People with a technical mind tend to find a system in everything. When learning English, which is so in demand in IT, many programmers are faced with the fact that they cannot understand how this language works, its system.
"Who is guilty?"
What is the problem? It would seem that a programmer who often owns several formal programming languages, or a system administrator who effortlessly manages complex systems, would easily have to master such a simple language as English.
Unfortunately, in the generally accepted practice of learning English, not everything is so simple. They teach the language and write manuals for the humanities with a mindset different from that of technical specialists. Conventionally, the creators of programs and manuals for learning English presented on today's market can be divided into two categories:
- Russian-speaking humanitarians practicing ;
- Native speakers, humanitarians, practitioners .
Both approaches to teaching English have their pros and cons. They are united by a common feature: the methods are built from elements to the common, i.e. to a system that, most often, in practice, things never reach.
Starting learning on the basis of this principle, a person does not have a clear idea of ββwhat kind of language system he will study. During the learning process, the student does not have a clear idea of ββwhich particular segment of the system he is currently training, how the element being studied fits into the overall scheme, and where exactly it will be in demand. In general, what is lacking is the structure needed by a technical (and non-technical) professional to train a skill in a meaningful way.
Russian-speaking authors of textbooks based on the grammar-translation principle practically implement descriptive or descriptive grammar in exercises, which is practiced by theoretical linguists, which has only an indirect relation to speech practice. Despite the deep study of grammatical elements, which distinguishes this method, the result obtained, as a rule, comes down to well-developed elements of the system, often remaining with the student only fragmentary knowledge that is not collected in a practical system of a living language.
The communicative approach comes down to memorizing speech patterns, which, in turn, also does not provide meaningful language proficiency at the level of the speech creator. Since the creators of the communicative approach are the speakers themselves, they can only offer their own idea of ββthe language from the inside, being unable to present it, comprehending it from the outside as a system that contrasts with the system of the native language of the Russian-speaking student.
Moreover, native speakers do not even suspect that their Russian-speaking students are in a completely different language paradigm and operate with completely different grammatical categories. Therefore, paradoxically, native speakers who do not speak Russian cannot convey to the Russian speaker all the nuances of their native English.
Global owl problem
The Russian system and the English language system contrast even on the cognitive level. For example, the category of time in English is comprehended in a completely different way than in Russian. These are two grammars built on opposite principles: English is language, while Russian is .
Starting to learn a language without taking into account this most important nuance, the student falls into a trap. By default, naturally striving to search for a familiar system, our consciousness believes that it is learning the same language as Russian, but only English. And, no matter how much a student studies English, he obsessively, without suspecting it, continues to "pull the English owl on the Russian globe." This process can take years or even decades.
βWhat to do?β, or Deployment to the brain
It is very easy to break the dead-end practice within the framework of the approach "β, tailored to the specifics of Russian-speaking technical specialists. The author solves the above difficulties by introducing two unusual elements into training.
First, before starting to study English, the student clearly learns the difference between Russian and English grammar, starting to distinguish between these two ways of thinking in their native language.
Thus, the student acquires reliable immunity from falling into the βbugβ of the intuitive βpulling English into Russianβ, which drags out the learning process for a long time, as described above.
Secondly, the framework of the system of cognitive logic of the English language is loaded into the mind in the native language before the study of English proper begins. That is, learning is built from the assimilation of the general grammatical algorithm to the development of its particular elements. Further, filling this frame with English-language content, the student uses grammatical constructions already familiar to him.
"Russian Revolution", or Miracles of Psycholinguistics
Both stages take only about 10 academic hours of classes with a teacher or some time of self-study by a student based on materials posted in the public domain. Such a preliminary investment, in addition to being a rather exciting process for the student, representing a kind of mind game, saves a huge amount of time and financial resources, creates a comfortable environment for the conscious mastery of a skill, and significantly increases the student's self-esteem.
As the practice of using this method has shown, English grammar is better and faster than other students mastered by specialists in the field of IT - an algorithmic and deterministic approach to grammar, the simplicity and logic of the system correlate perfectly with the professional skills of techies.
The author named this systematic academic life hack "Method 12" by the number of basic types of tense forms (or, in everyday life, "tenses") that make up the framework of the grammatical system of the English language.
It should be mentioned that this applied technique is a practical implementation of the theoretical provisions of psycholinguistics, formulated by such prominent scientists as N. Chomsky, L. Shcherba, P. Galperin.
Source: habr.com