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Difficulties in teaching foreign languages ​​(I would also recommend to students)

1. What is the difference between “word” and “concept” and why special techniques for memorizing words - pampering


A word is a lexical unit with a set of meanings. The concept is more complex matter, poorly formulated. When a person begins to master a foreign language, he encounters lexical units (unfamiliar words), crawls into the dictionary, sees several meanings of the word and tries to understand which one works in this particular context.

Illustration: an Englishman learns Russian, encounters the word "table". Looks in the dictionary. It turns out that this is both table and desk. But desk is more like a table at which people work (not carpenters). Well, OK. Then he meets somewhere "passport office". Table?? He sees the sign “The table of orders” in the supermarket, But suddenly there is no table, and there is a girl at the counter with a tablet computer ... It begins to come to him that the “table” is still some point where the population is served on a specific issue (obviously, due to the fact that the employee who directly serves people sits, as a rule, at the table). He goes to the online store, sees the button "Order Table", understands that this is an extended value from the real (not virtual) "table of orders."

As you learn the Russian language, it accumulates in the head certain meanings of the word “table”. It turns out that this is not only table and desk, but also board, and department, and much more. After that, the “table” begins to crystallize in his head, not as a word with a set of meanings, but as a concept. And he, once again encountering this word, already shines through the crystal of the formed “concept”, and already instantly grasps the meaning of the word in this particular context.

Students starting to learn a foreign language differ from advanced students, in particular, in the fact that beginners have words in their head (with two or three meanings). Advanced, due to the fact that they managed to come across this word in hundreds of contexts, in their head are not words, but concepts. They see any phrase through crystals of heavy, formed concepts over the years, so they take much less time to perceive a text than beginners.

Suppose beginner and advanced students are given the same short text. The beginner knows all the words in this text, and even the specific meanings in which these words are used. It seems that they are with an advanced student in the same conditions. But the beginner still takes a lot of time to translate / understand the text, because you need to understand what specific meaning each word is used and collect the combined meaning of all the words in the sentence. An advanced student, because he thinks not with words, but with concepts, almost instantly grasps the meaning of each phrase and the whole text - he shines through the crystals of complex concepts in his head.

That is why most methods of memorizing words are pampering. Well, you have learned, in half, with a couple of meanings of the word apply ... Apply is a difficult concept, in Russian there are no direct correspondences for it. But in order for words to crystallize into concepts, you need to work with different contexts, with sentences. And make sure that all these sentences are understood correctly - do not be lazy to look into the dictionary once again or check with the teacher.

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2. Sadness


Have you noticed how diverse officials, company representatives, when you try to consult with them, are often annoyed if after two phrases you were unable to figure out their profession or internal procedures as well as they understand? They are engaged in these procedures every day, it seems to them that everything is outrageously elementary.

The manager through whom I interact with the landlord:
“What is incomprehensible? Write a regular statement so that the amount of the deposit is credited to the rental account. ” Stop. In whose name, in what form ?? I understand that she has been cooking for 8 hours a day for years. For me it is less than 1% of work tasks, I need to concentrate as much as possible in order to complete this task.

In the grocery in a row are bags with a variety of cookies.
- Give me this cookie (pointing to a specific package)
- Which one?
- Here it is (I pull the index finger, it almost rests against the package)
- Is this ??
- Yes.
- This is not a cookie. These are biscuits ... (looks at me like an idiot)
Curtain.

Almost all instructions are written in such a language that you can understand them only if you ALREADY know how to use the gadget. Their authors talk to themselves. From the first pages begin to use heavy concepts, each of which requires a separate thorough input.

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A rustic man of about 50 years old to a sales assistant: "The phone is needed so that it takes a long time to charge." Salesman: “Here are two interesting devices: one has 4050 milliampere-hours, the other has 3500. This one, which has four gigabytes of RAM, four gigabytes of resolution, Full-HD resolution
and a proprietary shell, is a program that works in addition to the bare android . Accordingly, it consumes processor resources. And the second RAM has a smaller gigabyte, the processor frequency and screen are lower, but it’s on a bare android. ”

Amazing, isn't it? In the seller’s head, all these things do not exist at the level of information units, but at the level of heavy concepts, he easily juggles with these concepts, and can simultaneously compare a number of complex parameters. He sincerely does not understand how it is possible not to grasp his thought - after all, he just said what a corporate shell is ... For the buyer, these are raw, information units that have just been brought in half in his head in sin. He is not capable of comparing all these parameters at such a speed.

There is a very serious difference between a "unit of information" and a "concept." Why do they say: until you work in a profession, you won’t really figure it out. Work experience (or teaching) contributes to the conversion of raw units of information received at the university into “concepts” due to repeated reflection in different contexts ... But “concepts” already allow us to draw system conclusions and compare some complex parameters with others.

What is terrible is that most teachers do not understand this difference. People, unfortunately, as they always talked to themselves, so talk. Coming into the teaching profession does not change anything. They do not want and cannot (as a rule) take the place of someone who does not understand the subject. Retelling the same material for many years, they do not even notice how units of information are transformed in their head into heavy concepts. And they require the student’s brain to do the same in one semester. Do not do like this…

3. Pain


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One of the worst problems of mankind, IMHO - the inability to express thoughts. The purpose of the speech acts, it seems, is to convey some kind of information. In practice, people almost always talk to themselves.

Intercity driver: “When will we go?” Answer: "Soon." What in his understanding is "soon", you have to find out separately, and you need to plan the next 5-10 minutes.

"When is the soup ready?" The answer of a relative with 40 years experience in preparing soups: “I don’t know.” After a few leading questions, it turns out that she does not just know - she knows perfectly well, with an error of only 10-15 minutes, and you just needed to make plans for the next hour.

In everyday life, such misunderstandings are somehow smoothed out - it is not always so important to know for sure, and questions can be asked. In everyday conversations, you understand the context, so it’s usually obvious to you where and WHAT you could potentially misunderstand.

In teaching, an inaccurate expression of thought becomes criminal in nature. Students are faced with a context unfamiliar to them, and the ambiguous wording instantly turns into a part of the audience falling out of the process.

Unfortunately, most university professors sin by expressing their thoughts inaccurate by building logic on a blackboard. By the way, they like to throw 1-2 links out of this logic - it’s obvious! But at the last lecture, I [this missed link] analyzed in detail! All the constructions went to hell, but he did not even notice. The magnitude of the problem is greatly underestimated - they are gigantic. Lectures of university teachers can usually be understood in two cases:

  1. You know the subject no worse than they do.
  2. You additionally dig yourself, google, ask questions to classmates or the same teacher.

Before accepting the next candidate for the position of teacher of English, I ask him to hold for me personally 40 minutes of classes on a given topic. And I’m watching not so much for his methodological methods (it’s easy to correct it later), but for how he formulates the thought, I write down moments that could be understood in different ways. Most often, the lesson has to be stopped after the first 10-15 minutes: people demonstrate a criminal inability for the teacher to express thoughts. After that I make a decision - a specific case of correction or too much trouble lends itself. And each, absolutely without exception, each teacher has to be taught to formulate explicitly.

For instance. A common mistake teachers (and almost all people have) is the abuse of pronouns. Especially the pronoun "this." The teacher is lazy to reproduce the name of the phenomenon in its entirety, it simply refers to it with the pronoun: "... and this gives us reason to believe that .." In practice, from his previous speech, 2-3 different conclusions can be drawn as to what he meant under "THIS". Part of the audience is lost. And we are not yet discussing the common case when a student did not listen attentively at all, and he does not have a single interpretation of “this”. The student missed the ENTIRE passage, he does not understand further constructions, the whole lecture is to hell.

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In everyday life, due to the fact that someone incorrectly formulated, and someone incorrectly interpreted (and was too lazy to clarify), there are quarrels, fights, resentments. In teaching, this is a failed learning process, which we observe everywhere. It is sad.

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