Give your Students the Use of Theirs Tools… not yours ! ​​​​​​​

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In his book Caroline Grammairienne en Herbe (Caroline Dabbling in Grammar) French linguist Henri ADAMCZEWSKI studied how his granddaughter learnt her mother tongue, French… and beyond the study of one langue whether mother tongue or not we learn a lot on how children learnt a language… as mother tongue is often wrong interpreted and used to teach foreign languages namely in English (or other) only approaches… and we can only but remotely imagine the number of languages and students this has completely turned away from the language they were trying to learn… owing to bad teaching and bad teachers… 

From his study and essay Henri ADAMCZEWSKI puts the case that children learning their mother tongue and how they actually ‘make up’ their own language from what they both are taught and gather from their living and learning… 

In more than 40 years of teaching and almost 60 of learning -as I never stopped- I noticed the same thing about how I learnt and learn my own languages (13 to date) and how my students and people around me learnt their language(s)… all in different circumstances and in their own way… 

Let me start by looking at the case of one of my nieces… 

Agrinis now 3 and a half and started speaking from the time she reached 1… 

Agrin is Iranian born to Kurdish parents… her mother is Iranian Kurdish while her father is Iranian Turkish Kurdish… two different forms of Kurdish, a language which varies a lot from part to part of greater Kurdistan… she lives in Tehran… 

Agrin started by gathering all sorts of words as they came to her and remixing them in her own baby talk for a year until she decided to speak only Farsi (Persian)… while she went on learning more and more of both Kurdish languages even if not using the as did her two teenage cousins… whichever language she was spoken to she would only and always answer in Farsi… 

Her two cousins spending their baby toddling and pre-teen years mostly at their grandmother (Iranian Kurdish)… who, while she busied herself with her household duties) sat them in front of the television to watch cartoons in Italian… from which they understood Italian yet didn’t speak Italian as they didn’t need to speak but understand… 

Their other cousin, now one, is exposed to Iranian Kurdish from her father and Turkish Kurdish from her mother although they also speak to her in Farsi…

Being born to a multi-lingual multi-cultural family myself, I had to fend for myself in no less than 5 languages, namely French, English, Swedish, and Yiddish at home with my parents and my grand-parents… while I spent most of my childhood with Italians and Italian was probably then my first language as I spend most of my time outside the house speaking and learning Italian… 

We lived in different places and countries surrounded by people from all sorts of origins and cultures… speaking all sorts of languages… while learning the language of the country they were living in… 

Not happy with only those 5 languages I went on to study another 8… 

This goes to show how so many teachers are embarking on a mission of failure while forcibly teaching languages with lists of words and grammar rules -hoping this will meet the making of acquiring their mother tongue-… as children don’t learn that way… and even choose which language they choose to learn and speak… 

Again, isn’t it time started revisiting and rethinking their teaching to meet the natural approach of their students ?

I have spent my teaching life living and learning about teaching and learning… and have seem children and young students learn languages their own way and each and all of them with success as they all speak their own language(s)… much more than can be said about students learning foreign languages… and, what’s more, all their gain was without the pain ! 

CheckThe Comprehensive Teacher(The EFL & TEFL Companion)

for #English #teachers & #students… (paperback, eBook & audio book)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Comprehensive-Teacher-Jesse-Craignou/dp/1482731045/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1479848902&sr=8-1&keywords=jesse+craignou