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Finding Holes at B2/C1/C2 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5757 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 17 of 21 14 March 2014 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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luke, if you're getting at whether one is capable of marking reading aloud so that the audience understands you're reading aloud and not speaking freely ... that skill is pretty much independent of language level. Some people barely can do it even in their native language, and others find it very easy to do even when they are lower intermediate.
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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4819 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 18 of 21 15 March 2014 at 1:22am | IP Logged | ||
I still have to do this, and I've been speaking English almost all my life. :-) (Admittedly it's mostly for typos, but not always). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5000 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 19 of 21 16 March 2014 at 10:53am | IP Logged | ||
It could be useful because nothing forces you to go for the easiest path. You can include essays, comparisons, thoughts on complicated issues requiring terminology and so on. The main trick is taking notes on your own active production in the language. Later on, you read your notes on what you need and you can read the main text as well to see what could be said better. And as usual, huge amounts of native input are extremely useful as well. But I thought that was obvious and didn't need to be mentioned per se since most htlalers already know. The passive skills are easy to build at high levels, it's the active ones where we keep our holes for years. And that's why I use the exercise I mentioned. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4727 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 20 of 21 17 March 2014 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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So essentially, you're relying on your own passive understanding to notice when your
active abilities are lacking and leading to awkward or ungrammatical expressions? I suppose that could work to an extent, but I would worry about two things- (a) not recognizing what needs improvement and (b) not being able to readily find a more appropriate expression even if you recognize flaws in your production. Of course, (A) could be fixed by a solid passive understanding and (B) by extensive reference materials. The advantage of either the Ben Franklin technique or what Tarvos suggests is that you have a base of input, which if you've selected carefully is correct and appropriate for how you want to speak yourself. If you use the same language, you know you got it right. Of course, you're not necessarily wrong if you use different language, since there are always multiple ways to communicate the same idea. The main disadvantage of these "active-from-passive" approaches is that you're limited to topics you can find in video / article form, and depending on how strictly you apply the method, you're limited to exactly what is said in them. In any case, I think both are extremely useful and the choice would probably rest on which technique you can motivate yourself to do and what your specific goals are. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5000 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 21 of 21 19 March 2014 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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No, I'm not.
I am relying: 1) on the ability to better see my mistakes after some time (the same way you can see imperfections in an essay in your native language hours or days after you've writen it) 2) on the common sense telling me "ah, I want to use this word and I can't remember" or "ouch, I can tell that but it sounds weird, I should look up a better way" 3) on reading my notes later and working on the gaps. You don't need to "readily find a more appropriate expression", that is the point. You basically make a note to find it later and you do. Your "notebook" reminds you of what you wanted to look up and what was the context in which you were missing the expression Extensive reference materials are the bases for majority of high level learning. A nice one is google. Not google translate. Just google the expression to find out whether it is used somewhere by natives (and where), to find synonymes, new examples and so on. Passive understanding is usually no problem for people at B2+, the active skills are. This is one of the way to catch the bugs in the active skills. Of course it won't catch 100%, nothing will (not even high quality tutors). The key is to fill up the holes one by one and you'll see the results over time. I never said the input methods were anything bad, not at all. Tons of input is the base for any efficient learning, in my opinion. It's just that it is harder to find material for some areas, as you say, and there are still things it won't help with, in my opinion. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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