Learning English, learning about English, “tomEYto” “tomAHto” you might think. Unfortunately, most English learners spend 70% of their time learning about English. They learn about grammar rules, vocabulary, how to write an essay or pass an exam etc. but hardly learning English as in fully immersing themselves in the language. Look, needless to say, learning about the language helps and is important to some extent. It certainly speeds up learning and makes it more effective but should not and cannot replace it. Now, I’m aware that in most cases, learners don’t have the chance to immerse themselves into a fully English-speaking environment.
Learning ABOUT the language from a textbook taught by a teacher who likes to slack off is worse!
This is something that I learned 6 months after becoming an ESL teacher about 9 years ago. Like most beginner ESL teachers, I had to use textbook the director had told me to stick to. The textbook itself, among other things, is essentially for the teacher to teach you about the language. Most of the exercises in the book are fill-in-the-gap exercises or match this x word with that y word etc. Perfect for teachers isn’t it? All they have to do is explain the activity, split the class into a few groups and get them working together. Well, there isn’t much to talk about in a group when you do a fill-in-the-gap activity. And in the meantime, the teacher’s standing by doing very little in the classroom. Also, the textbook’s content is often irrelevant and artificial.
To hell with that! Let’s DO some English!
So for all these reasons I decided to develop a new teaching method and create my own materials based on the notion that students need to use the language not just think ABOUT the language. I realized early on that it was a physical skill that requires much repetition and muscle memory building. I figured the students just needed 30% of learning ABOUT the language and 70% of intensively listening and producing English. It was just a matter of a couple of months before the method proved its superiority. The students improved fluency, grammar accuracy and vocabulary…oh and naturally pronunciation.
It’s a pronunciation method not a subject you dipsticks!
Now you might think “hold on a sec, it’s a pronunciation course, how could it improve vocabulary and grammar?”. Well, it’s a pronunciation course that teaches grammar and vocabulary through pronunciation. Pronunciation is not a subject that teachers can teach by itself, nor is it a skill they can teach in separation. For me, it’s always been a method that teachers can use to teach the foundational aspects of the language, grammar and vocabulary. Obviously the pronunciation course doesn’t aim to teach reading and writing. There are plenty of other courses that do that. However, I truly believe it’s unnatural for learners to learn reading and writing before speaking and understanding the spoken language first.
Learning the spoken sound is crucial and fundamental for the students to learn the other skills quickly and effectively. That is how babies learn the language, and though the process is a lot harder and more complex for adults, it is based on the same principles. The spoken sound comes first, the letter comes second. I have written an article sometime ago about how there is so much research supporting the theory that high awareness in phonology and phonemic awareness is the best predictor of advanced literacy, that is reading and writing.
Sound comes first, letter comes second! True for you as it is for babies!
Unfortunately, for you as an adult learner, learning the spoken language is not as easy as it is for babies. It is hard work and requires intensive practice, repetition and correction. Why correction? Well because you can already speak a language and when you start learning English as a new language, your brain starts to send different signals to your poor muscles which they simply don’t know how to process or handle. So your muscles need physical training and your brain needs sound recognition training. Once your muscles or mouth organs have established new movement habits and your brain is able to decode the sound system of the language, you are now ready to use the alphabets and grow your language further. You simply can’t make much progress in the spoken English before you crack the sound system first in both speaking and listening, production and perception.
What do you think? Are you a supporter of that notion that sound comes first, letter comes second?
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