Thanks for the comments -

Yes, it takes time to get used to back mouth sounding, this is true for other learning activities, learning curve is usually low - high - low, then another loop; realizing this would make people not feeing down-hearted when learning becomes slow;
There is no short-cut in learning: practice makes one perfect, rules should be used as guidance; the purpose of knowing rules is to facilitate one's learning; knowing rules is not the ultimate purpose. The ultimate purpose is to master the skills of using a language for effective communication.

However, rules should not be neglected, although rules should not be focused on in the beginning. This opinion is based the perception that there are no rules initially, rules are generalization and accumulation of common practices of language culture for years / generations (rules are still changing), thus, when we start learning a language we need to start from root - sound, word, sentence, from simple to complex. By and by, we would have already got acquainted to a lot of language phenomena, and we had unknowingly learned a lot of rules and we are using the rules unconsciously.

At this phase the role of rules jumps in. The more the language phenomina that we are exposed to, the more important the role of rules would become, as the knowlege of rules would speed up the learning at this stage. The learners might have had the tendency/inclination of subconsciously seeking hidden patterns (rules) in this language (learning), if the instructor/teacher would have introduced the appropriate/corresponding rules to the learner, he/she would be quite happy as the rules could solve some of their mysteries encountered during the previous learning activities, the rules will shorten their learning circle. The learners will love rules at this time and not regard rules as a burdon any more. (Putting grammar completely aside is not proposed).

There is one short-cut for language learning, if there exists one, it is "easy hard-working". Here the "easy" refers to that the learner has a clear mind of what/how to learn, he/she wouldn't regard the language learning as an unconquerable obstacle, the learning is under his/her contol;
the "hard" means that the learner has to devote time/energy onto it and he/she knows that, and he/she knows how much time/energy to invest to get to certain aim, which would make their learning easier. No pain no gain. The worst scenario is avoided: Lots of pain, no gain. The learner usually is hard to get to this stage by himself/herself initially; the instructor/teacher plays an important role here - 需要师傅领进门 -

Words above are my own thinking on language teaching/learning, I would love to hear criticism and different opinons so that we all learn and progress together.

所有跟帖： 

• Very well said. That was what I was trying to express earlier. -北京二号- ♀ (0 bytes) () 02/18/2009 postreply 23:40:08

• However, I wanted to emphasize the importance of practice. -北京二号- ♀ (2242 bytes) () 02/19/2009 postreply 00:56:46

• What valuable learning experience shared! Thanks -billnet- ♂ (0 bytes) () 02/19/2009 postreply 20:09:45