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Memorization Strategy for classification | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4524 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 25 of 38 14 January 2014 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
Of course, what you say makes a lot of sense. I don't actually disagree with anything you've said. :) I wonder though if sometimes for L2 learners that are very early in their learning process A1/A2 even B1, that the emphasis on grammar tables is counter-productive. I think (and it's only my thought) is that these rules are better understood when you have developed a sufficiently good feel for the language by exposure. My guess, is that one of the reasons people get so much grammar in the early stages - when their vocabulary is at best at the level of 3-year-old native - is that schools can't really justify themselves by charging for exposure, but can by teaching grammar. It was a revelation for me that I could read 10000 pages of German without memorizing declination tables etc. Now I feel if I wanted to I could go back to school and would learn much faster and deeper than before. Anyway I've no disagreement with what you've said. If people want to study grammar in depth first I think they should. And I certainly think that at some point it helps to have the rules explicitly in your head. Simply by lots of exposure over the course of a year-and-a-half, I was able to follow and hold my own in conversations with lots of drunken fast-talking students discussing all sorts of political topics (Israel; sex trafficking; food politics; EU economic policy etc) at a party last week. So it's not as if you can't communicate if you don't know the grammar tables - at least explicitly - by heart. Edited by patrickwilken on 14 January 2014 at 8:41pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| 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 26 of 38 14 January 2014 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
The best way I can describe how it works for me is that I have sentence templates in my head. Imagine, two transparent boxes, one with a space for 'subject' and one for 'verb'. When the verb is intransitive, I am content with those two bits of essential information. But when somebody uses a transitive verb, it pulls up a new shiny box for a direct object, or, depending on the verb an indirect object or both. When there's nothing put in there (including implied), then the sentence doesn't work and I might have to guess really hard at what you may mean. For example, 'to give' "I gave her the book" would include a verb, a subject and two objects. In English, the sorting of words into such boxes happens mostly by word order. In German too, but case overrides word order. So, when I hear "Ihr ..." I know it doesn't fit into the subject box, it should be an indirect object. And that's where the word is put, and I expect a verb that needs/allows an indirect object followed by a subject. (Well, it could also be addressing a group of people, but those situations tend to be rather self-evident.) When I hear "Das Buch gab ..." I am pretty sure that it's not the book that gives something to anybody, and I expect either 'I' as subject or 'es gibt/es gab' (there is/was) as a set expression. Either choice narrows down the words that might follow; the first one would require an indirect object and possibly an adverbial and the second one would require an adverbial of time and a direct object. These templates are of course a result of massive exposure, but also from not having interfering expectations about how a sentence is supposed to work. Native English speakers tend to pay a lot of attention to word order in German, and not so much to agreement between nouns and their modifiers. So massive exposure alone naturally builds strict word order templates more quickly than case/noun agreement templates. Edited by Bao on 15 January 2014 at 10:00pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4524 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 27 of 38 14 January 2014 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks. This conversation is really been very helpful for me. I think you are correct. It's been very hard for me to unlearn English word order rules, and it's hard to be very conscious of case agreements, though this is starting to happen. That's not to say that when I read I am not conscious of cases - you obviously need them to understand what you are reading - I am just not very explicitly conscious of them, and would have trouble explicitly using them. Though I spontaneously use all the cases all the time, including the genitive (how accurately is another question of course). I think when I start seriously writing in the next six months this will come into sharp focus. The only problem I have with massive exposure is that it really is massive, and you need to take the time to do it, however, having managed not to learn German in various ways over the years, I am very grateful now that I am finally moving forward at a steady pace. And as a English expat said to me here in Berlin, what he likes about my method is that I get to go to the cinema a lot and sit around and read novels in coffee shops. I am basically now reading books and watching movies in German that I would have wanted to read/see in English anyway so it's very painless way to learn. Edited by patrickwilken on 14 January 2014 at 8:59pm 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 28 of 38 14 January 2014 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, we are obviously totally different kinds of learners, Patrick. The tables are very important in the beginnings for me because I can cover the grammar fast and not stay stuck at the beginner level (with beginner material which gets boring soon). Of course I can get great passive grammar without any tables but as soon as I need to say something, I need to know how to make the sentence work. And the pure exposure really isn't the most efficient way to do that for my brain.
I think the focus on grammar "tables" is totally ok at language schools, the trouble is that they totally miss the next step: exposure. They give you the rules but not enough material to see them work and practice. Unless you find out your own exposure path outside class, the teacher just takes the matter as finished. The other extreme are classes proud of not using any grammar tables. I have experienced a few such teachers and have seen people around me trying with those. And I have yet to find a single person really learning the language and not just parroting phrases in those courses without grammar tables. I don't doubt even I, despite my learning type, could learn a language correctly without any grammar rules or tables. If I was really motivated (learning to survive) and had years of exposure 24/7 (exception for hours of sleep), than sure. But I don't have enough time to afford skipping helpful tools. Actually, I have even experienced at times the approach you suggest, patrick. I saw the grammar chapters after a few years of somehow using their content. And had I seen it before, I could have saved myself a lot of struggle. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5523 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 29 of 38 14 January 2014 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
Normally, I spend a lot of time arguing the adults actually acquire language in much the same way as children. People don't always believe this, I think, because they grossly underestimate how much exposure children get, and how hard children work—and because people never notice how many heritage speakers fail to learn their home language much beyond a toddler level. If you put an adult in the same situation—at least 20 million words of comprehensible input and no other way to communicate—most adults will reach a very high level indeed. I've watched it first hand. After a good 10 years of full-time immersion, the vast majority of adults will be conversationally near-native. But despite my general optimism about adult language acquisition, children do have some advantages. It's fairly clear, for example, that at least 95% of adults will keep faint traces of their native accents, no matter how good they get. But it's also pretty easy to find public figures in France who still struggle with gender after 40 years of adult immersion. At the very least, many people's brains become less sensitive to some details of input with age. This is why I've made an effort to actually hear gender, especially on articles and adjectives. And it's why I try to hear the difference between various French vowels. My theory is that if I can perceive my own errors, I'll gradually adjust my speech until it sounds better. But if I can't even hear the difference between right and wrong, it's going to take me a lot longer to get it right! Mind you, I'm still pretty lazy about this. It's mostly a game I play every now and then. And I still make plenty of gender mistakes. But at least some of time, my brain seems to learn genders via some mysterious process I don't understand, and it applies them to my speech automatically. This feels more or less like progress. :-)
Yeah, this is one of the great underrated things about language learning: reading, watching and chatting are all enjoyable activities, and they really do help. When writing, a turn of phrase will often appear out of nowhere in my head, and I'll Google it, and Google will say "250,000 results." 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4524 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 30 of 38 14 January 2014 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
I probably didn't express myself very well. I certainly read a grammar book when I first start learning, which was helpful for reading, but I didn't try to remember the declination tables etc. I also use grammar books even now in English when I am writing. I think if we are different it is that I had no strong desire to communicate in German when I first started learning. I think this is where most language learners won't like this approach, as you can't say anything useful for quite a while. I do use German all the time when I am out-and-about, and in the last few weeks I have started talking full-time with my wife in German (HTLAL is actually about the only English outlet I have now - all other media is German), but I honestly don't think talking helps me as much as reading at this point. However, I am slowly shifting away from input to output and as that happens I'll pay much more attention to grammar. But when I talk I don't have time to remember declination rules. Once I do that people switch automatically to English. I can do that in writing, and will pay careful attention to my grammar once I start writing. I am getting to the point where standard adult novels are fairly OK for me (a big improvement over even six months ago). When they really become transparent - I hope over the next 6-12 months - I'll pay much more attention to my output. I don't really know if this is the best way to learn, but it feels right to me.
Well 10000 pages/year is 2.5 million words. If you add 300 movies/year, plus ongoing conversations 20 million might occur much sooner than in 10 years. Though I have no idea how many words you need to be exposed to reach C1 or C2. I honestly don't know how well this works for German or French or other languages. I have seen this work with both my mother and grandmother where they reached C2 - my mother was 15-years-old and my grandmother 35-years-old when they arrived in Australia (and had already learnt German there as refugees during WWII - so English was their L3 and L4 - my grandmother had also learnt Russian prior to that) - but perhaps English is a special case because of the simplified grammar system. The guy I rent from said he learnt Russian in much the same way - he works as a journalist in Central Asia and his wife speaks fluent Russian and she told me that he was C2, but I no way to really judge that (though again he has been in an immersive environment for years). Anyway I am not dogmatic about this. Whatever works is good. If I need intensive grammar lessons at some point I'll certainly take them. Edited by patrickwilken on 14 January 2014 at 11:24pm 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 31 of 38 15 January 2014 at 12:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ah, obviously, there was the catch. You wanted to understand first without any pression on speaking or writing. I had the opposite with German (I basically began to learn it as I knew I would need it soon). I think the no memorisation approach to tables works excellent for passive skills. I can see some parallel between your German and my Spanish actually :-) I wish you all the best with your German activation, it will surely go fine.
I think English is a special case but for another reason. It isn't simplified, there are matters that totally balance any signs of simplification. But it is more a matter of survival in an anglophone country. In most other countries, you can live in an English bubble. Sure, you will be more or less limited in some ways but how much you mind depends on you. But can you imagine an immigrant in the UK or USA just being fine speaking their language and expecting everyone else to speak it with them? I guess the guy in Central Asia could have stayed in the English bubble with small survival pieces of RUssian if it weren't for his wife. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4281 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 32 of 38 15 January 2014 at 3:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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I remember in primary school, we had exercises and lessons on declensions of nouns, if
it can even be called as such: whether to choose "a" or "an" based on if the noun starts with a vowel or not. Obviously that is extremely easy compared to having to memorise nouns that do not follow such a simple rule like in German, but I did learn it systematically. A more difficult aspect was learning the strong verbs and their irregularities. Like memorising the three genders of German nouns, I had to drill this concept in school. I think that it is one of those concepts that need to be memorised repeatedly and drilled in order to remember them. I had to do this for German gender and cases when I took German in secondary school (although for less years than my other languages). It makes sense to learn a rule or memorise something well instead of seeing it repeatedly for thousnads of times, and still only guessing at what might be a rule, being able to then recognise it passively but unable to reproduce it actively. So therein probably am I more similar to Cavesa in drilling and rules. I must table everything and memorise or else I simply have no idea what is going on. I gave up learning Dutch in 2008 because I did not know fundamental rules, and I tried to base many things on exposure, which made me slightly be able to passively understand and read, but I could not write nor speak without each sentence having five errors therein. I am this way, despite my love for grammar, i.e. I need it even though I like it. I read Butt and Benjamin's Spanish Grammar book from cover to cover, and I have Manual de la Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española literally about 40 cm away from my seat right now. So I think that this is a topic of how to learn things, or pedagogy, than just the noun gender therein itself. I think that I mentioned this months ago, but without tabling, memorising, learning theoretical grammar, the opposite, exposure, is like playing an instrument by ear. Before learning properly, in addition to music theory in primary school, I tried to play both piano and guitar by ear. My by-ear rendition of Für Elise sounded like the scattered bridge of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody\, and my parents probably made me take lessons to avoid making horrid noise. Also I think that it is mythical that one does not learn grammar rules and memorisation like in a foreign language like German, and not in English (for Anglophones). I remember having five days a week of one hour grammar lessons for all of primary school. I remember having to table the indicative pluperfect, preterite, present perfect, etc. tenses for a "tense test", fill in the blank with the correct tense. So no reason why not this way in a foreign language as well. If I did not learn grammar systematically, I would end up saying things equivalent in any language, including my own, such as, "Day nice see you good." All of the words corresponding are in the sentence, but if I do not know what the infinitive is or how to use it, how to use the adjectives properly, there is no reason that exposure would teach me. Perhaps it depends on the person. I am someone for whom I need to be told something explicitly in order for me to understand or use it, followed by extensive memorisation and drilling, or else I will mess up horribly, same with multiplication tables in the firsrt years of primary school. I could deliberately refuse to learn how to conjugate <sein> or <zijn> and rely on expousre. However it seems rather cumbersome to gather months of exposure, only to posteriorly guess on what the rule could be, instead of simply spending an hour or so thereon. Edited by 1e4e6 on 15 January 2014 at 4:21am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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