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Krashen & some failures for Massive Input | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 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 17 of 67 26 October 2014 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Look at them, yes. Understand them, I have no judgement to pass on that one. It could be
that he needs to review them. I am not him, so if he wants to give me a proper assessment of how he has studied grammar leaving aside extensive reading in a more detailed manner maybe we could help him better. Besides that, to understand a sentence the verb is more often more important than the noun. The verb decides the action, and often, it also implies who is doing the action. A lot of nouns are decorations in literature and understanding them is less key to getting the point of a sentence. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Slayertplsko Heptaglot Newbie Slovakia Joined 4833 days ago 24 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Czech, FrenchB2, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish | Message 18 of 67 26 October 2014 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | ||
Funny that you mentioned that. I started learning French almost a year ago by L-R-ing Le petit prince and the first page or so is still there and I'm able to reproduce it anytime somebody asks me despite the fact that I never actually tried to remember it. I just do thanks to the sheer amount of listening to it. But unfortunatelly I cannot comment on the rest of what you have written as that's my only internalized text. As for the main issue of this thread, I think Patrick should try some grammar drills. I for one don't have problems with German declensions, but my situation differs somewhat. First off, my native tongue is Slovak, a heavily inflected language. So I do have a feeling for cases. I had some good-quality German lessons at school, including conversation lessons with a native speaker and of course lots of grammar drilling. However, I may offer one observation on German adjectival endings, which I assume cause the most trouble: 1, the characteristic ending of the definite article should be present only once in the whole noun phrase and if present elsewhere, the adjective takes a ''default'' ending (unless overridden by rule 2) 2, the default ending is -en for all genitive, dative and plural and masculine accusative (because -en is the characteristic ending here, which is somehow stronger that the rest of accusative endings), otherwise it's -e Let me explain. Let's say you have a noun phrase 'eines schönen Mädchen'. The definite article is dES, so it's already present in the indefinite article and thus the ending is a default -en. Or der gute Junge. Again, already present, so it will be -e. Or der Bart alten Mannes (as if speaking in general about any old man's beard...I know it makes no sense, but hey, this is a grammar example). Here it is already there at the end of the noun, so even though there is no article, the ending is default. So the case should be clearly marked, but only once. With the exception of masculine accusative, which has an -en ending no matter what. I don't know if that helps at all, but it did help me. So I would suggest understanding and knowing the rules well and then reinforcing them by lots of input coupled with at least some output. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5262 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 19 of 67 26 October 2014 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | ||
Patrick, I am not anywhere near as scientific as emk. I don't have the number of languages that other posters have nor their knowledge of linguistics. So, my theory, based on observation, may be totally incorrect. Here goes anyway: You are a native English-speaker. As far as I know you haven't made a serious attempt at other languages. In our native language verbs inflect. They don't inflect as much as in some other languages but, even if only minimally, our verbs inflect. So, that's something to which we are instinctively accustomed. Therefore, we know that a verb stem has one meaning and another slightly different meaning depending on how they are inflected, e.g.: have vs had. Verbs inflect in tense and person. Knowledge of this is critical to understanding meaning. Our English nouns (again, I am not a grammarian) inflect into mostly two directions- singular and plural, and not nearly as often into masculine and feminine or number- ox to oxen, cow to cattle, etc. These are exceptions to the general rule of adding an "s" or "es". I know little of German, nor am I familiar with linguistics (or its vocabulary), but my feeling is that what explains your learning of verb inflections was because you really needed to know them in order to understand the meaning of a phrase, sentence or a passage. Nouns- aspects/qualities of feminine, masculine or neuter, singular and plural, this one and that one, can be ignored and the meaning is still there- more or less. Modification of articles- plural, singular, amount, referencing a particular aspect- this one, that one, these, those are not nearly as important to meaning as knowing verbs. It would appear it's easier to gloss over noun aspects than verb aspects in order to get meaning out of a sentence. Please bear with me, as I have said I know nothing about linguistics. One of the things artificially constructed languages do is eliminate these troubling natural language aspects. So, this is my explanation, for what it's worth, of how the OP was able to learn verb inflections but apparently missed out on noun inflections. I believe it is, in large part, the influence of English as a native language. I tend to look for simpler explanations instead of complicated ones. This may be a major fault in my reasoning. Ultimately, only the OP can answer this. Even if he can't right now, he may at some later point in time. Anyway, I wish him the best of luck in improving his German and finding his answers. Edited by iguanamon on 26 October 2014 at 9:37pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 20 of 67 26 October 2014 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder if you've picked them up in contexts where there's a direct opposition, like with static vs movement? And if not, will mastering this specific context help you with other situations where there's less need for the right case? That would be an interesting experiment :)
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7205 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 21 of 67 27 October 2014 at 1:25am | IP Logged | ||
The FSI German stuff around doesn't get the respect around here that the French and Spanish courses do, but I would wonder if there is not some set of drills in those courses specifically for declinations that would help with all the factors of noticing and learning and doing. Professor Arguelles talks about this in sort a third stage for the intuitive learner. One who has been through the intuitive/extensive learning process and explicit grammar study may need to then just drill on whatever weak points remain. It makes sense to me regardless of the theory. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 22 of 67 27 October 2014 at 8:20am | IP Logged | ||
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So I haven't read all of this thread because it's super long, but here's my theory on why
you haven't learned declensions: they're not necessary. They're not necessary for you to understand spoken language, so you don't need to pay attention to them to understand what someone says. They're not necessary for output, since people will generally understand you even if you mess them up. So your brain is never forced to learn them. There's a general trend where immigrants usually learn a language only up to the point where it's necessary for their needs, and I think the same thing is going on here. I don't have a suggestion for how you can correct this, other than actual study, though. Sorry if someone has already said this. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 23 of 67 27 October 2014 at 9:41am | IP Logged | ||
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How to survive grammar - revisited:
It will take an inordinate amount of time and input to extract complex rules about grammar from extensive input, but the expenditure will become much less if you already have the basic distinctions and some islands of knowledge ready. And that was exactly what I recommended in Berlin: read through some grammars and find of what you definitely need to know, i.e. the regular conjugations plus the forms of auxiliary verbs, the forms of articles, adjectives and (regular) nouns and pronouns, conjunctions and prepositions with the forms they typically govern. Leave out exceptions, even if they are interesting. And then write those basic things down - I use thick green paper for the final version because I don't want these sheets to get lost with all the other junk I produce. As far as I remember I haven't got more than three sheets for any language - but I have a small handwriting and don't like open spaces on my sheets so you could end up with twice as many sheets. But still less than a whole grammar. Now don't start learning these sheets by heart, but keep them within reach so that you easily can refer to them when you read or think or write in your target language. With time the information of these sheets will become the backbone of your understanding of grammar, and you will start using their layout and categories automatically when you read or listen extensively. You couldn't have done the same thing with a whole grammar of maybe three hundred pages, and even though the grammar section in a language guide isn't much bigger you won't have written it yourself as you have with the 'green sheets'. And a couple of points more: 1) one problem with grammars is their tendency to put terminology on everything. But think about the verbal system of English: loads of terminology and pages full of compund forms. But really you just have two forms of most verbs in the present ( with and without -s), one form in the past tense, an active present participle, a pasive past particle and an infinitive. That's all. The rest of the forms are compund forms. The simple forms of the have + the past participle form a system, and the simple forms of any verb plus the system based on the past participle can furthermore be supplemented with the same forms plus the present participle, and then you have all the continuous forms. No need for terminology, unless you want to study grammars - the whole thing is based on simple combinatorics, which you can learn through extensive studies. You just need to know the principles. Another kind of problem: the choice of prepositions after verbs (and some substantives). This is halfheartedly covered in most grammars, but resembles vocabulary studies more than it resembles rulebased grammar. So learn those combinations as compound words - which of course means that you have to use good dictionaries where the different uses are mentioned and maybe even illustrated. But use your grammar to get an overview over the possibilities. A third problem (which is more relevant in other languages than English): how do you learn the forms of nouns with seven or eight cases and three genders and two numbers and a multitude of seemingly chaotic consonant and vowels changes within a system with X different root vowels? Well, make those green sheets, but keep them simple. Learn exceptions from the sheets as exceptions OR as the outcome of phonetic rules which should be learnt through examples rather than as rules. The point is however that you only can spot the relevant examples if you already have some sense of sentence constructions, and you can learn the principles and distinctions necessary for that from grammars without learning the explanations there by heart. If you do read a grammar then look for construction principles rather than terminology and skip the most rare exceptions, no matter how interesting they are from a linguistic perspective. And be prepared to modify your categories if a certain language demands it. For instance the subject predicative in Russian (the X in 'I am X') can be in the nominative as in other languages, but more often than not it is in the instrumental case. How can 'being smart' be equated with wielding a hammer? Well, start thinking of 'being something' as an action in the same way as using a hammer. Or in broader terms: think of grammar in terms of semantics (and ignore those linguists who say that grammar isn't semantics) - that will make it much more manageable and appetizing. Grammar studies should be seen as tools to make example studies more fruitful rather than as funky terminological systems. On the other hand extensive activities have a tendency to end up in pure fun or purely topic-based studies. But when it comes to language learning not only the devil, but also the angels are found in the small, seemingly insignificant details which you can skip while reading and listening. One beneficial effect of explicit grammar studies is to make you capable of interpreting those pesky details on the fly. Edited by Iversen on 27 October 2014 at 9:51am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ijsn Diglot Newbie Brazil Joined 3744 days ago 12 posts - 19 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 24 of 67 27 October 2014 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm pretty sure that what I'm about to write won't really help, but I'll do it anyway.
I never tried to learn German and I don't even know what declensions are, but I think you're completely wrong when you say that the method has some failures. At most, you should say that you weren't capable of picking up ONE grammar rule. You managed to acquire the language in 2.5 years only reading and listening to things of your personal interest. My boss, for instance, lived in Germany and reached the advanced level after an entire year (she was studying really hard because she wanted to be accepted in a masters program in international law). In my opinion, what you've accomplished is really fantastic! 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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