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Learning a language just to speak it | ||
Tags: Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5925 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 1 of 15 31 December 2009 at 5:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm interested in knowing how you would go about learning a language just to be able to speak it. Immersion is not an option. What method(s)/resources would you use? What's the most effective way to do this?
(Please feel free to point me to a thread if this has been done before. I did a brief search but couldn't find anything this specific) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Taihen Diglot Newbie Brazil Joined 5449 days ago 6 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Japanese Studies: English | Message 2 of 15 31 December 2009 at 5:31am | IP Logged | ||
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You should try www.lingq.com
If you don't like this method, I recommend you read what Steve Kaufmann says in his blog. It's about enjoy the languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| unityandoutside Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6016 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin, Mandarin | Message 3 of 15 31 December 2009 at 6:54am | IP Logged | ||
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I would think that it would sort of depend on how drastic the difference between the written and spoken forms of the language was. For a relatively phonetic language, such as Spanish or Dutch, written material could probably be of use in concert with listening and speaking practice. I've found that the more I improve my all around understanding of a language, particular elements of proficiency improve.
However, if you're intending to study a language with a large degree of difference between the written and spoken forms (due to a difficult writing system, like in Chinese, or a diglossia between written and spoken forms, like in Arabic), you'd be limited to pedagogical resources specifically targeted to learners who don't want to learn to write and whatever helpful native speakers you could find. FSI would seem to me to be a logical place to start. I find it critical to be able to write a language in some form to increase my retention, and also because my study habits consist largely through systematic wordlists and language study notebooks. So even if I only was not studying Hanzi as I studied Mandarin, I would probably still do a lot of writing in pinyin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6374 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 15 31 December 2009 at 9:37am | IP Logged | ||
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What a repulsive and terribly limiting experience that would be.
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| pookiebear79 Groupie United States Joined 6032 days ago 76 posts - 142 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Swedish, Italian | Message 5 of 15 31 December 2009 at 11:06am | IP Logged | ||
While limiting oneself to only one or two parts of language (only the spoken language, only the written language, etc.) isn't everyone's cup of tea, I wouldn't necessarily call it "repulsive." Many people learn a language only to be able to read literature, so I don't see seeking only seeking oral proficiency any worse than that. Of course, in many cases this situation is unavoidable..."dead" languages which survive in written form but are no longer "living" in oral form, or the opposite case in which a language is traditionally a spoken, not written one. (Or in countries where people are only "literate" in the majority language which is used in schools and business, but their daily language is a dialect or minority language that they only speak, not read or write.) I guess what I'm saying is, I don't see this as such a strange or rare thing as it may seem...even in the case of a language which exists in written and spoken form, while it may seem limited, I can think of several cases where it may make sense for a person to just focus on the spoken language. A few I can think of would be needing to be able to speak with coworkers who speak that language but not the language of wherever they're living, or someone who needs the language to speak to their foreign inlaws or relatives, and that suits their needs without studying for additional years to be able to read literature or write dissertations in that language when they have no need or desire to do so. Verbal only (or written only, for that matter) doesn't appeal to me personally for any of the languages I study, but I can certainly see where it would be a different case for others. As for suggestions for the OP: Everything I'm going to suggest is pretty basic, certainly nothing earth shattering here, but it seems to me an all audio course (Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, etc.) for learning the very basic bones of the language, followed by working with a native speaker (i.e. on voice chat/skype) would be a reasonable way to go if you're only aiming for the spoken language, as well as listening to tons of radio/TV/films in the target language. Even if you're only interested in being able to speak the language in the long run, at the beginning stages it may not be a bad idea to use a book/audio course like assimil, etc. anyway, because you still need to learn the basics of the language. If the concern is that a language has a "difficult" writing system to learn, there are some courses (especially "conversational" types) which are all Romanized, even though people definitely look down their nose at this practice. Anyway, that's just my take on the question. You mentioned no "immersion" (I assume you meant in country immersion,) but I think native speakers to help you along would then be a very necessary component in this case, more so than if you were using more traditional/comprehensive study components. Edited by pookiebear79 on 31 December 2009 at 11:09am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| wildweathel Newbie United States Joined 5565 days ago 32 posts - 71 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Japanese | Message 6 of 15 31 December 2009 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | ||
First, if you want to integrate into a literate society, you need to be able to read in order to speak well. I'm going to assume you either are interested in a culture with limited literacy, or you don't want to speak at a very high level. There's an important difference between saying "I won't learn how to read," and "I don't care how bad my reading is, as long as I can speak." The first closes a lot of doors that should stay open: reference books, text+audio courses, flashcards, handwritten notes, etc. The second is an entirely reasonable preference. If you just care about speaking, you should do extensive listening without extensive reading: podcasts and audiobooks and movies and whatever else you want to understand someday. Ideally, you'd be able to interact with people using your target language for a good part of the day and listen to audio for the rest--but if immersion isn't possible, do as much as possible. As far as courses and reference materials: see what's available in phonetic and latinized writing, and maybe also the native script--you might decide you need literacy after all. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 15 01 January 2010 at 11:34am | IP Logged | ||
6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6438 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 15 01 January 2010 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | ||
My father learnt to speak Thai when he was in Thailand, with tones and everything. but he never studied the script. People have different purposes for learning languages. Just because someone chooses not to study certain aspects of a language, doesn't mean that their attitude is repulsive, even if that "aspect" happens to be the written language. I think not delving into your target language's literature is a real pity, but that doesn't mean that I would find people who don't read novel repulsive. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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