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Becoming fluent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 25 of 38 19 February 2010 at 12:42am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Let's get a bit technical. How to we achieve fluency? How do we change levels in the Spoken production skill of
the CEFR model? Everyone agrees that some form of massive spoken input in the target language is necessary, preferably through immersion in the country. But what specific techniques could one use outside in-country immersion? Many people recommend listening to radio and television in the target language. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is that often we don't always know what was said. So we don't even know what to look up in the dictionary. This can be very frustrating and rather inefficient. Instead, what I use a lot with great results is television shows with lots of dialogs. It could be soap operas, sitcoms, telenovelas, anything with dialogs. In North America, all these shows come with closed captions, subtitles that are more or less accurate transcriptions of what is actually being said. What I do is record a program that I like. Then I keep repeating a segment with the captions on until I know the dialog by heart. I look up any words that I don't understand and I figure out the grammar. Afterwards, I play the segment a few times without the captions. I speak aloud a dozen or more times until I think I've gotten it right. I may write down certain phrases in a little notebook that I carry around with me. Then I move on. This little excercise does a three things. First of all, it accustoms the ear to realistic spoken speech patterns. Remember that it's not the real thing. But it does give a relatively good idea of what the language sounds like. This is the basis for training the ear to hear the rhythm and intonation of entire phrases. Secondly, these dialogs illustrate very well the back and forth of conversations full of questions and answers. This is something that you'll never get by reading newspapers or novels. You'll hear people interacting in all kinds of situations. Something as simple as how to use the telephone can be learned very quickly this way. A third reason for using this technique is the fact that you will quickly develop a repertoire of stock phrases that you can use right away. I'm a firm believer that one should start very early on to imitate entire phrases even before totally understanding the grammar. This is the heart of this strategy. By learning these phrases, in fact we are learning model patterns that we can then adapt to different situations. This is all based on the fundamental principle that most everyday conversations use a limited range of words and grammatical patterns. We've all heard that one can get by in most languages with less than a 1000 words. It's very true. The big problem is that many of those words can be used in so many different contexts and idioms that complex shades of meanings can be conveyed with relatively few words. Think for example how the verb "to do" is used in English. The basic strategy then is to work on the fundamental or most frequent grammatical and vocabulary patterns. Then every thing will fall into place and when you go out into the real world, you'll hear these patterns and you'll be able to use them. For the grammar in particular, I think that an hour of this kind of television programming probably contains all the essential grammar of a spoken language. This means that If you were to learn by heart an hour's worth of dialog, you would probably have captured nearly all the grammar for most everyday conversations. O.K., I may be exagerating a bit, but the point is to concentrate on mastering a few basic forms and use them over and over again. The one caveat that I might make in all of this is that one has to be aware of regional or dialectal differences. Spanish, Mexican, Columbian and Argentinian telenovelas have distinctive linguistic features. One should keep this in mind when transferring to real-life situations. Edited by s_allard on 19 February 2010 at 3:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5424 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 26 of 38 19 February 2010 at 1:49am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Also, speaking of words nonnative English speakers use that I would have to look up, I like how you used pedantic. I guessed it's definition from context, though, so I guess I don't need to look it up. I'd like to think of myself as confident, at least around people that I know. A stranger, I might be less confident with some things, but with friends I say stuff in Spanish that is worded terribly all the time (they then proceed to correct me). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5587 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 27 of 38 19 February 2010 at 2:22am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
There is not ONE Spanish speaking student at my school. It's painful. We have an Italian, a Brazilian, and Swede and a couple Germans. No Spanish speakers :( 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Felidae Diglot Newbie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5409 days ago 28 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: French | Message 28 of 38 19 February 2010 at 2:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I meant relative to an excessive degree and not relative as well.
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| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5868 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 29 of 38 19 February 2010 at 3:39am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I see from your profile that you are native French-speaking, and that you are interested in Spanish and Portuguese. But you don't mention English. You seem to have native fluency in English. Did you grow up bilingual? It would be interesting to hear about your path to fluency in English. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 30 of 38 19 February 2010 at 4:12am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Although I come from a French-speaking home, I attented elementary and high school in English. Then on to
university in French. I've worked in both languages and feel equally comfortable in both (CEFR C2 across the board). I wish I could say the same about my Spanish. I've dabbled in a few other languages, but I don't dare put them down on paper. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5424 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 31 of 38 19 February 2010 at 5:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Wow, that kind of sucks. My school has a good number of minorities, I've heard it's about 50% white 50% minority, which is believeable. I would guess that 50% minority is comprised of 30% black and 20% Hispanic, of course with other students such as Asians, Indians, etc, but not a large amount. I guess that's what's good about living in the South, where, as to put it like some people do down here, "Those damn Mexicans are takin over." But yeah, I guess I've never really noticed the linguistic opportunities at my school. At least you have students to practice your Italian and German with. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| hypersport Senior Member United States Joined 5883 days ago 216 posts - 307 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 32 of 38 19 February 2010 at 6:49am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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s allard: You've got the right approach. Using dvd's in the target language can be a really effective tool. It's a lot of work and can be done several different ways, but well worth the time. A good way to train your ear to real spoken language with idioms, slangs, etc.
One thing I won't do is use English subtitles but or course early on I had to. Reading novels one after the other quickly builds vocabulary to the point where you can drop all the English. If there is something I can't understand, I'll pause, turn on the Spanish subtitles and replay the scene. Rarely do the subtitles match the spoken dialog but there is a benefit there as you can learn two different ways to express the same idea. If I get a dvd with only English and French audio but the option for Spanish subtitles is there, I'll play the audio in French (I don't know French) and I'll read the subtitles in Spanish. This is a great way to use the dvd too, you can get the emotion from the scene in the voices, but you can only understand what you're reading in Spanish. This is much more beneficial than if the movie was playing in English and I was trying to read the Spanish, it's an unnecessary distraction. You would need another language for the audio, but you get the point. Reading is just as important. I started with children's books and worked my way up to novels. I always have a book that I'm reading and I usually can read 95% of it out loud. Sometimes in public places I have to keep quiet. Yeah, this is more work (out loud) but it's necessary. If you've already developed good pronunciation, you know when you need to go back and re-read a sentence. This helps perfect pronunciation, intonation, and natural sounding speech. Think about how you read in English, you know when reading in Spanish feels the same...this is the goal as this will transfer over to real conversations with native speakers. When watching the news or a tv show in Spanish, repeat and parrot sentences that you hear all the time. My tv is on in Spanish all the time, I've got about 35 Spanish channels and about 25 English channels so I can always find something on that interests me in Spanish. When you hear something that catches your attention, repeat it until you own it. I do this all the time...it can be an interview with a political figure or the weather or a movie review, or anything. It's all useful. When you see a Spanish music video that you like, go to youtube and find it, then google the lyrics and pull them up. Then study the lyrics while you listen to the song and sing with them, use the song you like as another tool. Anytime you have time that you can listen to podcasts or audiobooks in Spanish, do it. If your job permits it and you can still do your job, listen for the full 8hrs. When doing housework, washing your car, at the gym, etc. Just keep the Spanish in your ear as much as possible. When you're listening to an interview or a great conversation with your ipod, pause and repeat chunks until you own them at the same speed and intonation as the native speakers. Then try and speak over them during real time for the entire conversation, you have to be able to kind of hear them and tune them out at the same time so you can hear yourself speaking too, this takes some work but is really beneficial. Always be translating to Spanish...when you hear something in English, translate it. When you read something, try to translate it. When you find something that you can't translate write it all down when you get home. Start from the top of exactly what you want to say and start writing it in Spanish. Look stuff up if you have to, but get it to where it sounds correct and then repeat it over and over again until you own it. Think of stories that you can tell and try to tell them in Spanish...out loud to yourself imagining that a friend is listening with interest. When you get stuck, write it down, get the entire story down in Spanish and read it over and over again out loud, this will transfer over into other conversations too. Force yourself to think in Spanish. When you get up in the morning and look at the clock, tell yourself in Spanish that you need to get up, that it's 5:00, etc. When you think of something that you have to go do, repeat the thoughts in your head in Spanish. Try to find opportunities to use the language, you have to speak to get good. You will make mistakes and you will know it, but then later you can repeat the entire conversation out loud to yourself and perfect it. I don't know how many Spanish speakers you come across where you're at. Where I'm at there's a lot of Spanish spoken all around. I've made lots of Mexican friends so the opportunities to speak are always there. If it's there, take advantage of it. If you've already got a good base, you can do all of these things and create your own immersion. If not, do a couple of courses and get a base. Start writing everything as you learn, pull stuff apart and really learn it. When I started I did Rosetta Stone first, and then I found LSLC. I did that thing over 30 times start to finish while waiting for volume 2 to come out. I would use the pause button during the opening dialogs and write every sentence on paper until I had it down, this assured me that I was hearing everything and understanding it. When I first started listening to podcasts at Spanishpod I did the same thing, I would write the entire dialog down using the pause button. Making your own transcripts this way will really pound stuff into your head, and writing with a pencil instead of typing helps too I think, getting all of the accents and punctuation right. Writing is powerful and should be done. These are some of the things that I have done and continue to do to make myself fluent. Everything I have learned to this point has been self taught or taught to me by natives when I ask them questions. All of this here in the states. Edited by hypersport on 19 February 2010 at 6:52am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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