Drew sent those kick ass transition phrases (we now have them in Spanish from Drew and in German (from Brigitte) and we need them in French and other languages. I made a category for them. John commented:
Ben asked me to elaborate on an email I sent him regarding transitional phrases. From my own experience learning and teaching conversational proficiency in Latin, I have found such lists to be very helpful. I have always referred to transitional phrases as “filler,” because, in order to achieve some sort of fluidity in one’s production of a language (especially spoken, but also written), that is, to get beyond “cave man” language, one needs to know how to fill in the gaps between core structures, whether that be with the equivalent of the English “and so forth” “by the way” “therefore” or even “um” and “like.” So much of achieving fluency is knowing how to use a language while one is developing one’s thoughts, in real time, without losing fluidity or momentum.
Now I developed my own list of transitional phrases when I was working with older and very motivated learners, of whom much output was demanded. But I think it definitely could be helpful to younger learners, namely the second year students Ben was talking about, who are ready to do a bit of output, in smaller doses, just to get them rolling with some sort of momentum in conversation and/or writing. Too many teachers view the learning of such phrases as somehow cheating if students can’t account for every detail of every word they are saying. My experience as a father contradicts this view: I hear my 4 year old daughter using very grammatically and rhetorically sophisticated transitional phrases (e.g.”I was wondering if you would like to…” and “I hate to say this, but…”) not because she knows the meaning of every word, but because she knows and feels how and where it fits (correctly) into a statement she’s trying to formulate–the result of hearing 4 years of CI immersion in a loving, playful and supportive environment.
So hopefully most of the words on any such list we hand out, students will have already heard us speaking many times during that first year. If that happens, then such a list (or some abridgement of it to a manageable size) could be very helpful to facilitate production of the language in the second year and beyond.
John