Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
Cheating can have cultural connotations too---for example, the expression 'cheating death' implies by its nature that one believes death in an entity and not just as a mechanical process.
Do you think it is every possible to truly achieve 100% fluency in a foreign language? Or will there always be small nuances you might not fully grasp? I am thinking of this theory we learned in my old college linguistics class called 'native speakers intuition.' It stated that people have an instinct with aspects of their native language that they cannot duplicate with subsequent languages they learn. For example, you could look at a badly constructed sentence and instinctively know it is wrong, but it someone asks you to cite the rule or to technically explain what the problem is, you might not be able to.
I took the course in 1998 or so and I am wondering if this theory has been debunked since  |
Doesn't sound very serious to me
Intuition plays a role when speaking a foreign language. Intuition in this case is just a word for acquired reflexes IMO.
I've always been good at learning foreign languages, and I think it's in part due to the fact that these "intuitions" come easily to me. Meaning that I can learn and integrate some grammatical reasoning without thinking about it. I don't know where that comes from, mostly from simple memory probably. I have a good memory I think, but there are things I remember easier than others, and languages are one of them. Other things (especially involving numbers) I seem to forget even before I learned them
When I was a student, I was once accidentally assigned to an English class that was far below my level then. One day in class, a student said something, and the teacher asked us if we thought that a specific form he had used was correct. Every one raised their hand except me. I was right, but when the teacher asked me why I didn't think the form was correct, all I could do was stammer that I didn't like it. It didn't feel right.
I never learned languages by learning the rules. I learned them by listening and reading, and unconsciously working them out and applying them by myself.
Just as we all apply complex grammatical rules in our native language without being aware of it, without even knowing the rules, we can do the same in a foreign language. The only difference is that the probability that we get it right is lower, because instead of applying rules we have been living since we were born or before, we are applying rules that we learned later in life, at a time when we have other things to worry about and where our organism is not so much focused on learning, and where we may be encumbered by the rules and reflexes of our native language. But it's a quantitative difference, not a mysterious gift you have in your native language and can never gain in another. That's my opinion at least.