, a big, eager grin on her face. I looked at that innocent, completely trusting face, and decided I had to say something more than I had so far. “War isn’t nice, honey. This isn’t just another fun school project. It’s real. And dangerous. I want you to know that.”

    Annie fixed me with one of those looks she gives me from time to time. A look that basically says: “Mom, how can you be so dumb? “I know, Mom,” she said. “And that’s why I wanted to write the letter! That’s why I put Scott and the soldiers in my prayers every night.”

    Now I was the one being naive. I should have known Annie had thought this through, and that there was no hiding the world from her. And certainly, there was no holding back her prayers. And how could she pray if she didn’t know what she was praying for?

    “Christmas in Kuwait!” I said to Annie. “We should put some practical things in the package too. Things he can use every day, like gum and lip balm. He can’t drive down to Target like we can.”

    Annie nodded vigorously as if this fact had already occurred to her.

    By the time we’d gotten everything packed into Scott’s holiday package and sent it off, I was as excited for him to get it as Annie was. That night I added Annie’s soldier to my own prayers. Lord, I guess Scott’s a part of our family now. Please keep him safe.

    The holidays came and went. No word from Scott. I kept my eye on the mailbox. I was as bad as Annie. Worse, probably. Finally, a box arrived—a big box. inside was an American flag. With a mix of awe and excitement, Annie and I spread it across the dining room table. It was covered with written messages from everyone in Scott’s unit, like a page from a high school yearbook.

    Dear Annie, Scott’s letter read, We flew this American flag in Iraq and Kuwait. As you can see, all the soldiers on my team have signed it for you. They know all about you, and it is our way of saying thank you for your support. You aren’t really supposed to write on the flag, but we made an exception. I hope you like it. Take care. God bless. Scott. I turned my head away. Wars make us cry for the right reasons too.

    That spring, Annie developed an injury to her back due to gymnastics class. Her flexibility caused her to develop a hairline crack on one of her vertebra. This meant limited activities for her, and she needed to wear a back brace for several months. She told Scott all about it in a letter. Dear Scott, I had to quit gymnastics. I hurt my back. I have a brace that I wear, and I have to do therapy. Ugh!

    Scott wrote back—in an envelope covered with some of the SpongeBob stickers Annie had sent him. Dear Annie, How are you doing? Is your back still bothering you? I hope by now it is all better. Take it easy and be patient. I know you’re upset about not being able to do gymnastics right now. Try not to get too upset. Remember, God has a plan in mind for you. When I got wounded back in October, I was pretty upset about it. I wondered why that happened to me. I now know that it happened so I could get your letter and we could become friends. Your friend, Scott.

    “See, Mom?” Annie whispered after we read the letter. “It’s all part of God’s plan.” I couldn’t say anything. I pulled her close to me, kissed the top of her head and breathed in her little girl smell. Sometimes moms forget that there are even bigger plans than their own, and how fast children grow up.

    In the fall of 2005, Annie’s friend sergeant Scott Montgomery came home to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to resume duty as a police patrolman the job he had held before shipping out to Iraq. He invited our family down in February 2006 to meet him face to face. We decided to meet Scott and his fiancée down at the beach.

    Annie hesitated at first, feeling a little shy, then threw her arms around Scott like she’d known him her whole life. So did I. It was so good to see him and see that all his wounds were healed. We had dinner with Scott and his fiancée. Scott had arranged for us to attend a tribute to our Armed Forces at the Alabama theater the next day.

    He greeted us at the auditorium and showed us to our seats. “Just to let you know,” he whispered in my ear, “I have a little surprise to give to Annie, so I’ll be asking her to step up to the stage with me when the time comes.”

    When the announcer called Scott up, he walked nervously to the stage. After the applause, Scott called to Annie, “Annie, get up here. I’m not doing this by myself.” “This young lady was always there for me when I was in Iraq,” he told the audience. “She deserves to share this award.” The room broke into applause as Scott handed a plaque and a bronze eagle to Annie. Someone snapped a picture. “Annie, while we’re up here,” Scott continued, “there’s one more thing I’d like to give you.” Scott reached into his pocket and pulled something out: his Purple Heart, the award wounded soldiers are given by their country. Annie’s eyes widened as Scott pinned his Purple Heart on her jacket. The whole house erupted in applause. Scott’s fiancée gave me a hug.

    Annie made her way back to her seat, the plaque and eagle in her hands, the medal pinned proudly to her, and an impossibly huge grin on her face. “Mom, can you believe how cool this is?” she said.

    “It’s pretty cool all right,” I said, putting my arms around my daughter. “And so are you.”…..End!

  • Making the Feedback Training Method Work

    Making the Feedback Training Method Work

    This post will give you some practical suggestions in applying the Feedback Training Method work to your language study, helping you to gain fluency as quickly as possible. 

    Making the Feedback Training Method Work:

    From past experience with the Spoken English Learned Quickly course, it is fair to say that these methods can help you double the rate at which you acquire a new language.  That is, in hour-for-hour of study, you can reach the same fluency level in six months that you would otherwise reach in a full year of study relying only on an established school’s program.  This language-learning rate should be just as attainable when using your own program in an area where formal instruction limited.

    In order to succeed, however, you must remember the four rules that were previously given in:

    1. To learn to speak a language correctly, you must speak it aloud.
    2. To learn to speak a language fluently, you must think in that language.
    3. The more you speak a language aloud, the more quickly you will learn to speak fluently.
    4. You must never make a mistake when you are speaking.

    There is no alternative to committing a great amount of time to language study.  If you are devoting full time to it, then try to spend a full eight hours a day, five days a week on language study.  Ideally, that will be eight hours devoted to actual speaking by means of recorded exercises and newspaper reading.  If you are enrolled in a structured class, you will need to supplement your class and preparation time with additional newspaper reading and spoken exercises for a total of eight hours of study each day.

    Whatever your schedule permits — from one hour a day to eight hours a day — bring as much spoken the language of your study time as possible.

    If you are applying the four rules above and simultaneously thinking, speaking out loud, and listening to yourself in your target language, you are using a Feedback Training Method of language study.

    Learning an alphabet:

    Let’s assume that you are a first language English-speaking adult, that you possibly also have a college degree, and that you know the Latin alphabet.  With this background, you should find it fairly easy to learn the alphabet for languages such as Polish and others that use additional accents and diacritical marks.

    However, if you are learning a language that uses another alphabet, you will need to learn that alphabet first.

    Most languages use a relatively small number of letters in their alphabet.  You would severely hamper your language learning efforts if you did not first learn that short alphabet.  Some languages have considerably longer alphabets, and you may not need to learn all of the letters before starting to study the spoken language itself.  On the other hand, Chinese is the only language that uses only characters while Japanese uses two alphabets and additional Chinese characters.  In time, you will want to learn as many characters as possible.  However, with no personal experience to guide me regarding these two languages. I would think that your time might better spent by initially concentrating on the spoken language.

    Making the Feedback Training Method work during formal language study:

    If you are studying in a highly structured program which emphasizes written assignments. You will need to supplement that study with spoken language.  Our bias against written assignments for language learning does not concern the accuracy of the sentences themselves.  In all likelihood, the written sentences used in these language programs are an excellent representation of the language.  They should, however, learned as spoken phrases rather than as written sentences.

    If you are in a language program that emphasizes written assignments, then after completing the written portion of the daily work, spend your additional study time using the assignments as spoken exercises.

    1. Practice only with written sentences that you know to be correct. You may want to use the sentences from the previous day’s lesson after they have been corrected in class.  Or you may have access to a first language speaker who can check them for you.  Avoid getting your primary help from an advanced student who is a first language speaker of your own language.
    2. In the early part of your study, be very certain that your pronunciation is correct. When the pronunciation of your own language and the target language are similar, this will not be a major problem.  In other instances, it will be a serious concern.  For example, a first language English speaker cannot learn proper French pronunciation without help from either a first language French-speaking person or some form of audio recordings.
    3. In some cases, you can record short segments from the local television or radio programs for use as pronunciation drills.
    4. In time, your pronunciation will become more reliable and you can return to reading written class assignments and newspapers aloud for pronunciation practice.
    5. You will need to use a mix of methods when you are reading. The second rule above suggests that you never merely read the sentences, but that you also recite the sentences from recall memory.  That is, you read a sentence aloud and then look away from the page and immediately repeat the sentence from memory.  On the other hand, there will be times when reading an entire newspaper article or written language assignment aloud, using precise pronunciation, will be of great benefit.  Reading longer portions without pause will develop your sense of the cadence of your target language.  Be creative in adding variety so that you are able to maintain the intense schedule while avoiding the monotony that could undermine your best intentions.
    6. In all likelihood, if you are in a structured class, verbs, as well as other types of speech. Will be introduced progressively rather than as was suggested in; Studying the Verb. You may greatly enhance your learning speed if you construct verb tables as you encounter new verbs.  Very quickly, you should be able to take any new regular verb and recite the entire table without first writing it.  You may find it to be helpful to make tables with suffixes and prefixes while leaving blank spaces for the verb root.  Then each time you encounter a new verb, you can refer to that table for spoken practice.  As already suggested, get into the habit of learning each verb in its entirety.  Also, develop the habit of learning the verb as a spoken rather than written vocabulary word.
    7. If you are in a classroom language study program, you will undoubtedly have a language textbook that will provide enough information for you to be able to construct your own verb tables.
    8. When you begin the study, you will have a limited vocabulary that will not permit you to practice individual verbs in the context of a sentence. Again, turn to your newspaper.  Find sentences that include specific verbs with the tenses and persons you are looking for.  Look up the vocabulary for those sentences and then use the full sentences in spoken practice.  With that model sentence, you can construct oral drills by changes in person or tense.
    9. During your initial language study, the process suggested in the previous paragraph will be slow. It may require a good deal of time for you to find a sentence that can appropriately adapted and then to find the meaning of each word.  Don’t discouraged.  The laborious process is still teaching you important lessons about the language.  Soon it will take far less time as you become familiar with vocabulary and syntax.
    10. Notice that the emphasis on speaking not initially done “on the street.” Of course, as quickly as you are able, you will want to engage in live conversation. Understand, however, that your polite listeners will allow you to use their language incorrectly.  Because they will feign understanding, you will be unable to determine if your syntax or pronunciation is correct.  Carefully apply the fourth rule and try to learn basic syntax before you get into the habit of using words that

    will just get you by because your listeners are polite or have learned to interpret what you mean.

    Making the Feedback Training Method work as your only language course:

    Several assumptions made in this section.  Presumably, the target language spoken by a relatively large population, used in public education, and, at least to some degree, used in university level education.  Also, presumably books and newspapers are readily available in the language.

    We are also assuming that you will be able to locate a language helper who has the equivalent of a public school education.  Better yet, your language helper will be a university student.  University students trying to earn extra money are good language helpers.  They also have excellent contacts among their peers which would permit a substitute if they become temporarily — or permanently — unavailable.

    This post is not concerned with a target language that is unwritten and/or used by a remote and isolated group of people.  There are organizations that deal with language learning in that setting.  Therefore, devising a method for learning that language is not the intent of this book.

    You may find that language courses actually offered in the country by a university or private tutors.  However, you may have used them and decided that they are not effective for you.  Typically, these courses will consist largely of lectures on grammar or culture and will have class sizes that are too large to allow for significant spoken language experience.  They will provide little to nothing in audio playback language laboratories or pre-recorded spoken language exercises.

    You may enroll in a class as described above but plan on supplementing your class work with a great deal of additional spoken material as suggested in the section on formal classes.  Enrolling in this kind, of course, gives you access to a language teacher who could correct your pronunciation and syntax problems.  On the other hand, after evaluating the language courses that are locally available. You may decide that you would accomplish more by designing your own spoken language course.

    The information in the following sub-headings should help you structure your course.

    Selecting a language helper. 

    If you live close to a university, a student might be a good choice.  If you use a Feedback Training Method, an effective language helper does not need to have any training as a language teacher as long as they speaks your target language fluently.  In fact, if you feel confident in establishing the kind of language learning program suggested in this book. You may find that a university student with training as a language teacher could actually hinder your progress.  In all probability, this training would place the high value on teaching grammar.  In the absence of a local university, a secondary school student or graduate could also serve the purpose just as well.

    You will want a language helper who speaks clearly, can read well, and has an acceptable voice for recording purposes.  The language helper should also be able to write and spell correctly.  In your study, you will be using written exercise pages that your language helper will write.  It is important that you see correctly written sentences with correct spelling.  Of course, as suggested in; Selecting a Text, you will also use a newspaper which well edited, with good grammar and spelling.

    Your language helper will be making voice recordings that you will use for practice.  It is important that his or her pronunciation is correct and clear so that you can be confident in mimicking the recording.  As much as possible, find a language helper who speaks with a normal cadence.  Also be aware that missing front teeth or speech impediments will likely distort pronunciation.

    Initially, if you and your language helper share another language in common other than the target language. You could use it for communicating as you establish the pay, the study schedule, and your expectations.  In many parts of the world, you would expect to pay your language helper at least weekly, if not daily.

    Training your language helper. 

    Understand the skill differences between you and your language helper.  They is the expert in the language — you are not.  You are the expert in the language learning method — they is not.  After you have studied for a while, you could presumptuously assume that you know more about the language than your language helper does, hindering the process.  That can happen more often than you might imagine! On the other hand, your language helper has more than likely studied language in school using a grammar-based method. 

    If the university system uses a European language as the means of instruction. Your language helper will almost certainly have studied that European language’s grammar for many years in school.  It would also mean that grammar study was superimposed on the local language.  Your language helper will expect that you want him or her to teach you grammar.  It would be surprising if your language helper would initially understand the Feedback Training Method of using only spoken the language.

    In all probability, your language helper will expect that you are paying him or her to give you grammar lessons.  They will probably further expect that the language of instruction will rely heavily on a common language between you. Either they has studied English or you have studied French or another language of instruction used in the local university.  Your language helper may also have an agenda, hoping to practice English as well.

    Considering all of the above, you have an important task ahead of you in training your language helper to speak only the target language.  Nonetheless, in this section let’s assume that you have a common language in which you can communicate to some degree.  However, you will not be using this common language for instruction.  All instruction will be in your target language.  You will need to work together as a team — you will be guiding the language sessions. While your language helper will be providing the language expertise.

    Developing initial exercises. 

    The following suggestions assume that you have no language ability in your target language and that you are just beginning your initial language study.

    1. Start with the “hello”s and “goodbye”s of the language. Show your language helper that you want to mimic everything they says and that you want to speak at a normal cadence, using correct pronunciation.  Work with your language helper until the two of you can carry out a complete conversation using the appropriate greetings and farewells.
    2. Keep a notebook in which your language helper writes every phrase they is suggesting to you. When you have written the phrases in the notebook, the two of you should be able to repeat the phrases as a dialogue.
    3. Work on vocabulary. You will keep a vocabulary notebook that is separate from the phrase notebook your language helper is using.  Make a list of vocabulary words and write the definitions in English.
    4. Using your recording equipment, have your language helper record four or five phrases as a test recording. After each phrase, your language helper must pause long enough to give you time to repeat the phrase.  However, your voice is not recorded.  Now, demonstrate how you will use the recording during a study.  This will give your language helper a better idea of how much time should be allowed during the pauses.
    5. If the pause time is either too short or too long, re-record the first phrases until it is correct. Then finish the recording so that all phrases written in the notebook are recorded.  Depending on the time allowed for each session, this may complete the first lesson.
    6. You will keep both the phrase notebook and the vocabulary notebook with you.
    7. After your language helper leaves, you will spend a number of hours studying before the next lesson. You will practice until you can say all of the phrases with good pronunciation without referring to the phrase notebook.  You will also learn all of the vocabularies.
    8. During your next lesson, you may introduce the idea of verb tables. Select verbs from the vocabulary.  Have your language helper give you all of the tenses and persons. Other grammatical functions placed within the verb if pertinent to that language.  If it is a common verb, be alert to the fact that it may be an irregular verb.  If you have purchased language texts for your target language, you may already have textbooks giving all of this information.  If so, you can prepare the initial table information without your language helper’s involvement.
    9. Have your language helper write a number of the verbs used in the first lesson in table format. Have him or her repeat each person and tense — and other verb grammar functions — as demonstrated in; Studying the Verb.  Respond by repeating everything your language helper says.  Finally, using appropriate pauses, have your language helper record all of the verb tables they has just written.  This will probably be the end of the second lesson.
    10. Again, you will study using the recordings until you can repeat everything from the first two lessons perfectly without looking at the phrase or vocabulary notebooks.
    11. During the next lesson, have your language helper write simple sentences for each person and tense for as many verb tables as you will be able to finish and record for that lesson. Use as many of the words as possible which are already on your vocabulary list.  You will need to encourage your language helper to frequently reuse vocabulary you are already familiar with.  They must be in the habit of using your vocabulary notebook whenever new phases are written for recording.
    12. In successive lessons, you can complete more verb tables and example sentences for each of the verbs you have already used. Of course, new example sentences will introduce new verbs.  The new verbs will introduce even more new vocabulary as the new sample phrases are written and recorded.  Be creative and you will find that this process will be self-perpetuating. Producing enough material for many weeks of intense language study.  You will also soon accumulate enough recorded material so that you can profitably spend many hours a day repeating it.
    13. There is a mistake you must avoid. Your objective is not to review the recordings until you merely understand the meaning and the vocabulary.  You will reach that point quickly.  You should study every recording until you can flawlessly pronounce each phrase.  That will take considerably more work.  Do not be satisfied with merely understanding the phrases.  Work until you can reproduce the phrases with the fluency of a first language speaker.

    Selecting a text. 

    At some point, you will begin drawing your text from a newspaper.  Three previously stated principles need to be reviewed regarding newspapers as language study aids:

    • You will need to select your newspaper carefully. Making certain that it is an edition that uses everyday common language rather than one that uses a literary style.
    • You cannot use a newspaper for language study without having appropriate pronunciation assistance. During your early study, you will want to have your language helper guide you so that your pronunciation is correct.  You may want to read the article together and then continue reading the same article after your language helper leaves for the day.  You should have your language helper record the newspaper article with appropriate pauses.
    • You should always read the newspaper aloud.

    It may be helpful to have two identical newspapers so that both you and your language helper have the same text.  You will proceed much as you did earlier.  Initially, you will be able to use a single newspaper article for many weeks. So you do not need to buy a newspaper for each session.

    1. Select a short article that interests you. Your language helper may help you make selections based on the vocabulary or expressions contained in the article.
    2. Start by reading the article together. Have your language helper read a phrase, and then you reread the same phrase yourself until your pronunciation is perfect.  Then go to the next phrase or sentence, and so on.
    3. When you begin to study the same sentences on the recording, you will not be looking at the newspaper. Your response will be entirely from recall memory.  Therefore, show your language helper how longer sentences should be broken into shorter phrases.  For examples, see Appendix B: Text Exercises.
    4. During your practice reading, it might be helpful for your language helper to insert slash marks in the text to indicate where pauses should occur during the recording.
    5. Develop vocabulary lists in your vocabulary notebook as you have already done.
    6. Continue to develop verb tables.
    7. Add a new category for expressions and idioms. A newspaper will generally use many common expressions.  Identify each expression and define it.  In many cases, keywords may be substituted in the expression to change either the subject or the action of the expression.  You may also be able to change the time of the expression with the verb tense.  Learn how the expression can be modified.
    8. In time, your language helper may write actual exercises using word substitution or verb manipulation. However, this may require more time than is available during the lesson period that, in fairness, may require additional payment.

    The alphabet and numbers. 

    Assuming that your target language uses an alphabet with a relatively few letter. You will want to learn the correct pronunciation of each letter in order to be able to spell words for first language speakers.  You will also want to learn the correct pronunciation for numbers.  Construct simple drills for both letters and numbers.  Review the drills frequently enough that you can readily use both letters and numbers, utilizing perfect pronunciation.  See the alphabet and number drills in Appendix A: Introductory Lesson.

    You will probably use numbers more frequently because they are a part of daily conversation in making purchases.  Consequently, you will probably gain fluency with numbers relatively quickly.  However, be certain that you also learn the alphabet.  As a foreigner, you will frequently be asked to spell words.  It will be a great help to you if you learn to spell fluently in your target language.

    Finally, if your target language uses a monetary system that is identified with anything other than simple numbers such as we use in English. For example, we say seven dollars or three hundred and eighty dollars — you will also need to learn to rapidly use that system as well.  For example, in the country in which I lived for nine years, a price could be specified in either MGF francs or the national aviary.  The ariary was worth five MGF francs.  In the larger cities, you could get by with calling the price 350 francs.  In remote areas, one was forced to bargain by calling the same amount 70 ariary.  I learned, much to my chagrin, that mistakenly bargaining a price for 350 ariary was going to cost me a lot more than 350 francs.  At least I won that bartering round at my first stated price!

    Recording the exercises. 

    In spite of the high technology equipment that is available today for MP3 and CD (compact disc) computer-based recording. Some may still prefer the low-tech cassette tape recorder.  It is inexpensive and easy to use as both a recording and a playback machine, and it has a pause button and counter that facilitates use in language study.  However, if you take a recorder with you, you will need to either take an ample supply of cassette tapes with you or verify that tapes can be purchased locally.  Also, make certain that any equipment you take with you will work on the supplied voltage and frequency of that country.

    If you use a cassette recorder, limit your cassettes to the 60-minute length or less.  Longer duration cassettes use thinner tape that will not hold up to repeated forward and reverse usage in language study.  The thinner tape also tangles more easily.

    Today’s choice, however, would be MP3 technology.  If you use an iPod or MP3 player and have appropriate computer equipment. You may find that making the voice recording on a CD and downloading it to the MP3 player is a good alternative.  You can also purchase auxiliary attachments that permit an iPod to record directly.  In this case, you will probably want to upload your MP3 files to a computer so that they could be stored on CDs.  Many MP3 players may be paused just like a cassette tape recorder.

    You will need to establish a routine with your language helper.  During the time they is helping you, you will be working on text material that will be spontaneously organized or written as recorded exercises.  In addition, you may also record verb tables and the like.  You will need to allow enough time so that each day’s recording can be completed.

    View the recorded material as the most important part of the lesson time spent with your language helper.  You can easily get three or four hours of language practice time from each hour of recorded material.  Thus, live conversation with your language helper will only give you an hour of spoken language for an hour of your language helper’s time. Whereas an hour of recording will give you a minimum of three or four hours of spoken language time for the same hour of your language helper’s time.  In addition, past recorded exercises can be frequently reviewed, which will give you even that much more spoken language exercise.

    There will also be days when your language helper is not available because of illness, school schedule, holidays, and other reasons.  Previously recorded exercises will allow you to continue language study without lost time.

  • Studying the Verb

    Studying the Verb

    Unlock the secrets of studying the verb in diverse languages. Explore the significance of influxive languages and their impact on linguistic precision.

    Studying the Verb: Unraveling Language Structures

    Each language has distinct qualities that will require unique and specific exercises.  Many languages are inflexive and use declensions in which certain words indicate agreement or specialized meaning.  Inflexive languages have well-developed verbs with numerous forms.  If your target language is inflexive, you will need to use carefully developed verb exercises.  (English, however, is not an inflexive language.)

    Many modern languages add a great deal of precision by their use of these linguistic constructions.  For example, an adjective may definitively identified with the noun that it modifies by its agreement in gender and number, thus setting it apart from other adjective/noun combinations within the same context.  Since written language derived from spoken language, the focus of this chapter is primarily the variations of meaning that result from manipulation of the spoken language.  The following two definitions are important here:

    • An inflexive language is one that adds one phoneme — or one moneme in its written form — to a verb to denote case, number, gender, person, tense, etc. A phoneme is the smallest linguistic sound carrying meaning, whereas a moneme is the smallest linguistic unit (typically a letter in a phonemic alphabet) identifying a specific phoneme.
    • Declension is the occurrence of inflection in nouns, pronouns, and adjectives, indicating such features as number (typically singular vs. plural), case (subject, object, and other case functions), and gender. Declension occurs in a great many of the world’s languages.

    This post will demonstrate how specialized exercises which focus on unique qualities in a language can constructed.  It is easy to demonstrate this type of exercise by using the English verb as an example.  Probably nothing marks adults struggling to learn English quite as much as their improper use of verbs in regard to person and tense.  Therefore, when teaching English to adults, it is necessary to use specialized English verb drills.

    Of course, you will need to adapt these examples of English verb exercises to your own needs as you begin learning your target language.  Inasmuch as English adjectives seldom modified in order to agree with gender and number, we cannot give sample exercises for that purpose, though you could certainly develop them for French, Spanish, and many other languages.  Other languages would require extensive exercises for the case within the verb.  And were you to be studying Cantonese, you would certainly need to develop exercises using its six tons.

    A short introduction to verb drills:

    All of these illustrations taken from the Spoken English Learned Quickly language course.  In my own personal experience with language learning, I was frustrated when I would learn a present tense, then a week or two later learn its past or future tense, only to come back to it again a few months later to learn its subjunctive form.  I would have done much better had I learned each verb as a complete unit.  When I was studying French, the verb “etre” (to be) evolved into at least four verbs. 

    First I learned the present tense etre, later the past tense etre, still later the future tense etre, and finally, an entirely new etre verb form called the subjunctive.  It would have been much more effective for me to have learned one verb having four tenses than to have learned four separate tenses as though each was a new verb.

    Of course, I am exaggerating to make a point.  Yet, if we make a single package out of each verb, learning it in all its forms simultaneously, it becomes a far simpler memory task.  In addition, full use of each verb as it learned gives greater initial command of the language.  I said many things incorrectly until months later when I finally learned the subjunctive form.  Then I wasted additional time retraining my mind to use the subjunctive form in place of the tenses I had previously thought I was using correctly.  I spent more time learning and then unlearning incorrect verb constructions than had I learned fewer verbs initially but learned them in their entirety.

    There is, however, another equally forceful argument for learning all forms of the verb at one time.  As I have taught the Spoken English Learned Quickly course, I have discovered that in a relatively few week of learning all new verbs in their entirety, adult students who have no previous knowledge of English are able to conjugate verbs which they have never before encountered.  I have experimented with this many times.  I choose an obscure regular verb and find a student who does not know its meaning. 

    Then I have the student conjugate it in all of its persons and tenses.  Only after they have successfully conjugated the verb do I tell them what it means.  It is an amazing process to see.  (Spoken English Learned Quickly was designed to used as a self-study course.  Most students study on their own.  However, I have often conducted a weekly two-hour group session as a means of encouraging the students.  It is during the group sessions that I have used these spoken conjugation drills.)

    We strongly encourage you to learn all forms of each verb the first time you encounter them in your study.  Verbs will become much more useful to you in a shorter period of time.

    In traditional language instruction, once a particular verb tense supposedly learned, it is then assumed that the students know that form and no longer need to review it.  Yes, the students may be able to write all the present tense forms of a particular regular verb, but that is not the objective.  Can they use all of those forms in spontaneous spoken English? In the Spoken English Learned Quickly course, the instruction does not stop when students are able to write the endings of certain verbs.  The goal is to help the students reach a level of fluency in which they can correctly use the verb in all of its tenses and persons in normal speech.

    That will be your objective as you learn to speak your target language.  Do not satisfied by simply learning verb tense and the person in written form.  You will not know a particular verb until you can use it fluently in spontaneous conversation.

    For the same reason that you were encouraged to learn cognate forms of words in Selecting a Text, you encouraged to learn all of the individual forms of a single verb at one time.  This will greatly reduce the time required to learn verb vocabulary.  Depending on your target language, this could include tenses, persons, imperatives, declensions, etc.  Combining all forms of each verb as you learn them will also improve your intuitive understanding of that particular verb.  You will be better able to use the verb in its different forms when you want to use it to convey a similar meaning.

    All of the above comments relate to spoken language.  You may find it helpful to write tables.  But you must learn to use the words in the tables as spoken vocabulary, not merely as written tables.

    Four types of verb drills:

    The Spoken English Learned Quickly lessons use four verb table forms.  In the early lessons, only the following form used.  It will called an “A” format for this illustration:

    An “A” format English verb drill.

    TO OWN (to own) / She promised to own it.  (She promised to own it.) Own.  (Own.) / Please own it.  (Please own it.) owning (owning) / He is owning it.  (He is owning it.) owned (owned) / it is owned (it is owned) / it was owned (it was owned) / it will be owned (it will be owned)

    • I own (I own) / he owns (he owns) / she owns (she owns) / it owns (it owns) / you own (you own) / we own (we own) / they own (they own)
    • I owned (I owned) / he owned (he owned) / she owned (she owned) / it owned (it owned) / you owned (you owned) / we owned (we owned) / they owned (they owned)
    • I will own (I will own) / he will own (he will own) / she will own (she will own) / it will own (it will own) / you will own (you will own) / we will own (we will own) / they will own (they will own).

    Since all of the exercises recorded as audio lessons, the students respond by repeating the words enclosed in the ellipses (. . .).  A Student Workbook is provided that contains the written text for all spoken drills.  The parenthetical phrases included in the written text.  Thus, the narrator says, “to own” and the students respond, “to own.” The narrator says, “She promised to own it,” and the students respond, “She promised to own it.” Everything is spoken, and as soon as the students understand a new exercise, they put the written text aside and complete the exercise by using only the audio recording without the text.

    Repeated use of this format allows the students to conjugate an unknown verb correctly.  Can you see how their fluency increases when they can correctly use English verbs so early in their language learning experience? That is the same fluency you will want to develop as you study your target language.

    Quite early in the lesson series, another verb table format introduced.  Throughout the Student Workbook, all irregular verb forms appear in bold type.  A drill for the irregular verb “to meet” looks like this:

    A sentence completion English verb drill.

    First, Complete the following sentences with “them here every evening.”

    • I always meet (I always meet them here every evening.) / He always meets (He always meets them here every evening.) / You always meet (You always meet them here every evening.) / We always meet (We always meet them here every evening.) / They always meet (They always meet them here every evening.)

    Second, Complete the following sentences with “them here after work.”

    • I always met (I always met them here after work.) / She always met (She always met them here after work.) / You always met (You always met them here after work.) / We always met (We always met them here after work.) / They always met (They always met them here after work.)

    Third, Complete the following sentences with “them all before evening.”

    • I will meet (I will meet them all before evening.) / She will meet (She will meet them all before evening.) / You will meet (You will meet them all before evening.) / We will meet (We will meet them all before evening.) / They will meet (They will meet them all before evening.)

    Though the sentences are simple, this format teaches the verb conjugation in the context of the spoken language.  It also forces the students to be more mentally alert during the exercise.  Later in the lessons, the third type of verb table is added that identified here as a “B” format table.  It looks like this:

    “B” format English verb drill.

    • TO TEST (to test) / He promised to test it.  (He promised to test it.) Test.  (Test.) / Please test it.  (Please test it.) testing (testing) / He is testing some.  (He is testing some.) tested (tested) / it is tested (it is tested) / it was tested (it was tested) / it will be tested (it will be tested)
    • I test (I test) I tested (I tested) I will test (I will test) He tests (he tests) he tested (he tested) he will test (he will test) she tests (she tests) she tested (she tested) she will test (she will test) it tests (it tests) it tested (it tested) it will test (it will test) you test (you test) you tested (you tested) you will test (you will test) we test (we test) we tested (we tested) we will test (we will test) they test (they test) they tested (they tested) they will test (they will test)

    In this format, students forced to move from tense to tense using the same person, rather than from person to person using the same tense as they did in the A format drills.  Language requires both skills, so students taught to do both at normal conversation speed.

    However, by this time in the lessons, students should be able to do both.  Consequently, they alternate between table formats in the same exercise.  That is, the first verb uses the A format, the second verb uses the B format, the third verb uses the A format, the fourth uses the B format, and so on to the end of the exercise.  This increases the students’ abilities to use the verb with all tenses and persons while, at the same time, forcing them to develop spontaneity while using verbs.

    Again, this will be your objective in learning your target language.  You want to be able to manipulate the spoken verb quickly and accurately, using all persons and tenses in addition to any other verb functions in your target language.  You should also be able to see the great advantage of learning all tenses and persons of a verb at one time.  If you learn all the forms of the entire verb each time you encounter a new verb, you will have learned one meaning with multiple forms rather than a mix of verb forms and meanings.  Learning all forms of a single verb in this way will take you less time than learning the same material using a traditional method.

    Most importantly, if you use spoken exercises as a means of learning verb tables, you will find that the conjugation you are learning for one verb will quickly transferred to other verbs.

    The same transfer of knowledge will also be true with any kind of word or sentence construction you learn as you use this table format.  Once you are familiar with that exercise, you will always study the information in the table as a spoken exercise without reading from the text.

    There is a final verb exercise format used in the Spoken English Learned Quickly course.  The exercise with its spoken introductory explanation looks like this:

    Tense or person selection English verb drill.

    Say each sentence using the word I will give you.  I will tell you if the sentence should be in the present, the past, or the future.  Use the word “to ride.”

    Present.  The children in that family always _________ the bus; The children in that family always ride the bus.

    The children in that family always ride the bus; The children in that family always ride the bus.

    Present.  That family with three children always _________ the bus; That family with three children always rides the bus.

    That family with three children always rides the bus; That family with three children always rides the bus.

    This verb table format used frequently with a large number of regular and irregular verbs.  It uses all tenses and persons and incorporates as much vocabulary from each new lesson as possible.  In Making the Proprioceptive Method Work, you will learn more about the process of recording these written tables as audio exercises.

    Manipulating language:

    Development of the ability to manipulate language easily illustrated.  Imagine that four-year-old Ryan lives next door to his best friend.  The boys frequently go on each other’s family outings together.  On one occasion, the two boys rode a miniature train that circled a picnic area at the zoo.  When Ryan returned home, he excitedly told his parents, “. . . and we rode the train.”

    As a young child, Ryan’s developing language skills include his growing ability to manipulate language.  He can correctly use “…ed” to signal past tense with regular verbs.  In time, he will learn the correct conjugation of the irregular verb to ride and will be able to report that they rode the train.  We often hear young children doing this.  Probably the most frequently made mistake is attaching “…ed” to irregular verbs to create the past tense.  Other instances include “gooder” or “baddest” for the words good or bad that do not follow convention, even though the child is using the correct pattern (“tall/taller/tallest” or “large/larger/largest”). 

    Thus, prior to attaining maturity in language, growth is evident as a child develops the ability to manipulate language.  The child is intuitively attempting to express unknown, yet grammatically correct thoughts.  As adults, we may detect a mistake in conjugation.  Yet, how often have we heard a child incidentally use a past tense correctly, when we did not realize that the correct conjugated form itself was not yet a part of that child’s recall vocabulary?

    Thus, when the Feedback Training Method teaches students to manipulate language in a way that can used to create the new vocabulary, it closely replicates a child’s language development.  As far as we know, no studies have been conducted to evaluate this process.  Nonetheless, it seems reasonable that the best way to teach a new language is to group cognitive and the tenses and persons of verbs in a way that mirrors a child’s progression in language development.

    The proprioceptive influence:

    Notice how the emphasis on the proprioceptive sense in language learning has influenced this method.  Verb usage is important in English, as it likely is in all languages.  In order to use verbs properly in English, the speaker must use tense and person correctly.

    However, tense and person have multiple components.  There are cognitive components that essentially controlled by memory.  So drills that retain memory will needed.  This is accomplished by using a great deal of repetition.  These verb forms will be repeated thousands of times throughout these lessons.

    During cognitive learning, however, students should also develop the proprioceptive sense that will retrain their mouths to pronounce the words correctly.  After all, the difference in knowing whether to use “ride” or “rides” is a function of pronunciation as far as the tongue and hearing are concerned.  Therefore, in all of these exercises, the students’ cognitive, proprioceptive sense, and hearing have simultaneously been retrained by forcing them to speak aloud, listening to both the narrator and their own voice, and experiencing the feedback from their own mouth as they speak.

    Something else has also been done that is extremely important.  For the entire time the students work on the exercises, everything they hear the narrator say has been an example of perfect English.  It is perfect in both its pronunciation and syntax.  The students could use this lesson from which these sample exercises were taken for two hours a day for five days a week.  If the students repeat exactly what the narrator says, they could speak perfect English for 10 hours during that week, even though they are studying by themselves.

    These same students could probably do a written exercise using the same material.  It would be a cognitive exercise, but it would not involve any retraining of their mouths or hearing.  They would probably work on it for two hours or less during the week.  The results would be negligible in terms of producing fluent spoken English.

    You will want to establish an effective training experience when you study your target language.  If you want to be successful, you must avoid complacency with written exercises.  Your goal is to advance to effective spoken language learning.

    However, it will be difficult.  There is no way that you can repeat the same sentences enough times to retrain your mind, mouth, and hearing without becoming weary in the process.  That is the price you must be willing to pay in order to efficiently learn to speak a new language fluently.

  • Selecting a Text

    Selecting a Text

    Find out how to enhance your language learning with the right selecting a text for studying. Newspapers offer a wide range of topics and vocabulary for effective language practice.

    Selecting a Text for Language Learning: Enhance Your Skills

    This chapter will use the term text to identify a written manuscript. Enhance Your Language Learning Journey with Selecting a Text. A newspaper in your target language is usually an excellent source for a study text.  Most newspapers use good syntax, relatively simple sentences, and common expressions.  In addition to general vocabulary, newspapers will give you many common political, scientific, economic, and technical words.  Generally, newspapers are also a good source of colloquial expressions.

    Important: Not all newspapers would be suitable for spoken language study.  In many countries, there are both common language and literary newspapers.  You would want to select a newspaper that uses commonly spoken the language.  You may also be able to find magazines that work equally well.  There may be magazines of particular interest to you such as political news, handyman, sewing and crafts, travel, outdoors and camping, sports, or any number of other topics. 

    You would want to have your language helper evaluate the newspaper or magazine to be certain that the one you select uses an acceptable level of conversational language.  The term newspaper throughout the remainder of this chapter will refer to whatever text you would have selected.

    Some may also argue that a local newspaper does not always provide the best conversational language for spoken language study.  That may be true, but the reality is that you probably would not be able to find the ideal text at any price.  When carefully selected, the inexpensive and readily available newspaper will undoubtedly be your best compromise.

    Further, this chapter attempts to describe the use of a newspaper in language study without suggesting when its use in that study might occur.  The introduction of the newspaper into the language study schedule would depend entirely on the unique circumstances in each language study program.  The reference to time (six weeks) at the end of the chapter is done simply for the sake of illustration, though it is entirely realistic with the help of a competent language helper.  Similarly, some users of the newspaper suggested in this chapter could occur early in language study while others are for students who have already had considerably more experience with their target language.

    As you begin language study, you will need both a text and an audio recording of it to use for pronunciation practice.  Since it would be difficult to procure a constant supply of companion texts with recordings, you will need to select one and then produce the other with the help of your language helper.

    Going from a written text to an audio recording:

    Making the Feedback Training Method Work, the role of a language helper in your language study program will be fully explained.  This present chapter, however, will be primarily concerned with the text itself.  As we begin this chapter, we will make two assumptions: 1) that you will have a language helper who is a first language (L1) speaker of your target language and pronounces the target language correctly, and 2) that you will have audio recording equipment.

    Everything considered it should be easier to produce an audio recording from a newspaper text than to produce a written text from a radio broadcast recording.  It would be much simpler for your language helper to record the text than it would be for the language helper to transcribe the audio recording.

    For your study purposes, a printed newspaper text will assure a more precise use of the language, better spelling, and a more easily preserved printed copy.  Because live radio broadcasts are difficult to record when inexpensive audio equipment is being used, it would be difficult to hear all of the words clearly.  Therefore, it may be easier for you to make a good language study recording by having the language helper read a newspaper text for the audio recording.  With a little coaching, your language helper could also learn to record the material in such a way that there would be long enough pauses to allow you to repeat the phrase when studying alone.

    The purpose of using the newspaper is to facilitate spoken language practice.  You would always read the newspaper aloud, reading a sentence and then looking away from the text while repeating the sentence from recall memory.

    Appendix B: Text Exercises will illustrate how the text is actually used to create audio exercises.

    A number of uses of a newspaper are suggested under the following headings. These uses, however, are progressive.  That is, during the first few weeks of language study, you will begin using the newspaper as an aid for building vocabulary and improving an understanding of the meaning of the language.  As language study continues, the newspaper will become an increasingly important tool for syntax development.  Learning expressions from the newspaper will require more language skill and will take place somewhat later in the language learning process.  Each of these uses of a newspaper as an aid to language learning will depend to some extent on the readiness of the student to progress to that level.

    Using the newspaper for vocabulary:

    First, read the article out loud, identifying new vocabulary as you go.  Whenever you read a word you do not know, stop and find it in your dictionary.  Keep a vocabulary notebook.  If a word you do not know is used more than twice in an article, enter the word in your notebook and put a check () by it to flag it as a word needing special study.  However, do not record place names or personal names in your notebook.  After you finish reading the article for the first time, review the meaning of all of the new vocabulary words.  Study these words enough that you know what they mean when you read the article.  Always pronounce vocabulary words out loud so that you learn vocabulary as a spoken language.

    After you are more familiar with the process, select other newspaper articles and continue reading aloud while you look for new vocabulary words.  When you find a word in a second newspaper article that you have already checked () in your notebook, place a second check () by it.  Any word in your notebook with two checks should be memorized as an important word to know.

    Whenever you are able to do so, write out the cognate forms of the same word.  For example, to adhere, an adhesive, and adhesion are cognates.  It will be helpful for you to learn multiple cognate forms of a word at one time rather than learning each form as a new vocabulary word when you first encounter it.  Association of a single word in its multiple forms with one root meaning results in more rapid vocabulary retention.  It will also teach you how to accurately develop cognate forms of words during the speech when you do not already know the word.

    The following will be used as an English illustration.  If, for example, you as an L2 speaker know the word “high” but do not yet know the superlative “highest,” you could nonetheless develop the sentence, “It was on the highest shelf,” if you have the ability to develop cognitively.  By learning all cognate forms of every new word as a group — and always learning them in the same pattern, such as sharp, sharper, sharpest, and sharply, or quick, quicker, quickest, and quickly, your ability to accurately create unknown regular cognitive during speech will be greatly enhanced.

    The real essence of language fluency is understanding the target language well enough to intuitively use previously unknown vocabulary during the conversation.  It may be helpful to you to reserve a section in your vocabulary notebook for exactly the purpose of listing cognitive forms.

    Verbs should be listed in your notebook in their infinitive form (for example, “to remember”) rather than in a conjugated form (for example, “she remembers”).  Note that not all languages identify verbs in their infinitive form.  Use your target language’s dictionary notation form as your pattern.  After you have mastered the verb’s conjugation, it will be far simpler for you to learn a single verb form than it will be for you to learn each form of a verb as an individual vocabulary word.

    Using the newspaper for meaning:

    Read the article again for meaning.  If you do not understand a sentence, stop and find out exactly what it means.

    If some of the definitions you have written in your notebook do not make sense when you read them in the article. Find the word again in your dictionary and see if it has other meanings.  If a second meaning for the word makes better sense, in this case, write that definition in your notebook.

    If you still cannot figure out the meaning of a sentence, it may be because two or more words combined to form a single expression.  Try to determine the meaning of expressions.  Look for similar expressions in other articles.  If you still cannot determine the meaning of an expression, ask your language helper for assistance.

    Using the newspaper for syntax development:

    An ideal way to reinforce your use of grammatically correct syntax in your target language is by reading newspaper articles aloud.  Your goal is to retrain your mind, hearing, and mouth to understand and use your target language correctly.  Reading aloud from a newspaper is one of the best ways to accomplish that.

    The great advantage is that you are reading a large number of different sentences that are all organized according to the same grammar rules.  Thus, you are learning the acceptable range of the syntax of that language.  That is, there may appear to be many variations from sentence to sentence, yet all of the users are still correct. 

    An example from English would be learning that you can place the word “however” at the beginning, middle, or end of an English sentence.  You would also learn that the position of “however” can make a slight difference in meaning, or it can enhance the style of the sentence.  You will discover equivalent nuances in your target language.

    In many respects, using the newspaper for syntax development is similar to using it to increase fluency and to help you develop fluid conversation as mentioned below.  The same exercises suggested below would be as profitable for syntax as they would be for fluency and conversation.

    Using the newspaper in order to learn expressions:

    Expressions add richness and variety to all languages. Identify expressions as you read the newspaper.  Use a special mark to identify them in articles.  As we will see in a moment, many expressions may divided, with component words of the expression being separated by non-component words.

    Try substituting other words within the same expression.  Say or write as many sentences using the expression as possible.  As an English example, you may read a sentence in a newspaper that says, “The Governor announced on Friday that he will not run for another term, putting to rest months of speculation about his future intentions.”  Most expressions can used in different tenses with different people or things. 

    For example, the expression “to put to rest” can used in the present tense, “I want to put our disagreement to rest,” in the future tense, “He will put his argument to rest,” or in the past tense, “They finally put their rivalry to rest.”  Notice that in these phrases, the component parts of the expression separated as in, “They finally put their rivalry to rest.”  Watch for such variations of construction in expressions in your target language.

    English also uses forms of words as a type of expression.  For example, you may read a sentence in a newspaper that says, “We’re getting many calls from people who are panicking and asking what they can do.”  This form of expression uses two or more words ending in “…ING” to describe two or more actions that the same person is doing at one time.  You will certainly find many similar expression forms in your target language.

    Using the newspaper for fluency enhancement:

    As you use the newspaper in your spoken exercises, you will begin reading longer sections rather than simply alternating between reading sentences aloud and then repeating them from recall memory.  You will want to read the entire article aloud for fluency practice.  Try reading the article as smoothly as possible without stopping.  Read it aloud at least twice.

    For more fluency practice, continue reading the article aloud until you can read it at the same rate of speed that a first language speaker uses when talking.  Practice until your pronunciation duplicates that of a first language speaker.

    Your purpose is not to merely learn the vocabulary in these newspaper articles, but to learn to speak your target language.  Keep practicing until you can read the article aloud well enough that a first language speaker could clearly understand what you are saying.

    Fluency is the ability to speak smoothly with proper intonation.  Initially, use single sentences for fluency drills, repeatedly reading a single sentence until you can read it smoothly.  Eventually, do the same with multiple sentences or paragraphs.  Even as a beginning student, there is value in reading a longer passage or entire article without break in order to establish the rhythm of the spoken language.  This is excellent proprioceptive training.

    Your natural tendency will be to move on to new articles too quickly.  In reality, it is only after you already know all of the vocabularies and can pronounce each word correctly that you will be ready to use the newspaper article to full advantage.  You are not fully retraining your mind and tongue until you can read the article at normal speaking speed with proper inflection and pronunciation.  You will better attain fluent speech by rereading fewer articles aloud perfectly than you will by reading many articles aloud with faulty pronunciation.

    Using the newspaper for conversation practice:

    It was stated, “You must never make a mistake when you are speaking.” That objective will be the most difficult when you first begin a free conversation.  However, using a newspaper article will be a great aid in producing the conversation that is essentially free of mistakes.

    A newspaper article can give you a great deal of structure for conversation practice.  This structure will give both you and your language helper a defined group of vocabulary words, defined sentences with an understood meaning, and a defined context in which the vocabulary and sentences can communicated.  After very little coaching, your language helper can use the newspaper article to structure the free conversation.

    To continue with the illustration from English, your language helper could lead you in a discussion evolving from a newspaper article.  You could easily have the following discussion after only six weeks of full-time language study.  Notice that your language helper is asking each question twice, expecting that you will substitute a pronoun in your second response. 

    Language Helper: “What did the Governor announce on Friday?”

    Reply: “The Governor announced on Friday that he will not run for another term.”

    Language Helper: “What did the Governor announce on Friday?”

    Reply: “He announced on Friday that he will not run for another term.”

    Language Helper: “Will the Governor run for another term?”

    Reply: “No, the Governor will not run for another term.”

    Language Helper: “Will the Governor run for another term?”

    Reply: “No, he will not run for another term.”

    Language Helper: “When did the Governor announce that he will not run for another term?”

    Reply: “The Governor announced on Friday that he will not run for another term.”

    Language Helper: “When did the Governor announce that he will not run for another term?”

    Reply: “He announced on Friday that he will not run for another term.”

    Assuming that you have only been studying your target language for six weeks, your initial response to each question may be slow and halting.  You may also be looking at the printed text when your language helper initially asks the question.  But at least your answer is word perfect.  You are training your proprioceptive sense by using perfect syntax.  Now you can add perfect pronunciation and fluency to that.

    Typically, in language instruction, extra attention given when a student makes mistakes.  That is, when a sentence used incorrectly, it will corrected with additional drills.  On the other hand, when a student responds correctly, the instructor will move on to the next sentence.  That is not what you want your language helper to do for you now.  Of course, you will want help with incorrect syntax and pronunciation. 

    But in order to learn the language effectively, you will want to emphasize correct language use.  To continue our example, let’s say that none of the sentences in the above illustration have any phonemes that you cannot reproduce acceptably.  Therefore, at your instruction, your language helper will continue to drill you on these same sentences until they are perfect.

    Your language helper will again ask the first question twice, allowing you to respond accordingly.

    Language Helper: “What did the Governor announce on Friday?”

    Reply: “The Governor announced on Friday that he will not run for another term.”

    Language Helper: “What did the Governor announce on Friday?”

    Reply: “He announced on Friday that he will not run for another term.”

    Now, however, you will not be looking at the text.  Your language helper will ask these two questions until you can answer word perfectly from recall memory.

    But she still not finished.  She will now increase the tempo and will expect you to answer in the same cadence.  She will persist until the two of you are conversing so quickly and naturally that a first language speaker coming into the room would hear a strangely redundant conversation in what would otherwise be completely understandable language.  It would be just as understandable to that first language speaker as any conversation would be between two first language speakers on the street.

    This would continue — maybe for several days of practice — until the entire series of questions from that newspaper article could be asked and answered in fully fluent conversation.

    You would be worn out by the time you finished studying this intently from a newspaper article.  Yet while others would be in the beginning language course after their initial six weeks of study, you — after your first six weeks — would already be speaking on an advanced level, though you would only be using a relatively small number of sentences.

  • Grammar and Writing in Spoken Language Study

    Grammar and Writing in Spoken Language Study

    Discover the impact of grammar and writing on language development. Explore the role of proper sentence structure and pronunciation in effective communication.

    Grammar and Writing in Spoken Language Study:

    Personal experience about Grammar and Writing:

    I had the great advantage of growing up in a home in which grammatically correct English was spoken.  As I progressed through grade school and on into high school, my language ability matured as a result of my home and school environments.

    In retrospect, I believe that this is what happened. For the most part, I used proper sentence structure and pronunciation because that is what I heard in my home.  However, when I went to school, I needed to learn grammar in school in order to reinforce my knowledge of my own language.  I — like probably most of my classmates — did not learn to speak by studying grammar.  Rather, I was able to learn how to do grammar exercises because I already knew how to speak.

    Certainly, I learned many important things about my language through grammar study. But it was of importance to me only because I had already achieved basic English fluency.  I did not learn to speak English as a result of English grammar lessons.

    In contrast, I also took two years of Spanish in high school.  We started with basic grammar.  We wrote exercises almost every day.  But we almost never heard spoken Spanish and had even less opportunity to try to speak it ourselves.  (Language instruction in the United States has changed considerably since I was in high school.) After high school graduation, I could neither speak Spanish nor did I understand Spanish grammar.

    In my mid-twenties, I spent a year in Paris studying French.  I had the great fortune of enrolling in a French language school that emphasized spoken French to the complete exclusion of written exercises.  Not only did I learn French grammar — meaning that I learned to use sentences that communicated what I intended to say to a French listener — but, interestingly enough, because verb construction is similar in both French and Spanish, I also began to understand the Spanish grammar which had made no sense to me in high school.  Because I could read and write in English, I had no difficulty reading French.  It was a simple transfer of knowledge from reading in English to reading in French.

    Later, I studied another language in Africa.  Because school-based language courses were almost non-existent in that country, all of my language training was done by way of recorded language drills that I adapted from local radio broadcasts.  I also had a university student as my language helper.  Yet I learned how to structure a sentence in that language — which is applied grammar — and how to write much more quickly than had I been studying grammar and writing independently of the spoken language.

    Traditional language instruction:

    Traditional language instruction has reversed the process with poor results.  Most second language classes teach grammar as a foundation for spoken language.

    The quickest way to teach students to read a new language is to teach them to speak it first.  The fastest way to teach them sufficient grammar to pass college entrance exams is to build a foundation by teaching them to speak the language fluently.  Then as they build on that foundation, they will understand the target language’s grammar.  Finally, it is almost impossible to teach non-speaking students how to write well before they have mastered the basic spoken language.  Whenever the process is reversed, it takes a needlessly long time to succeed in teaching grammar and writing skills, much less spoken language fluency.

    Do not misunderstand.  One cannot speak any language — fluently or otherwise — without using the grammar of that language.  That is true because grammar consists of the rules used in that language to string words together as units to convey meaning.  (In English we call these units sentences or paragraphs.) In English, we can use a given number of words to make a statement or ask a question by the way in which we order the words and use inflection.  Simply stated, placing the words in the correct order applied grammar.

    The issue is not whether or not students learning a new language need to know grammar.  Language is unintelligible without it.  The question is, “How is grammar best taught?”

    The best time to study grammar:

    That effective spoken language instruction simultaneously trains all of the cognitive and sensory centers of speech.  To again resort to an English example, when is the best time to introduce the grammar rule that the sentence. “That is a book,” is an English statement, and “Is that a book?” is an English question? The best time is when students simultaneously learn to speak these two sentences. Inverting word order to change a statement to a question.  That would take place while they are learning many other similar sentences. So that they develop a cognitive sense reinforced by motor skill and auditory feedback that the order and inflection of the one sentence is a question, while the other is a statement.  The sound of the sentence is as much an indicator of its meaning as its written form.  Right? Right!

    There is also a relationship between good pronunciation and good spelling.  I am a poor speller.  I understand that I misspell many words because I mispronounce them.  At some point, everyone who expects to write a target language well must learn its spelling.  Yet, it will probably be faster for a student to learn good spelling after learning good speech habits. Than it will be for the same student to learn good spelling without being able to speak.  In practice, in a spoken language course, students should learn the spelling of new words as they added to the vocabulary of each new lesson.

    This is not to say that grammar and spelling are unnecessary for the new language learner.  Rather, what is being said is that grammar can be taught more effectively — and in less time — by using audio language drills.  Teaching grammar by means of spoken Learning to Speak a Second Language

    language has the great advantage of reinforcing the cognitive learning of grammar. While using two additional functions found in normal speech — motor skill feedback and auditory feedback.  Teaching grammar as a written exercise does develop cognitive learning, but it reinforces it with visual feedback.

    Though visual feedback through reading and writing has some merit, it is outside the context of spoken language.  Reinforcement through visual feedback outside of the spoken language context is far less effective. Than motor skill feedback and auditory feedback that are both inside the spoken language context.  The trade-off in gaining visual feedback at the loss of motor skill and auditory feedback is costly and retards progress.  Far more gained when the student identifies correct grammar, by the way, a sentence sounds, rather than by the way it looks. 

    Though it would not typically explained this way, it is also important on a subconscious level that the student learns how to correct grammar feels.  As a function of the proprioceptive sense, a statement produces a certain sequence of sensory feedback from the mouth, tongue, and air passages that feel different than a question.  A speech pathologist working with children’s speech problems will pay a great deal of attention to this part of speech during retraining.

    It would take considerably longer to teach a language student. How to manipulate the grammar of the new language and then speak that language correctly. Than it would teach the same student to first speak the language correctly and then introduce rules of grammar.  This gain would greatly augmented, however, if the rules of grammar were incorporated into the spoken language lessons themselves.

    A year spent exclusively in spoken language study will produce a marked degree of fluency.  With that language fluency, the student will gain a functional understanding of the grammar of the target language.  The same amount of time spent in grammar study will produce limited fluency and little practical understanding of that language’s grammar.

    Grammar study in your own language program:

    How you approach grammar study in your target language will depend on the language program you are using.

    If you enrolled in an established school program with written grammar assignments. You will obviously need to complete them just like every other student in the class.  However, as you will see in Making the Feedback Training Method Work, on your own time. You can then use the completed (and corrected) written exercises as spoken language drills.  If you focus more on using your grammar exercises as spoken language drills rather than simply as written assignments. You will find that your ability in your target language’s grammar will increase much more rapidly.  Of course, this will add time to your study schedule, but it will undoubtedly result in considerably higher exam scores.  You will also see an important caution regarding correct pronunciation when you are reading grammar assignments as spoken exercises.

    As also explained in Making the Feedback Training Method Work, if you design your own language course with a language helper. You can have much greater freedom in the way you study grammar.  In that case, you will try to incorporate your grammar lessons into your spoken drills.

    Nonetheless, there will be times when you will ask your language helper for clarifications regarding grammar.  For example, to again use an illustration from English, during the first week of lessons you would encounter the two articles “A” and “AN.” If your language helper explained that “A” used before a word beginning with a consonant, and “an” used before a word beginning with a vowel, it would certainly be a grammatical explanation.  With that knowledge, however, you could then ask your language helper to record an exercise with both “A” and “AN” sentences.  Your grammar study on “A” and “AN” would then done with a spoken exercise rather than a written assignment.

    International students struggling to learn English will often say that they want more grammar lessons.  But that is not what they are really asking for.  Many undoubtedly have a large vocabulary from studying written grammar for years.  They do not need more grammar rules to memorize — they need spoken language exercises that will teach them to organize the vocabulary they already know into fluent, spoken English sentences.

    Irrespective of the kind of language learning program you are in, the primary emphasis of this closing section is to encourage. You to study grammar by using spoken exercises rather than written assignments.

  • Learning Grammar: The Key to Language Acquisition

    Learning Grammar: The Key to Language Acquisition

    Achieve language fluency by mastering and learning grammar. Discover the importance of comprehensible input, communication, and focused grammatical learning.

    Learning Grammar: The Key to Language Acquisition

    I suggest that you will acquire language best when you study in such a way that you 1) listen to large amounts of comprehensible input, 2) have opportunities to use the target language to communicate with others, and 3) support your learning with some grammatical learning (focused on making input comprehensible and developing awareness).

    In days old, teachers and students spent countless hours talking about grammar. Often these students had a lot of knowledge about the language, but little ability to use it. In recent times, some teachers (mostly in the west) have claimed that grammar teaching is useless. Grammar will learned naturally through listening to comprehensible input and interacting with others. Often students taught in this way can communicate very well, but often do not speak accurately. What is the right way to study grammar?

    I believe grammar study should focus on two areas: 1) making input comprehensible and 2) developing awareness to help the learner notice the grammar of the input.

    First, a little knowledge of grammar can make input a lot more comprehensible. For example, when I studied Chinese, I had great difficulty with the passive voice. When I first heard it in a listening passage, I had no idea what the sentence meant. It was completely incomprehensible to me, and therefore simply noise. Now, if I listened to hours of input, I might have been able to eventually learn the passive voice. But that is too long and difficult. Instead, the textbook gave me a little information on passive voice sentences using “BA” and “BEI”. After reading the explanation, I could comprehend these sentences. A little knowledge of the grammar made the input comprehensible. I went on to learn the passive voice very well and much quicker than if I had not studied any grammar.

    Second, when learners are concerned only with communicating their meaning, they often do not need to be grammatically accurate in order to accomplish their goals. For the passive voice, I needed to know the grammar in order to understand what was being said. But for other aspects of language, this is not the case. For example, in English, subject-verb agreement is completely unnecessary to comprehend the meaning of the sentence. Thus, because a student can subconsciously ignore the grammar, he may not learn to speak accurately. This phenomenon called “fossilization.” Fossilization is when a student, though he may speak fluently, continues to make the same mistakes over and over again even though he has heard the correct way to say them a thousand times.

    Some scholars believe that when students learn about grammar, this knowledge can help them “notice” (pay attention to) not only the meaning of the input but also its grammatical form. Even though they might not yet speak the form correctly; if they are aware of the correct form, they can then “notice” it in the input. Eventually, after “noticing” a grammatical feature enough, they will use it correctly.

    Although unable to test this idea of noticing directly, I wondered if there was a difference between successful and non-successful students in the amount of time they spent studying grammar.

    Question: On an average DAY of study, how much time did you spend studying English GRAMMAR?A: 0 hours B: Less than 1 hourC: 1 hour or more
    Successful Learners;24.24 %66.67 %9.09 %
    Non-successful Learners;36.36 %30.30 %33.33 %

    Apparently, successful learners claim to spend more time each day listening to English than studying grammar. Therefore, a reasonable inference is that the majority of successful language learners in this study use grammar in a subordinate role; their primary focus is on communication, using English as a tool to receive and send messages.

    Accordingly, if the goal is to improve your spoken English, you would do well not to let the memorization of grammatical rules and such activities dominate your English study. Rather, make listening and using the target language the focus of your study. I recommend studying grammar for the following reasons: 1) to make input comprehensible and 2) to develop awareness to help the learner notice the form of input and their own output. This may help you eventually internalize these grammatical rules rather than storing them up in your short-term memory where they will quickly forgotten after the test.

    Remember, the advice for studying grammar here designed to help you improve the accuracy of your spoken English. You may need to study grammar in additional ways to prepare for certain exams or writing projects.

    How to Learn English Grammar Effectively

    Improving your English grammar is essential for effective communication. Here are some steps to help you enhance your grammar skills:

    1. Understand the Basics

    Before diving into complex grammar, ensure a strong grasp of the fundamentals:

    • Parts of Speech: Familiarize yourself with nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.
    • Sentence Structure: Learn the standard structure of English sentences – subject, verb, and object.
    • Tenses: Understand the various tenses – present, past, and future; and their different forms like simple, continuous, perfect, and perfect continuous.

    2. Use Grammar Books and Resources

    Invest in reliable grammar books or online resources:

    3. Practice Regularly

    Consistency is key to mastering grammar:

    4. Read Extensively

    Reading various English materials helps you see grammar in use. Pay attention to how sentences are constructed and note different grammatical rules.

    5. Listen and Watch

    Exposure to spoken English through podcasts, audiobooks, movies, and TV shows allows you to hear correct grammar usage. Try to imitate the sentence structures and grammar you hear.

    6. Learn from Mistakes

    Use feedback from teachers, friends, or grammar-checking tools to identify and correct your mistakes. Learning from errors is a crucial part of improving.

    7. Join a Study Group or Class

    Being part of a study group or taking a grammar class can provide motivation and diverse perspectives. Participate in discussions and share learning experiences.

    8. Use Grammar Apps and Tools

    Leverage technology to aid your grammar improvement:

    • Grammarly: An AI tool that provides grammar, syntax, and style suggestions.
    • Duolingo: Offers grammar lessons integrated into language learning.
    • Quizlet: Allows for the creation and use of flashcards to study grammar rules.

    9. Set Specific Goals

    Set realistic and achievable goals focused on different grammar aspects. For example, work on mastering the use of past tenses over a set period.

    10. Stay Patient and Persevere

    Improvement takes time and persistent effort. Stay committed to practicing and don’t get discouraged by slow progress.

    Tips for Grammar Study

    • Study Grammar to Improve Comprehension: Understanding grammar helps you better comprehend written and spoken English.
    • Use Grammar to Notice Features in Input: Being aware of grammar helps you recognize it in different contexts, aiding natural learning.
    • Be Patient with Application: Over time, consistent practice will make the correct use of grammar feel more natural.

    By following these steps and tips, you can steadily improve your English grammar and become more confident in using the language. Happy learning!