Ears and Note Part 2

My first encounter with the English language was through pop music, of course. Then I learned it at school, where it was rather grammar translation flavoured with a bit of audio-lingual seasoning, I don't mean language labs, even 'listening to the tape' was skipped sometimes. It was something like learning music from notes only, there was no space for learning by ear. (I don't remember my teachers speaking English as a means of communication.) Acquisition was out of reach as far as I can remember.

On the other hand Anglo-Saxon vocal music was always around. The most motivating factor was the few occasions when I had the chance to communicate with people (which was really scarce in Hungary that time.)

What we were tested on was grammar, vocabulary, dialogs and monologues learned by heart, with the slot-filler principle. Consequently all we knew was that.

It was 20 years ago. Very modern at that time.

Now I am an EFL teacher outside the public sector. A considerable part of my work is remedial tutoring/coaching kids whose parents cannot help them with preparing for the school English classes. The aim of their English lessons with me (once a week or twice) to keep up with the 'material' of the school English lessons (3-5 times a week). This is a very small town (12000) and I am not the only one on the shadow education market.

Following up those school English lessons I find that the way they are taught English is very similar to that of my secondary school years. But they are only 6-10 years old! Songs in their coursebooks are used as sort of condiments, can be omitted. Songs are not thought to be serious. 8-year olds have neat vocabulary notebooks with bilingual lists of words. They know the spelling (more or less), the L1 equivalent of the words, the order of the words while many of them are not capable of matching L2 words with pictures. (Nothing complicated, skirt, trousers etc.) Poor Piaget. The least important factor seems to be pronunciation. The content tested is the list of words. They can read English with quite funny pronunciation. Isn't it like learning sheet music instead of playing music? Isn't speaking the primary form of the language? Isn't writing over-rated?