Here is Lantian, at his iconoclastic best:
I firmly believe that all the exercises in a classroom are a diversion, a deception, a crutch to the actual development of the language in one’s brain. Whatever it takes to think a thought and use the target language to express that thought is going to build the language. So, ‘thoughts are the foundation upon which everything in a language builds!”
Update:
Here’s the link to that discussion.
Ken Carroll
What is the source of this quote?
Who is Lantian?
Is this from his own blog?
A comment to your original post?
Links, please.
(interesting thread, btw)
Gabe,
I’ve put the link into the original post.
Lantian is one of our most active, and obviously insightful, CPod learners. From the time we launched last year he has consistently offered terrific insights, criticisms, and ideas. You can find his comments all over the place. I could safely say he has really influenced the way CPod is done.
I could write a list of other stalwarts/influencers/friends here, but I’m afraid I might miss someone - they know who they are! I invite yourself (and anyone else who has interesting things to say) to get into the daily discussions!
It’s true that practice and especially natural practice will be the main things that achieve fluency and any sort of decent level. However, I must also add that repetitive exercises can reinforce the style and basic principles upon which a specific subject is based. A properly constructed lesson (according to my thinking), will first give a dump of information, then explain it. It is then reinforced by the student performing the exercise as they saw it to show a level of understanding. They can then be guided through a similar exercise before going on to try their own experimental applications. This last step is the crucial one that I think Lantian is talking about. Without it you just have parrots who regurgitate mindless impracticalities. Without the basics, however, I think that the result would be just the same as if there were no teacher in the first place, with no guide. This is all, of course, taken to the extreme. There is definite middle ground here.