Ce que j'ai remarqué (What I've Realized)

The reason why I can read and write French and yet have trouble when I speak it, to the point where I feel like I don't know anything, and other assistants I've spoken with are in the same boat, is because we learned French backwards. We learned to read and write French from textbooks before we learned to speak. We still don't know how to speak. I still don't know how to speak. I can look at the verbs on paper and know what they mean, I know how to use them when I'm writing an essay (for the most part), and yet, when it comes to speaking out loud, I stumble, I fumble, I stutter, and the right verbs elude me. My vocabulary is small. At times I choose silence over attempting to express myself. A good solution? I think not. This experience is serving to dissuade me from wanting to become a language teacher. I don't want to teach language the way I've been taught. It doesn't work. The method is fallible. It's backwards. One must learn to speak before one learns to read and write. Just the same as we crawl before we walk, so on and so forth. Such is the way the brain works best. 9/26/12