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Tags: Listening-Reading (L-R) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6679 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 121 of 164 31 March 2009 at 7:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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hypersport, you may very well spend the rest of your life perfecting your Spanish, that's just excellent, but other people may want to be able to use more languages, even without NATIVE SUPER ELOQUENT FANTASTIC FLUENCY. Using them is, in my opinion, a very good starting point, plus it is kind of what language learning is all about for me; being able to function in multiple languages, to read first and foremost.
If some people can pick up a fair amount of the language to allow this by merely reading and listening to books (a very noble occupation, I must say), then that's great. I would like to point out that Slavic languages are just a *little bit* more complex than your average Romance one, and if I would have gotten Volte's results with Russian in the same amount of time, I would have been extremely happy. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 123 of 164 31 March 2009 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
In which case this "experiment" will never satisfy me, on the grounds that L-R is an undefined "method". Step 1: Have some undefined amount of knowledge of the language. Step 2: Read and listen. Now I've got to fall back on my general objection to immersive learning techniques: success in immersion appears to be directly related to previous experience. I mean, you see immersive courses quoting students with things like "I learned more Foreignese in 3 weeks with SuperWonderCourse than in 5 years of Foreignese classes at school!" This doesn't prove that SuperWonderCourse is suitable for beginners, but only proves that it's effective at 'activating' prior learning. (This is not a disproof of SuperWonderCourse's effectiveness for new learners, of course, but an argument against using such quotes as proof.) If L-R relies on prior knowledge, whether in the form of a closely related language or book study of the target language, then it looks to me like an activation strategy. Now we all know that learning new languages becomes easier with each new language learned. Why is this? I would suggest it's because we have a bigger store of "prior knowledge" -- patterns that can be reapplied and activated as appropriate to the language in question, and because it's easier to build new knowledge because we've done it before. Furthermore, as there's no such thing as a perfect course, we've all had to develop strategies (or have been fortunate enough to have been provided with strategies) to cope with suboptimal input. Has anyone had success with L-R without having had a couple of foreign languages under their belt? This all kicked off because Volte recommended L-R to a couple of people who I have to assume were basically monolingual. Goindol is not a blank slate -- he has already developed appropriate strategies. He has got this far and thus is not representative of the majority, who in general fail to learn foreign languages as adults. He won't prove anything useful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jimmymac Senior Member United Kingdom strange-lands.com/le Joined 6154 days ago 276 posts - 362 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 124 of 164 31 March 2009 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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What an absolute load of tripe this thread has become. Those of you who think 'L-R' could be of use then give it a good try, who knows, you might just find it useful (I know I have). Those of you who are sceptical will probably never try it nor will you be convinced into trying it unless 'science' tells you otherwise. Who cares either way!
This just seems like an argument with no end. Volte and company have L-R'd from scratch with 'success'. If anyone thinks they can replicate Volte's success with other methods then please voice up because I'm open minded enough to try it. Unsurprisingly there are plenty of critics but none have mentioned a method that will produce better results. She had around 40-50 hours of study in a matter of weeks with a relatively unrelated language and was able to understand correctly what was said to her by an unknown Pole on the bus. I cannot think of another 'method' that will achieve that. Imagine if she put in ten times that study. Are you really saying that wouldn't produce results? 500 hours of constant target audio with the native translation in front of your face feeding the pattern finding machine that is your brain. Caintear (and anyone else), stop comparing this to an 'immersion' experience. It is completely different. For one thing the word exposure is far higher during L-R and for another you have a constant translation feeding into the situation. Also, how can you possibly say that Goindol's 'experiment' won’t prove anything? If he/she does nothing but L-R and learns the target to a 'high' level then he/she has PROVEN that L-R can teach people languages. End of story. You mention the fact that the learner may already have developed appropriate learning strategies but let me tell you that when you L-R all so called strategies go out of the window. Your mind is working far to fast reading native text and rapidly switching to the audio to be utilizing learning strategies. If, however, you are referring to unconscious learning strategies that happen in an instant then I will challenge you to find one single person who doesn't already have some form of learning strategy that won't influence their results. All this talk of science is absolute rubbish. This is a site where people freely discuss language related topics including the methods they find most useful to them. How dare anyone call these people liars and demand scientific evidence. I understand that the 'creator' of L-R may not have helped the cause by claiming that they learned German in a week and that they could do the same with Japanese but for crying out loud people. Chill out. This person seemed partially sane at the best of times. That doesn't mean they haven't brought something useful to the table. This is the last I will say on the topic and unlike Cainntear I actually mean it. Edited by Jimmymac on 31 March 2009 at 4:24pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 125 of 164 31 March 2009 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The first time I said I was out unless anyone wanted to discuss any specific points I'd raised. I returned merely to clarify a misunderstanding and then I said we'd never agree and that I was done. However, when Goindol said:
what was I too do? Silence would have been interpreted as "shrinking into the shadows", but rejoining the debate led to your comment above. It's a classic fork -- I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't. Maybe I should have just put it like this: "If Goindol succeeds with L-R it is no different from Volte succeeding with L-R -- my objections to Volte as testimony would naturally extend to Goindol. It is not, then, that I am unwilling to engage with these issues, but that I see no reason to believe that the process of experimentation will yield any statistically reliable results, not least because the sample size is one." Edited by Cainntear on 31 March 2009 at 4:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Goindol Senior Member United States Joined 6075 days ago 165 posts - 203 votes | Message 126 of 164 31 March 2009 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Cainntear, I don't think that any outcome from this will be the last word on L-R, for some of the reasons you bring up. But falling short of publishable in a specialty journal doesn't mean it's useless, either.
The challenge I issued for you wasn't to keep doing what you have been doing, i.e. carp endlessly. It was for you and the others to come up with mutually satisfactory criteria for a necessarily limited experiment. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 127 of 164 31 March 2009 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I had already stopped (and I quote: "that's me done") precisely because there is no scope for agreement (and I quote: "We'll never get past this disagreement"). You challenged me, then, to do something I'd already said was impossible or to admit defeat and "shrink into the shadows". Sorry, but I'm just too pig-headed to accept that sort of slap in the face. You cast negative aspersions about my character and I will respond. But I would much rather discuss technical issues than personal ones. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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