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Moses McCormick’s admirable achievement | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| jondesousa Tetraglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/Zgg3nRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6263 days ago 227 posts - 297 votes  Speaks: English*, Portuguese, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Mandarin, Spanish | Message 25 of 221 25 December 2008 at 9:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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To Juan,
A good friend of mine is also studying Sanskirt and she is quite serious about learning it. I will see what kind of resources she suggests for you. I also recently stumbled across some Sanskrit grammars and dictionaries free online at google books. They are a tad bit dated, but it is free. To Moses, Thank you for your inspiration. I study languages as much as I can (3-5 hours per day) as a hobby and your achievements really have boosted my confidence that I can be successful in learning many more languages even with limited study opportunity. Unfortunately, I already looked at Google books for books on Wolof, but was unsuccessful in finding any. I would definitely recommend checking there for other free books (that are out of copyright). They can generally be found there scanned in their entirety and they don't cost anything. I recently read The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti there for free. I would highly recommend it to everyone as a good resource for hard to find study materials. Good luck to all and Happy Holidays, Jon 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Walshy Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6941 days ago 335 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German | Message 26 of 221 26 December 2008 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
You're welcome. One of the best things about this forum is the sharing of internet resources, over the years we've made some great finds. For future reference, I'll give you a rundown of the most useful (in my opinion) resources hat have popped up on this forum over the years: - SCOLA - Username: unOmaha_VS001, Password: Dodge_6001. SCOLA receives and retransmits TV and radio with transcripts and translations from up to 65 languages. The amount of material per language varies hugely, though. Not a good resource for beginners, of course. http://www.scola.org/eoneCommerce/Portal - FSI Language Courses, organised and run by one of the members of this forum - http://fsi-language-courses.com/ - GLOSS, I haven't used this myself, since it focuses on more exotic languages, but it appears to be similar to SCOLA except that it breaks the foreign-language material down and actually teaches it to you - http://gloss.lingnet.org/ Later. Edited by Walshy on 26 December 2008 at 9:21pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| laoshu505000 Senior Member United States Joined 5815 days ago 121 posts - 232 votes Speaks: English* | Message 27 of 221 27 December 2008 at 12:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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OMG DUDE! Man... I don't know what to say about this......I'm so glad I joined this site! Thanks again for these resources!
Moses McCormick
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| glidefloss Senior Member United States Joined 5967 days ago 138 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 28 of 221 28 December 2008 at 6:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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Moses, would you mind explaining your methods a little bit?
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| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7255 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 29 of 221 29 December 2008 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This thread is tending to go off on too many tangents so I will move the useful information about Wolof resources and Sanskrit study to other more easily identifiable threads and ask everyone to try to keep this thread centered upon welcoming Moses McCormick to our forum and discussing his learning methods and techniques with him.
In that respect, Mr. McCormick, it would be nice if you could share some more information with us. You mentioned that you delve into each new language with utmost intensity and often with all-day study, so I would be particularly curious if you could quantify an approximate number of total hours of study that it takes you from having 0 knowledge of a new foreign language to the point where you are able to make one of your videos. With the inspiration that you have provided by the proof of your accomplishments, I would not be surprised if a number of the more enthusiastic younger language lovers on this forum were able to attempt such feats as well – provided, of course, that they put in your intensity, your passion, and your fearlessness. I would also be curious to know what you yourself are learning as a learner – that is, do you study in the same fashion now that you did some years ago, or have you developed and innovated new or improved techniques? And speaking of continued learning, I would finally be curious to know what plans you have for graduate school. Alexander Arguelles 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| laoshu505000 Senior Member United States Joined 5815 days ago 121 posts - 232 votes Speaks: English* | Message 30 of 221 29 December 2008 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hello my friends,
Basically what I do is buy resources for whatever language I intend to study. For example, lets take Vietnamese. I will find me a good dictionary, good course which has all the essential things one would need when meeting a native of that language. I like to start off of course with pronunciation practice and alphabet. After I attain a strong foundation of how things are pronounced, I move on to the next essential thing- Salutations. I learn all salutations including introducing myself by telling people how old I am, where I'm from and what I do for a living. Most resources won't start off with this stuff from the first chapter so you would pretty much have to dig for this information. I set goals while learning. My first goal is to be able to introduce myself fully to a native speaker so I stick to that content until I'm able to do it fluently. I go to chat rooms to find a native speaker and practice what I've been working on. After doing it for several hours, it sticks and it's time to move on to the next goal which is being able to talk about family or whatever subject I choose to talk about. I like to make journals to practice this stuff as well. I also like to listen to the conversation dialogues to help my listening skills. Going to chat rooms to listen to natives speak in their language is another method I use for listening. You may not understand everything, but you will the more you do it. Watching foreign films is another good method for listening skills. I use youtube as another source to get feedback on my pronunciation. I choose a topic that I'm able to talk about for youtube.I stay away from reading scripts because it really won't help you that much. It will help you for pronunciation however.. I try and make it a real life situation as if I was really talking to a native speaker.As far as making a youtube video, anybody can make one at any level. You don't have to be advanced to make a video on youtube. I just use you tube as a tool for practicing my pronunciation and getting feedback from natives or anybody who has better knowledge than I have in that language. I must say it's helped me out a lot because I found myself pronouncing certain words incorrectly and I was able to fix that. That's another way of overcoming fear. You have to be relentless when it comes to this foreign language practice. I know sometimes I may sound weird or goofy, but hey..I'm learning right? Many people are too conscious of their mistakes which will take them even longer to learn a language. As far as time, it varies. I've just come up with this new method for my language study. I decided to choose 4 languages for 1 whole year. I will spend 3 months studying that particular language intensively until I'm at the high intermediate-low advanced level. That probably sounds crazy, but it can be done as long as you have the right resources and study your ass off. As far as hours, I'm not exactly sure how many for the languages that will be studied intensively, but for the ones I've studied in the past, I will spend at least 2-3 hours on that language. In that 3 hours I will also find the natives to practice with. The method I was using before was a bit different. I think this new method will probably be better. You have to make sure you're having fun while learning the language you intend to study. That's why I said, leaning a language in school isn't for everybody, because you have to stay in the box and go at the same pace as everybody else. For professor's question, I find myself learning new techniques. Maybe next year I will have come up with a new technique. As far as continued learning, I don't think I will be able to go to grad school after my undergrad due to expenses. I hope I've explained things clearly. I will be happy to answer anymore questions here. Thanks Moses McCormick Moses McCormick 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7255 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 31 of 221 30 December 2008 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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While you yourself obviously learn quite well without detailed record keeping, I think it would be of great assistance to those who might like to emulate what you can do to know just how much work is required in order to do it. So, if it does not rub entirely against your grain, I wonder if you could possibly keep an accurate count of just how many hours you put into Estonian or one of the other languages upon which you are now embarking? I am sure that there are others reading this who are both inspired by what you do and in awe of it; if they could know, upon viewing your Estonian video in the near future, that this is the fruit of X hours of intensive engagement, then this might give them a concrete standard against which to measure their own methods of learning.
Alexander Arguelles 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| laoshu505000 Senior Member United States Joined 5815 days ago 121 posts - 232 votes Speaks: English* | Message 32 of 221 31 December 2008 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I plan on studying the languages I've chosen intensively for at least 8 hours a day,or maybe more. I will do that for three months straight until I reach intermediate level. Perhaps there will be a video sooner than that to show my progress.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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