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Memorizing lists of "phrases" rather ... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| RogueMD Senior Member United States Joined 4955 days ago 72 posts - 82 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 65 01 November 2011 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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... then individual words, as a possible learning strategy.
As a newbie to the board (and second language aquisition), I am willing to look at a variety of learning strategies to discover one that will "mesh" well with me. Looking through the forum, I haven't seen a discussion re. memorizing phrases, specifically high yield, idiomatic phrases, as well as likely daily conversation phrases rather then "vocabulary lists" in isolation. The advantage, for the beginner, is a more contextual use of words as well avoiding potential pitfalls of "mistranslating" (ie. trying to translate the expression "See you later!" from English to a target language where the equivalent of that sentence is something else entirely!) Perhaps this is best suited for a beginner, but an additional advantage I see memorizing "canned" expressions is learning grammar passively. I don't believe learning a sentence, much as an actor memorizes "lines", would be more difficult then words in isolation. Obviously, as I initially posted, I'm a newbie exploring ideas, and would appreciate any input on this idea (or if I have simply missed a previous thread, a link and my apologies for starting a redundant thread! And last, Thank You to all for your inspiration that I receive vicariously by my daily "lurking" on this amazing forum! Michael 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5801 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 2 of 65 01 November 2011 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | ||
There has been discussion about learning phrases but it may not be focused in a single thread. Sometimes people look down on such techniques as "memorizing phrasebooks". I think there is some value to that, for many of the very common conversational phrases. But I think the real issue goes well beyond phrases to use in train stations and restaurants. I have been putting English - Dutch phrases and expressions in the thread "Passive versus active Dutch Vocabulary" in the Specific Languages section. My point there is very similar to your ideas. Words in combination (in the way that natives use them) are very important, and somewhat easier to remember because they form their own context to some extent. For example, an English learner may use the term "worldwide heating" to mean what native English speakers would say as "global warming". The person would probably be understood, but it would not be the normal combination of words. The person probably would recognise "global warming" in reading but have trouble coming up with the correct combination in active speech and writing. The main challenge of learning these combinations of words is that there are huge numbers of them. Fortunately, the most useful and most common ones occur (necessarily) the most frequently. So they become a bit easier to learn, especially if you hear them repeatedly in speech. So my current approach is to specifically look for these combinations in my reading and listening, and making lists of them in Anki. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4800 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 65 01 November 2011 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have used this method myself. I find that for me at least, it is much easier to absorb new vocabulary in some kind of context. raw lists of words never seem to stick with me. I can think of many examples of words that were in my Anki deck or in the deck of physical flash cards I bought that just didn't seem to stick. And them I ran across them in my reading and they immediately stuck.
My own experience is that new words that I encounter in something I'm reading stick with me much better than words in a list or flash card deck. I can only assume that if I took the time to memorize phrases that included those new words that not only would the words stick better, but the grammatical structure of the phrases would stick as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4944 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 4 of 65 01 November 2011 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is the 10 000 sentence method, even though it seems to be meant primarily for grammar.
It is always useful to know various uses of a word in context, in a sentence. I do that by reading a lot and generally trying to get as much input as possible. And I agree it is useful to learn some larger pieces together (like a verb and object which are usually together or idioms and such). But I don't put whole sentences in Anki because 1. I want to keep the amount of information on one card smaller for easier and faster use 2.it reminds me too much of the "sentence parroting method" some teacher confuse with communicative one. I prefer to memorize smaller chunks and use them in many variants, contexts etc (like pieces of lego) and I think memorising whole sentences would slower that process for me. 3. Writing down the words is enough pain for me. Whole sentences (and therefore more writing and more cards for each word to not get stuck with one option) would demotivate me too much. But for someone other than me, I think it might work great. At least till reaching a theoretical advanced point where it would get too unconfortable. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5316 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 65 01 November 2011 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would agree that it's more effective to learn how words work at the phrase or sentence level, rather than learning them individually, because a lot of information can be quickly revealed. For instance, in the case of a verb, how the subject and object are introduced.
But must you use memorization per se? Once you have seen how a verb is used in a sentence, you have acquired in one glance various information that you can learn to apply when you create new sentences -- and I think this is the key. Memorizing a sentence is of little use: the most crucial step is to take this information -- whether you are reading it or have it memorized is irrelevant -- and to turn it into workable processes that can allow you to create new sentences you have never made, seen or heard. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 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 6 of 65 02 November 2011 at 1:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Theer has been some discussion about learning short phrases that can keep a discussion in your target language flowing. Splog named them connectors, but I had falsely remembered it as if he had used the term 'chunks' for such expressions. Maybe it stems from this thread. Whatever the paternity of those terms I still prefer the term 'chunk' and continue secretly to remember them by this term (see this discussion). The terminology may seem irrelevant, but it is a significant subgroup among all the fixed expressions in a given language.
They overlap with idiomatic expressions, i.e. expressions that for some reason have become the preferred ones to the exclusion of other possible word combinations. Whern they have been established they live a life of their own and may come to mean something that you couldn't have predicted from the components alone - and then you have a fullfledged idiom. I would personally say that the first group are so important that you should pick them up early if your goal is to speak a language. The second group will be learnt along the way, and it may even be problematic to learn them systematically if that means that you loose your sense of their frequency. There are lots of books on the marked with fixed expressions in different languages, but they often have a tendency to list a lot of colorful expressions which actually may be quite rare in real life. But just as with words it is excellent to know them passively, and if it turns out that a certain expression turns up in your reading and listening a number of times then it will in all likelihood automatically turn into an established part of your active repertoire. I don't believe in learning whole sentences by heart (unless you are aspiring to become an actor) - actually I find long quotes from famous authors in grammars superfluous and irritating unless the grammar specifically is aimed at native speakers and very advanced learners (the venerated French grammar "Le Bon Usage" by Grévisse is a good example of this cathegory of grammars). Short phrases used contrastively and with hyperliteral translations are much more useful for beginners and intermediary learners. There is another golden rule which I would like to mention: if you want to learn an expression then you should always learn the components first. It may make it possible for you to see the logic behind the expression, and dividing an expression into known elements also it makes it easier to memorize - a sequence of three or four wellknown entities is simply easier to recall than 37 random letters or sounds in a row. Edited by Iversen on 02 November 2011 at 1:31am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5365 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 7 of 65 02 November 2011 at 4:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm a firm believer in learning chunks of a language, especially as one progresses to higher levels of proficiency. Unfortunately, the word "chunk" has come to mean a few different things. For some people (I think this may be Iversen's case), a chunk can refer to what is usually called a collocation, that a pair or combination of words that often go together. For example, steaks in North American English are usually cooked according to the labels rare, medium and well done. Those are the standard terms that can be qualified of course, but steak lovers know those terms. Some people also use the term chunk to refer to idioms. These, as we all know, refers to set expressions whose meaning cannot be derived literally from the component words. So when we say that, confronted with a serious financial crisis, the Europeans are just kicking the can down the road, we are saying that the problem is simply being postponed to a later date,
The third usage of chunk, and the one I prefer, is simply a unit of conversation or interaction that is learned as an entire unit. This can be just a sentence or, more often, snippets or an entire conversation. Without getting into all the academic details, the idea behind learning chunks is that a) you actually have something to say and b) you are also assimilating the basic grammatical features of the the language. Edited by s_allard on 02 November 2011 at 11:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 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 8 of 65 02 November 2011 at 10:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Whatever they are called, the 'glue expressions' are important for any communication, and they should be learned. But from where and how? I primarily learn new vocabulary through wordlists, and in principle I could just do wordlists with enough space to accommodate up to 4-5 words if necessary. But for some reason I haven't done this systematically, except in one case: if you look through a dictionary there will be some words that are used in many fixed expressions. You can take one such word and learn a number of those expressions in one go.
The small language guides for tourists can also contain useful sections with common expressions, and some people compile useful lists of chunks/collocations, or you can write your own wishlist and fill it out with promising expressions as you meet them in practice. Learning such expressions systematically at an early stage of your study will also make it easier to start thinking in a foreign language. But trying to learn tons of complete sentences will just make everything come to a grinding halt. Edited by Iversen on 02 November 2011 at 10:14am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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