Читать книгу The Principles of Language-Study - Harold E. Palmer - Страница 6

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We must not conclude from the foregoing that methods involving the use of our capacities for study are necessarily bad, nor that those based on our spontaneous capacities are necessarily always to be used. In certain cases and for certain purposes we shall be forced to use the former. Nature alone will not teach us how to read or write; for these purposes we must use our studial capacities. We shall, however, refrain from reading or writing any given material until we have learnt to use the spoken form. Nature will not teach us how to use forms of language which are not currently used in everyday speech; in order to acquire these we must have recourse to our powers of study; thus we shall use these powers when learning literary composition, the language of ceremony, etc. Moreover, the studial powers must be utilized for the purposes for which a corrective course is designed. What has been badly assimilated must be eliminated consciously; bad habits can only be replaced by good habits through processes unknown to the language-teaching forces of nature. Even those who have not been previously spoiled by defective study require a certain amount of corrective work in order that they may react against the tendency to import into the new language some of the characteristic features of the previously acquired language or languages.

Some students have no desire to use the foreign language, but merely wish to learn about it, to know something of its structure. In such cases no attempt whatever need be made to develop or to utilize their spontaneous language-learning capacities; they may work exclusively by the methods of study.