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People in the past

de Alkanadi, 2015-septembro-02

Mesaĝoj: 32

Lingvo: English

Alkanadi (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-02 15:09:00

Did the people of the past learn Esperanto faster than we currently do?

I was just wondering because we have so many more resources and tools. Do we learn faster, or did the people of the past learn faster.

robinast (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-02 16:14:10

I think it depends much more on the motivation of the learner than on the tools and resources available...

Tempodivalse (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-02 17:27:41

Alkanadi:Did the people of the past learn Esperanto faster than we currently do?

I was just wondering because we have so many more resources and tools. Do we learn faster, or did the people of the past learn faster.
I suspect that (educated) people of the past had a much better grasp of grammar than (educated) people today - and were in general more multilingual to begin with (e.g., Oscar Wilde had a good grasp of Ancient Greek and French, and apparently some German - and that was not considered in the least unusual).

Judging from my experience in language classes, the average American college graduate is lucky to know what transitivity is - or even a direct object. I've said it time and again: if you don't understand these grammatical concepts, no language will come easily for you, not even Esperanto.

Armand6 (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-02 17:37:05

I believe they did, because lower classes did not learn it, and higher classes had a mandatory Latin/French courses.

Bruso (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-02 17:38:03

Tempodivalse:
Judging from my experience in language classes, the average American college graduate is lucky to know what transitivity is - or even a direct object. I've said it time and again: if you don't understand these grammatical concepts, no language will come easily for you, not even Esperanto.
A (now retired) Classics professor named David Mulroy wrote an excellent book about this:

War Against Grammar

Tempodivalse (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-02 17:47:26

Bruso:
Tempodivalse:
Judging from my experience in language classes, the average American college graduate is lucky to know what transitivity is - or even a direct object. I've said it time and again: if you don't understand these grammatical concepts, no language will come easily for you, not even Esperanto.
A (now retired) Classics professor named David Mulroy wrote an excellent book about this:

War Against Grammar
Excellent link. There seems to be a quasi-pathological aversion to grammar these days - "huh? that's useless, innit? don't we all speak the language already?" Actually, some native English speakers' grasp of the language is considerably inferior to reasonably proficient foreigners'. I so often cringe at the inability of students at my university to express themselves concisely and coherently. What happened to the eloquence of the Victorian upper-middle classes?

Meanwhile, advanced algebra - despite having absolutely no practical application for a large segment of the population and professions - remains mandatory almost everywhere.

I think this is part of a broader educational trend away from "humanities" and more towards "sciences".

Armand6 (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-02 18:36:58

Tempodivalse:I so often cringe at the inability of students at my university to express themselves concisely and coherently.
Can you explain how grammar skills like determining whether 'finding' is a deverbative noun, present participle or a gerund, can help your students to express themselves coherently and concisely? Grammar and eloquence are apples and oranges. In the Soviet school there were TONS of both English and Russian grammar, and what results it gave?

johmue (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-02 20:14:48

Armand6:
Tempodivalse:I so often cringe at the inability of students at my university to express themselves concisely and coherently.
Can you explain how grammar skills like determining whether 'finding' is a deverbative noun, present participle or a gerund, can help your students to express themselves coherently and concisely? Grammar and eloquence are apples and oranges. In the Soviet school there were TONS of both English and Russian grammar, and what results it gave?
Grammar end eloquence are not like apples and oranges. It's more like grammar is knowing when to hit the clutch and shift the gear whereas eloquence is how to drive in a sensible fuel saving way and avoid dangerous traffic situations before they occur.

You can also learn driving without knowing what the clutch actually does, but it is helpful to know what it does. Nevertheless without natural feeling in your foot all the theory alone won't give you any drivng skill.

In my teaching experience knowledge of grammar turn out to be really helpful. If a student asks in the first lesson "You say all the nouns end by 'o', so why there's the 'n' at 'Saluton'?" I respond "It's accusative." and the student says "Ah ok, thanks."

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-02 20:32:46

Foreign language learning is often an English speaker's first brush with learning grammatical terminology. It gives you the tools to know what you're talking about. The rest is just details - how does this language express a subjunctive, and under what circumstances is a subjunctive used in that language? Knowing what a subjunctive is reduces the explanation time massively.

I vaguely recall being at a language fair some years ago and seeing books geared towards learners of specific major languages (Spanish, French, etc) and titled something like "English grammar for learners of Spanish". Basically it was a book explaining grammar of a second language by explaining to the student that their first language also has this grammar and this is what it looks like.

Suzumiya (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-02 20:38:07

Tempodivalse: I think this is part of a broader educational trend away from "humanities" and more towards "sciences".
It's always been like that, I believe. Very little importance is given to know how to write coherently, as a result, we have many doctors, engineers and many other professionals who can't write well, and this is something that happens in many languages/countries. The study of languages is always neglected because, after all, 'we already speak the language', yet many fail to efficiently use the main communication tool we posses: the language.

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