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分类: 教育/科学 >> 外语学习
解析:
English is the dominant language of the Inter. The Inter will in turn bee the dominant place to learn English. The way languages are learned is changing, and these changes are accelerating.
The Inter is constantly evolving. It has created a dynamic environment for the munication and the management of information. The Inter has brought with it new forms of social interaction without boundaries. Technologies like MP3, iPod, Skype and PDAs, as well as blogs and podcasts, are making an immense variety of munication, information, literature, news and other language content available anywhere and anytime. A cascade of developments is causing interactive munities to spring up based on mon interests, without regard to geography. This is going to stand traditional language learning on its head. English dominates on the Inter in areas ranging from entertainment to science. If you want to learn English, this represents an unprecedented opportunity.
You can access English language content on any subject and learn from it. You can connect with English speaking people who share your interests. You can do this via e-mail, through blogs, podcasts and forums. You can link up with friends or even language tutors using free Inter telephony. The World Wide Web is the ultimate dynamic classroom and learning munity.
Over the next few years the Inter will take over from the classroom as the place of choice to learn English: Here are some of the reasons.
The Primacy of Input
If you want to learn English or any other language, you need input, meaningful, interesting and at your level. Today language learning experts emphasize input over output, listening and reading over grammar study. Before you can use the language, you must get used to the language. You don"t need to be in a hurry to speak English, and you don"t need to speak it all the time to improve.
“Real language acquisition develops slowly, and speaking skills emerge significantly later than listening skills, even when conditions are perfect. The best methods are therefore those that supply "prehensible input" in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students to produce when they are "ready", recognizing that improvement es from supplying municative and prehensible input, and not from forcing and correcting production." Stephen Krashen, University of Southern California.
When you learned your own language as a child, you didn"t begin by speaking. You began by listening. New language learners can benefit from a “silent period". During the “silent period" you can absorb the language. You need not force yourself to speak it until you are confident. Even if you are an intermediate learner, extensive reading and listening will increase your familiarity with the language, enrich your vocabulary, and develop confidence. This is more beneficial than studying grammar.
While listening and reading often and regularly are vital, the content must be meaningful. Learning content should be interesting and prehensible to you. This means that you, not the teacher, should choose what to learn from. The Inter allows unlimited choice of fascinating authentic content. The traditional textbook cannot pete.
Motivated learners used to spend their time in book stores looking for graded content that would help them in their language studies. Yet, inevitably a lot of this material could only be found in uninteresting textbooks and readers. But today authentic content on a variety of subjects is only a click away. This is especially the case for the person who wants to learn English.
This range of material is made accessible to learners, since new systems can grade it for difficulty in a way that is customized to your specific vocabulary. You can learn English by listening to and reading on subjects that interest you and you won"t find it too difficult.
Vocabulary over Grammar
In order to achieve fluency in English you need to be fortable using at least 10,000 words. On the Inter, you can choose appropriate content to listen to and read. The content can be graded to your level. But what about learning and remembering all those new words. We know how quickly we fet words when we look them up in a dictionary. And there are so many words to learn. Fortunately, the Inter makes it a lot easier to learn vocabulary.
On the Inter you can use online dictionaries to look up words instantly (i.e., Babylon). There are learning sofare programs which create customized word lists for you as you learn words. This sofare can help you accumulate example sentences for these words from the familiar contexts you are listening to and reading. You can set vocabulary goals and follow your progress towards these goals.
The Inter helps you to efficiently accumulate vocabulary based on lively and interesting language content, customized to your needs. This bination of vocabulary learning efficiency and limitless content is only part of why the Inter will bee the place of choice to learn English.
Learning in Chunks
Vocabulary does not only mean words. It also means phrases, or chunks of words. Phrases are groups of words that e together in a way that is natural to the native speaker but not always to the learner. Michael Lewis has been one of the pioneers in pointing out that you learn language in chunks, or lexical phrases. The Inter and the puter make this easier.
On the puter, you can grab language chunks as you are listening and reading and collect them in an easy to use database. Phrases and chunks of the language can be linked to larger contexts, which are already familiar to you. You don"t need to rely on dictionary definitions and rote memory. You can review these chunks of language in short fragment form, in sentence form and as part of a larger context that you can listen to and read many times.
In this way you gradually develop an instinctive sense for how words are used. This is the natural way to learn correct usage. It is more effective than trying to remember and apply grammar rules.
As you build up your confidence in English through regular input and word and phrase learning, you will no doubt want to talk to native speakers. Once again the Inter is the ideal environment, offering more opportunities than the classroom.
Better Tutors on the Inter
The Inter connects people who are looking for each other. A quick search on a few professional web sites will locate native English speaker writers, editors, or professionals from all over the world, who are interested in acting as language tutors and coaches. If you want to learn English, you can interact with this outstanding pool of qualified people with a wide range of experience and knowledge.
You do not need teachers with specialized linguistics degrees if you want to learn English on the Inter. The new learning paradigm does not require teachers who are trained in the details of grammar and language teaching. Instead the important qualifications for a tutor on the Inter are; an interest in people, an ability to use one"s native language well, and rich experience to share with learners in English.
On the Inter you can choose the tutor whose accent and interests match your own.
Meaningful Communication
Technologies like Skype make conversations via puter easy to anize and the munication is free of charge. You can get your friends together for a chat or make an appointment with a tutor.
It is like having lessons on demand. You can schedule one-on-one or four-on-one discussions via Skype with the tutor of your choice. You can invite your friends to join, or make new friends from different countries and cultures. Tutors need only provide advice and encouragement as well as feedback, at your convenience. There is no need for grammar instruction or quizzes, since you are learning the language naturally through your input activities.
In the relaxing atmosphere of Inter online discussion, learners and tutors bee friends and form a munity of people helping and encouraging each other. These are not stressful lessons. They are pleasant opportunities to municate. You can record these conversations or produce your own oral essays and file them or share them. In this way you can keep track of your progress as you learn English on the Inter.
To really improve your accuracy of expression it is important to write. The correction of written texts can be efficiently anized on the Inter and integrated with your input and speaking activities. Systems can keep a permanent record of both your original texts and the corrected texts. These records can include details on the nature of your mistakes and the tutor"s notes. Tutors can make audio recordings of your corrected writing for you to listen to, in order to reinforce the learning of the corrected phrases. The writing can range from casual writing for a blog to serious academic essays.
Motivation and Enjoyment
Learning on the Inter is effective because it is fun. The Inter avoids the tension and boredom of the classroom and increases your motivation. You choose the content, vocabulary is easy to learn, progress is constantly measured, and you bee part of a munity.
There are already blogging munities with learners and tutors sharing their experiences. People e together from all over the world to help each other. Bloggers may post in their own language, or in English. English bees the medium of munication among people of different cultural backgrounds. Blogging isn"t an assignment, but a genuine, enjoyable, and meaningful activity. A contagious enthusia *** will keep you learning. It is not like studying. It"s more like making new friends and discovering new cultures through language.
Efficiency
The Inter introduces a higher level of efficiency in language learning. Efficiency is essential because it creates intensity. It takes a high degree of intensity to transform yourself into a fluent speaker of another language.
There is also another reason why efficiency is important. You have a right to a decent return on your investment of time and money in language learning. If you want to learn English, efficiency is important, yet it is often ignored in traditional language teaching.
“I spent over 14 months studying English in a school. It was a waste of money for Canadian government and a waste of time for me." Humberto Soto, a recent immigrant to Canada.
Traditional classroom methods are not as efficient as the Inter. It is difficult to cater to learners of different levels and interests. Stress and boredom are often the results. Many people are discouraged by their school experience, and end up convinced that they cannot learn to be fluent in a new language. They lose interest and give up.
For people who want to learn English, the Inter opens up a new world of efficient and satisfying language learning. The Inter makes possible a quality and variety of input that far exceeds the resources of a traditional classroom. Learning methodologies and munication opportunities are available to you on the Inter that the classroom cannot match. Goals can be set and achievements measured. The result is a highly integrated and enjoyable learning environment.
This new method of learning appeals to all ages. While youngsters and students are the most avid users of the Inter, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation 70% of Americans beeen the ages of 55 and 64 use the Inter! Similar trends are being seen in Europe and Asia.
A Learning Community, The Linguist
The Linguist is both a learning methodology and a munity. It is the first language learning system developed specifically to take advantage of the possibilities offered by the Inter. It was initially developed to help people learn English. It is now being revised and expanded in order to offer other major world languages. In the future, The Linguist model has many applications for life-long education.
The explosion of new media and learning technologies via the Inter will change forever the way people learn. The Linguist system will influence how many subjects are taught. It will make it possible for people all over the world to share their knowledge, expertise and learn from each other, in many languages. Learning English is just one of many lessons we can learn on the Inter. Another one of them is to learn how to learn.