On Sun, 19 Aug 2007 17:50:33 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:
>Martin writes:
>
>> but not 6 year old students, who speak English like native English speakers
>> after thirty weeks.
>
>Except that they don't. Non-native speakers of the target language often
>incorrectly believe that they do, in part because they see the students
>speaking without hesitation (whereas they assume that anyone who wasn't fluent
>would hesitate in embarrassment), and in part because they cannot hear the
>students' accents or mistakes in grammar, vocabulary, etc.
We're talkign about six year olds here. Even native speakers make
mistakes in grammar, vocabulary, etc. at that age.
>The reality, however, is that if adult speakers spoke as these
>"native-speaking" six-year-olds did, they'd be considered incompetent in the
>language.
They'd probably think the same of the true native speakers.
>But mistakes tend to be forgiven or overlooked in children, since
>they make so many mistakes with language generally.
Right. So what's you point?
--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hatunen@cox.net) *************
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