Rules vocab and dictionaries

English can be learned like maths by the learning of rules and applying them

Vocabulary can be learned using a dictionary

The dictionary is to be trusted more than the teacher

This is one of my favourites: the false belief that learning a language is like learning Maths.

You just learn the rules and apply them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

While it may be true for Maths it certainly is not true for learning English as a second language

Many adults don’t realise that much language is acquired not learned. A lot of language is learned at your mother’s knee: first it is received and then later produced as the child matures. This is an automatic process of acquisition–not a planned step by step process of learning the rules and applying them. Most adults fail to understand this. The acquisition continues in a total immersion environment of the child as it matures into an adult.

The reason for the perpetuation of the myth is because we have been indoctrinated by commercial and political interests to believe it! It is in the interests of Language Colleges, schools and universities to perpetuate the myth that they are indispensable for language learning! Necessary–perhaps? But not entirely indispensable. Let’s say that they exaggerate their own importance for obvious reasons!

This false belief means that many adults are reluctant to concede the importance of ‘acquiring’ language outside class by speaking to native speakers, reading newspapers and watching movies etc.

Although the teacher may be given an exaggerated importance by many learners, when it comes to vocabulary the dictionary is given even more importance. Many students quite erroneously believe that looking up the meaning of the word in the dictionary is the way to learn vocabulary.

Research shows that in order to retain the meaning of a word in your long term memory you have to ‘learn’ it 3 times with at least 24 hours in between each learning episode or activity. Looking the word up in a dictionary might be the first one of those activities. But the learner has to be exposed to the meaning of the word at least twice more in order to put it onto his long–term memory. Just looking the word up in the dictionary does not achieve this. Many students believe it does.

Talking of dictionaries, if there is a discrepancy between what a teacher says is the meaning of a word and the dictionary meaning -then the learner will often believe the dictionary-such is the power of the written word. If it is written down-it must be right!