Activation of Existing Knowledge

Three months ago I started learning French on my own. I bought two books by PONS (see previous post), I watch Youtube videos (I recommend the channel "Learn French with Alexa") and I found a French tandem partner, who I talk to via Zoom. I guess what I mean by self-studying is that I am not planning to take any courses in French. I am simply going to use the above mentioned resources.

Yesterday I got an idea about what could be a good way to start studying a foreign language.

At the very beginning, why not activate everything that we might already know from a target language and analyze it a bit (with the help of a teacher or an advanced speaker).

Being born in Croatia, and therefore coming from a European culture, I already had knowledge of a few phrases and expressions in French. Maybe even more than I was aware.
In Croatia I studied art so some expressions I already knew come from this field.

Here are some examples of phrases that I already knew: Bonjour, Bon soir, en-face, enfant terrible, Notre Dame, raison d'etre, Ceci n'est pas un pipe, and of course the unforgettable "Voulez vous coucher avec moi...); something that we as kids in Croatia somehow knew and giggled while saying it...

There is so much grammar to extract from these few phrases, for which one would admittedly have to recruit a little help from a teacher.

I think this would be an interesting approach, because this knowledge is already "embedded" in our minds, it has already been "memorized" and therefore could be used well as a starting point for learning. It would "activate" and harness knowledge that is already there, similar to the activation of knowledge before teaching a topic in class. At the beginning of each class teachers often use the activation technique by inviting student to brainstorm ideas and associations connected to a certain topic. This is usually done on the whiteboard, in the form of mind-maps. It prepares the students for the topic of the day and is also used as a warm-up.

Why not use this approach to activate all the possible phrases from a target language that might already be part of students' general knowledge in their own culture? Followed by a short analysis on the whiteboard.

In the examples of my own previous knowledge of French, that I mentioned above, the following knowledge could be extracted or activated:

From "Notre Dame" teacher can extract the possessive pronoun before a singular feminine noun, with "Ceci n'est pas un pipe" teacher can easily show two parts of a French negation (supported by a reproduction of the Magritte's painting), and in "Voules vous we already have the ending of the conjugated second person in plural, and the personal pronoun "Vous")...

I am sure this technique would be a lot of fun in class, would also be very encouraging for the students because they would realise that they already have some knowledge of the language that they want to learn even before they start learning it. 

Learning a new language on my own with PONS

About two months ago I started to learn French on my own.

Already a year ago out of curiosity I listened to the Michel Thomas' audio course for French and found this method interesting but not as efficient as what I am doing right now. Michel Tomas' method requires you to just relax and listen. I found the approach interesting, but more from the point of participating in a kind of a linguistic experiment that isn't very practical. I found the method very slow as well. It's sort of an imitation of how a child would learn its mother tongue, just by absorbing.

But two months ago I bought two books for French learning by PONS. The first one is an intensive course with a CD and transcripts ( A1-A2) and the second one is called "Grammar practice through translation method". Its concept is that on one page you have sentences in German that you need to translate into French, and on the opposite page you can find the French translations. The book is organized into different grammatical themes (modals, question words, different verbs, imperative, functional phrases etc.) and the sentences are connected thematically, there is an inkling of a story behind them, which I find very useful. It wouldn't be as good if you just had random sentences without any contextual connection.

At first I was suspicious about this concept because translation method isn't used in language schools anymore. Just like teaching grammar in general it is considered archaic and is generally avoided in favor of a more communicative method based on speaking, role-playing and complete absence of the L1 (mother tongue).

But surprisingly I find this method very practical, fun and quick for myself. It requires you to write so there is an additional benefit of practicing your writing. You can do it on the train, at work or at home. It is a great supplement to the Intensive Course book, which has a CD and transcript to practice your reading and listening.