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Learning a language just to speak it | ||
Tags: Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Snesgamer Groupie Afghanistan Joined 6613 days ago 81 posts - 90 votes  Studies: English*, German, Spanish, Norwegian, Scottish Gaelic | Message 9 of 15 04 January 2010 at 8:27am | IP Logged |
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I'm not going to be as condescending as some have been, but I'm just going to suggest that being able to read your target language is extremely useful for bolstering your vocabulary as well as ingraining some of the grammatical nuances of the language you're going to speak. Reading a language's literature is sometimes useful for improving yourself in the absence of having someone available to speak with.
All I'm suggesting is, you should give yourself all the tools that could be useful in reaching your end goal, and learning how to read could very well be one of them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6044 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 10 of 15 04 January 2010 at 9:09am | IP Logged |
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You can always just develop your reading skills. Reading on it's own is fairly easy in all European languages. For example, I can read French but would never be able to write anything correctly.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 11 of 15 04 January 2010 at 4:00pm | IP Logged |
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Learning a language only for speaking makes sense if you are living in a place where you have to communicate a lot with the locals, but this is also a limitation: without constant access to native speakers you will loose it. Learn to read and any book or the internet can be used to keep it alive.
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| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5925 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 12 of 15 05 January 2010 at 7:07am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the interesting responses. I had no idea this would be so controversial. I'm not exactly planning to learn a language just to speak it. I'm more interested in what gets a learner speaking a language when immersion isn't a possibility. Can you go straight to it or is it the product of the other skills? Children speak first, after all but perhaps more out of necessity than choice.
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| lorsque Groupie Canada Joined 5441 days ago 64 posts - 67 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 13 of 15 05 January 2010 at 10:44am | IP Logged |
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Children listen first. Once they have enough exposure than they speak. They may make baby sounds here and there but they really are making sounds that are in the language. They do this in a progressive manner.
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| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6153 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 14 of 15 05 January 2010 at 11:18am | IP Logged |
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Like many others, my language learning endeavours were tainted by my experience in school. In French at school, we mainly concentrated on the written language, which worked well for a classroom situation. However, once in the country I realised my speaking ability and my pronunciation were abyssmal.
After a long break from language learning, I returned to study with a totally different focus. Instead of concentrating on the written language, I would concentrate almost completely on developing an ability to speak the language. Using standard material such as Teach Yourself didn't help much. It wasn't until I discovered the Michel Thomas courses did I finally develop an ability to manipulate a language without recourse to visual aids, such as writing. I hadn't realised that my ability to write was quite divorced from my ability to speak. After Michel Thomas, which doesn't use native speakers, I started using Assimil. These courses contained more authentic audio than the majority of standard courses. Assimil was beneficial, but for me, it lacks the spoken exercises that helped in manipulating the language. My final discovery was the FSI courses which I've found the best for learning to speak a language. The sheer volume of recorded material means you hear and practice nearly all aspects of a given language. I found the best way to use the courses is to listen and practice while walking or doing some other activity. I can't imagine using them in their original language lab setting. I'd probably fall fast asleep. I've found that manipulating a language entirely in my head, gets me closer to thinking in the language. If I write it down, I tend to translate between it and my native language. I know others, such as Iversen, can think in the language while writing, but I currently lack this ability unless I can speak it first. Edited by DaraghM on 05 January 2010 at 11:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jerrypettit Groupie United States Joined 6028 days ago 79 posts - 103 votes Speaks: English* | Message 15 of 15 16 January 2010 at 8:12pm | IP Logged |
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I am more interested in speaking than reading/writing so although I'm working on all of that, I am EMPHASIZING the speaking.
After a lot of experimentation, I have found that what is most efficient for me is to listen to Pimsleur (or whatever) in a sound editor (I use Sound Forge--Audacity is free), and chop out the phrases that I don't know, convert to mp3, and input into Supermemo (Anki is free). I am learning MULTIPLES faster now, compared to just listening to the Pimsleur--and it is much more interesting, as the SRS (spaced repetition software) software repeats the phrases optimally. I truly believe I am learning 3 or 4 times faster than before. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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