Monday, December 6, 2010

multiple areas of skill working cooperatively in real time

In as much as spoken English involves multiple areas of skill working cooperatively in real time, it is mandatory that effective spoken English teaching methods simultaneously train all of these areas of speech. This is shown in

It is the important area of the proprioceptive sense which has been most overlooked in current grammar-based teaching methodology. When any student over the age of about 12 attempts to learn a spoken language, his or her proprioceptive sense must be consciously retrained for all of the new sounds and syntax.

Furthermore, to properly retrain the proprioceptive sense of the mouth, the combined feedback from the mouth and hearing must be simultaneously processed in the mind. Simply said, the student must speak out loud for optimum spoken language learning.

Without simultaneous involvement of all skill areas of speech, it is impossible for you to effectively retrain your proprioceptive sense in order for you to speak fluent English. Yet, this is exactly what grammar-based English instruction has traditionally done by introducing grammar, listening, writing, and reading as segregated activities. It is not surprising that you have studied English so long in school without learning to speak fluently.

Grammar-based instruction has hindered English learning by segregating individual areas of study. This segregation is represented in Figure 6. Grammar-based English training has not only isolated proprioceptive training areas so that it prevents simultaneous skill development, it has replaced it with visual memory training by using written assignments. Grammar-based language instruction teaches English as though spoken English was an open-loop system. The result for the student is that, gaining English fluency requires far more study time, pronunciation is often faulty, and grammar becomes more difficult to learn.

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