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Learning without a course or a teacher? | ||
Tags: Self-Study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3848 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes  Speaks: French | Message 1 of 9 12 April 2015 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you know me, my strengths are, I learn quickly, and I work hard, however, my failing is I am very unstructured, I am to the point now where in French, a good many of the words, and topics I want to learn about aren't covered in courses, I have people I can ask about things, but I hate to bog them down with 15000 questions a day on every topic under the sun. I also think that simply looking the word up in the dictionary, is kind of boring, even if it is occasionally quite rewarding, as I find some bit of cultural thing I wasn't looking for. If you need an explanation of what I mean by unstructured, I have ADD, so its hard to be focused consistently, and daily in some cases. What do you guys do for regular learning? I could do flash cards, but don't have the patience to make decks myself. I figure this advice can be non language specific as well, I'm just looking for general tips on how to keep it interesting, and how to be more structured in your learning process?
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| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4456 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 2 of 9 13 April 2015 at 1:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Extensive and semi-intensive (pop-up dictionary) reading. Choose a book (or wiki
articles) about a topic that interests you and just start reading, don't worry too much. Or if you don't really like reading, extensive listening (including TV watching) can cover much of the same grounds as extensive reading. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7140 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 3 of 9 13 April 2015 at 2:46am | IP Logged | ||
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I have found Assimil to be great for short sessions. The lessons can be initially covered in a few minutes and you can move on quickly. I just circle back over and over when my interest again waxes.
With French, there are four Assimil courses I'm aware of. I've been working on them off and on for over two years and some of the courses still have more to teach. So, the Assimil lesson per day format is a good way to give structure to your studies. You said "without a course". There, I find something that captures my imagination. Le Petit Prince is one of those books. Another approach is to find videos you are interested in on youtube. There's a lot of French. If you include francais and the topic you want to know more about, you may find video after video. One good thing about this approach is if the video doesn't appeal to you or you get bored, you just find another one. Edited by luke on 13 April 2015 at 2:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4642 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 4 of 9 13 April 2015 at 3:31am | IP Logged | ||
I don't know you. Read, read, read to up your vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3848 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes Speaks: French | Message 5 of 9 13 April 2015 at 4:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Would gaming in the target language help? I started playing Skyrim in French, mostly by accident, and it's one of those games that has pop ups for what you are looking at, you know, wolf tail, skull, that sort of thing, so that way you can learn lots of random vocab quickly. I had no idea that games were done in other languages beyond just the menu screens.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4642 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 6 of 9 13 April 2015 at 5:19am | IP Logged | ||
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How do you think most children learn English?
Yes, games are done in other languages. I used to play through Spyro the dragon in French and German, Mario in Italian, etc. etc. Yes, you should play through Skyrim in French. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4379 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 7 of 9 13 April 2015 at 7:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Part of learning a language is your exposure. 1 of the ways to increase your exposure is watching TV and
listening to radio programs. I have 2 friends who studied several languages in high school including Latin, French & German. Although they got high marks in these subjects, they never claimed to be fluent speakers until they moved to Europe and started working. Back in their school days, their parents kept TV out of the house out of fear some programs may be a negative influence. Part of my language learning routine is to spend up to 2h / day listening to the news (TV or radio) and watch documentaries. I especially like to get into ancient history because I studied history in high school. Nowadays, there are a lot of programs on YouTube that are free and accessible in many languages. I pick up new words & phrases in Chinese all the time. I'd look them up phonetically and enter them into my word list on computer. Every once in a while I'd review the word list. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5243 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 8 of 9 13 April 2015 at 10:50am | IP Logged | ||
I'm not sure whether you need (1) something structured, which is contrary to your nature, plus a way to make you stick with it, or (2) something unstructured, which is consistent with your nature, yet works nonetheless. For (1) something structured, you can follow a course, or you can follow just the syllabus or table of contents of a course, and look up the contents yourself wherever you like. And to stick with it, you can send me $10 each time you skip a topic. For (2) something with chaotic order but works well, I recommend About.com's French section. Instead of all pages following a certain syllabus, each page is hyperlinked to several other related pages, so you can study in any order you like. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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