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66 hours of L-R Portuguese | ||
Tags: Listening-Reading (L-R) | Portuguese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Jimmymac Senior Member United Kingdom strange-lands.com/le Joined 6151 days ago 276 posts - 362 votes  Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 1 of 12 25 March 2009 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi all,
Between the 6th of April and the 3rd of May I plan to L-R a 16.5 hour Brazilian Portuguese audiobook (Quando Nietzsche chorou, When Nietzsche wept). I'm planning to make 3-4 passes over the book during this time in the hopes of giving the 'L-R' method a ‘fair’ crack of the whip. I have L-R'd in Spanish and French with success but these languages were for from new to me at the time. Portuguese, whilst I have done around 15 hours of study in it, is still reasonably new to me. The method, as can be expected, will deviate from the 'original' L-R in that I can only commit around 3 hours a night during the week (except for Wednesday when I can't do any as I see the little lady), and between 4-6 hours on weekends (I would like to study more but I have to maintain some sort of a social life). So that works out at 20 hours a week or 80 hours in total to complete something that will take around 66 hours. I imagine my timing won't be quite as precise during that period as I have a few events coming up but I'm confident I won't deviate from it too much. Also, obviously I'm not going to be shadowing the audio just yet so this is simply a test of how well my comprehension improves. I do plan on L-R'ing another book I have at a later date and then eventually shadowing it but at the moment I will just concentrate on this first part. There are a few more aspects that will differ from the 'original' L-R. 1) I won't have read the book before hand. 2) The language isn't 'completely' new to me as I have completed the first level of Pimsleur. 3) I'm not using Parallel texts as I do not have the time to create them. I think I must add an important point here; while I'm by no means 'fluent' in Spanish I have a good grasp of the language. I can read the likes of 'Angels and Demons' and 'Harry Potter' without problems and I recently had a 40 minute conversation in Spanish with a Uruguayan colleague on various topics (having said that, my choice of words on occasion was less than ideal). So although I can understand close to zero when I listen to Portuguese the language won't be completely alien to me. So on that note, if I find L-R to be of a significant benefit I'm not going to make any bold conclusions on its effectiveness under different circumstances. People can draw their own conclusions. The reason I'm writing this is that there are many advocates of 'L-R' but, with the exception of Volte and a few others, not much is said with regards to progress in it. If anyone has any suggestions on how I could make the four weeks more productive then please let me know. Also, I realize I'm writing this a bit soon but it gives me something to do as I'm bored at work. Cheers Edited by Jimmymac on 25 March 2009 at 5:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Akipenda Lugha Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5736 days ago 78 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Swahili, Sign Language, Spanish | Message 2 of 12 25 March 2009 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This 'L-R' method is new to me (it took me a while to figure out it stood for
listening-reading). Is there a particular topic on the forum where it's elucidated, or a website? EDIT: Ok I obviously should have searched for 'l-r' first. I'll look into it as I'm still confused about what it is able to do, and be tracking your progress with Portuguese! Edited by Akipenda Lugha on 25 March 2009 at 8:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lindley Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Ukraine Joined 6069 days ago 104 posts - 109 votes Speaks: Russian*, Ukrainian*, English Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 3 of 12 25 March 2009 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Good luck in this endeavour! I'm really interested in seeing how this experiment turns out, so I'll be sure to track your progress :) Hope it'll be beneficial for you!
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jimmymac Senior Member United Kingdom strange-lands.com/le Joined 6151 days ago 276 posts - 362 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 4 of 12 25 March 2009 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, sorry about that. I'm usually the first to complain about the use of acronyms. The below link will take you to the original Listening-reading thread. L-R thread
Thanks for your kind words. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Akipenda Lugha Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5736 days ago 78 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Swahili, Sign Language, Spanish | Message 5 of 12 27 March 2009 at 12:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, I've spent the last day reading about l-r on this forum (including the 42 pages from the original poster) and I'm still so confused. (though I've started collecting materials I can use for my own attempt at it). While you're writing the log could you share the method you're using and any adjustments you make to it?
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jimmymac Senior Member United Kingdom strange-lands.com/le Joined 6151 days ago 276 posts - 362 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 6 of 12 27 March 2009 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
Congratulations! Reading through that huge thread is an achievement in itself. While maintaining the log I do plan on adding details such as my level of comfort with the process, whether or not I feel my recognition of the language is improving, and also any hurdles I come upon and changes I make. Obviously these details are going to be completely subjective so I'm not sure how much you will be able to take away from it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jimmymac Senior Member United Kingdom strange-lands.com/le Joined 6151 days ago 276 posts - 362 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 7 of 12 06 April 2009 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi,
I managed to get a free day yesterday so I started my Portuguese early. I have come up against an immediate problem with the book I'm L-R'ing. Whilst the book is written in the third person the audiobook gives the perspective from the first person. If I wasn't familiar with Spanish it may have taken me a long time to realize this, so that’s another hurdle one has to look out when considering an audiobook. Whilst this is an obvious disadvantage it has forced me to rely early on the audio as a guide while supplementing the meaning of the book with the English text. For the first 20 minutes or so I was able to keep my place with relative ease, using cognates shared between Spanish and Portuguese. My progress after this time was fairly quick in comparison to French. By the end of the 2.5 hours I was able to keep my place easily and analyze much of the spoken language. Not much more to say. Edited by Jimmymac on 06 April 2009 at 4:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jimmymac Senior Member United Kingdom strange-lands.com/le Joined 6151 days ago 276 posts - 362 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 8 of 12 11 April 2009 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Evening All,
It has been 5 days since my last update. I'm pleased to report that I'm temporarily ahead of schedule. I finished L-R'ing the book on Friday and I'm one hour and 15 minutes into my second pass. I doubt I will continue to stay ahead of schedule for too long as I proposed to my girlfriend on Friday and I'm delighted to say she said yes. So the next 2 days are a write off as we are celebrating with friends. During the first pass I became increasingly comfortable with the Portuguese audio, to the point where on occasions I was listing to the audio first and foremost and checking the text for comprehension, and more often that not my understanding of the audio was correct. I did try this when I first started the process but I was only able to pick out isolated words rather than understand the meaning of a sentence. What I find really useful with L-R is how quickly you can transfer your knowledge of one language to another similar language. With courses like Pimsleur or Assimil you get the language bit by bit but with L-R you get a vast overview of the language in a short space of time. Also, It is amazing how quickly the foreign sounds begin to feel familiar and the words cease existing as a string of auditory blurs and actually become distinct entities. When I started my second pass this morning I remembered the few times I lost my place and had to search frantically to find it again. On this occasion no such thing occurred. More importantly I'm not simply searching for familiar words as an anchor anymore, rather I'm reading the text and actually looking for the words I don't know. That's not to say I don't pay attention to familiar words, I do, its just that I don't have to put so much effort into acknowledging them. I was trying to conceptualise L-R in terms that would appeal to my way of thinking and I came up with a metaphor that I thought was quite useful. I think of a wall that is primed and ready to be painted. Other methods seem to start at the most easily accessible part of the wall and paint nothing more than a tiny slither of white paint, it does this over and over again until that part no longer needs another layer. It is as white as can be. Then it moves onto the next most easily accessable part and starts again. Listening-Reading, however, does one quick pass over a much larger portion of the wall. With the first pass the layer is rather thin but with more and more passes that portion of the wall is pearly white. After that we can move onto the next portion of the wall. I think if you are the type of person who likes to know how many words you know in a given language or likes to learn word by word or sentence by sentence then L-R probably wouldn't suit you. But if you consider yourself a 'global learner' always wanting to see the big picture then I reckon you would be mad not to give it a try. Well that is all from me. p.s The book 'When Nietzsche wept' was an absolute gem of a read and I heartilly recommend it. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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