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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| JC_Identity Triglot Groupie Sweden thelawofidentity.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4120 days ago 53 posts - 108 votes  Speaks: Swedish, Serbo-Croatian*, English | Message 41 of 46 27 April 2014 at 3:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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As I have mentioned before, I am using French daily and consuming a lot of interesting content. Today I read an interesting article, which
is quite old, on one of the blogs that I read, on how to learn English for French people (written in French) There is a lot of good advice given in the article but the core is to focus on what already interests you and then just find content in your target language on the topics that interest you. From there you can begin to take small steps forward. I also liked one of the comments to the article, which summarises this natural approach really well: "Lire en anglais sur des sujets pour lesquels on est passionné permet de garder un intérêt fort. On est plus intéressé par le contenu que par la langue, et l’apprentissage de la langue devient presque un « effet secondaire » de notre intérêt pour le sujet qui nous passionne." The message is that if you focus on that personally interesting content instead of the language, you end up learning the language as a by- product. This is exactly what it means to treat a language as a means rather than an end. And if you dig deeper into this notion you will soon understand the value of reframing "language learning" or "language studying" to "language using". I really like some of the simplicity that shines through in the article in the beginning where the author talks about his experience with learning English. After all thinking, researching, and studying of different language learning methods you return to the fact that to learn a language, you just have to use it. Simple and beautiful. Edited by JC_Identity on 27 April 2014 at 3:50am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5555 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 42 of 46 27 April 2014 at 7:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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Quelle ironie...I've just practised my French reading skills as a by-product of reading something I'm interested in! Thanks for sharing the link, JC, and reminding me of the sheer simplicity and joy that can drive language learning. :)
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| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 43 of 46 27 April 2014 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
I read this entire thread with interest and didn't disagree with anything up to this point (quoted above). It is all well and good to say just find content, and to live the language. But you have to have a basic understanding and grounding in a language before you can find any decent content. For example if you are interested in "Extreme Ironing" (which is a legitimate hobby apparently) how would you find interesting content on this subject in for example Japanese, unless you already had sufficient knowledge to be able to look it up? And even if you googled for it after using a translation tool, how would you find like minded people and talk to them without at least the rudiments of the language. I'm not disagreeing with the methods you were using to learn French, I'm just pointing out that you can't advise people to just "go find content" at the beginners stage, they need to have some progress up to advanced beginner level at least. IMHO 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JC_Identity Triglot Groupie Sweden thelawofidentity.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4120 days ago 53 posts - 108 votes Speaks: Swedish, Serbo-Croatian*, English | Message 44 of 46 27 April 2014 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you for your input. I will try to give my honest take on it so you see where I am coming from. I think it all depends on what a person is comfortable with. I much rather struggle with content that is interesting to me than defer it to later. I truly think that it is possible to focus on personally interesting content from day 1 (granted that your target language is not too small and rare). Frankly since I now have totally reframed my approach from "language learning" to "language using" I cannot imagine how I would begin with the deferred approach of first learning to an advanced beginner level and then beginning to consume interesting content. I wouldn't know what to learn if I took this deferred approach. The language itself would become the end and learning a language is an endless pursuit. When would I be ready for using the language, and when would I know that I have reached an advanced beginner level? I wouldn't know. I am not trying to be funny here but I truly cannot imagine how I would do it, and how I would do it without getting bored. What would I be aiming for under this deferred period? I wouldn't know. Now instead lets imagine your example, where I am deeply interested in "Extreme Ironing" and my target language is Japanese, and I am a totally beginner. If my first goal is to find some content online on extreme ironing in Japanese, everything becomes natural and every action up to that goal is now motivated. So it becomes like a fun quest. Since I don't know anything about Japanese I might start my look up the single words in a dictionary. Then when I search on google or whatever other site I will have the problem of comprehending the results, so I will need to find a mouse-over dictionary perhaps to translate the results. Now since Japanese is so different from English I will naturally get a need for looking up some grammar points. But notice that all those needs come up naturally from a specific goal in a concrete situation. So I will not read the entire grammar book or go through countless word lists blindly but I will only check what I need to help me interpret what I need to interpret. And thus the practice, speaking for myself, will stay motivating and fun. Now it might be that I cannot figure out something no matter how hard I try (something which rarely happens). What I will do then is to perhaps go to the Word Reference forum and ask others about the meaning, like the author in the blog post that I linked to is suggesting. I think that if your target language is very different from the ones you know and you are a total beginner, it helps a lot to have parallel texts with a mouse-over dictionary. However if your content is boring, nothing will help you stay motivated in the long run. So the absolute in my "language learning approach" is interesting content no matter your level. I think that some people might say that my approach seems so slow and that you would learn a language much faster by focusing on high frequency word lists and language courses. I don't know, these people might be right in so far as you can stay motivated with studying word lists and language courses. I for sure cannot stay motivated with such material. I need interesting specific content to focus on. If I have this, I have no problems spending countless hours "indirectly learning" a language. The interesting thing is that I have always learned my languages in this indirect way. It is only recently that I have become conscious of the process and the principles on which it rests. From a lot of thinking and introspection I have realised that I learned Swedish, English and countless programming languages in this way. For example I learned English primarily from reading a lot online. When I was younger I used to go to the school library to use one of their computers and I spent hours on the old search engine AltaVista searching for news and cheats for different console games. I understood very little English at that time, but the content was so valuable to me, especially as it allowed me to destroy my friends in those games. As for programming languages, the same is true. I never learned or rather learned very little from reading books on them. I have also tried countless times to watch video tutorials on different languages, but I always get bored 10-20 minutes in. What made me learn all those languages was when I didn't bother with the books and videos but instead came up with ideas of specific apps that I wanted to make. With those specific ideas the learning came naturally as a by-product. Now I was a total beginner many times but this did not stop me. When I did not understand something I looked up that specific problem in books or online. Yes it took time, but I was patient. And of course if I still didn't get it I turned to StackOverflow.com which is to programming what the WordReference forum is to language learning. I am truly convinced that you don't need to defer the use of your target language even if you are a total beginner. You might agree or disagree with me but this is my position. To end this long post I would like to link to a youtube video where Zuckerberg (hate him or love him) says something interesting about how he learned to code. So simple, yet so profound. Zuckerberg on learning to code 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 45 of 46 27 April 2014 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I totally get what you are saying, and I'm not disagreeing. This is a very very good method for learning languages. I'm just thinking to myself when I look at a language like Japanese, because of the difficulty with scripts, it would be bloody difficult to get started. I still believe to someone reading this thread and never having learned a language before my advice would still be to get a course to start yourself off.
No offence but I've been programming for 25 years and I've hired dozens of "self-taught" programmers and they are generally very poor at basic programming architecture. Because they are unaware of best practices with regards to data structures, algorithms, object-oriented design, etc. So they can get a program working, but it goes wrong and someone normally has to go and re-engineer it to move it into a production environment. So if we are going to use programming as an analogy to language learning, I say go get yourself a CS degree and learn the theory. Just because someone can hack code, doesn't make them a good programmer. Anyway, I think we are in agreement as far as language learning is concerned, it is always better to learn a language in context. But I believe beginners should use both a structured course, and their interest(s) to develop an language at least up to A2 stage. All that aside, I don't want to hijack your log which is a very interesting and informative read. I'd like to thank you for your considered and very informative replies, it has given me something to think about. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JC_Identity Triglot Groupie Sweden thelawofidentity.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4120 days ago 53 posts - 108 votes Speaks: Swedish, Serbo-Croatian*, English | Message 46 of 46 04 May 2014 at 2:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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Today I actually used Spanish, because I wanted to read the transcription of a podcast where Luca was interviewed on language
learning. Luca Podcast There is this one quote that is just perfect in my mind, and even better when it comes from a master polyglot like Luca: "... los idiomas no son cosas que se estudian, no son objetos, son seres vivientes, vivos, vivientes que tienes que utilizar cada día que son herramientas con las cuales y a través de las cuales nos comunicamos con los demás, si no estudias, sino utilizas un idioma, va a hacer una diferencia enorme a corto y a largo plazo." What Luca says is essentially that languages are tools of communication, i.e that LANGUAGES ARE MEANS to be used and not studied. To Luca languages aren't static objects but they are alive, like living things. You do not study or acquire a language, you use a language. You bring it into your life and it will be your friend and serve you well as long as you have use for it. Beautiful like that. P.S. Spanish served me well today Edited by JC_Identity on 04 May 2014 at 2:19am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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