The Kuma chapters helped remind me about the difficult of language learning and teaching. I really liked how he illustrated that language is somewhat dependent on the context, resulting in coherent sentences from seemingly incoherent ideas and vice versa (especially in the telephone ringing, bath taking example on page 211). However, being reminded of these areas of language make the native speaker in me think ahhh yes, that makes sense! I can think of one hundred instances where this happens every day! But the teacher in me is a little more skeptical. How will I teach my students about intonation? Does this need explicit instruction or will exposure to natural language be enough?
I don't want to leave my classroom hoping students understand. I want to practice and come up with tasks that will ensure understanding (or at least awareness) of all types of contexts including situational, intonation (and other extralinguistic contexts), extrasituational, etc. This all seems very heavy. I'm wondering if context is something to dissect with medium to higher proficiencies. Or do we just jump in with the beginners and teach them about 'natural' English language use and hope they aren't overwhelmed. As a language learner, I felt that listening to natural language definitely helped, but that it wasn't enough for me to fully grasp these issues in France. How do we teach this then? When do we start teaching it? Who benefits the most from it? How can we make it seem less overwhelming? What tasks can be involved? These chapters left me with more questions than answers.
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