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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4698 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes  Speaks: Czech* | Message 33 of 64 07 February 2012 at 3:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
You may study everything there is to know about musical theory, but that will not bring you any closer to perfect pitch. It's imposible to learn TL phonology through formal study, it requires training. (ie. many hours of passive listening) Edited by LaughingChimp on 07 February 2012 at 3:18am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5225 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 34 of 64 07 February 2012 at 3:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Yet again? I've never said studying = learning. Learning necessarily involves acquiring relevant data through observation or active study, but it also requires that you develop usage patterns for the data so you can actually do something with them. You develop these patterns through cycles of practice with feedback. I.e.: -study <whatever> so you think you know it all -try to use it; it will work only partially -Through external help or thinking (this may or may not be important) you figure out what failed (this is vital) -make corrections accordingly (this is crucial again) -try again, and see how good your corrections were. Repeat as many times as necessary to get frustrated or satisfied with the performance level, whatever comes first. Different disciplines require different levels of theory study and practice, but basically that's all. The time required to master phonology is usually split around 1% theory (easy-peasy concepts, not much to memorize) + 99% practice, so you can study the theory in a single sweep at the beginning and spend your time properly, i.e. practising. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Balliballi Groupie Korea, SouthRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4691 days ago 70 posts - 115 votes Studies: Korean | Message 35 of 64 07 February 2012 at 4:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I did spend some time shadowing the CD that came with a textbook (intermediate level) when I first started learning Korean. It had 220 short mp3 segments (4-6 sentences in each segment) and I went through the whole CD a couple of times, listening to each segment about 6 times each per cycle. Doing this helped improve my pronunciation and prosody. (But I had to study this grammar book before I was able to follow the CD.) I also learned a few pronunciation rules for Korean from another book. So I have a rough idea of how to pronounce words, but yes, my p&p need more work to make me sound much more like a Korean native speaker. What you've written, mrwarper, is a good reminder for me that I should do a little study of p&p before embarking further on other types of study, and that it's possible to do separate study of p&p, and that I don't have to devote lots of time to it to bring it up to an OK level, that is, not making gross mistakes in pronunciation. Later, when I do the shadowing and some immersive activities, I can work on perfecting them. When I reach the point where I can understand 99% of what they say on TV, I can work on correcting my accent and making myself sound more like a native speaker, as I don't have to worry about comprehension and other things. I can just focus on listening.
I want to learn grammar quickly so I can get onto other activities. It should have taken a month to learn the grammar in this book (advanced level grammar book) but because of all the words I had to look up, it took twice as long. Actually, I am studying grammar so that I can read Korean so that I can do shadowing so that I can learn to speak fluently. That's also the reason why I am studying vocabulary (which I will do after I finish grammar study). Without being able to read Korean I cannot shadow a lot of comprehensible input, and also it will take me longer to do the shadowing. When I start shadowing, that's when I will really be learning to speak Korean. I know learning grammar and vocabulary is not the way to learn to speak Korean, but they help make shadowing and other p&p activities more efficient and language acquisition overall faster. I will start shadowing in about 3 months, roughly 9 months after I took up studying Korean. I don't think that's too big of a delay in doing intensive p&p tasks. And I will keep doing that until I am fluent in Korean. Well, that's the plan at any rate. As for watching videos, I have noticed that I am picking up a few more constructions from videos after studying grammar. Because I was forced to study vocabulary at the same time, I recognize a few more words too. It's sounding less and less like gibberish. But I am far from understanding whole sentences. Watching videos may be helping me with my pronunciation even though I don't realize it at the time. It's more helpful when I listen with the subtitles off. Actually, it's better to listen while not watching the screen. I am listening to KBS World on TV right now as I am typing this (but not watching the screen - I just turned it on for background sound) and am actually following a lot of it. :) I can pick up many of the grammatical particles and verb endings and understand some of the words. It's also a contemporary drama that's on (and I rarely watch contemporary dramas) and I think that's why it's easier to understand. I watch mostly historical dramas and the dialog in them is harder to understand and follow than the dialog in contemporary dramas. I understand about 25% of the grammar constructions and about 25% of the words of a sentence spoken in a contemporary drama; for a historical drama, about 5% of the grammar constructions and about 10% of the words. News, documentaries, variety shows - <5% of the grammar constructions and <5% of the words. This is encouraging as it means my grammar study and vocabulary study are showing results. I am starting to agree with you, LaughingChimp, that listening passively (to a TV drama in my case) can be very useful. In my case though, I have to not look at the screen while I listen. Edited by Balliballi on 10 February 2012 at 3:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5225 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 36 of 64 07 February 2012 at 5:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Actually, properly studying phonology should make you develop a fairly native-like accent from the very beginning, so you have relatively little to polish. Why do a little study when you can study it all? I've just gone over why it can be difficult to develop a good accent even if you're good at doing accents in your native language(s) in the thread Single person accent source (comment #3) so I'll just elaborate a bit here on how to overcome it studying phonology. The main problem with phonology is that people are not even aware that it's there to help them. Of the very few that really do something about pronunciation, most limit themselves to shadowing and other play-by-ear activities (pet-peeve of mine!). After all, why study what I do with my mouth if I already speak "perfect" (native) <whatever>? Simple: because in a foreign language you must move your mouth differently, exactly like natives do to be precise, and knowing what the possibilities are just eases so greatly the adoption of the sound system of your new language. So, you need to study, with audio samples and clear diagrams and maybe even animations how you produce the different individual sounds that make up your native English and all that there is to know about them: what phonemes there are, points and modes of articulation, voiced/unvoiced pairs, allophones, etc. Once you know all that, you need to study the same things about Korean -- similarities and differences, how different allophones of a phoneme in one language can be different phonemes in another, and what to do about all that should begin to become obvious. From that on, practice while you learn all the other stuff (words!), because all the other stuff is made of what you just studied! Something very similar can be said about prosody: get to know how languages can be stress- or syllable- timed, raising and falling intonations, etc.
I understand what you want to do and I shared a very similar wanderlust-driven POV. However, I promptly found out that a language grammar, unlike phonology and prosody, is usually too much (reminder: I know very little about Korean) to learn in one single pass, no matter how few working examples are necessary to go through everything. I may be wrong but I'd say two months is very unrealistic for an advanced grammar book. You'll need to divide it into chunks that are digestible and sorted by importance and so you can progress more or less logically. Then, each of them must be learned through its own cycle of theoretical study plus enough practice so that it sticks. Only then should you move on to the next one, or you'll be multiplying the time needed to learn them all. Edited by mrwarper on 07 February 2012 at 10:34pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6549 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 37 of 64 07 February 2012 at 7:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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For the most part, I agree with mrwarper. There is a huge benefit of taking a few hours up front to learn pronunciation.
To me, this means learning to recognize and produce all the sounds in isolation (at the word level). Because of the way I proceed, I am able to use my next stage of studies to learn prosody. I use Pimsleur, and I will not pass myself unless I have the pronunciation of a sentence correct, including prosody. After those stages, I always try to stay diligent about pronunciation. But doing those things up front greatly reduces the need for future work on my pronunciation. Unfortunately, there is a popular myth that's been floating around the language learning community for the past few years. That myth is that there is a huge benefit to having a several hundred hour silent period at the beginning of learning a language. They say that it softens up the language for you in many ways. But in reality, the few benefits that can come from this can be had much more efficiently by listening a few minutes per day from the beginning. This myth that by only listening one will develop near native pronunciation, and that it's the only way to do it, is really unfounded. Everyone I've read about who's honestly tried this has failed. Using only native materials from the beginning is an extremely inefficient, perhaps even impossible, way to learn languages as an adult, imo. On the other hand, using them to supplement your studies a little in the beginning, and gradually replacing your study resources with all native resources while you are learning, is probably the best way to learn languages. Edited by leosmith on 07 February 2012 at 7:10am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Balliballi Groupie Korea, SouthRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4691 days ago 70 posts - 115 votes Studies: Korean | Message 38 of 64 07 February 2012 at 7:46am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I am in the middle of finishing the grammar study. Now that I am on a roll with this, I don't want to interrupt my focus and do something else. I might listen to some of the mp3s though. I did listen to them a couple of times while I was studying this latest grammar book to clear up some confusion about how to pronounce some words. I plan to study phonology properly when I get to the shadowing part. I will probably need to get feedback from native speakers about my pronunciation, and study how to move my mouth and all that when I get to that part. I like to do something thoroughly once I get started on it before I move on to something else. I can't study for instance like this: study vocabulary, switch to speaking, then do listening, and finally do a bit of grammar study all in the one day. I like to do only one activity for weeks/months at a time. I can concentrate on the task better like this. So right now that activity is studying grammar.
Those are good tips about phonology. I never really worried about how I moved my mouth when speaking but I think I will have to think about this as there are many difficult sounds in Korean to pronounce, aspirated consonants and so on. However, I am not really concerned about sounding perfect at this stage. My main focus when I study speaking is just being understood. I am kind of rushing my study to meet a deadline. Sounding like a native speaker is for much much later. After I have learned how to read and communicate at a competent level, I will work on making my speaking accent-less. Since I plan to stay in Korea long term, I will have all the time to work on my accent.
I know I have problems pronouncing some vowel sounds in Korean, and analyzing all of this might help me with this.
I think shadowing can help me with this, but you seem to not think shadowing is that good. Why? It's not enough, you mean? That people neglect proper study of phonology and prosody?
I learn grammar best when I learn it all in one go. Of course I am not going to remember it all (there are about 1000 grammatical terms I have to learn in Korean grammar), so I will do periodic reviews and I will have to look up the grammar book for things I have forgotten. At least I will know where to find them in the book. This way when I study reading and vocabulary later, I will have a broad overview of grammar from the start. Things I've forgotten I can easily look up. I find grammar the most comfortable thing to study about a language. It was the same when I studied English and French grammar. Some people zero in on getting the pronunciation and intonation right from the get-go, and concentrate on picking up some phrases and sentences they can say correctly when learning a new language; others like to understand the grammar of a language first and try to learn to read as a priority when learning a new language. I am in the latter group so the speaking part is not that much of a priority for me right now. Watching dramas is more a relaxation thing for me currently. If I watched contemporary dramas, it would probably be better for me. When I reach the shadowing stage, I will watch dramas for language-learning purposes and not for entertainment. Edited by Balliballi on 09 February 2012 at 11:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5225 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 39 of 64 07 February 2012 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Again I can understand you and even relate to your plans, but I'm afraid languages just don't work that way. Fortunately, if you need to work around deadlines, the only harm in the long run will be extra time wasted on reviewing stuff later when it wouldn't have been necessary otherwise. It may not be that bad if you don't make too many serialization mistakes. I mean along the lines of "I'm studying these two things -masculine/feminine, singular/plural, whatever- work differently, but turns out the only difference between them is some final consonants that sound all the same to me. Should have studied that better beforehand". Something similar may be the case for any two given language features, not just grammar points based on phonological differences.
Exactly. Shadowing, like any other kind of practice, is good, but most of its benefits may be wasted if you don't know what to aim for while doing it. Prosody deals with higher order elements of speech than phonology, but all the other considerations I made apply equally. 'Playing by ear' fails a lot for adults for the reasons I gave in the other post.
Exactly, this is why insist in not studying the whole grammar (or pretty much anything except phonetics, and only because it's so brief) at the beginning in one go. You just need to know what's there so it doesn't catch you off-guard when the right time comes. But since you know most won't stick, you'd be better off just getting to know just the basics about everything, and going through the details of every particular point when the right time comes. Kind of like reading a table of contents thoroughly before going through a book for real, instead of reading everything the text in detail from the get-go. What do you think works best? Reading is linear, our minds aren't. Edited by mrwarper on 07 February 2012 at 11:18pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Balliballi Groupie Korea, SouthRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4691 days ago 70 posts - 115 votes Studies: Korean | Message 40 of 64 09 February 2012 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I think you are right, mrwarper. I am just studying this way as an experiment really. To see whether it gets me fluent in speaking, reading and writing within a contracted time interval and by mostly studying by myself.
Korean grammar is different to other grammars such as English grammar in that much of Korean grammar is denoted by words that exist purely for grammatical reasons. Of course, there are words like that in English: "so", "because", "if", "that", "and" ... but in the Korean language, these words run into the thousand (at least). Not only that, but you have to change the endings of the words they attach to at times. So grammar study is essential I think if you are studying vocabulary from reading text, as a significant percentage of the lexicon consists of grammatical words. If you didn't know these grammatical words, you will be hampered in reading as much as if you didn't know basic, simple Korean words. Unlike English, where you can look up most words you don't know in the dictionary, it's not easy to find many Korean words. For one thing, the endings are tacked onto the end of the word so you have to work out that there is a word and an ending. Then you might not find the ending in the dictionary. Sometimes it's hard to work out the root verb because the verb is often changed before endings are added. So, if you want to learn how to read, you have to have a broad knowledge of grammar first. I haven't memorized all the grammatical endings well as there are about a thousand of them, but I can find the ones I don't know the meanings of in a textbook, and I am at the stage where I can recognize what is a grammatical word and what is not a grammatical word. This helps me with reading comprehension. I can then look up the non-grammatical word in a dictionary and the grammatical ending in the textbook. I could learn grammar by interacting with Koreans doing immersion activities such as working with them, but those avenues aren't open to me right now, and it might take a bit longer too to get a snapshot picture of all the grammatical terms I will come across. On the other hand, if I study speaking first, before I learn grammar, reading and writing, I would probably be able to learn them at a faster rate than if I hadn't learned speaking first. However, I can't study in this order due to my circumstances. I hope your warning, mrwarper, about how the method I am following will end up prolonging the time (by a great degree) it takes to study the language to the point of being fluent in speaking, reading and writing, won't come true. (In my experience, there is a difference in the way people speak between the ones who have learned from books mainly and the ones who have learned from immersion starting early. A person who learns from books and shadowing may never get the intonation right compared to someone who has studied prosody and phonology and done a lot of immersion activities from the beginning. The book-learning person, even if they do shadowing, may always sound slightly "off" - intelligible but strange-sounding and stilted.) By studying from an advanced grammar book, I get an overview of everything there is to know in high intermediate-advanced grammar (the book I am studying is 450 pages long and covers nearly everything - I have compared it to other books around, and this is my conclusion). Of course, there are probably much higher-level grammar books (most of them written in Korean), but for my purposes, as a foreign student, this book serves me well as a comprehensive grammar book. And I will return to this book after I have learned more Korean through communicative activities, especially spoken Korean/conversational Korean. I think I will have to read it through four more times at least to remember everything. (I have read the book 4-5 times now but I don't remember many of the grammar terms.) I think I have underestimated the value of listening. For example, using the "keunil-nassumnida" example in a previous post, I heard the phrase as "keunil-ASSIMNIDA" first in the video. I knew the meaning of the phrase vaguely as "there was a big problem", probably because I had heard this phrase many times in the past, including as a child, and associated it with something really bad happening. But then I started to "intellectualize" the phrase after I recalled that I actually knew the different parts of the phrase in its written form. This is because I had started studying Korean. For example, I knew "keun" is "big", "il" is "a happening"/"event", and "nassumnida" is "[it] happened". Now, the meaning of the phrase is changed for me a little after I translated it into English. Before, I knew it meant something big and horrible had happened like a traffic accident, but now I know the phrase as "a big event had happened" and it doesn't carry as much of the negative connotation that I had associated with the word in the past. It doesn't have the same emotional impact on me any more. Not only that, but I started to pronounce the phrase AND HEAR IT as "keunilnassumnida", that is, with the "n" sounded after the "l". I think my original hearing of the phrase is right (correct me if I am wrong, Korean speakers out there), and that the "n" is silent. But because I have neglected formal study of phonology (and forgotten the rules) AND because I rely on the written form of the words too much, I am now on track to mispronouncing this phrase. My ear tells me to say it as "keunil-assumnida", but my forebrain tells me to say it "keunil-nassumnida", and the forebrain seems to be winning. It's great to know that the phrase consists of three words, "keun", "il", "nassumnida" when it comes to spelling it during writing, but not that good for speaking and pronouncing it. This is what I think the OP was talking about in the thread, "Reading in the TL may delay fluency" (if I recall the thread title correctly). So, as you say, mrwarper, I am "limping along", not quite getting the pronunciation down pat, and that eventually I will have to throw away the native language, English, as a crutch. Also, I know that I am constantly translating things into English in my head when I listen to Korean. It's a habit I can't get rid of, a subconscious process. At some point, I have to work hard on just forgetting English and start thinking in Korean. Once I do that, absorbing the language more like how a child absorbs a language, without having preconceived ideas about the language and trying to make the language conform to those notions, I think I will learn to be fluent. When you learn a phrase as a youngster, you tend to learn it "emotionally", I think, instead of learning the literate, intellectual meaning of each of the words that make up the phrase and then putting it all together. You don't even know that the string of words you understand are made up of a bunch of words with different functions. For example, before I studied Korean, I didn't know "keunilnassumnida" was a phrase made up of a noun, an adjective and a verb, I just knew it meant something terrible had happened. Perhaps there has been some research on this, showing that children learn "chunks" of language in preference to learning individual words and putting them together to make a sentence. Or perhaps they do both (learn chunks and individual words), and most/many adults do not have the same facility to learn chunks of language as children do, for various reasons. Adults who learn through immersion may be better at assimilating language in "chunks" than adults who learn through a pedagogical approach (me). (Learning to write one's native language may be a way of putting language one already knows into graphical visible form. And so that process will be quicker for those who are fluent in speaking the language.) When I do "pure" listening, not caring about the meaning too much, I "hear" more. This is what LaughingChimp was referring to, I think. I can distinguish the words better. Ironically, I am even picking up the grammatical endings better. I have to trust my ear more, try to let go, and allow myself to be carried along with the tide. Edited by Balliballi on 10 February 2012 at 3:21am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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