TOEIC Preparation
Listening and language development
Supalak Komarakul Na Nagara, PHD and Roberte, Woodhead, Center for professional Assessment (Thailand)
Communication as an essential life skill has been receiving a lot more attention than in the past. A great deal of attention has been drawn to the fact that today's students and teachers are unable to successfully communicate in English.
Considerable blame has been laid upon the curriculum, the teachers and the nature of classroom teaching. "Too much emphasis on grammar ... not enough time for speaking," claim the critics. While this may be true to a certain extent, there are indeed reasons for such limitations within the formal education system for this problem.
So what can you do right here and now to improve your own language skills?
Each and every learner, young or old must begin to assume responsibility for his or her own path of language development. While there are some things that might be better covered through the formal education system, there are most certainly things that individuals can do on their own to improve their communicative ability.
Background information
As a language learner, have you ever wondered why some aspects of language learning tend to be easier than others?
There is actually a logical reason for this. Researchers have found that those language elements that are similar to the native language tend to be easier to master than those elements that are different. They also found that many "linguistic distortions" are due to specific differences between the languages studied. These differences cover a range of language related aspects such as sound systems, grammatical structures, vocabulary patterns and writing systems. This is why, for example, it is hardly surprising that many Thai learners find it difficult to use the articles "a," "an," and "the" correctly, as this particular part of speech does not exist in the Thai language.
Research conducted by linguists during the 1950s led to the idea that the key to ease or difficulty in foreign language learning lies in how well the instructor and the learners understand the differences between the native and foreign language being learned.
It was found that learners of a second or other languages tend to transfer the forms and meanings, as well as the distribution of these forms and meanings, contained in their native language to the foreign language being learned. This not only involves spoken forms of the language but receptive forms as well, as observed when individuals attempt to understand the language and culture as used by native speakers.
The research findings made a considerable impact on foreign language teaching, not only from the perspective of developing teaching materials and foreign language tests, but also on a teacher's ability to diagnose individual learning difficulties. A language teacher who is able to compare the native language of the learner with the foreign language being learned has a better idea of the potential learning problems, both in terms of reception and production skills.
These findings are important not only to language teachers, but also to each and every language learner as well. This is because all learners recognise that some features of the language tend to be easier to master while others are considerably more difficult.
Looking at grammatical structures
English language classes in traditional school systems tend to treat the memorisation and mastery of grammatical rules as the end-all-be-all to language learning. It is important however to provide some clarification regarding the role of grammar as it applies to communicative competence.
Perhaps one of the first things to do is to replace the word "grammar" with "grammatical structures," as grammatical structures refer to the systematic formal devices used in language to convey meanings and relationships. Therefore, grammatical structures in English are the significant features in the language that are systematically used to convey meanings and relationships.
So, as in this next somewhat simplified example, how might this apply to something like singular or plural noun forms? What is the difference in terms of meaning between "book" and "books," or "switch" and "switches" or "calf" and "calves?" Well, the form or devices used to convey the concept of "more than one" include "s," "es," and "ves."
The meaning of this contrast in English is the concept of "one" as opposed to "more than one." Therefore simply knowing how to change singular noun forms to the plural noun form is meaningless unless students are able to draw a relationship between the "form" and the "meaning" of the form being communicated.
Research has shown that learners commonly transfer the structure of the native language such as sentence forms, modification forms, number, gender and case patterns to the language being learned. This tends to occur without the learner being conscious of this happening as they end up using their native language through force of habit through constant use. As there is no distinction between singular and plural noun forms in the Thai language, Thai students of English can find this problematic if simply taught as a pure grammar concept. What needs to be integrated into the teaching of grammar is how it affects "meaning" and overall communication when put into context.
Both teachers and learners need to be aware that grammatical structures that are similar tend to be easier for students as they will end up functioning in much the same way in both languages. The opposite is true for the aspects of language that tend to be differ, as they will function quite differently in the foreign language.
Unfortunately, for Thai learners this involves a considerable number of language learning elements. Just from the grammatical structure aspect, recognizing the difference in word order between the meaning of "traffic light" and "light traffic" is not as easy as it seems as modifiers in Thai are placed after the noun rather in front as in the English language.
Armed with a better understanding of the differences in language, regardless of whether the differences relate to grammatical structures or pronunciation, students will have a better idea of some of the potential learning problems and therefore be able to focus their energies on their specific learning needs.
In our next article we will review some of the differences between Thai and English, specifically as they impact pronunciation.
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