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Bookworm’s adventures-TAC15 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4226 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 113 of 217 26 May 2015 at 3:42am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
That. Oh that. I know all about that. Guess we need to have more books about self-discipline and stuff. But I doubt I can discipline myself to read one haha. Btw, I know where you can get first 4 seasons of Doctor Who (the new one) in German, some movies in German and even audiobooks. There's one famous social network that does such wonderful things, but no links outside PM :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5001 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 114 of 217 26 May 2015 at 5:33am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Via Diva, have I already confessed my feelings towards you? It is not just gratefulness for your offer of links to what-must-not-be-named. You've been one of the constant inspirations and one of those I admire! And I don't recommend books about self-discipline and stuff, they make far too convenient procrastination excuses :-D
Speaking of procrastination. I went through a few pages of the newest vocabulary thread. I really liked the first few pages, where I could read about routines of other people that are food for thought. The rest turned into the usual battle full of strawmen with the same combatants on each side and same arguments. I don't feel like participating for a dozenth time, especially as I feel like just my person is becoming more oil to the fire. So, inspired by the thread, I thought of summing up my thoughts on the matter. Even if noone else is interested in my opinion, I can sort my thoughts up. -while knowing a few hundred words is certainly enough to get you started, even get you started with speaking, only a fool can believe knowing really well a few hundred words suffices for most kinds of conversations, unless you want to bore the natives to sleep. And remember that most languages are very different from English where you can basically substitute most verbs by one of the most common ones with a preposition. And the more different is the new language from your old ones, the more vocabulary learning awaits you. -CEFR exams, both those I have passed and others I have only informed myself about, DO usualy evaluate your vocabulary. No, the examinator doesn't count words. But they certainly pay attention whether you use appropriate words, whether you aren't repeating yourself too much and so on. A practical example: I was warned by an examinator I had spoken with before my CAE, that repeated use of words like "good" and "interesting" is a serious red flag. -frequency lists and such tools cannot predict what words are YOU gonna need. A frequency list based on newspaper vocabulary won't cover your needs in many other areas. -however, vocabulary sources (like Vocabulaire Progressif) can give you base for a wide range of situations. For everyday vocabulary, I can as well recommend tv series and books of the "lower" genres. -sure, you can always use a dictionary and ask the native for a word. But if you do it too much, you'll bore and annoy yourself and (which is worse) the native. You can make your life much more comfortable by learning a few thousand words you are likely to need before the necessity actually arises. -sure, you can learn a lot from input and should choose input of appropriate level for you. But sometimes, the graded readers are just so boring... and yes, you can learn most of the commonly learnt words from books and movies but there are words you are gonna need and that happen to be in your input once or twice per 10000 pages. And they might be vital for some situations. -about srs decks: noone forces you to use a premade one without any changes. delete words you don't see yourself using. add words from your studies -of course you cannot learn a language just by hoarding words, just by learning a 5000 core words list on memrise without anything else. Of course. And the htlalers usualy know that perfectly fine. But vocabulary learning, whether you use more immersion tools or lists and srs, needs to be part of the learning process. All the grammar and accent in the world won't save you if your vocabulary is smaller than that of three year old. -learning a list doesn't necessarily mean learning without context. the other pillars of learning usually provide that and you can always google more. I've correctly actively used words I had only encountered in a premade srs deck a few times already. So, I wouldn't doom those decks either. A practical example: 1.One of the posters (I think rdearman?) found a great book about the Bombai city, which is above his current level. But it makes him much more interested and passionate than some graded book or kids' stories. Therefore there is no reason to switch for something else. 2.A common vocabulary poster claims there are two approaches: just diving in with a dictionary no matter how much work it is going to be (intensive reading is about that but not everyone can be an intensive reader. i surely cannot). The other is just memorising a 10000 words list and hoping the words are gonna be there. That is one of the common strawmen, in my opinion. Of course there are gonna be many differen words. 3.My approach is a third one: no general/newspaper frequency list but learning a few lists of words commonly associated with description of city layout, architecture, history. And then dive in and get lost much less often and enjoy the reading much more right away. Really, you cannot predict future and every new situation is likely to teach you a few more words. But refusing to learn too much beforehand, in fear of learning some useless words, that is stupid and may cost you, from my experience. There are situations that make you wish you had learnt more vocabulary. So, if someone was asking me: "Cavesa, how the hell am I gonna learn all that vocabulary? There is so much of it!" I'd say: "No worries, you don't need to learn it all at once. You don't need to guess your future needs. Start with vocabulary builders for beginners and intermediates, use the vocabulary lists in your course. Continue with lots of native input, that will teach you lots of vocabulary in context, even though not everything you are likely to need. Use any kind of dictionary you find comfortable whenever you feel the need. Use SRS if you like, or write lists, try mnemonics or whatever else that might be helpful. Don't worry about not knowing all the meanings of a word at once. Learn the most common few and acquire the rest on the go. And above all, don't freak out, there is no reason to. At any time, look up words YOU are likely to need no matter their overall frequency. Find out examples, google is your friend. And don't forget you'll need a much larger passive than active vocabulary as the natives don't usually go through lobotomy before speaking to learners." Thanks for either reading or skipping this. Now that it's writen down, I no longer feel any temptation to respond to the vocab threads of doom. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 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 115 of 217 26 May 2015 at 5:44am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Inject some personality into your conversation. Someone stuttering out their Chinese is a boring idle good-for-nothing, but in this case I have resolved to gesticulating, paraphrasing, whipping out my phone and using Pleco while I murmur a long, drawn-out sound and triumphantly announce that it is "word x"! If you feel you are boring, force yourself to think on your feet so that you can comeback from every lull. And don't forget that conversations naturally pause. I used to have to interview people professionally, and one of the key things you can do is shut up for a few seconds. The other will want to fill the void, and then you capitalize. You can let them do the hard work. If you work with a teacher, they will be masters of this technique. About self-discipline: I don't have it. I just have boundless energy when motivated and this keeps me going. I stop when I don't and then I realise I need to sleep/eat/go to the bathroom/do some other useless chore. Which leads to very arhythmic and chaotic day plans, but I love it that way. Basically, what matters is getting things done. Some people schedule it down to the details, some don't. Find the method that suits you and then burn through your skills. Edited by tarvos on 26 May 2015 at 5:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5001 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 116 of 217 26 May 2015 at 6:25am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Yeah, I am one of those people who prefer to use many more words than just the hands-legs language, it might be a personality fault, I admit. My father is awesome at the latter, he can have a "conversation" and get things done in quite whichever language and he knows like 50 words of English and 10 Italian despite years spent on English. But the truth is that I get very frustrated when my vocabulary is not sufficient to cover my needs even roughly. And I've been in situations where the gesticulation heavy low-vocabulary conversation was really painful and complicated.
Sure the conversation pauses and you are not having a monologue. That's why I mention the need to have a larger passive vocabulary. The other side will carry their part but you need to understand them. I think the value of passive vocabulary for active skills tends to be underestimated sometimes. Yes, get the things done in whatever way you find to work. However, what I mind in those doom threads are a few mindsets I find potentially poisonous. 1.The approach "I don't want to learn too many words beforehand, because I might not need them" is, in my opinion, quite a bad approach to most kinds of learning. After all, why learn a foreign language you are not guaranteed to really need? This kind of thinking basically turns most htlalers into fools as we tend to be learning tons of things we might never trully need. 2.And frustrating yourself over not knowing all 100 uses of a very common word, that is unnecessary. I think some of the examples are as welltoo English centered, some of the common examples are rather specific to it. In some languages, you are better investing your time learning 10 various verbs than 10 uses of one. 3.The polarization. From what I read around htlal, vast majority of learners uses some kind of combination of methods, few are pure native inputits who wouldn't touch a course (and a language course is already a kind of wordlist in some ways) and even fewer are the srs hoarders who don't do anything else. 4.Some of the arguments used are often just arrogant or obvious strawmen. (btw I would find it offensive and would feel embarassed to just repeat the same thing over and over despite several successful polyglots having valid counterarguments.) 3.And particularily, the way sallard mixes in cefr levels and exams without having personal experience with them (perhaps someone else takes the skeleton of the closet sometimes as well but I cannot remember any other names now), that is just incorrect. I am not speaking about Quebec immigrant exams, JLPT, etc. I have information only about exams in my TLs. When it comes to those: Anyone who expects their vocabulary not to be evaluated (especially in the B and C levels) just because it is not counted and you are usually not given a list to memorize beforehand, is naive and likely to fail the exam if they count on such a myth too much. And the exams are not the only point in learning and life. Sometimes I feel I have less self-discipline and focus with every day passing. :-D Thanks for your support, Tarvos. Not being the only hard-to-find-a-routine one gives me hope 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 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 117 of 217 26 May 2015 at 6:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
By all means, prepare. Preparation never hurts. I don't do it because I am a lazy butt, but the two are not mutually exclusive. I find it horribly annoying having to gesticulate or sound like Tarzan, too - the reason I do it is because it is better than keeping my mouth shut when I need something. It's not a strategy to move forward, it's a strategy to cope while you move inwards to find a way to move forward. This way you can keep unwanted problems at bay for a while until you find the right way to say it. It's like using a blunt knife - you can't cut well with it, but by golly those vegetables need peeling and cutting! So you better cut the best way you can and in the meanwhile try and see if there's a sharp knife around.
No comprehension isn't always vocab. Often it's also poor ear training and pronunciation. More vocab helps, but if you don't know what that word sounds like you won't understand it in hearing. People need to train pronunciation and actively listening more. Very often in Mandarin, I know what the word is that is being said, just not its meaning (that you can look up with Pleco). I really advocate more speaking in this case because you are not getting used to actually listening for and using the language in a real context. Passive vocabulary will give you extra words when you recognize them, but you need to be able to pronounce them properly (including stress/tones!) when you want to hear them in speech. It's not an or/or situation. The and is important. Yes, get the things done in whatever way you find to work. However, what I mind in those doom threads are a few mindsets I find potentially poisonous.
I mostly skip jargon. I'm never going to actually need that. It's not that you don't need it; it's that it won't push you forward right now when you could be learning a useful word like "faire" and a few forms in French first. Because the "faire" will bring you a longer way than "vis-écrou". Unless you're a carpenter.
Sometimes, sometimes not. Depends on your life and context.
I hate categorizing, but one reason I seem so unstructured is because I don't think there's a method or approach, rather than a huge number of small ones to solve problems. When someone asks, can you cook, the answer isn't yes or no, straight up; it's "can I cook what exactly? Steak? Rice? Pancakes?". Because I can make most basic things but a good tournedos will still stretch me. And the times I do roast beef right make me proud, but I know it's just beginner's luck. No one is a pure this or that, they just have favourite tools based on context. And if someone looks through my log a bit they can find all of that info in there.
This is probably an attack at s_allard, but it's generally problematic of internet debates. The only way to respond is to not do it and leave them be. If they want to be deluded let them, you can't stop them.
I'm working on sitting the Russian C2 exam and the skills I use for it are different (I've honed them so I'm okay) but the thing is an exam situation is very contrived and requires a different approach and methodology. The problem is if you can only think in general terms and never see smaller situations then you will cut too broadly and never have a good solution for a specific problem. Language has much more in common with medicine and engineering than people think. We don't want to find a cure-all for cancer; we want to treat that damn cold right now. Or an allergy to peanuts etc. etc. etc.
No probs. By all means do ask yourself if you need a routine, though. Some people function best without it, and they achieve great results. Iversen is a prime example. Edited by tarvos on 26 May 2015 at 6:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6695 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 118 of 217 26 May 2015 at 10:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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I have lots of routines, like doing wordlists, copying texts with or without hyperliteral translations etc. etc. However I try to avoid having a fixed schedule. It is enough that I try to cover all my languages and all my methods within a reasonable time frame. I don't want to know that Thursday at. 19.47 is wordlist time in Greek or listening-like-a-bloodhound time in Serbian. But both activities should take place at least once during the next week or so.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 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 119 of 217 26 May 2015 at 10:10am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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By routine people mean the scheduled ones, that is what I meant. But I agree with you
wholeheartedly otherwise. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 120 of 217 26 May 2015 at 11:08am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
I've mostly been avoiding that thread like the plague, so thanks for confirming my suspicions :) I did look at a few recent posts out of curiosity the other day and it was the same bloody 300-words debate that's been done to death on several other threads. No thanks, I'll be out learning my languages while they all go around in circles and deliberately misinterpret each other's arguments. As usual my views are quite moderate: I think it's very important to master basic usage and many learners don't focus on it enough - more than enough learners know a lot of vocabulary yet struggle to express simple things and make tons of basic mistakes, and that includes myself at times - but at the same time, the basics only get you so far and you need more if you want to speak well in a variety of situations. But moderate opinions like mine are no fun in Internet debates! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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