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The Schliemann Experiment | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Hashimi Senior Member Oman Joined 6249 days ago 362 posts - 529 votes  Speaks: Arabic (Written)* Studies: English, Japanese | Message 17 of 38 22 September 2010 at 1:06am | IP Logged | ||
An excellent tool for this: http://www.productivity501.com/how-to-memorize-verbatim-text /294/ 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7093 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 18 of 38 22 September 2010 at 9:10am | IP Logged | ||
Yes. But actually I should have put this in my original post - there's a much simpler one provided in the comments further down: http://www.downes.ca/memorization.htm Do a File/Save As and you have it locally as well. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5425 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 19 of 38 25 September 2010 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Week 2
It feels like the project has only really started this week. One reason for this impression is the fact that I stopped wondering whether I've finally gone insane taking on such an absurd task as learning a book by heart. I'm not wondering anymore -- I know it now. I'll try to get as close as possible to my goal and then we'll see. Failure is not an option. It's a lifestyle. The other reason for the impression mentioned above is that this Wednesday the delivery from ozon.ru with the printed book arrived. I wanted to have the Russian text in a hardcover book, because everything else seemed inappropriate. And I really like this volume: simple but not cheap paper, just the plain text, no forewords and afterwords that nobody reads anyway, the perfect font size and line distance, and a simple cover in earthy colors. So what did I do this week? I stopped L-R, because I can roughly follow the whole recording without looking at the text. My knowledge of the original text seems to have a big impact here, because most of the Russian vocabulary is unknown to me. The words that occur most often start to sink in, but often don't know exactly how they are spelled. Apart from that, I get many verbs only in conjugated forms and don't know the infinitive. The same happens with many nouns, where I often know several declined forms but not the nominative. This feels quite strange, and this week I often looked words up in order to find out their basic forms. This takes a lot of time, and I think it partially defeats the purpose of learning words from their context, but I couldn't help it. I read out the text as well as I could, which means: not very well. The amount of new vocabulary is overwhelming. Sometimes I feel like a force-fed French goose. This is the drawback of not using a normal language course, where you get new words in easily digestible doses. The other side of the coin is that with a real book the amount of new words should decrease exponentially as you go ahead. I'm also getting a lot of gerunds and participles (and Russian has a whole bunch of them), and I'm always tempted to look them up to get an idea of the other forms of the verb. It feels right to do this, but it will slow me down quite a bit. Learning the text by heart is not a problem, but digesting the vocabulary is. Once I know all the words in a sentence well enough then I also know the sentence by heart. When reading out I have to go very slow. I don't see how it could do any good to stumble across long words that I don't know well enough. Similar to practicing on a musical instrument, I think doing it as slowly as necessary is the key. Speed will come on its own. Quality over quantity. This also means that shadowing is possible only with isolated sentences at the moment. I can't keep up with the recording for more than a few lines. Quote of the week This week it's not going to be a tricky phrase but the one that the publisher of the Russian book chose to print as a motto on the cover: 
Я хотел бы одарять и наделять до тех пор, пока мудрые среди людей не стали бы опять радоваться безумству своему, а бедные -- богатству своему. Ich möchte verschenken und austeilen, bis die Weisen unter den Menschen wieder einmal ihrer Torheit und die Armen einmal ihres Reichtums froh geworden sind. I should like to bestow and distribute, until the wise among human beings once again become glad of their folly and the poor once again of their riches. (Parkes) J'aimerais prodiguer et distribuer, jusqu'à ce que les sages parmi les hommes, à nouveau, se réjouissent de leur folie et que les pauvres soient heureux de leur richesse. (Goldschmidt) Jag skulle vilja skänka och dela ut tills de visa bland människorna återigen blivit glada över sin dårskap, och de fattiga glada över sin rikedom. (Teratologen) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5425 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 20 of 38 02 October 2010 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Week 3
This week I didn't put in as much time as I had planned because of some turbulences: my bike was stolen. I had bought it only 2 months ago and it was more of a Pegasus than a bicycle with its white frame, white saddle, and white handlebars. Next week I still have to take the bus to work until I can fetch a new bike from the shop, but this is one more opportunity to use my mp3 player. Despite all of this, I made some progress. Shadowing is already a lot easier, at least after I've gone through a chapter several times slowly. I didn't write anything this week. Maybe I should do this more often, at least for expressions that are hard to digest. I've payed a lot of attention to words that cannot be translated in isolation but are idiomatic: - разве as part of questions; often seems to express astonishment - пусть in expressions like may it be or let ... be - же to emphasise a point, similar to the German doch and the Swedish ju - и when it means neither and nor both ... and; this still is a mystery to me and pops up in the strangest places Since I'm dealing with a quite poetic text here, there surely are a lot of stylistic twists which are not used in contemporary written language. Some of them I may have identified: - instrumental of feminin nouns on -ю instead of й: дорогою ((with this) way), зарею ((with the) aurore); but мудростью ((with this) wisdom) is the only singular instrumental form, even though мудрость is feminin - сей and all its forms, except in set expressions like до сих пор(á) (until now); seems to be replaced by этот - stress in должно (should): the only accent printed in the book that I've seen until now is on дóлжно, as opposed to the "standard" stress должнó Quote of the week Tausend Pfade gibt es, die nie noch gegangen sind; tausend Gesundheiten und verborgene Eilande des Lebens. Unerschöpft und unentdeckt ist immer noch Mensch und Menschen-Erde. Есть тысячи троп, по которым еще никогда не ходили, тысячи здоровий и скрытых островов жизни. Все еще не исчерпаны и не открыты человек и земля человека. (Antonov) Il existe mille chemins qui n'ont encore jamais été empruntés, mille santés, mille îles secrètes de la vie. L'homme et la terre de l'homme ne sont toujours pas épuisés et toujours pas découverts. (Goldschmidt) Tusen stigar finns det som ännu inte har vandrats; tusen friskheter och förborgade öar. Outtömd och oupptäckt är alltjämt människa och människojord. (Teratologen) A thousand paths there are that have never yet been trodden; a thousand healths and hidden islands of life. Unexhausted and undiscovered are the human and human earth even now. (Parkes) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5425 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 21 of 38 09 October 2010 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Week 4
Antoine de Saint Exupéry starts his novel "Terre des Hommes" with the words: La terre nous en apprend plus long sur nous que les livres. Parce qu'elle nous résiste. L'homme se découvre quand il se mesure avec l'obstacle. Mais, pour l'atteindre, il lui faut un outil. Il lui faut un rabot, ou une charrue. (The earth teaches us more about ourselves than any books. Because it resists us. Man discovers himself when he measures himself against an obstacle. But in order to achieve this, he needs a tool. He needs a planer or a plough.) Ironically, it is a book that offers the resistance in this experiment. People often want to get things done the easy way, but without resistance you cannot get stronger. Isaac Newton formulated the same principle in a less verbose way: action = reactio. If you feel no resistance, you won't learn anything. But not every kind of resistance seems to be good: if you bang your head against the wall, things won't get much better. At the moment I feel like the Russian text offers a lot of resistance, but I'm not banging my head against the wall. Progress in terms of learning the text by heart is slower than I would like. I still am in the first of the four parts of the book. When listening to the recording there are many places where I can speak along for a few sentences. This is the kind absorption I had in mind, but if I don't get a lot quicker with this then there will be no way to learn the whole text until the end of December. I surely will get quicker as I absorb more vocabulary and idiomatic turns. However, I may not get quick enough. I cannot invest more than 2 to 3 hours per day, and if I had much more time at my disposal then I might burn out rather than run out of time. This doesn't really concern me right now, because I do see improvements. The day before yesterday I listened into a Russian radio broadcast and was surprised that I could actually follow the conversation. This was completely impossible only 4 weeks ago. I recognised a few words that I had learned only after the start of this thread, but the biggest improvement is on the side of my language parsing capabilities, due to the fact that I've listened to the audio book every day for at least one hour. What kept me from fully understanding the radio stream was my poor vocabulary. Fixing this will take time, but I feel like I'm on the right way. Quote of the week Hin zum Throne wollen sie alle: ihr Wahnsinn ist es, -- als ob das Glück auf dem Throne säße! Oft sitzt der Schlamm auf dem Thron -- und oft auch der Thron auf dem Schlamme. Все они хотят достичь трона: безумие их в том -- будто счастье восседало бы на троне! Часто грязь восседает на троне -- а часто и трон на грязи. (Antonov) Fram till tronen vill de alla: det är deras vansinne, -- som om lyckan skulle sitta på tronen! Ofta sitter gyttjan på tronen -- och ofta även tronen på gyttjan. (Teratologen) They all want to get to the throne: this is their madness -- as if happiness were sitting on the throne! Often it is mud that sits on the throne -- and often the throne also sits on mud. (Parkes) Tous, ils veulent accéder au trône : c'est leur folie -- comme si le bonheur était assis sur le trône ! C'est souvent la boue qui est sur le trône -- et souvent aussi le trône sur la boue. (Goldschmidt) Edited by OlafP on 20 October 2010 at 5:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5425 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 22 of 38 16 October 2010 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Week 5
Five weeks are over -- almost one third of the time. My progress at this point is disappointing. It is not only that I know very little text by heart, but this week I've often looked for excuses to not pick up the book and have actually found them. Am I trying to lift a weight that is too heavy? Why is it so damned hard to learn the text in Russian when it was like a walk in the park in French when I tested it before the start of this project? I'm glad I ran this test, because otherwise I wouldn't know now whether it is my lack of vocabulary or the memorization of text that stalls the progress. I'm fluent in French, and this makes the difference. When I was a child I had several cassettes with fairytales. After listening to them I don't know how often I knew them by heart. I remember that I was asked several times in kindergarten to recite them in front of the group. The language was not always simple and contained a lot of idioms that must have been new to me at that time. How did I absorb them and understand their meanings at the age of four to five? Or is it the other way around, that you create the meanings out of the words when learning your first language? Anyway, Schliemann suggested that his method should be used at schools. No matter how much time he could put in to memorize books in unknown languages, he probably didn't expect a pupil to do this for more than half an hour per day, which is a lot less than what I've been doing. Using an audiobook is not exactly what Schliemann did, so maybe I'm just doing it wrong. Schliemann surely would have used audiobooks if he had had the opportunity. But would he have used them the same way I do? This reminds me of the question whether the Welltempered Clavier should be played on the piano or only on the harpsichord, for which is was written. Bach surely would have used a piano if it had been available at his time, but then he would have exploited its dynamic sound generation and written the WTC differently. The question just cannot be answered. All we can do is to make reasonable guesses. From January to June I went through the Assimil Swedish course, and I know a fair amount of lessons by heart, even though I didn't force memorization. The Swedish course is different than any other Assimil course I've seen. It teaches a lot more vocabulary: 4000 words. This is not that much less than what I estimated for the book used in this project, as outlined in the first post. Maybe I shouldn't try to cover as much text as possible at once but only an amount that contains about 40 to 50 new words per day. This might be only a few sentences in the beginning but more text later. Would this allow me to get to the "French pace" towards the end of the book? On the other hand, it is unrealistic to expect that I can learn Russian vocabulary at the same rate as Swedish. 15 years ago I learned 4000 French words in 9 months using flash cards. I tried the flash card method with Russian last year but didn't get anywhere. The words just didn't stick in my memory. Should I change from covering a lot of text to only as much as I can safely learn at a time? Then I could measure my progress better, estimate how long it takes to get somewhere, even if it takes a lot longer than Schliemann suggested. Should I keep going the same way and hope for something that looks unrealistic at the moment? One of the fairytales from my childhood was the Ukrainian story of the hen that laid golden eggs. An old couple had received a hen as a reward for I don't remember what. They were told that the hen would one day start laying golden eggs if they were patient enough. They waited for several years and finally curiosity killed their patience. They slaughtered the hen in order to get at least a little gold, but they found -- nothing. Were they punished for their impatience or was the whole thing a hoax? I'll try to make up my mind next week. Quote of the week Die Welt ist tief --: und tiefer als je der Tag gedacht hat. Nicht alles darf vor dem Tage Worte haben. Мир так глубок, как день помыслить бы не смог. Не все дерзает говорить перед лицом дня. (Antonov) Världen är djup --: och djupare än någonsin dagen har tänkt. Allt får inte kläs i ord inför dagen. (Teratologen) The world is deep: and deeper than day has ever comprehended. Not everything may be spoken in the presence of day. (Hollingdale) Le monde est profond : -- et plus profond que jamais le jour ne l'a imaginé. Tout ne doit pas avoir la parole en présence du jour. (Goldschmidt) Edited by OlafP on 16 October 2010 at 2:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5174 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 23 of 38 17 October 2010 at 9:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Well you're inspiring me to try memorizing texts with my own language learning. I would love to learn a whole book. I think learning the Koran is considered very prestigious in many countries but I'm not that ambitious. I'll probably try a short story and a couple poems. Who doesn't envy people with photographic memories who could realistically learn an entire book in a reasonable amount of time? I am sure it would take even them a lot of effort though.
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| jasoninchina Senior Member China Joined 5221 days ago 221 posts - 306 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Italian | Message 24 of 38 17 October 2010 at 11:40am | IP Logged | ||
I just found your log and think it is quite inspirational.
Probably, but that's OK. I am not familiar with the book(s) you are memorizing, but I would say that if it is longer than 100 pages(and especially if it is of regular book length), it'll take years to memorize. Honestly, I think you could probably learn a language faster than it would take you to memorize a book. Also, who said you had to memorize the whole book? I think you're really on to something. I think you should definitely keep it up. The only thing I would suggest is to make certain you have a proper balance with your learning method. You may be able to learn a language solely through memorization but I'm not sure if it the most efficient path. Good reading to you! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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