I could not agree more! On all counts. What you allude to, and which is really important is the reading aloud, to. It was this, especially my grandmother reading to me, that made me ***want *** to learn to read. One of the books she had to read was about a bear who went to sleep for a year. One of my first "big" words? Hibernate...
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Isn't that wonderful when one can handle that kind of big word from early age!
I remember learning that word from an anime (Fables from the Green Forest)
That cartoon prompted in me an interest in trading about nature, animals, weather and everything related to natural sciences. Big words are not the problem; how they are presented to us is.
Every day I run into a situation in which a teenager displays, how can we put it nicely... lack of vocabulary? They can't express themselves clearly and coherently and they have an even harder time understanding others in formal contexts. Sometimes, even in informal situations, words that we may consider common come up and cause that puzzling look in kids who should be more informed if only they had developed their reading skills and interests.
Exactly. Because context context conveys so much and in a story, and in "good" a new word is often instinctively understood from tone and mood. That said and because I remember writing a paper for a conference. It must be nearly 20 years ago, now, and our paper was on online writing tutoring and the organisers' instructions were clear: no idiom.
I get that many of the participants were second language English readers, but it's almost impossible to write in one's mother tongue wothout idiom. Obviously, the more obscure idioms, yes, but I would posit the same argument about "big" words. One of the reasons I remember this is because in a chunk that I wrote, my use of red herring was chopped.
Interesting. I agree. For L2 learners, not to know idiomatic expressions often times feels like a handicap.
It's funny that they chopped red herring, that being a rather formal (aka well known and quite useful) rhetorical and literary expression.
Language courses are the best example of how problematic limiting the language can be. Sooner or later one has to get out of what is pedagogically prescribed or convenient
Actually, we chopped red herring. And yes, I think that deliberately excluding excluding idiom does everyone a disservice. Plain language is good. To a point and for legal/business documents. That said, for L2 learners/speakers in any language, idiom is difficult but learned and understood the same way as you suggest children do, big words, and from mother tongue speakers and writers. I worked with a fellow whose mother was Afikaans and father Polish. They had to communicate with each other in English. So he claimed both English and Afrikaans as mother tongue. However, his English, unlike his Afrikaans, was void of idiom and actually quite wooden. Because, IMO,of no exposure mother tongue speakers. He'd be in his late 60s now, so I am talking about an era when South Africa was very separate. Not just black and white, also English and Afrikaans.
Another long one! Sorry for the ramble... Happy Tuesday!
No need to apologize. Very interesting. I agree. No contact with native speakers makes our L2 bookish and our interactions outside formal context quite awkward.
I started a conversation course today (intermediate level) and one thing I remind my students is that they have the advantage of internet today. It allows them to interact with people from anywhere or access all kinds of linguistic registers. We did not have that when I learned and we would find ourselves using idioms long extinct because we were using decades old textbooks.