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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Lindley Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Ukraine Joined 6072 days ago 104 posts - 109 votes  Speaks: Russian*, Ukrainian*, English Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 26 of 164 25 March 2009 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Does one have to be registered on this site? No matter what language I choose, I just see a sample insta-class file. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| SlickAs Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5878 days ago 185 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Swedish Studies: Thai, Vietnamese | Message 28 of 164 25 March 2009 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have used L-R as an experiment in a language I know (French). I used a book I read in English (Les Liaisons Dangereuses), that I had also read in French, and seen the movies "Dangerous Liasons" and "Cruel Intentions" (so I know the text well). I already owned the book in both languages. And the audio was free to download, read by professional actors.
I found the exercise valueable. definitely a pleasurable way to spend some hours with your language, and I guess that is the key. But even at an advanced level, knowing how the story goes next, I felt it only valueable for marginal vocabulary and linking spelling to pronunciation. Like marginal. So I admit it was not a fair test (with a language I don't know), and I will definitely use it again (because it is a nice way of spending some hours with your language), but for me, I am not entirely impressed (as if it is some revolutionary technique). But I am not prepared to call it dead. In my coming trip to Vietnam I will buy a translation of something (and why not "Les Liaisons Dangereuses") ... the old Polyglots learned from the Bibles ... if they know the bible back-to-front and can recite any passage then when they hear in another language "And on the first day God said let there be light, and there was light" or however it goes and just listen to a receitation in whatever language while knowing the text in their own, I dont see how that is particulary different in theory than L-R. So I am open to it, and will give it another try. But I definitely can't see it working in beginner stages of an unrelated language (I tried to read along with the English while listening to the Vietnamese gave me nothing even from Colloqial and TYS, even though I read through while listening to the thing 5 or 6 times, reading the English, then reading the Vietnamese then reading the English again. This is essentially what Professor Argueles recommends and is not so different. I got nothing. Really Zip. It did not even make FSI, or Pimsleur easier). Edited by SlickAs on 25 March 2009 at 4:34pm 1 person has 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 29 of 164 25 March 2009 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
But in this case you are the teacher. You have given instructions to the learner. And in a very real sense, you have given instructions to yourself and failed to follow them, instead opting for a strategy that works. It's all well and good to talk multitasking and claim it's a transparent process to the user, but maybe it's not. It was to you, but will be some people who spot that their eyes are drifting ahead, or lagging behind, or doing quick sprints during pauses... whatever, and force themselves to match the pace of the recording -- those same conscientious students that I mentioned before, the ones who notice that their fingers are drifting apart and close them, the ones who notice that they're letting their arms move in straight lines and force themselves to trace an S in the water, they'll try to do exactly what you say. This is what I don't like. You say there's no underwater camera for introspection, but there is! I don't have it, you don't have it, but many universities and research institutes have it. It's a battery of measurements of eye-moment, reaction times, brain activations, and it tells us things about what is and isn't possible. My local swimming pool doesn't have a chase cam. I've never seen myself swim, and I don't think my childhood swimming teacher ever saw himself swim either. But we can both benefit from the research that other people have already done -- we don't go by conjecture, opinion or "anecdotal evidence" (an oxymoron) in swimming, why should we do so in learning when there is good empirical evidence to the contrary?
What do you mean by "two note systems"? Do you mean chords? Chords/harmonies/counterpoints split across staves? All of a sudden we're going into some pretty deep questions. Does a piano player experience a chord as a single "word" or a series of "letters"...? Notes as sound aren't independent, after all, so why should written notes be? 1 person has 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 30 of 164 25 March 2009 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It's not that I'm sure that it doesn't work, it's that I have no reason to believe that it does, and I have reason to doubt the testimony of people who claim it does: nobody really knows what they are doing, and if you don't know what you are doing, how can you tell me? 1 person has 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 31 of 164 25 March 2009 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Going back to Volte's first post:
When it comes to learning activities, "how" is often more important than "what". There are "exam techniques" that'll get you answering questions correctly, but that won't help you learn how to really speak a language. If I can't give a "how", I'm not keen on giving a "what". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 32 of 164 25 March 2009 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Me, a teacher? Gosh! I have written about my methods here in this forum, so in that sense I have acted as a teacher - my apologies for that. But I have always stressed that I have had only one test person - me - and that my methods won't suit everybody. However in spite of your claims I can't acknowledge that I have given instructions to myself (as a pupil) and failed to follow them, instead opting for a strategy that works. That's nonsense, - I have ordered myself to try out different techniques. Some worked, some didn't, and then I have told myself to use those techniques that worked insofar that I had the opportunity to do it. That's the good thing about being your own study counsellor and teacher and pupil in one person.
Of course you have a point there. There are lots of things that could be done to test different methods, and I do sincerely hope that somebody uses those instruments in experiments that really show something about the efficiency of different techniques. I may even trust that you know a lot about such reseach projects, and that you have seen something that really was worth the accolades. I can't say that I'm as lucky. Those few scientifically-looking reports that I have seen mostly focus on school children, not on self-study for adults, and in the few cases where I have seen something relevant for 'us' the methods that were investigated were rarely those that I would expect to be most efficient. For instance I have not in one single case seen a test of wordlists that went beyond the simple memorization of word pairs (target and translation) which I personally long ago have discarded as hopelessly inefficient. Likewise I still haven't seen any research concerning the value of ordinary parallel texts versus interlaced texts, or even the value of reading a translation while listening to the original version in an unknown language, which for better or worse is one of the main innovations in the L-R method. I wouldn't like to end up in the same situation as the man who saw a drunkard search for something under a street lamp. "What are you looking for" he asked. "My key", the other answered. Then the two men searched for at least an hour without finding anything. "Are you sure you lost the key here?", he then asked. "No, I lost it over there. But the light is better here" said the drunkard. I would be more than happy to see a lot of serious and relevant research results, because I'm always on the outlook for ways to improve my own learning. But so far the most relevant and msot useful sources have not been scientific in the strict sense, but more like common sense rationalizations based on the experience of somebody. And I'm not going to believe in the value of a research if it can't present usable results AND make them available to interested laymen like me. Scientific results in popular form are pouring from scientists in other field, but most of what I have seen from paid researchers within the pedagogical sector has mostly looked like an unhealthy cross between philosophy and political propaganda.
No I meant staves. A pianist can demonstrably switch between reading two staves and integrate the result into one set of instructions to his brain about the music his fingers has to play. If he couldn't do that on the fly then he couldn't play the music. A conductor or composer should be able to do the same thing with maybe 15-20 staves, but here it is easier to be sceptical - I know that I can do it, but you don't have to believe me because you can't hear me thinking the music. My point with this is that score reading is also heavily dependent on rapid switching, but the end result is one mental stream of music in the brain of the musician. And if a musician does rapid switching then a language learner might also be using that technique. Edited by Iversen on 26 March 2009 at 8:08pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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