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Quantity makes the difference | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 33 of 122 21 December 2010 at 2:39am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In this thread we see the usual suspects, including myself, and the usual ideas. Quantity and quality of input plus lots of repetition are important factors in language learning. Can anybody argue with that? Isn't that the same with any skill taken to a high level? Nothing earth-shaking here.
In my opinion, the real interesting topic should be what learning methods and strategies are most effective and give the most bang for the buck, figuratively speaking. I know I have to put in a ton of hours to learn a language. But maybe there's a way to make the process go faster or give better results. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| languagewarrior Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 5118 days ago 5 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English, Spanish | Message 34 of 122 21 December 2010 at 3:51am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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" I've tried to stop picking on people's English, but there is a lot of holes in yours, slucido. " Slucido's written English is umpteen times more articulate than the average native English speakers and I for one applaud his progress, any errors are very minor in nature and in no way distort the intended meaning. If the message is not to our liking, there is no need to attack the messenger. Language learning is not a competition. 21 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Gatsby Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6167 days ago 57 posts - 129 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch | Message 35 of 122 21 December 2010 at 4:39am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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"...there ARE a lot of holes in yours..." We can all make mistakes, even in our native languages and even if we are well-educated. Edited by Gatsby on 21 December 2010 at 4:45am 15 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6555 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 36 of 122 21 December 2010 at 5:54am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I like slucido, and I think his written English is very good, but I think even he'd agree that this is a silly exaggeration.
Many people benefit by competition in language learning. Slucido certainly does. Ask him about the 100,000 sentence method sometime. Of course, someone with such a non-competitive handle as you would not understand such things.
It depends on how you define proficient. You can't become proficient in modern colloquial speech by merely reading classics, for example. To say one is not proficient unless she can read the classics effortlessly is an opinion that some, including myself, would disagree with.
That almost sounded like "uncle". But seriously, the reason not many come out and endorse the line you are feeding us is because of the following. Person A listens to music passively in his target language while he's doing the dishes for 10,000 hours at home. You like repetition, so lets say its the same 10 songs over and over, and he sings along. Person B works actively using Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, Assimil, a personal tutor for conversation, novels, movies, and a target language significant other all while being immersed in his target country, for 9,999 hours. By your definition, person A is more skilled than person B. Edited by leosmith on 21 December 2010 at 7:39am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 37 of 122 21 December 2010 at 11:41am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I've had this argument before. "There are" is a peculiarity of the written register, and derives from Latin. English verb correspondence doesn't work that way in spontaneous speech. In English we say "It's me", "it's him", "it's us", "it's you", "it's them" (like the French "c'est moi" etc), not "*am me" etc (compare Italian "sono io" and Spanish "soy yo"). We also say "that's me", never "*that am me" and "that's him", never "*that is he" (some older books might use similar constructions, but it is never said in spontaneous speech. If you look at a spoken corpus, you'll find that "there's" is the most frequent way to express existence for plural as well as singular. In fact, when "there are" appears in the spoken corpus, it usually follows immediately after "there is". People automatically say "there is", but their schooling has taught them it's wrong, so they "correct" it. Of course, you don't believe any of this, and you're not even going to bother checking before you tell me I'm wrong. Go ahead. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 38 of 122 21 December 2010 at 11:48am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
His errors are minor in that they could be easily fixed. My point is that simple "INPUT + OUTPUT" alone hasn't done this. He says he's not learning English, but he is certianly getting a lot of input and output, so he should be learning by default. He says it doesn't matter what method you use, but if he isn't learning English actively, then we must assume that this input and output is all he has. He's quite good, but he could be better. Language learning is always a competition, but it's not between me and him or me and anyone else. It's between me and myself, and me and the language I'm learning; or it's between him and himself and him and the language he's learning. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6680 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 39 of 122 21 December 2010 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Cainntear, my English is the result of a chaotic approach of a man who lives in Spain and has received a lot of input from Internet, books and DVDs and has produced a lot of output (mainly without corrections). I began when I was about my fourties.
In what order? Reading first, then listening, then writing and then speaking. Why this order? I followed my interests. It's random. Did I study grammar? Yes, randomly. I study grammar when I need it or I fancy it. Most of the time, my goal wasn't learning English, but the content. Actually most of the times, when I write in this forum I act as if it was a Spanish forum. What does this mean? I don't know and I don't care. Is this good? I don't know because I don't have any goal. By the way, I use spellchekers and grammarchekers when I write in my native languages and I find mistakes. Input and output its NOT enough in my NATIVE languages. Edited by slucido on 21 December 2010 at 12:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 40 of 122 21 December 2010 at 12:24pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
So are you now saying the equation is "input + output + correction"? I hope you see why I say that there is no one "most important" factor in language learning. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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