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Never had classes but have reached a wall | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5958 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 9 of 77 14 December 2013 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | ||
The fact that you've come this far on your own says that your discipline is actually very good. Your approach doesn't necessarily conform to what others may expect. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5727 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 10 of 77 14 December 2013 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd recommend a tutor. It costs more but the attention is only on you, so fewer classes will do you more good then more classes in a group.
For grammar, I'd recommend getting a grammar book. Try writing/self talk about topics you'd be interested in talking about in real life. Whenever you feel you're stuck and you can't say something you'd like to, then you use the grammar book to check how to say it. The same with reading, whenever you stumble upon some new grammar feature you look it up. You can really learn a lot like that. 6 persons have 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 11 of 77 14 December 2013 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Classes are dangerous in your situation because they will give you an illusion of progress even when you're barely learning anything new. A typical class uses very little native materials, whereas they are a must at this unstable level.
See the various techniques listed here, especially shadowing. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 77 14 December 2013 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | ||
You say your writing is "OK." Have you ever had your writing corrected by a Dutch speaker? If so, did they just find a few problems here and there? Or did they cover half the page in red ink, pointing out all kinds of basic mistakes? 1. If your writing is mostly OK with just a few mistakes If you can write a 100-word summary of what you did yesterday, and can you produce something that's almost normal Dutch—and you can do so without consulting any books—then you just have a speaking problem. Find lots of opportunities to speak, and keep practicing until you think your brain is going to cook. :-) The ability to respond quickly without thinking is almost entirely a matter of practice, at least for the basic conversational stuff. 2. If your writing is full of basic grammatical errors If, however, your writing is still a mess, then you may still be missing big pieces of Dutch grammar. My A2 French was like this. I had near-total understanding of my wife when she spoke to our kids, but I treated gender markers as random noise, and I didn't even remember that French had a partitive article. Sad. But my brain didn't actually need genders or partitive articles to understand stuff, so it filed them all under "random stuff I can ignore." Fixing this involved spending 30 days writing 100 words per day on lang-8, and it made a massive difference in my grammar. It also trained me to pay attention to little tiny details when other people write or speak French. Once your written Dutch is mostly grammatical, see (1) above. Anyway, take this advice with a grain of salt. But it's how I dug out of my personal "can understand one person but not really speak" hole and made to a very solid B1 across the board. Edited by emk on 14 December 2013 at 11:23pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rolf Senior Member United Kingdom improvingmydutch.blo Joined 6006 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch | Message 13 of 77 14 December 2013 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's my passion that has kept me going so far.
I also love learning via different methods, and each has taught me well. I know so much, and yet I don't even have the fundamentals down. This is why I'm attracted to classes. That and I've never heard of anyone who did classes from start to finish and didn't get good at a language. It may not be the most efficient route but it sure seems to work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rolf Senior Member United Kingdom improvingmydutch.blo Joined 6006 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch | Message 14 of 77 14 December 2013 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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emk, I'm definitely in the (2) field. My grammar is atrocious.
I can totally understand Dutch that I read. I am even comfortable reading newspapers and sometimes when watching Dutch soaps, there may be a scene where I completely understand everything being said, every single word. And yet I can't construct anything myself. Well, I can, but only with the help of going back and forth in Google Translate. But totally from my head, I'm pretty incapable. I'll take a look at your link now. PS I have thought about only participating on Dutch forums (such as fok.nl) but I find it VERY hard to stay away from English language sites on the internet. Edited by rolf on 14 December 2013 at 11:26pm 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 15 of 77 15 December 2013 at 12:59am | IP Logged | ||
If you want to have classes, given the gap between your comprehension and production I think a tutor is the best option. He/she would specifically work on your weaknesses. I also think you'll benefit from the one problem at a time approach. This doesn't include only grammar: just try to identify your worst problem, or ask for a native speaker's opinion, and then work on eliminating the problem. As you can understand a lot, you may find the basic exercises very boring. In this case you can make your own. Also, try SRS. Edited by Serpent on 15 December 2013 at 1:03am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 77 15 December 2013 at 1:08am | IP Logged | ||
You're definitely not alone. I had much the same problem two years ago. I also know a woman who forget how to speak her mother tongue when she was a child, but who still understands it well enough to watch gritty cop shows. You've heard people say they're "B2 passive/A2 active"? Well, she's basically "native/nothing." And a lot of heritage learners (people who learn a language at home but who use a different one outside the house) have similar problems. For me, I needed three things to fix my problems: feedback, attention to detail, and lots of practice. 1. The feedback helped me learn where I was screwing up. Good sources of feedback are lang-8 (used well), writing classes, and a one-on-one tutoring with somebody who can correct your most common mistakes. 2. As you get feedback, you'll begin to develop your attention to detail. For example, if you mess up gender all the time (like I did), then you need to train yourself to pay attention. For example, try reading a page, and inferring the gender of as many words from context. Then repeat the same exercise with audio—try to determine the gender of spoken nouns by listening carefully to the articles and adjectives around them. With enough practice, you should find yourself stopping mid-conversation to ask, "Wait, is that word you just used really masculine?" You can do similar exercises with verb tenses and prepositions: Read through a page carefully, and try to notice the tense of all the verbs, or which preposition is being used where. 3. Once you start to figure out these details, you're going to need to write and speak a lot to make it automatic. I started from roughly where you are (except with considerably weaker passive skills), and I spent 20 to 30 hours per week working on my French. In two weeks, I could mostly speak, and within 6 weeks I was comfortable. After 4 months, I somehow passed my B2 exam. I suspect that the right kind of classes might be very helpful for you, but only if you find other students who are like you: either heritage learners, or other people who can already watch TV. If you take beginner classes, you'll be surrounded by students who don't have a clue, and who may need 5 years of class before they can carry on a basic conversation. Basically, your problem is that you need to cover most of the same material that they need to cover, but you can cover it far faster, because you're already deeply familiar with Dutch. I'm sure appropriate classes exist. But do they exist anywhere near you? Edited by emk on 15 December 2013 at 1:11am 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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