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Text memorization and imitation | ||
Tags: Memory | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7093 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 9 of 95 23 September 2010 at 9:51am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I posted the technique I'm using in OlafP's The Schliemann Expirment thread but I'll repost it here anyway: One technique (and it's the one I've adopted together with Anki) involves building the material up bit by bit. From the Assimil point of view, it goes like this: 1. Listen to / look at sentence 1 2. Repeat sentence 1 without looking. 3. Listen to / look at sentence 2. 4. Repeat sentence 2 without looking. 5. Listen to / look at sentences 1-2 6. Repeat sentences 1-2 without looking. 7. Listen to / look at sentence 3. 8. Repeat sentence 3 without looking. 9. Listen to / look at sentences 1-3 10. Repeat sentences 1-3 without looking. and so on until the end of the dialog. A further tip is to provide a hint by reducing the dialog to the initial letters of each word. This aids as an initial prompt in the early stages. I'm then using Anki to provide the review scheduling. The lesson title and hint go in the Question and the lesson title and text go in the Answer. Once the lesson is properly nailed, I plan on removing the hint. There is also a useful page for generating the "hint" in the thread which can be saved locally: http://www.downes.ca/memorization.htm I got interested in Schliemann because of the resurrection of some older threads that I missed first time round. In the past, I've spent a lot of time reviewing previous Assimil dialogues - probably too much. Most people, I believe, have found that they can recite pieces of the dialogues after using the courses for some time - in others words partial memorisation of the course has been a by-product of the study. As using Assimil courses is my preferred approach, I wondered whether I could reverse the process and use memorisation as the primary technique with the assimilation and internalisation of the material as the by-product and also use a SRS to schedule the review. I chose German and Italian as two contrasing languages for me. German I used to know very well - 5 years at school to A-level and a run through El Alemán sin Esfuerzo about three years ago. Italian, not so much, a year at school in the 70s to get an O-level and a failed attempt at L-R about 3 years ago. I have Assimil Italian for Spanish speakers but have only dabbled in it. At the moment I'm using nothing else, no grammar books, no podcasts, no reading nothing else - just Assimil. I deliberately chose the Without Toil books because the material presented will be "unfamiliar". I've added the quotes because with German, it's clear that I'm probably simply teasing out what's already there even if it's buried pretty deep. With Italian, not so much. I'm keen to add Dutch to the mix but I fear interference from the German, so I've put it on hold for the time being and probably running three simultaneously would be a bit much. Dutch will be a good test later on since I'm a beginner. Doing a search on the forum for "Schliemann" and "memorisation" is also worth a go. There are some interesting threads there. One particular discussion contained a link that was the main trigger for me going down this route was this one: Heinrich Schliemann’s memorizing method The post from pentatonic at the top of the page contains a link to an article by someone who learnt French by memorising a language course. Regarding the article you posted earlier, I will simply say that it is anecdotal but it's also not a survey - this is not a Gallup poll where 3 random people were pulled up in the street and asked whether they thought "Text Memorization and Imitation" were a "good thing", it is a report on interviews with three students. However, I'll agree that the results of asking people to do self-analysis is often un-reliable and that they may well have been pre-disposed to attending to the details of the language anyway. That particular aspect was of little interest to me in contrast to the memorisation and imitation - the latter being what I use Shadowing for. The issue of the efficacy of substitution drills (and memorisation for that matter) is also important. The production by rote without meaning or comprehension is pointless. It will do me no good to repeat parrot-fashion with a thousand-yard stare the text learnt. Somewhere, either here or on the Internet, there was mention of how actors may approach learning a large number of lines for a part - there has to be feeling and an understanding of motivation. The dialogue has to be produced, as if, well... you're taking part in a dialogue. At lesson 12, it's too early to tell whether the tested memorisation has me "learning the language". Unfortunately, that's inherently true of anything put into a SRS, be it vocab or sentences. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and at the moment the ingredients are still in the bowl. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6001 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 10 of 95 23 September 2010 at 2:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not calling it bullshit, just bad science. You can't accept a conclusion from bad science, but just because it's bad science doesn't mean it's wrong. I can't claim imitation is useless -- I do it myself. I can't claim memorisation is useless -- I do it myself. But I only imitate consciously for short periods of time, and the only things I memorise are songs, and only a few per language. The article seems to promote doing a lot of both, but does not attempt to prove a statistical relationship between volume of memorisation and imitation, and success in language learning. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6665 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 11 of 95 23 September 2010 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Andy, thank you for your long answer.
I am curious to know how do you use the hint with the initial letters. It seems very interesting. On the other hand, those Chinese students doesn't seem to maintain the texts they learnt by heart. They learnt the texts verbatim to expose them to their teacher and then they went to the next text, every day, several years. Maybe it's worth it to learn the first book (Assimil) and maintain it in the long-term memory and then to continue with the Chinese text memorization style or nothing at all like the guy in the article Pentatonic pointed out: http://egonet.de/ego/699/art3.htm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5420 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 12 of 95 23 September 2010 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
I read the original article that I found quite fascinating, and I have to wonder if Cainntear read the same article. How can he dare call this bad science? First of all, the author places the study in the context of an ongoing debate on the concept of noticing in second language acquisition. Noticing refers to a heightened awareness of the formal features of language. The author then looks at the winners of nationwide English-language competitions and suggest: "...they are certainly successful learners, and examining their experiences will certainly give us insight into behaviors that -- at least for these learners -- result in effective language learning". I'll let readers explore the rest of the article. The main point is that the three winners studied all emphasized the role of extensive memorization and imitation played in their learning of English. I should also point out that all the winners used other techniques, including watching a lot of TV and DVDs repeatedly. I would like to draw readers' attention particularly to the Discussion section of the paper. I am in total agreement with the findings of this paper and it mirrors perfectly my own observations and practice. Memorization and imitation, in the context of an overall learning strategy can produce wonderful results. The reason for this is very simple. Instead of getting bogged down in the mindless learning of arcane rules with even more arcane exceptions, learners, through precisely memorization and imitation, develop spontaneously an intuitive feel for the workings of the language. The author writes: "When the learners are learning formulaic sequences (as opposed to grammar rules and isolated vocabulary items) through text memorization and imitation, they are simply taking advantage of the formulaicity of language, a feature linguists may overlook (see Wray, 2002)." This is exactly why memorization and imitation work. Of course, one has to use all the tools and techniques available, but these two are fundamental. Edited by s_allard on 23 September 2010 at 5:55pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| rjtrudel Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6817 days ago 36 posts - 56 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 13 of 95 23 September 2010 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@cainntear
"Memorising isn't easy, but again, you can start to see results in the skill tested (memorisation) and convince yourself that you're learning language." If you Memorize the the sounds (and letters) that make up the phrase "mi amigo vive aqui" knowing the translation is "my friend lives here". Do this for thousands of sentences. Are you learning language? I would say yes. I think you memorize a lot more than you think you do. If I asked you what the "most useful part of (your) learning regimen" was you would probably say Michel Thomas. But based on what you say in message 7 of this posting ,I would then have to remind you that actually, your answer is "less than 50% accurate". 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 14 of 95 23 September 2010 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
The hint forms part of the Anki question so the front of the Anki card for Assimil German without Toil Lesson 6 looks like the following: Sechste Lektion - Ich bin nicht der Erste 1. W w S t? 2. I w D l. 3. W w S e l? 4. I w s l, o L. 5. D i i; a i e m? 6. W n? I b n d E. E i n s s. The back looks like this: Sechste Lektion - Ich bin nicht der Erste 1. Was wollen Sie tun? 2. Ich will Deutsch lernen. 3. Wie wollen Sie es lernen? 4. Ich will selbst lernen, ohne Lehrer. 5. Das ist interessant; aber ist es möglich? 6. Warum nicht? Ich bin nicht der Erste. Es ist nicht so schwer. I'm considering removing the hint and simply using the first line of the dialogue as a prompt on the front instead. Not sure at the moment.
Well, I figure I'm a few months away from worrying about the next step - first I need to be sure this current approach is worth the effort. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6665 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 15 of 95 23 September 2010 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Andy, I think your are into something good. I am using Anki with sentences in a production way, but using your method, with the audio in the back card, can be very good.
After introducing all the lessons, you can learn the list of the average one hundred lessons using the Loci method. Something easy. And then this will allow you to practice recalling all the book by heart whenever you want and Anki will be a reinforcement. By the way, I tried the "first letters" hint with a short English text and I am surprised how quickly I have learned it verbatim. Do you have the same experience? http://www.productivity501.com/how-to-memorize-verbatim-text /294/ 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7093 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 16 of 95 23 September 2010 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes. With a language known well, it comes quickly. My German is extremely rusty but I only have to go through a lesson a couple of times before it's "learnt"**. Initially I've been keeping the Anki reviews intervals as short as possible but I'm finding with German that's not really necessary. Italian on the other hand takes more time - I'm also getting a lot of interference from Spanish which isn't helping. I've stopped doing any Spanish at all - even to the point of giving up my weekly purchase of El País which was a wrench. **By this I mean, I memorise it before putting it into Anki Edited by Andy E on 23 September 2010 at 7:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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