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Originally Posted by tdol Many courses seem to talk top-down, but act bottom-up.  |
I would say that different teachers have different ideas of what bottom-up is.
Sometimes students insist on bottom-up. They're not satisfied unless they know precisely what each item means be it a grammar form or a lexical item. Some really analyze things. I was told Russian speakers are quite like that, and now I've been finding out just how true that is.
There are many different things to consider when speaking of bottom-up.
My last listening comprehension class involved quite a bit of bottom-up explaining. Sometimes top-down is entirely impossible without understanding all the details. The details are big, and many students, though not all, understand this. Sometimes it's impossible to grasp certain things. There's nothing wrong with placing the English language under a microscope if that's what it takes.
I think everyone has their own ideas about what bottom-up is.