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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Ortho Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6348 days ago 58 posts - 60 votes  | Message 105 of 164 30 March 2009 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
If you can divide all the words up and know what each word means, I have a very difficult time believing that you wouldn't have comprehension levels above 90%. Yes, it is true that idiomatic language or sarcasm makes up the rest and that that couldn't be understood, but that's a relatively small part of the language. I don't like your example sentence because you've taken a very simple shape and just added some unknown nouns to the end. As most people might not know the words for the all trees in their native language, this is a situation where you lose the least meaning in not knowing them. Something pulled from wikipedia's front page at random:
It's much more difficult to miss a word or two here and still know what they're talking about. Your sensation of getting the gist in this sentence will be much weaker than where someone is reading off a list of trees. I didn't pick this sentence to be difficult, my basic point is if you knew the words (university, discovery, china, electronic, computers, countries), which is reasonably advanced, you'd _still_ probably get the gist of the sentence wrong. Worse, I don't understand (and I'm not attacking you, it's just a problem of mine in general) how the learner is in any kind of reasonable position to judge how much of the gist of things he's getting at the time. Without knowing the language or translating into L1, there is an unknown, possibly very large amount of meaning lost.
Yeah, I disagree with this. I think that one would have extracted some information from the passage, but not understood it. Or to be more precise, one _might_ have understood it but wouldn't know how much unknown information got left in the passage.
I think that this is a different problem. Because you already understand English you could immediately restate or paraphrase the sentence including the unknown word or a reasonable sound approximation of it, because you know all the other words in the sentence. I don't think that one has to understand anything like 100% to define it as "understanding", but the percentage has to be high. I personally would have a very difficult time with anything less than, say 75% known stuff at an extreme as equaling understanding. It has to be a couple of things you don't understand in a sea of things that you do, not the other way around.
I apologise if I gave the impression of attacking your Polish level (your specific claim above was that you could understand polish tv in a few dozen hours), just to share my thoughts about whether the stuff you listed above met my own definition of "understanding." Perhaps some of this is due to my French study, where it seems like some tiny thing that I miss is the thing that totally changed the meaning of what was said. I go back months later and find I had it wrong. I'm also reading a really idiomatic book in French right now for the second time and wondering how I could have thought that I understood it the first time six months ago. Edited by Ortho on 30 March 2009 at 7:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Goindol Senior Member United States Joined 6072 days ago 165 posts - 203 votes | Message 106 of 164 30 March 2009 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I'm willing to serve as a guinea pig to learn a language from scratch using the L-R method. In order for this to take place, there should be rules that the L-R skeptics agree to, and I will need suitable text and audio. The challenge can be in any language. I have no background in any Germanic (save English) or Slavic languages, so perhaps one of those. L1 text should be in English. During the challenge, I will keep a daily log and answer any questions.
The only thing I ask is that the text be something I wouldn't object to reading. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 107 of 164 30 March 2009 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"Knowing what each word means" is my weak point here. In the Wikipedia articles I randomly chose, there were a ton of medical terms I'd never seen before (for things like scoliosis, various joints in the body, etc). My Polish vocabulary is rather idiosyncratic. As for how important idiomatic language and sarcasm are for understanding: it depends entirely on the material. For some things (like non-juvenile humor) it's vital; for others (like what I usually care most about, information extraction from factual material) they can be almost entirely ignored. Cultural references are also important; if there's some satire in English based on something I haven't heard of, I may well not understand it, despite knowing all the words. My (passive) Polish vocabulary is significantly weaker at this point than it used to be: intensity works, if you follow up on it. Middling intensity followed by ignoring something lays the ground to re-learn it faster, but doesn't lead to great retention - at least for me.
Some meaning is lost, yes - but it's usually not critical meaning. If you see that sentence in the middle of a novel, odds are tremendously overwhelming that missing X and Y won't impact your ability to follow the plot, or enjoy the novel.
I don't think that's a difficult sentence - that is, in the languages I claim a 'rough' reading level in, I'd expect to be able to make a good guess as to whether it was critical for what I was trying to do, understand it, or understand it after looking up a few words. The subject matter helps here, as I've read a moderate amount about botnets. A similar structure with content about medicine would be much more likely to confuse me.
This is where meta-skills help. For technical information: - is it in agreement with what you already know? (reading articles about things you know well is much easier - it lets you immediately discard most things which would seem like plausible interpretations due to weaknesses in your knowledge of the language) - if it's a technical problem, does your understanding of the solution actually work? In general: - is the understanding you're getting from it internally consistent and coherent? For novels: - does there appear to be a plot? Do the actions seem plausible? (These tests will fail for some types of experimental/absurdist/etc literature - but I'm not going to appreciate those in languages I'm not properly fluent in anyhow). I can usually make very good guesses as to how much meaning I'm losing. It's not infallible.
Again, my main purpose is usually information extraction. To name an extreme example: about 8 years ago, I wanted to figure out the horizontal and vertical refresh rates for my monitor. I grabbed the nearest copy of my monitor manual, which was in Chinese. I knew exactly 0 characters at that point - it was years before I started looking at Japanese. Fortunately, the appropriate numbers were in Arabic numerals; working from the structure of the manual and my knowledge of the approximate range the numbers had to be in, I found the right numbers on the first try. How do I know they were the right numbers? X11 worked, at the right resolution, on my monitor. I'm not going to claim I know Chinese, or that I have a reading knowledge of it - I don't - but this is the type of thing I care about being able to do. For Polish, my main interest has been reading linguistic-related stuff: so, for instance, I've learned words like 'consonant' and 'unvoiced' (sometimes inferring them from context). The most difficult stuff I've read and would claim to understand in Polish was 'the gist' (which has been linked to repeatedly on this forum, so other people can look at it) - I missed a lot (such as every single pun or word play in it), but relatively easily understood major parts of it as well.
I can't always immediately rephrase or paraphrase; it depends on the material. If it's highly technical (say, from a medical journal), highly archaic (pre-Chaucer), etc, odds are much worse. My point is simply that understanding languages is a continuum. I'll agree with you that 75% is not entirely unreasonable as a benchmark. "A couple of things I don't understand in a sea of things I do" accurately describes my French/Spanish comprehension (in general - things like comedy in the languages are another matter), may or may not describe my German comprehension (it depends on the material - "Turkisch fur Anfaenger" or newspapers aren't all that difficult, while literary novels are), and is extremely material-dependent for my Russian and Polish - I'm weak enough at them that having a large percentage of the terms or concepts be technical can be enough to push me up to understanding.
I did understand it; I don't remember the details now. I watched a few minutes each on three stations - one was a trivial soap opera (very simple interaction, in this particular case - nothing that would be all that out of place in mass-market pop music), one a documentary (lots of nice cognates), and one a news program (simple, short segments, high-register so easier to understand, etc). As for some tiny thing one misses totally changing the meaning: yes, that happens. I've just been wading through languages I have very little base in for long enough to have a relatively good - not perfect - idea of when that's happening or not happening. Edited by Volte on 30 March 2009 at 7:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 108 of 164 30 March 2009 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
If you're interested in Hungarian, I've prepared what I believe is suitable material (all of the source material is freely and legally available online, from MEK, Project Gutenberg, or the Internet Archive) - I just need to confirm that the audiobooks are unabridged. If you'd prefer another language, I'll do what I can to help, but I don't have as many materials that I can redistribute. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6676 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 109 of 164 30 March 2009 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Please do, it would be very interesting! Start a log in the log forum (and tell us when you do) and tell us about the progress. If I only had any free time, I would do it "properly" as well with Hungarian (a language I know very little of), but at the moment I have max 1h a day to use for it, so there's no point. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Goindol Senior Member United States Joined 6072 days ago 165 posts - 203 votes | Message 110 of 164 30 March 2009 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Volte, Hungarian is fine. Any language is fine. For an absolute beginner like me, I understand that an interlinear text would be necessary. Other than that, the text just has to be something I would find worthwhile. It would also be nice if the text were recorded by a professional, to give proper shaping and inflections to words and sentences.
Before deciding on the language or text, broad guidelines for the challenge should be established to satisfy both the L-R advocates and skeptics. Is there a timeframe? A minimum or maximum number of hours per day I should spend on L-R? Is it permitted to get a broad overview of the target language's grammar beforehand? Ask specific questions about the language during the challenge? I know from firsthand experience that it is much easier to tear down than to build. I hope the skeptics will engage with these issues and not shrink into the shadows. Edited by Goindol on 30 March 2009 at 8:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jimmymac Senior Member United Kingdom strange-lands.com/le Joined 6151 days ago 276 posts - 362 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 111 of 164 30 March 2009 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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If anyone is interested I am attempting to learn portuguese next week not quite from scratch (done 15 hours of Pimsleur) using L-R. Here is the link to my log L-R log. I've never L-R'd so early on a language so I'm as curious as any to see what comes to pass.
Feel free to pop in for a chat. Edited by Jimmymac on 30 March 2009 at 9:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jimmymac Senior Member United Kingdom strange-lands.com/le Joined 6151 days ago 276 posts - 362 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 112 of 164 30 March 2009 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I would just like to add a link to Adrean's journal. It is obviously very relevant to this thread Adreans journal
1 person has voted this message useful |
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