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Reducing Self-Study Method Abandonment | ||
Tags: Burn-out | Self-Study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 25 of 139 27 August 2013 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks for the post, it shows how much is the learning process and its perception individual. I think we two could demonstrate the opposite extremes of the scale actually. 1.No, tutor is not essential, I have often had more progress on my own than with any kind of teacher. Two tutors even made me give up on French. Just as there are some boring and useless books, there are as well boring and useless people. People who are like the wrong books in many ways. People who don't understand your needs. Better to learn alone with a book and a lot of audio than with such tutors. 2. I do all the exercises except for those that are obviously bad (such as my previous example with tables to sort pieces of sentences in. totally not needed). I do about 95% of the exercises, I make my own based on that. (usually based on substitution of various elements, creating anki decks, scriptorium and so on) 3. Exciting methods and fun to read? Well, that is actually what we can agree on. As I said, I am not interested in another Gertrude in Spain and Pierre in Sweden. They should have stayed at home and appear in the German and French textbooks instead :-) 4.I love grammars too! Probably because the grammar book cannot shy away from grammar and usually doesn't chop it into pieces too small to actually make sense and make me progress. I think most of us have shelves (or harddiscs) full of books, cds, dvds, and so on. And this is exactly why I don't agree that money spent is such a motivation (Bao wrote it? not sure). There are thousands and thousands people who didn't finish expensive classes, who have full shelves of books they barely opened before giving up and so on. Of course the money can motivate someone but I doubt it works on majority of people. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 26 of 139 27 August 2013 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think the Swedish course I am using found a solution to the lists of things. There is limited amount of the words in the thematic lesson and exercises, so that you aren't overwhelmed by learning a list of things you don't need right away, but there is a list of complementary thematic vocabulary later in the lesson. You don't need to look for words yourself but you don't have to learn the list unless/until you want to. I think it is a perfect idea. There go the lists of countries, body parts, fruits, jobs and so on. You can learn the grammar and everything other in the lesson with just the initial words and go to the next lesson but you can practice with many more if you want to. About the too complex lessons. I think dividing them in smaller ones could work much better if there were notes for people in need of the larger picture or just plainly curious ones. Like: "You've learnt to use these four main prepositions of space, good work! In the next lesson, there will be the basic prepositions we use when speaking of time and we will come back to describing space in lesson 7, page 95." Not sure about others, but I would love this kind of approach. It would be up to the student to either follow the path of small bites or to get a mouthful. As it usually is now, I need to search for myself through the book or to use a different book to get the larger picture in which my brains just learns better (which sometimes leads to leaving the original book completely). 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4638 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 27 of 139 27 August 2013 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Many good posts here, which demonstrate the very different approaches people have to self-studying. Personally I prefer long lessons with lots of new grammar, vocabulary etc. like Colloquial or Langenscheidt. I did complete Colloquial Russian in the sense that I went through all lessons. I did most but not all the exercises, some of them seemed a bit stupid, like answering questions in English to show that you have understood the text.
As for Assimil, I appreciate it, but I do not follow the passive/active wave method. And I do prefer clear and complete grammar explanations, something you do not get immediately in Assimil. Finally I agree that the choice of topics or "story line" in language couses can be boring and silly sometimes. There at least I found Colloquial Russian quite good, although in the first lesson it introduces a British businessman who has moved to Moscow to run a company, later on you actually get interesting information about things like education, Russian media etc. And Colloquial Russian 2 has serious articles about life, society and politics in Russia (albeit somewhat outdated). However, some people will probably find that boring too. Generally though, I think I would not be able to stick to just one method and follow it mechanically, and I have no qualms about not completing a specific course, as long as I find other ways of improving my language skills. On the other hand, I do not mind either to go back and repeat some lessons in a course, if I feel I need to refresh particular points of grammar or vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 28 of 139 27 August 2013 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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For me the key aspect of learning a language is actually being able to speak it someday
in the future (with whomever I find cool). A textbook is meant to give me a thorough grounding so that I have enough understanding to basically move on to doing just that. For me, languages that I don't use actively in some way or another are the ones that get relegated to the wayside. Including their textbooks. And in that case it depends more on my situation and context than the actual textbook. Edited by tarvos on 27 August 2013 at 5:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 29 of 139 27 August 2013 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Entirely agree with Cavesa, as usual ♥ s_allard, I think it's almost offensive to assume that most of us here are like the clueless learners you know in real life. We don't need you to complete exercises, no worries.
In fact my #1 reason for not using textbooks is that the authors try to hold my hand and be gentle and not scare me with the grammar. Whereas as a linguist who already speaks a few languages I usually already know what they are trying to explain and just want it in plain clear terms without the sugar-coating.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 30 of 139 27 August 2013 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Unfortunately, I think it's the one aspect where there simply can't be a perfect solution: between a lesson that's too hard even for experienced learners and one that's too dumbed down even for first time learners, there is a huge array of possibilities and at some point, the writer has to pick a target audience and stick with it. It might be possible to create basic simple lessons followed by a set of somewhat more detailed explanations and exercises for those who want a deeper knowledge, but I question the viability of such a model over an entire book... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 31 of 139 27 August 2013 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
There are a number of reasons why most people love working with a good tutor. One, you get specific and personalized correction, especially for pronunciation. Two, you get to ask your specific questions about anything, including contemporary usage, culture, etc. Three, you can talk about what interests you. Four, you can simulate situations such as interviews or tests. Five, you can practice conversational interaction. Six, you can identify your weaknesses. Seven, you can get a good feel for social register and categories such as politeness, formality and informality. Eight, working with a tutor can help sustain motivation. If you can do all this on your own, then you will save time and lots of money. I agree that bad tutors are useless and a waste of money. But give me a good tutor at an affordable price and I - like most people - will be in heaven. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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