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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 73 of 170 22 October 2014 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm curious about this. Mandarin is a tonal language, so depending on which tone of the five is used you get a different meaning.
So I'm curious how you are writing out these words "phonetically"? I think you are going to have serious problems with your experiment with a tonal language. This might have worked for Dutch, where regardless of the intonation the word is the same, but not Mandarin. SPOILER ALERT - I'M GOING TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING NOT ON TV :)
there are 5 different meanings for a word which is pronounced the say way, but with a different tone or inflection. How are you determining which word you are hearing without some study or knowledge of tones? Also because of a rising tone (like a question in English) can appear in a statement, the Chinese use particles like ma above to indicate a yes/no question, there are other particles as well, so how are you going to figure these out? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| victorhart Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States mandarinexperiment.o Joined 3706 days ago 66 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 74 of 170 22 October 2014 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't know, and you have a good point. I'm sure in 1,200 hours there will be a ton of details, including differentiation of many tones, that I simply won't get. But I think I'm absorbing something about tones naturally, as a child might do. The main limitation is not being able to practice them and receive corrections from native speakers. I'm sure that type of modeling and correction would be very helpful, so this is a sacrifice in terms of efficiency that I make for the sake of (1) better isolating and testing the variable and (2) being able to "study" at 1 am in a highly enjoyable and relaxing way without the hassle of scheduling regular classes. However, I think this issue of tones has little to do with jotting down a word a day phonetically. That practice of mine is really just a way of being able to watch that clip again and hear the word in context over and over. I'm not basing my mental model of the terms on what I wrote down, but rather on what I'm hearing in the video. Edited by victorhart on 22 October 2014 at 6:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 75 of 170 22 October 2014 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The OP posted in the Portuguese thread and I asked him about his background. I didn't receive a response but when reading his blog, I clicked on his about me link and have some answers. He grew up as a Bazilian-American bilingual. He spent a semester in a French school in Burundi in 7th grade, another semester in a Brazilian school in 8th grade, and a university semester in Sevilla, Spain. He has started and has something to do with The Natural Language Institute (link to site in Portuguese) in Brasilia. I am curious as to how this experiment may tie into this. His blog is written in English and his school's site is in Portuguese, so I don't think he'd be encouraging his students to drop out and drop in to dvd's. Though I don't know if he is still involved with the school.
A few years ago, on HTLAL, more members were of the course + anki + course strategy with the balance heavily weighted towards courses/srs. My observation is that the pendulum has swung much more towards native materials in a higher percentage of learners on the forum now, especially since the super challenge started. As much as I advocate early use of native materials, I would never advocate exclusive use of them. Even a little bit of help in making the incomprehensible, comprehensible, goes a long way, as does having at least one language learned under the belt. I, as a monolingual who has learned two Romance languages to a high level, could probably do this experiment with Italian and French and learn a lot. I doubt that I could do the same with Welsh, Russian or Japanese. Give me something to help, even a dictionary or a phrasebook (better if both), and I would make progress. Give me a basic course in the mix and I will be able to learn the language more quickly. Let's give this guy a chance to prove us wrong. He's got a good background (bilingual-multilingual) to recognize patterns. Time will tell. Edited by iguanamon on 22 October 2014 at 7:58pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 76 of 170 22 October 2014 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Here's my rough translation "We work only with teachers who are native-speakers...The classes are conversation interspersed with corrections and explanations of grammar and pronunciation done by the teacher. At home, the student reads many different texts, such as current events (news) articles and classic/modern literature. The student's listening skills are trained by cd's, dvd's or via the internet. The student also writes regulary to practice writing and grammar. The teacher finds written and audio resources of interest to the particular student, according to their level, professional area of concern, cultural and hobby interests. In this way, the student enjoys studying and learning proceeds naturally and with maximum efficiency. After each class, the teacher prepares a new vocabulary review including grammar and pronunciation corrections. putting that lesson on the institute's website for student access." I'm not a good translator. I don't like translating. This is something that looks to be much better than the average, run of the mill, Brazilian language school, or even most language schools anywhere :). Sounds like how I worked with my Portuguese tutor over skype. Edited by iguanamon on 23 October 2014 at 12:47am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 77 of 170 22 October 2014 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You've picked up on the one thing I always have a problem with when people say "Learn like a child does" which is you don't have one/two people who are constantly on call 24 hours a day to do corrections, answer questions, help with pronunciation, etc. I'm not trying to discourace you, but just saying that when you are writing phonically you might actually want to try using Pinyin format and try to listen for the tones as described in my earlier post. You can add a 1,2,3,4,5 to the end of your phonetic writing to indicate tone. Anyway, good luck. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 78 of 170 23 October 2014 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's what HTLAL is about ;) Video is just one of the many things you can use for this. I entirely agree that this is very different from LR, btw. Volte and others had some great experiences with it, even when learning Finnish (search for the Finnish experiment). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5307 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 79 of 170 23 October 2014 at 6:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I read victorhart's blog, too. I think I'm starting to understand his motivation for watching videos like that. * * * Maybe you don't have to experiment yourself. My generation of Hongkongers grew up watching Japanese TV and movies with Chinese subtitles, and listening to Japanese songs. You can study people like that to see how much they learned. Most of us learned nothing. So, if victorhart has already learned something over the last few weeks, I believe he listens less relaxed as those Hongkongers who had no intention to learn Japanese whatsoever.
Not as relaxed as that sounds. In which case, I think the video-watching is sort of like (my understanding of) L-R. My understanding of both is: hearing L2 while reading L1. Indeed, I know little about L-R. * * * Hongkongers learned no Japanese watching TV, but the Swedes learned English. So what does that mean? I don't know. * * *
I believe, if you are specific enough in defining the aim of your experiment, you will automatically know what's allowable and what's not. Maybe you can think about what videos really are and how they're different from textbooks and courses. How is Qiao Hu different from Alliance Francaise classes where the teachers speak only French from day 1, illustrating ideas with pictures and body language. If there are video'd or animated versions of Assimil and Michael Thomas, do they count as courses or as videos. If going over a word trying to remember it is not a violation, then is going over the number-counting system from 1 to 99 in your head a violation, and is recalling scenes from a movie a violation. I don't know. Depends on whether you're trying to prove whether NATURALLY watching TV works (which I originally thought was the experiment), or whether you're just trying to use videos the way you use books (re-reading things, underlining things, copying parts into a separate notebook) (in which case does not seem an interesting experiment at all, since it's just a slight change in media). Edited by smallwhite on 23 October 2014 at 6:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 80 of 170 23 October 2014 at 8:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well, those things are hardly necessary for children to learn. In many cultures, grownups don't speak to children until the children can hold up their part of the conversation, and those children have no problems in learning the language fluently. However, what children do have are brains primed to learn language. Adults don't have that. Trying to learn language like a child does is like trying to learn flying like a bird does. You're better off using technology to your advantage. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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