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"I learned English from watching..." | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| liyulianyanyu Newbie China Joined 5371 days ago 10 posts - 11 votes Studies: English | Message 81 of 97 16 March 2010 at 3:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have learn English more or less ten years during schools.However,my English haven't been improved much.I can't speak very fluently.I am very sad.
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| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5736 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 82 of 97 16 March 2010 at 4:34am | IP Logged | |||||
That's been the same for most of us. Just keep going, reading and listening, and a bit of speaking and writing, and your English will get better and better :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5650 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 83 of 97 17 March 2010 at 3:13am | IP Logged | |||||
They say language is required to graduate and to enter college, but that's just a lie to get students to take the classes. I dropped Spanish within a week, got a high school diploma, and I'm a current college student. If my current major didn't require a foreign language, I could have gone all throughout school (high school and college) without ever learning a foreign language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 84 of 97 17 March 2010 at 3:33am | IP Logged | |||||
In my country, you have to take one language for 9 years (~1080 classroom hours) and another one for 7 years (~840 classroom hours) when you want to go to university afterwards; in the linguistic branch of such a school you have to take another one for 5 years. It just ... doesn't seem to be comparable. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5736 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 85 of 97 17 March 2010 at 5:28am | IP Logged | |||||
Is "your country" Spain or Germany? In Germany I had a lot less than that. Maybe 8 years of English, and 3 years of French. And since they scraped 13th grade, it's one year less of everything now, compared to me.. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 86 of 97 17 March 2010 at 9:25am | IP Logged | |||||
Germany, Baden-Württemberg. I also had additional classes in two voluntary languages, but in those I didn't learn much. At least in BW, they begun teaching English from grade 3 in a lot of primary schools recently. I'm not saying that the courses are fast-paced because other than for the second language leading to Abitur from grade 9 they aren't, but I wouldn't assume that the mandatory language classes in the US are very fast-paced either. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Frieza Triglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5354 days ago 102 posts - 137 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, French Studies: German | Message 87 of 97 16 April 2010 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Personally I've learnt some Italian by watching TV alone.
I'm able to understand most of what is said and sometimes words and phrases that I heard on TV just come to me on different contexts. I've been twice to Italy and was able to understand about 70% of what people told me and I could speak a little (just a very little bit) as well. However it's a language very similar to my own and French. I doubt I could it as effectively in a non-Romance language. Watching TV may be a good way for a first introduction to the language or to acquire more and more vocabulary once you've mastered the language to a reasonable degree, but I can't fathom how one could become fluent in a foreign language only by using this means. For once, it certainly doesn't teach you how to write. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 88 of 97 28 April 2010 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Fasten your seat belts, everyone, this is going to be a long one. I apologize in advance because I think this is going to sound really conceited but I just want to try to clear up for myself (and you) how I learnt English and maybe gain some insight into how this process took place and if it is really an effective way to learn a language. I've always claimed that I learnt English from watching films but after reading this thread I realise that that may be a little too simple, although I will still argue that it was my main source. I’m just going to explain this chronologically:
I had a head start; I’m from the Netherlands so not only is my native language quite similar to English, I also lived in a country where I came into contact with English often and from an early age. I remember watching American cartoons with Dutch subtitles and actively comparing what I heard to the subtitles, trying to figure out what the words meant. I have no memories of not understanding English, not a single one, which leads me to conclude that I must have had at least a basic passive knowledge of English by the time I was ten. This was the age at which I started learning English in school and I thought it was dreadfully boring. Having to learn simple words like carrot and parrot comes to my mind as well as having to match “you” with the correct form of the verb “to be.” I had really been looking forward to learning English but I was very disappointed with the way we were taught. Two years later I entered secondary school and though I won’t deny that I learnt some grammar and vocabulary in my first couple of years, I was still way ahead of my class. To illustrate: only a couple of months into my first year in secondary school my teacher gave me minus points for an assignment because she refused to believe I had written it myself. At thirteen I started watching a lot of films and since most of them were either American or British, they really helped expand my vocabulary and to develop a feel for grammar. Common expressions, different ways of saying things, American speech (since my school aimed at teaching us British English) and just a general ease of expression. I learned all of that from those films. At one point I switched from watching them with Dutch subtitles to watching them with English subtitles because I thought it would be good for my spelling. My best friend also spoke English and we often spoke it together to improve our conversational skills. I also read a lot of English from all sorts of casual speech on the internet to Pride and Prejudice, which I must have read a hundred times when I was fifteen. Meanwhile in school I breezed through my exams and assignments without any effort. Before an exam, I would revise the vocabulary, making sure I used the same definitions as the book and memorising the handful of words I hadn’t encountered before. I never learnt the tricks and rules they taught us about the grammar because they only distracted me. I always just filled in what sounded best to me. I eventually wrote my dissertation in English and graduated with an 8 for the subject. I now study English at university and writing essays and translating texts is relatively easy for me. All in all, I wouldn’t say I learnt English from TV alone. I think it gave me a basis that films and internet than built on and school occasionally added to as well. I think this kind of immersion is really effective but not exactly fast. It took me basically my entire life to get where I am now and my English is still far from perfect. I had all the time in the world when I was younger but I don’t anymore and I think neither do many of you on this forum so a more rigorous approach is probably more beneficial for anyone older than, say fifteen or sixteen. Edited by ReneeMona on 25 July 2010 at 11:21pm 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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