A language tutor I know told me that memorizing dialogues was the most effective method of learning a foreign language, and (implied) that it almost was sufficient to learn the language.
Is this true? Or is it just another cute little technique? It would seem there is something to it, since dialogues represent the real language more than grammar and vocabulary alone.
Depends on what you mean by “mot effective”. It is very effective for a very large number of people, but there are other more effective ways. Having a lover who speaks another language is an extremely effective way, but not practical for most learners. Total immersion is also very effective, but again, restricted to learning only in a certain environment. Any method that allows for direct practice with a native speaker is obviously better, regardless of the pedagogical method used as a base.
Age of learner is also important. Language can be learned most quickly at a young age, but trigonometry much easier than Urdu for a 20-year-old, because with age, the mind processes input differently.
I taught English to Arabic speaking adults using the English 901 series, in which pupils memorize 900 sentences in 180 classroom hours, and virtually all my students who stuck with the program were able to converse comfortably in English after an hour a day for 36 weeks. On the other hand, I’ve studied seven different languages in formal classroom methods, and never found any that seemed to work well for me.
Language is an extensively complex activity, that different people learn in different ways according to their own cerebral wiring. Some people learn visually, others learn better aurally, for example. Speaking and understanding are two completely different disciplines. My wife can learn quickly to understand people in foreign language, but has trouble learning to speak. Conversely, I can easily learn to say just about anything, but never understand anything. (We make a great traveling team – she translates the question into Englisn and I give the answer in the local language.)
I doubt that memorizing conversations would work for me. My first five years of ESL were based on memorizing words, memorizing the lessons, memorizing stuff but not its underlying structure, which we were forbidden from asking about*, and after five years I wouldn’t have been able to tell you how to get to City Hall from the cathedral (they’re across the street from each other). There are parts you eventually have to memorize, but with every language I speak better or worse, I’ve needed to understand the underlying logic. The more I understand that, the better I can use that language. Often that takes the form of comparison with other languages: German has declensions like Latin, genders similar to those of Spanish, its verbal structures are sometimes identical to those of English (for example, in both languages the future is formed with an auxiliary verb, will or werde), and the way they form the hours happens to be identical to that of Catalan. Other people would find that extremely confusing: to them, “just memorize it” is what works.
Memorizing dialogues was the method used when I was in high school. I can still remember the conversations. Word for word. And that was over 50 years ago!
My complaint was the subjects. I remember one dialogue that asks “Where is the library?” I thought, right, I am going to Mexico and ask where is the library? Better to learn, where is the bathroom, no?
In my English classes, we focus on conversation. Both spoken and written. But the subjects are appropriate for the learners.
Heh, this is exactly how we were taught Spanish in high school, only we did learn “¿Donde esta el baño?” (Where is the bathroom?). We, being high school boys, immediately used that knowledge to learn “¿Donde esta la casa de putas?”, because as every foreign traveler knows, first one needs to find the bathroom then one needs to find the whorehouse…
I find that immersion or constant use is the best method for me. Rote memorization just doesn’t cut it for pretty much any subject.
Last night I listened to part of an interview with Ina Garten the “Barefoot Contessa”. She was discussing recipes and learning to cook, and the takeaway was that if you learn to competently make, say, a roasted chicken, you could then expect to have reasonable success with a cornish hen. In other words, learning a handful of basic, key recipes will then unlock a multitude of variations where really you’re just substituting one item or method.
Perhaps learning conversational language X might work by memorizing sentences and dialog. If I know how to say “my foot hurts, please take me to the hospital”, then you should be able to make the necessary substitutions for when you bang your head on the pavement.
Al fondo de la casa de putas, a la derecha. Pero al fondo del todo, ¡no te vayas a meter en una habitación!
(All the way down the hallway of the whorehouse, to the right. But all the way down, don’t get into a room!)
I taught French as a Foreign Language for several years when I was in my early twenties and the method involved avoiding grammar and vocabulary lists almost completely.
The idea was to mimic the way children learn languages i.e. by repeating, experimenting and having fun. It also tried to cover all types of learning profiles. So we had activities that involved miming, others with pictures, yet others with music and singing. There were games including, but not limited, to role-plays (a small rubber ball was actually one of my most important and versatile teaching tools). Spontaneity was highly encouraged and groups were very small (6-7 max).
Now, did it work ? Yes, to some extent. It seemed to me that, once the initial surprise had worn off (What ? No desk ? No pen ?) most students enjoyed it and actually made some real progress in terms of oral expression. I’m pretty sure that they were able to get by in everyday life much more quickly than with a traditional method.
But there were some drawbacks.
I noticed that many students who’d started from scratch stopped making significant progress after a year or so. At that point, it was usually necessary to introduce grammar. It was not exactly forbidden but we had to do it in a way that was in keeping with the spirit of the method. Not an easy task.
Students also sucked at writing, of course since the absolute priority was developing their speaking ability. There were some demands for courses aimed at writing correctly (spelling, appropriate registers, etc.) but again, it was difficult to make it fun.
And finally there were some students who actively rejected the method. Usually, I was able to spot them immediately. They had that “deer in headlights” look, demanded written material within the first five minutes, questioned and/or refused to take part in activities.
So, not for everyone but certainly more efficient than memorizing random dialog.
Thing is, people forget that children learn languages in a way which involves a lot of repeating what amounts to lists. Caretakers spend a lot of time describing what they are doing with the kid, such as which pieces of clothing they are putting on him or removing; they spend a lot of time going over colors (kid drops the pencil he’s been painting with and points for another one: “the red pencil? No? The green pencil?”)… they’re lists which aren’t exactly in list form, but sometimes I wonder if the people who push those methods really know the difference between a little kid and a banana. Or realize how much the introduction of grammar lessons improves people’s command of their first language.
I did three years of French in primary school under the memorise without explanation system and, like you, didn’t learn much. The five years in secondary school, with grammar included were far more useful. The one thing those extra three years seems to have done though is give me a large vocabulary. Not that my French is all that good but enough to get by booking hotel rooms and buying stuff from shops. Oddly enough they didn’t teach me how to ask hotel staff for emergency sanitary protection - luckily showing an empty wrapper sufficed 
Please watch this
I have to disagree with you there.
This is in no way comparable with the endless lists of words that you and I had to learn at school. What you describe is the kids performing tasks and linking them to specific strings of sounds. It definitely involves repetition, lots of of it actually, but it is contextualized and I certainly wouldn’t compare it with an abstract list of words on paper.
Yes, not the least of which is that children learn in a very immersive environment. I could see that system working with people living in a foreign country, but when my sister’s high school adopted that strategy is just didn’t work - one hour immersion and 23 not immersed is not conducive to actually learning the language.
Don’t parents correct the kid’s grammar and such all along? Most parents I’ve known do that: “No, dear, it’s not “we goed to the store”, it’s “we went to the store”.” Constant but gentle correction is normal during natural language acquisition.
Doesn’t that parallel normal language acquisition? It’s all fun and games until formal schooling starts and you have to sit down at a desk and learn to read and write?
But that context isn’t done in the “immersive, fun, child-like” classes. And it initially isn’t the child who does the linking: it’s the caretaker, way before the kid can do much more than coo.
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Broomstick**, what LEDS* is talking about is something else. It’s about the students discovering that a course which is almost 100% oral, well, sucks when you try to read or write. Most people who’ve learned ESL are better at the written than spoken parts; conversely, Romanians (who often have learned it from games and other not-even-subtitled media) can speak it at a level about 2-3 school grades above their horrendous, I’m-just-guessing-here, spelling.
I should have mentioned it, but it was in a French-speaking country. Basically our adult students had just arrived and they needed to become functional in this new environement quickly. That’s what we delivered. As I wrote above, it worked remarkably well when all they wanted was to be able to get by. For the more advanced and/or ambitious student, it was necessary to introduce more traditional grammar at some point.
Yes, and that was the idea, too. It worked with complete beginners who pretty much didn’t question my corrections but once they got the hang of it, they would start asking some very specific questions, which required grammar lessons. The real challenge was to keep it fun.
Pretty much, yes, except for those who rejected the method from the beginning. No games for them.
Wouldn’t you agree that the child does some serious linking, too ? He/she may not be able to verbalize the connections but I’m pretty sure that their brains must be working a lot during those interactions.
Yes, and that’s what we were trying to reverse.
What our students needed was to be able to go shopping, open a bank account, talk to their neighbours and to do it right now. As a matter of fact, we had texts, and fairly long ones at that, but we didn’t introduce them until we had practiced purely orally for something like 15 hours. The idea was to hand out this big, fat stack of paper at the end of the first week and tell them: “Five days ago, you didn’t understand a word of French. Today, everything that’s in there will be crystal clear”. However, French spelling being what it is, it was hilarious to watch the students discovering the way these sentences, that had become familiar over the course of a few days, were actually written.
I could tell you about all the languages that I learnt in a traditional way, sometimes for years and was really good at when it came to exercises and memorizing vocabulary lists but couldn’t really use in real life. Russian (4 years at University level, and yet no way I can have a conversation in that language) or German (8 years, starting at age 10 - I can have a basic conversation but not much more).
Dis donc, où est la bibliotheque?
C’est tout droit. Tu y vas tout de suite?
Oui. Il faut que j’aille chercher un livre.
You won’t believe how often that was useful when I visited France.
Oh yes, but the linking involves a lot of lists. Completely removing lists makes as much sense as expecting someone to learn a language from a list of words.
It would have been a “reversion” if the students had already had French, at a higher level in written than oral form. What you were trying to do was emphasize the verbal aspects. And what people eventually need (eventually, not necessarily in the first three weeks) is to be able to work with both mediums.
Well, some had. French isn’t such an exotic language in Europe, so most students were familiar with it to a limited extent, often from school.
Correct.
Likewise for me with German, and that was only 25 years ago. I can ask someone if they’re working a lot at the moment, and how the soup is today, but I don’t have the underlying grammar knowledge to carry on a conversation.
Ou est la bibliotheque reminds me of the hilarious Flight of the Conchords video Foux de Fafa, worth googling.
I memorized a lot of dialogues but didn’t find them very helpful except to introduce vocabulary. The problem was the phrases we learned just weren’t very practical. Our French also overemphasized grammar at the expense of speaking skills. I took French in Canada from Grade 4 to 13, at some point you would think they might have mentioned that the spoken and written language are often different (certainly in rural Quebec) or that Acadian, Québécois, Parisien French are somewhat different. I took French at university in Montreal but watching TV or going to Rue St Denis was more helpful. I took Spanish in high school too which was taught much more efficiently.