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Can you speak a foreign language?

Forums New posts
MK Shrimper said:
I remember with horror conjugating verbs in French. It definitely kills the joy of learning & coversing in a foreign language.
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I struggled conjugating the Spanish verbs at first. Trying to remember them was half the battle!

But like anything in life, once you’ve practised enough and eventually cracked it, it’s fairly straight forward, and quite mentally rewarding when you start getting it right tbh.
 
Tangled up in Blue said:
Clearly we're talking about maternal milk here.Insulting someone's mother is about the worst thing you can do in a Latin (or probably any other) culture.
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Sometimes I wish I didn’t know these insults.

It’s almost too tempting to try them out :Think:
 
Here's my one line of Yiddish, love using this at the right moment. I'm not Jewish by the way but used to work with a guy that was fluent and this one stuck in my head.

kush meyn tokhes
 
Tangled up in Blue said:
I understand what you're saying and you make some good points.

My point,however, is to achieve fluency in a language, grammar has a role to play.Nothing more than that.I'm certainly not obsessed by grammar teaching, anything but.What I have noticed, though, teaching teenagers at the LFB for the last 9 years for their Cambridge FCE/CAE exams is that pupils who have a good grammatical base generally go on to achieve a high grade.This is also generally true even for adults that I examine for the Cambridge oral exams.
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To be able to have a conversation you don't need grammar. Even to speak fluently and read a news paper you don't need grammar.

If you get to a certain level then you add the extras if you need to.

Some of you may have heard of Michel Thomas language courses. I had the French CD's which i can thoroughly recommend.

Rather than bore you with verbs he builds up as you go along. Ideal for 20 minutes each morning in the car and certainly when your driving through France with the family.

Driving is a great time to practice. There are so many useful things from directions to colours and different sign posts you can point out, or even turn it into a game.

Like wise when shopping or in restaurants. Don't just learn the meal you have ordered, go through the whole menu.
 
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rigsby said:
To be able to have a conversation you don't need grammar. Even to speak fluently and read a news paper you don't need grammar.

If you get to a certain level then you add the extras if you need to.

Some of you may have heard of Michel Thomas language courses. I had the French CD's which i can thoroughly recommend.

Rather than bore you with verbs he builds up as you go along. Ideal for 20 minutes each morning in the car and certainly when your driving through France with the family.

Driving is a great time to practice. There are so many useful things form directions to colours and different sign posts you can point out, or even turn it into a game.

Like wise when shopping or in restaurants. Don't just learn the meal you have ordered, go through the whole menu.
Click to expand...

Agreed with 90% of this, but you do need a grammatical underpinning to be fluent. Otherwise you won't understand the nuances of tense and aspect which in some languages is very subtle. For everyday stuff, sure, learning like the above is very useful - confidence building in language acquisition is half the battle. Finding native speakers who want to help you is other half!
 
Napster said:
Agreed with 90% of this, but you do need a grammatical underpinning to be fluent. Otherwise you won't understand the nuances of tense and aspect which in some languages is very subtle. For everyday stuff, sure, learning like the above is very useful - confidence building in language acquisition is half the battle. Finding native speakers who want to help you is other half!
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Yes, I get your point about grammar now :Winking:
 
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