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Sentence Method question... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Ortho Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6352 days ago 58 posts - 60 votes  | Message 17 of 27 18 April 2009 at 6:54am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Why do you think this is a problem? If you know ten different ways to say "Let's go to the movies" in L2 and the English phrase "Let's go to the movies" comes up, and you say one of them in L2, you mark it correct, whether you hit the exact one on the back of the card or not. What's the problem? The point is NOT that you translate from English into the other language. The point is that you have an occasion to say something in the foreign language. Pimsleur is horrible for this, because when it gets you to producing the question will be (in L2): "Now tell me that you want to go the movies" and your answer will be "I want to go to the movies", and you haven't had to produce anything, because the L2 way of posing the question just reminded you of all the words and sentence structure that you're supposed to be producing. I'd be really good in French if I had a little demon on my shoulder to whisper the words in my ear every time I needed to say or write something. Anyway, for me the L1 question is just a way of putting myself in the situation where I can attempt to produce the L2. It could be L3 or L4 or pictures or recordings or someone doing mime (but not sign language because then we'd be translating oh noes!), but just writing the L1 on the side of the card is quick and easy, and it doesn't create some kind of chronic disease where I have to always translate through my native language in order to use the L2. That said, when I was writing my reponse to you I had an idea about how to do this all in L2 (putting a little situation on the front of the card, like Q: "There is a new film coming out this week, you'd like to go see it with your friend. Describe how the conversation might go." Or something like that, with a better-written question. Maybe this is a way to deal with the problem (I agree that using L1 is a problem because it's inefficient--cards with L2 on both side would give you twice as much practice, I'm just saying I haven't really found a better way) that you're pointing out. Edited by Ortho on 18 April 2009 at 8:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5863 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 18 of 27 18 April 2009 at 8:32am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Reading a card in L1, and saying it in L2 is translation.
Not necessarily, but I think I see what you are getting at. If you are using sentence flashcards and you've spent too much time on the same flashcards, you might get to the point where you recognize the card by the first character, and blurt out the answer without really reading it or formulating an answer. This is not a problem with single words, as it's pretty much what one wants to happen. This is not even a big deal with sentences, provided you are not too reliant on flashcards, that is, if they don't make up too high of a percentage of your study time. It's good to use a variety of techniques; try not to be one-dimensional. I only use sentence flashcards for idioms/set phrases, grammar examples, and tough vocabulary items. I don't mind memorizing these. Otherwise, I stick to words. For reading practice, I read (don't use flashcards). Another thing you can consider is deleting your flashcards after a few months. Not only will this help you with this particular problem, but it will allow you to add more new material, which is always good.
There are some benefits to memorizing sentences outright, but what the 100000 sentence technique is really supposed to do for you is teach you to read. Having whole sentences memorized is useful, but not as useful as having words and short phrases memorized in my experience.
Agreed. If people are shooting for internalization rather than memorization, maybe they shouldn't use SRSs. On the other hand, taking the measures I mentioned above should make it better.
There are some flashcard writing tricks that might help here, but the best advice is stop being so anal with cards. There is no need to go overboard and try to learn every phrase and every definition, especially at the sentence level, with flashcards.
Sometimes. But no more than, in the case of someone who has memorized thousands of sentences, having to create a sentence that they haven't memorized. When it comes to production, no technique is going to allow one to create perfectly idiomatic speech/writing without a lot of practice. This is one reason I believe producing early and practicing a lot as part of my regular routine is so important.
If you are able to use a memorized sentence "as is" in a conversation, then you are pretty good at figuring out what to memorize. Well done. But creating perfect sentences is something you can do with practice - it's not a skill limited to sentence memorizers.
I think by most definitions speaking and writing are considered active, reading and listening are considered passive. I can see thinking going either way, depending on what kind of thinking it is. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6246 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 19 of 27 18 April 2009 at 9:49am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Point taken. Except I wasn't arguing with him, I was just asking for clarification on a point of spoken English. As I suppose he is an expert in that respect at least. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6246 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 20 of 27 18 April 2009 at 10:04am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Good grief, another cainntear! As if one dissecter weren't enough! Edited by charlmartell on 18 April 2009 at 11:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6677 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 21 of 27 18 April 2009 at 10:11am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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These discussions are more about fads than anything else.
If you live in a country where your target language is not spoken, "inverse translation" is a good method. Harder, but very good. Your memory reinforcement will be stronger and yes, at first this "inverse translation" method can be a long serie of behaviour chains with two behaviours every one. Edited by slucido on 18 April 2009 at 10:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 22 of 27 18 April 2009 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
As I've already said, I don't believe "translating" these short expressions is the same as translating a long text, but setting that aside for one moment.... When you are doing L1->L2 flashcards, you're teaching yourself not to translate literally and instead to translate idiomatically. If you were to start with "tengo hambre" and you translated it as "I have hunger", the other side of the flashcard would tell you you were wrong, and you would learn to say "I am hungry" instead.
But that depends on the size of your card deck. The Michel Thomas courses, for example, teach by L1->L2 translation, and there is virtually no repetition of any given sentence (almost every prompt is unique), so I don't think this is necessarily true. So if the deck is large enough that you don't see an individual card often enough to completely memorise it, it would be production (but then again would that still be the method we're talking about?) Charlmartell, if you're genuinely curious about the "used to" thing, PM me and I'll give you an explanation, but judging by your response to icing_death I'm guessing you just said it to try to start a fight. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6441 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 23 of 27 18 April 2009 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
At best, this is a point in which English varies regionally. "I never used to" is not a statement I can imagine myself ever making. I can spontaneously say "I used to ..."; the opposite simply doesn't spontaneously come up. In response to "Did you ever do...", I'd say "No/nope, never" if the answer was negative. The extreme case, for me, is if someone was talking about something and, while I wasn't questioned, I felt the need to explicitly deny having done it (and, frankly, this simply doesn't tend to happen: it would sound defensive, and depending on the context, likely silly or judgmental - regardless, it would be awkward). In that case, I'd probably simply say "I've never ..." - ie, "I've never eaten stir-fried chipmunks!" Anyhow, I simply wouldn't use 'used' in a negative form of the sort posited above - not with "never" and not with "didn't". The whole idea of negating something with a repeated aspect in English strikes me as weird: either you never did it (and hence don't use 'used to'), or you only did it sometimes, and so you say "I occasionally/I sometimes/I rarely/I didn't often..." ... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5863 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 24 of 27 18 April 2009 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Depending on context, I think another valid "opposite" of used to is will. (Three years ago, I used to go to the
library every day. Three years from now, I will go to the library every day.) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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