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Text memorization and imitation | ||
Tags: Memory | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| 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 41 of 95 25 September 2010 at 8:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hardheim, you are right. I have no doubt about it. The problem is how to work with this verbatim memorization without too much pain.
That's why we are thinking about the best approach to do this.
Yesterday I spent all evening trying and practicing with these intermediate steps and it seems very good to recall sooner. The problem was that I didn't have any software to do quickly the multiple cloze deletion trick and the first two letters trick. Thinking about it I found two other intermediate steps that we can make quickly with any word processor. Removing vowels (a, e, i, o, u ) and removing vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and some consonants (for example, b, n, t, y, x ). Then, I substitute them by the symbol "_" and then I increase the space between words. Very easy and quick to do. For example: "La jueza no ha querido oír los argumentos de los abogados y ha rechazado dejarla en libertad bajo fianza." First step: without vowels: "L_ j__z_ n_ h_ q__r_d_ _ir l_s _rg_m_nt_s d _ l_s _b_g_d_s y h_ r_ch_z_d_ d_j_rl_ _n l_b _rt_d b_j_ f__nz_." Second step: without vowels and some consonants: "L_ j__z_ __ h_ q__r_d_ _ir l_s _rg_m____s d _ l_s ___g_d_s _ h_ r_ch_z_d_ d_j_rl_ __ l__ _r__d __j_ f___z_." Third step: first letters: 4-L j n h q o l a d l a y h r d e l b f. Four step: verbatim. This seems to work better for me. Edited by slucido on 25 September 2010 at 8:52am 3 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 42 of 95 25 September 2010 at 10:29am | IP Logged | |||||
Many thanks for your post. Very interesting to note what you said. Regarding the above quote, I think we're all agreed that parroting without comprehension is a pointless process. 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 43 of 95 25 September 2010 at 10:34am | IP Logged | |||||
Alberto, this is a really great idea. I'm going to try this with today's lessons. 1 person has 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 44 of 95 25 September 2010 at 11:41am | IP Logged | |||||
It depends on your goals, though. Yes, it gives you a lot of things you can say without effort, but if you consider language as a big statistical calculation, it skews the balance -- 500 sentences don't cover much of the infinite permutations of language. For your purposes (I'm assuming you're LDS from the fact that you did missionary work in a developed country) you were expected to provide certain specific information 9 weeks after you arrive in the country, and sentence memorisation is certainly effective for that purpose, and will no doubt help with the topic as a whole. But if I'm not wrong, you're expected to work there less than 2 years after training's complete and you will be living and socialising with other missionaries. A restricted model of the language therefore serves your purposes quite adequately, but for people who expect to continue in the language beyond two years, having such a subject-specific and phrasally-restricted base may be quite limiting. 1 person has 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 45 of 95 25 September 2010 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
This idea that this intensive study of a relatively small number phrases is limiting is, in my opinion, totally and absolutely wrong. What Hardheim is alluding to anecdotally, whilst others including the original poster and a growing number of researchers are showing scientifically, is that the memorization and imitation of meaningful and appropriately selected materials can accomplish in a very short time three important things: 1. Expose the learner to the most common and useful grammatical structures and vocabulary in an authentic and natural manner. 2. Make the learner quickly functional with a toolbox of set phrases. 3. Produce a heightened awareness of the formal features and patterns that ultimately lead to an intuitive mastery of the language. When this is done with all the other things that one can do, including formal study of the grammar and immersion, the results can be very spectacular. The reason all this works particularly well with day to day spoken language is the simple fact that a relatively small number of grammatical structures and lexical items are used repeatedly. For example, if a learner were to memorize and imitate all the dialog of a single episode of a typical American soap opera, they would have a very good overview of a certain kind of modern spoken American English. On the other hand, they would not be able to read or write the language very well. The vocabulary will be somewhat limited, but all the fundamentals are there. In other words, that single episode contains in a nutshell most of the grammar of daily conversations. I"m not saying that one can learn to speak a language by watching a single episode of a soap opera. I would throw in various kinds of programs, such as game shows that are excellent for vocabulary and usage of the imperative mode. But the essentials are there. The main issue here is that this approach, when used appropriately and in combination with other techniques, goes straight to the ultimate goal: acquire an intuitive ability to interact spontaneously with speakers of the language. I believe this is what all good language learners do. I, like many people here no doubt, have observed people pick up the rudiments of a language in days. We call it a knack for languages. Actually, it's an efficient learning technique based on a simple truth: ordinary spoken language is actually very simple, highly repetitive and formulaic. Most people waste their time learning a lot of useless material. One of the worst examples of this is the study of verb conjugation tables. These tables are very useful of course when we are looking for a certain form. But they do not highlight the fact that certain forms are much more frequent than others. Much study of grammar is like this. Yes, grammar is important. Yes you have to study it. But make it relevant. Otherwise, the end result is something that we hear time and time again: "I studied language X for years, but you don't want to hear me speak it" Edited by s_allard on 25 September 2010 at 10:06pm 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 46 of 95 25 September 2010 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not disagreeing with that, but the problem is finding adequately representative set of texts to learn from, which is always going to be a problem, particularly for people doing self-study. How is a learner to identify whether "nothing compares to the importance of family" is a representative sentence or not? 4 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 47 of 95 25 September 2010 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
Assimil or something similar. If we are talking about textual memorization and imitation, I am sure that something smaller is enough. 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 48 of 95 25 September 2010 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think Cainntear's point is well taken. How do you find representative material? There's all sorts of commercial material on the Net that purports to offer authentic materials with transcription and translation. I haven't tried any of them, so I hesitate to recommend anything. A basic question that one must ask oneself is: What genre or register of language do I want to learn? (I'm assuming here that we are talking about spoken language). Do I want to learn the very informal language, something akin to slang or street language? Do I want something that is age-appropriate for me? Maybe I'm interested in general everyday speech. Or maybe something more formal. Then again I may be interested in academic speaking. With Youtube and the Internet, there is no lack of material. The problem is getting or making transcriptions. I must say that at this very moment there is a fabulous resource being created, unwittingly I may add, by the Quebec government for learners of Québécois French. A commission of enquiry headed by former supreme court justice, Michel Bastarache, is holding public hearings into allegations of political interference in the process of appointing judges by the government. The hearings are televised live over the Internet and archived with transcriptions here: http://www.cepnj.gouv.qc.ca/audiences.html If you want to hear what courtroom language sounds like and hear highly educated Québécois speakers jousting verbally and indulging in political theater, you cannot find a better source. Just call up the transcription and follow along! This amazing tool is totally free. I believe this is going to be a gold mine for generations of students of linguistics. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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