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Luca from Italy and his You Tube videos | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Sterogyl Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4370 days ago 152 posts - 263 votes  Studies: German*, French, EnglishC2 Studies: Japanese, Norwegian | Message 105 of 121 25 February 2014 at 7:44am | IP Logged |
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Luca is one of the very few accomplished "internet polyglots" out there. He knows what he's talking about. I also think his language learning technique is quite useful.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4447 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 106 of 121 25 February 2014 at 6:51pm | IP Logged |
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I've seen a video where Luca spoke Mandarin with Steve Kaufmann. His Chinese intonation sounded more accurate
than Steve. He posted recent videos explaining his methods. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6678 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 107 of 121 26 February 2014 at 4:43pm | IP Logged |
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Luca's methods aren't anything new or special. It's input and output using bilingual
translations. Luca IS special and NOT his methods. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Poliglotta80 Nonaglot Newbie ItalyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5979 days ago 11 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Italian*, SpanishC2, FrenchC2, EnglishC2, GermanC2, Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese, Russian Studies: Mandarin, Romanian Studies: Japanese | Message 108 of 121 26 February 2014 at 5:43pm | IP Logged |
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Hi everybody!
It's been quite a while since I last visited this fantastic website, mostly because I haven’t found the time in my hectic schedule. First of all, I’d like to thank you all for the kind words. My goal is to share my passion with other language enthusiasts, and I try my best to do so. Slucido, most of my students would strongly disagree with you. Given that every person has a more or less prominent “inclination” for something, methods do count. The bilingual translation is just one technique I use to get started with a language, but there is so much more to it. Also, the technique in itself is nothing new as you said, but you apply it is what matters, and I haven’t really shown any details of how it really works. Regarding how I acquire fluency in a foreign language, my “method” is in fact a combination of methods that evolve with time. The truth is, I haven’t spoken about it much so far, and the book I am putting together will give perspective on how and why anybody – regardless of so-called “talent” - can become polyglots and enjoy an enriching, fulfilling life. Stay tuned and best of luck to everyone! :-) Luca Edited by Poliglotta80 on 26 February 2014 at 5:47pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6678 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 109 of 121 26 February 2014 at 7:05pm | IP Logged |
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Hello Luca:
I have been following you for a while and I admire you. I don't want to offend anyone. I might be wrong. I think you are an exceptionally gifted language learner and you have passion. That's it. If you manage to instill this passion to your students, they will learn quickly. I think methods are extremely overrated. It boils down to input and output or interaction with our target language. If we have this interaction factor, we only need more and more passion. Input + output + passion= the best language learning method Input + output + passion= the best language teacher It's sure there are nuances that change from student to student, but the main variables are just these ones. Just my opinion. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Poliglotta80 Nonaglot Newbie ItalyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5979 days ago 11 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Italian*, SpanishC2, FrenchC2, EnglishC2, GermanC2, Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese, Russian Studies: Mandarin, Romanian Studies: Japanese | Message 110 of 121 26 February 2014 at 11:12pm | IP Logged |
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Hi again
I think you are an exceptionally gifted language learner and you have passion. That's it. While passion and talent can propel one's learning process – in any field - they are not enough by themselves, as your final “that's it” seems to suggest. In this regard, I believe that the most overrated aspect in this discussion is talent, not methods. If you could see how I learn languages and the discipline it requires – not to mention a wide range of other factors that this activity entails – you would think differently. It is simply too easy to say “he has got something special, so no matter what he does, he will succeed” Input + output + passion= the best language learning method Once again, if things were this easy, I am pretty sure there would be many more polyglots in the world and less discussions on forums like this one on the Internet. While I agree that getting a lot of input is paramount, the question is how and when. A lot of language learners get discouraged because they don't even know how to tackle the most simple texts, let alone audio material. The same goes for output. “Getting out there and speaking” is not as easy as it looks. It is a delicate psychological process that needs some planning and it depends on each individual Anyway, I want to let you that I was not offended at all. I thought your comment was an excellent excuse to start a discussion about talent and discipline (I personally don't like the term “hard work”) Luca Edited by Poliglotta80 on 26 February 2014 at 11:14pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6678 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 111 of 121 26 February 2014 at 11:53pm | IP Logged |
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Luca, you are right. Passion and talent aren't enough. We need input and output...and
hard work. People need more frustration tolerance. On the one hand you are gifted, but you work very hard. No doubt about it. World champions are specially gifted, but they also work extremely hard. But people forget that there are very few world champions in any activity. There is only ONE Luca. If they follow your methods, I am sure they will improve, but most of them will not reach anything near your level. They do not have talent enough. On the other hand all this input + output + passion formula is simple, but not simplistic and far from easy. It's hard work. It's endless repetition. A lot of motivation (¿passion?) is needed. I think methods are overrated because people make all this language learning stuff too complicated. * Input: extensive and intensive listening and reading. * Output: extensive and intensive writing and speaking. OK,they can use a few grammar explanations in their own native language or they can use their native language like a crutch, but is simple (not simplistic). How much input and output do we need? A lot, a lot, a lot of time. When should we start? Right now. It's not that complicated, but people make thinks complicated in order to procrastinate. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 112 of 121 27 February 2014 at 12:30pm | IP Logged |
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Almost all humans have the apparatus you need to learn a language (and one more, and one more), but we have different amounts of tenacity, concentration capability, immediate memory etc. - and we live in different circumstances, where it can be more or less easy for instance to meet native speakers. And sometimes there are things you have to prioritize even if that means that you have to drop other nice things. For instance I read a lot of books about weird topics in Danish and English before my current language craze, but now I try to find materials in other languages instead - and that often will be things I find on the internet.
If newbee language learners aren't willing to invest the time and effort it takes to learn languages then they probably won't get far. So that's a general requirement: you have to be interested (and maybe even passionate) enough to make changes in your life to attain the goals you set yourself. But because we are different it is also important for each language learner to evaluate the effect of the things you do - and sometimes it just takes a small adjustment of a technique to get much more effect from using it. Your teacher - if you have one - may propose a technique, but you have to find out whether it works. Let me take an example, where I actually owe something to Luca: retranslation. I had of course tried this out long ago: I translated texts, and later I then translated them back and hoped that the final result would be identical to the original. But it rarely was (also because I have a somewhat anarchistic attitude to learning materials), so I dropped the method and just made ordinary translations instead - or (more often) wrote my own texts from scratch. Then I watched one of Luca's videos where he recommended retranslation, and suddenly I understood what I had made wrong: I had let so long time pass between the first translation (target to base) that it felt like translating a totally new text when I was supposed to do the retranslation - and on top of that I felt it like an undesirable and basically irrelevant coercion that I had to 'hit' the original form to the last iota - I could just as well make my own texts. So even though Luca apparently lets just as much time pass between the two phases as I did with my old experimentations, I now understood that precisely this was the reason the method didn't work for me. Instead I now make the first translation a sentence or two at a time, and then I make the retranslation right after that while I still have the original formulations ringing in my ears. In that way it almost feels like inventing the words myself, but with the assurance that I'm mimicking some idiomatically correct native formulations. And this functions very well for me. So I have Luca to thank for this humble glimpse of inspiration even though I don't follow his advice in the form he gave it. Edited by Iversen on 27 February 2014 at 12:51pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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