LOTE's are on a decline says latest figures.

[brendan]

thats exactly what happened with english teaching, and look at people's grammar today

[IntoTheNewWorld]

thats exactly what happened with English teaching, and look at people's grammar today

So true...My grammar is terrible. I don't think everyone can absorb grammar "naturally", it should still be taught explicitly. And spelling is on a decline as well...If Firefox didn't have built in spell checking I would make so many spelling errors in my posts.

[/0]

thats exactly what happened with english teaching, and look at people's grammar today

Yes, well that would vary from person to person and would depend on the quality of teaching. Besides, this is SLA, you don't have much time to teach a hell of a lot, and having interactive conversations in an SLA environment strengthens both vocabulary and grammar, even if it is not the emphasis.
To be quite honest, what I learnt in year 11 chinese was pathetic. Every lesson we would read through yet another page etc. of dialogue, sometimes reading the same ones again, and it would just fly over our head. People were more preoccupied with getting the pronunciation of each character correct than paying attention to grammar or semantics, so they would not seem incompetent. And then we had these massive vocabulary lists that nobody really payed attention to, because it was quite frankly boring. The result: I felt that every new essay I wrote was using the same, tired old vocabulary that I had been drilled with for 4 years, and not much progress was being made.
If we want people to learn a second language, we must ensure they have the proper stimulus, so that they are compelled to actively learn. LOTEs are, after all, some of the hardest subjects.

[IntoTheNewWorld]

Hmm I can relate with Chinese school, sounds like me and Viet school. Maybe a combination of methods of teaching? Immersion along with traditional textbook to reinforce the grammar. The textbook can counter problems with the immersion style, such as students continuously using incorrect grammar/phrases that natives would not understand, but the teacher, as a native English speaker, could, and so accepting it the student thinks it's okay.

I do agree that "natural" learning has a place in LOTE learning. I can see the problem with a language taught ONLY as a written language with grammar and vocab lists, and students not knowing how to maintain a conversation. This is most apparent in early education of a LOTE, where teachers tell the students to do some task such as "find out the hobbies of your classmates in X language". The students obviously cheat and use English.

This is what I think about LOTE. For first languages however, "natural learning" is inevitable anyway, it's probably more beneficial to teach the mechanics of language and proper spelling, phonetics etc.

On another note, have you ever seen Rosetta Stone software? They try to teach you a second language "how you learn your first language", without teaching any grammar specifically. I seriously think it is fail. That's an extreme anti textbook method.