Summary Writing as a Means to Improve the Second Language, the Mother Tongue, and Mental Organization
Author: D'Acierno, Maria Rosaria
Date: 2018-05-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Writing Skills,Native Language,Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,Memory,Vocabulary Development,Grammar,Syntax,Transfer of Training,Reading Writing Relationship,Teaching Methods,Writing Evaluation,Reading Comprehension,Oral Language,Generalization,Cultural Influences,Writing Processes,Psycholinguistics,Sociocultural Patterns,Learning Processes,Inner Speech (Subvocal)

The general purpose of this study is to increase, in a classroom environment, formal communication by using reading and writing. Our research focuses on reading as a means to develop the writing of a good précis, which in its turn contributes to improve: 1) memory, vocabulary and grammatical-syntactical structures, in brief, the organization of a correct paragraph in both the oral and the written language. The experiment includes the foreign as well as the students' first language, since it wants also to investigate the influence of one language on the other. Furthermore, it wants to enlarge the results concerning the great problem related to transfer; in other words if, in this limited area (reading and summary writing), it is the L1 which influences L2 or vice versa. Undoubtedly, the acquisition of the first and the foreign language follows two different processes, one based on spontaneous development, the other on systematic and sequentially instruction offered by a proper teacher. Another general statement refers to the influence of one's own mother tongue on the foreign language, just because the advantage knowledge of the first language and the previous experience attached to the meaning of its words lead the foreign language student to a simple translation of words without caring about their cultural implications. In so doing, the first language shows a deep influence on the foreign one, depriving words, linguistic expressions and gestures of their cultural side. The foreign language student automatically translates words and structures taking advantages of his/her previous experience, thus, depriving the foreign language of the inner sense coming from traditions and ways of life. For this reason it becomes essential to teach the cultural data of the foreign language studied in parallel with the formal aspect of the language. While talking about the different cultural meaning attached to words, a big parenthesis needs to be discussed, even though is not central to this study, mostly centred on a didactic situation. From the psychological point of view, a more difficult situation is attached to the meaning of words, when a connection is established between words and thoughts; when words refer to the speaker's personal experience, which in its turn reflects the social experience of the subject. As Sergio Piro writes in &quot;La scacchiera maledetta&quot; (a kind of trap, where every move is controlled, a research about mental illness), to communicate does not mean to use conventional words/signs, rather it means to use a series of unconventional spontaneous, immediate alternatives, which, through mediation, inevitably become conventional, even though they are subject to another changing according to the feeling of the speaker. Linguistic crystallization (sistema doxico -- monotetico; rozzezza del linguaggio convenzionale), as Piro calls the symbolic meaning attached to words, reflects the flow of social events, events which are totally different from the personal, internal happenings of the single subject. For this reason conventional words are not the best way to describe inner thoughts.