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❐ Going it alone﹕ self-instruction in adult foreign-language learning has a bunch of relevant takes:
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Vocabulary research raises the possibility that L2 learning may not be so much a gradual evolution as a step-like (phase-threshold-phase) progression. Hirsh & Nation (1992) identify a 2000 "word-family" vocabulary size as a threshold at which many authentic L2 texts suddenly become comprehensible; Nation & Hwang (1995) point out that this is roughly equivalent to West's General Service List (1953). Meara (verbal seminar contribution) claims a second threshold at 5000 words, though on unspecified grounds.
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Fantastic feeling: I can read many magazine articles without a dictionary... [10 months]
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> Foreign-language learning - like the learning of most highly-complex skills, perhaps -seems to fall into two distinct phases. The first, "skill-getting" phase can be a hard, uphill slog, especially by oneself. Classrooms and teachers can make the journey easier. Teach-yourself packages, though not bad in themselves, can replace the instruction side of the classroom experience, but not the vital support networks that keep the learner learning - hence the poor prognosis for self-instruction at this phase. One passes a threshold to the second, "skill-using" phase when one finds oneself able to take part in real-life interactions and understand real texts, especially in listening mode.
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end of period of silence can be seen as a threshold, I think
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> When learners ‘get’ a threshold concept, there is an ontological shift – the meaning something holds for them changes, impacting their worldview and understanding of the other of things. However, when they do not ‘get it’, they remain in what Land has termed ‘liminality’ or a state of mimicry (2011). [...] students are asked to perform role-plays in the target language [...] Yet for the pair of learners who do not yet understand foreign languages as communicative tools, it is possible for them to participate in this task while remaining in a state of mimicry. They can construct sentences, questions and answers from model textbook examples, perform them and finish. — ❐ Second language use as a threshold concept
- this is fascinating to me given that I had this literal experience