Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

L-R: Intensity, evaporation, gist

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
10 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6437 days ago
4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 1 of 10
25 May 2010 at 4:17am | IP Logged 
I recently asked atamagaii what it took to keep a language which had reached natural listening from evaporating. This is his/her answer to that, and to what s/he sees in learning logs on this site.

atamagaii wrote:

When/if you've natural-listened to a few rather difficult audiobooks and then will be natural-listening and reading every day for a few minutes at least, the language will not evaporate.

Speaking: you'll have to practice your pronunciation every day for at least five minutes - repeating after the recording.



I hadn't been using some of my languages for twenty years (Portuguese or French) and when it was necessary I could manage - understanding was almost intact, speaking rusty, but improving very fast - you can revive it in a week.


atamagaii wrote:

I don't know how much you like literature - for me it is my soul - a good book is something that keeps me going for ever - any time I start listening or reading Le petit prince or Alice in Wonderland or Kafka or War and Peace... I could go on and on without stopping and never tiring.

If I can experience it, so I am sure that there are other people who can do it.



As far as L-R goes, everything is important - it is a system a interdependent elements: LOVE and self-explanatory texts are the most important. But the quality of the audio and the reader are very important, too. Parallel e-texts make it much easier and faster. If you have a literal interlinear long text for beginners, it is marvellous - if you don't, use a mouse-over pop up dictionary, it will be slower and you’ll have to stop the recording time and again and re-listen to a given fragment. Your knowledge of grammar and pronunciation also count. L-R is for hard-core learners. It's nothing mechanical, you have to concentrate and think all the time paying attention to what you HEAR - the texts are only there to help you understand the spoken words and sentences. You have to be able to process information very fast, some people can't read quickly enough, for them L-R would be a nightmare.



I don't memorize anything, but when I'm going through a text for the first time, I understand at least 70%, usually almost 100% of the recording, for a fleeting moment only, and I go on. It is possible if you use self-explanatory texts you love and know some basic facts about the grammar. There's no magic in it, it's damn easy.

When I started L-R Japanese, I had no literal translation - I read the story in Polish, Russian or any language I already knew and then I used a pop-up dictionary - I listened to a fragment a few times - when I understood every single word, I went on - let me repeat: I concentrated on what I HEARD, the written text was only a tool - I didn't pay too much attention to kanji but I got plenty exposure to them and very soon I started recognizing some of them, more and more of them.

I work very intensively - 10 to 12 hours a day for a week or two to get to a stage of natural listening to completely new, previously unknown texts - and then I can slow down a little bit and enjoy newly acquired language freedom.

To be able to work intensively you must get ENOUGH SLEEP, it goes without saying. And if you don't love yourself and what you're doing, L-R is not for you. As simple as that.



Most language learners are just dreamers – they play with a new toy for a while and drop it. I NEVER do it. My toys grow with and within me. A toy is very serious matter. It’s not to be abandoned, you’re responsible for it, it’s yours, you shouldn’t betray it – yourself.





Edited by Volte on 25 May 2010 at 4:30am
8 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 5554 days ago
2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 2 of 10
25 May 2010 at 10:27am | IP Logged 
Thanks for posting this, Volte. All good advice, and I like the allusion to the Little Prince at the end of her/his reply.

Would it be possible to clear up a couple of points for me on LR? I'd really appreciate this.

LR QUESTION 1

In the original post, the first part of LR system (to put it all very roughly in terms of learning Spanish via English) read something like this:

1. Read the book in English

2. Read the book in Spanish, whilst listening to Spanish. Do this either:
a. ...until you can follow both comfortably, but are not learning anything much new.
b. ...until the end of the book, if you find that you're actually learning quite a bit during this step.

3. Read the book in English, whilst listening to Spanish. Do this 1-3 times from beginning to end. [edit]

In terms of the bare bones of the method, is this about right?


LR QUESTION 2

I love reading literature, and am the proud owner of an extensive library of bookshelves buckling under the weight of all authors, great and small. However, I'm not really much of a fan of re-reading a story straight after I've finished it. Maybe it's just me, but I prefer to be kept bated during my studies by the unraveling plot of a good story.

I'm also not a particularly fast speed-reader or great memoriser, so the details all seem to fade relatively quickly for me after several pages. Coming from a largely musical background, I tend to really enjoy listening to the wonderful medley of sounds in a language and reaching out to the emotions in a scene instead. I'm also a terror for silently repeating the words inside my head like a sumptuous meal or a fantastic flight of melodies.

It's things like this that make me want to tackle a project involving listen and reading, such as LR, in smaller more manageable sections.

Would it be possible to ask atamagaii if she knows of or can recommend a version of the LR method where a reader can go through a book in smaller sections like this. I do remember some advice in one of her/his latter posts, that suggested something along these lines:

1. Read a page/paragraph in English

2. Read a page/paragraph in Spanish, whilst listening to Spanish.

3. Read a page/paragraph in English, whilst listening to Spanish. Do steps 2 AND 3 from beginning to end 1-3 times.

However, I've always been quite confused whether this meant following the above steps for each section in the sequence i) 1, 2,3,2,3,2,3, or ii) 1, 2, 3,3,3, or even perhaps iii) something else entirely.

Please could you help clarify this point?

Thanks to both of you for all your advice on this subject so far, and if you could answer these questions on LR, I'm sure it could prove really useful for future learners, me included. :)


Edited by Teango on 25 May 2010 at 11:07am
1 person has voted this message useful



Andy E
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 7101 days ago
1651 posts - 1939 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, French

 
 Message 3 of 10
25 May 2010 at 10:59am | IP Logged 
Teango wrote:
Read the book in English, whilst listening to English. Do this 1-3 times from beginning to end.


This I don't recall from the original method. Why would you listen to it in your native language?

Teango wrote:
However, I'm not really much of a fan of re-reading a story straight after I've finished it.


This is why L-R in its unvarnished form just doesn't work for me. Re-reading a book, whether it be in L1 or L2 multiple times bores me to tears.

Quote:
It's things like this that make me want to tackle a project involving listen and reading, such as LR, in smaller more manageable sections.


This is what I do. A chapter at a time, repeatedly until done.As for intensity, I don't have 10-12 hours a day to devote to the method. A couple of hours at a time, at most.

We can obviously give this whatever label we like "L-R", "L&R", "R-L" etc, but at the end of the day, you're listening and you're reading and you do whatever works for you.

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 5554 days ago
2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 4 of 10
25 May 2010 at 11:11am | IP Logged 
Andy E wrote:
Teango wrote:
Read the book in English, whilst listening to English. Do this 1-3 times from beginning to end.


This I don't recall from the original method. Why would you listen to it in your native language?

Oops...morning mistype (lol)...I've edited the post to read "Spanish" instead now. Thanks for pointing that out, Andy! :)

Edited by Teango on 25 May 2010 at 11:11am
1 person has voted this message useful



Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6437 days ago
4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 5 of 10
25 May 2010 at 1:08pm | IP Logged 
Teango wrote:
Thanks for posting this, Volte. All good advice, and I like the allusion to the Little Prince at the end of her/his reply.

Would it be possible to clear up a couple of points for me on LR? I'd really appreciate this.

LR QUESTION 1

In the original post, the first part of LR system (to put it all very roughly in terms of learning Spanish via English) read something like this:

1. Read the book in English

2. Read the book in Spanish, whilst listening to Spanish. Do this either:
a. ...until you can follow both comfortably, but are not learning anything much new.
b. ...until the end of the book, if you find that you're actually learning quite a bit during this step.

3. Read the book in English, whilst listening to Spanish. Do this 1-3 times from beginning to end. [edit]

In terms of the bare bones of the method, is this about right?


I don't think atamagaii is going to chime in again (though if s/he does and allows it, I will very gladly pass it on), so I shall try to answer. Take what I say with shovels of salt, etc.

What you said is correct, and is part of the core step of the method, but isn't particularly complete. You need intensity, and a relatively large amount of material (I believe atamagaii has mentioned 40 hours or so - and this is of recordings, excluding repetition).

The other steps are less crucial, but still helpful - and then there's the art of learning pronunciation.

Teango wrote:

LR QUESTION 2

I love reading literature, and am the proud owner of an extensive library of bookshelves buckling under the weight of all authors, great and small. However, I'm not really much of a fan of re-reading a story straight after I've finished it. Maybe it's just me, but I prefer to be kept bated during my studies by the unraveling plot of a good story.


I share your profile. Not liking to reread is a disadvantage for L-R. That says, atamagaii always points out that you should be guided by joy (L-R can really be hell if you ignore this), and you can choose just to not repeat books - you'll lose something in efficiency, I think a substantial amount, but I don't know how much.

That said, I find rereading a story I quite like, where I understood nothing the first time, and feeling like I'm picking off occasional unrecognized words the second, is magical enough that it makes me hate rereading less. Your mileage may vary.

Teango wrote:

I'm also not a particularly fast speed-reader or great memoriser, so the details all seem to fade relatively quickly for me after several pages. Coming from a largely musical background, I tend to really enjoy listening to the wonderful medley of sounds in a language and reaching out to the emotions in a scene instead. I'm also a terror for silently repeating the words inside my head like a sumptuous meal or a fantastic flight of melodies.


Not reading quickly is a problem. The rest sounds good to me, but I could be wrong.

Teango wrote:

It's things like this that make me want to tackle a project involving listen and reading, such as LR, in smaller more manageable sections.

Would it be possible to ask atamagaii if she knows of or can recommend a version of the LR method where a reader can go through a book in smaller sections like this. I do remember some advice in one of her/his latter posts, that suggested something along these lines:

1. Read a page/paragraph in English

2. Read a page/paragraph in Spanish, whilst listening to Spanish.

3. Read a page/paragraph in English, whilst listening to Spanish. Do steps 2 AND 3 from beginning to end 1-3 times.

However, I've always been quite confused whether this meant following the above steps for each section in the sequence i) 1, 2,3,2,3,2,3, or ii) 1, 2, 3,3,3, or even perhaps iii) something else entirely.

Please could you help clarify this point?


I personally hate this style, so have essentially no experience here. Generally, I switch between 2 and 3 whenever I feel like it - I can stick to one for chapters, or be switching multiple times a paragraph. Go with what you feel.

I'd worry about this not being as effective as going straight through (waiting and getting more exposure makes a second pass seem way more worthwhile to me, and you're not maximizing your exposure to new material this way, which is something atamagaii has written about with upper-case letters and exclamation points). That said, what you can do is always more effective than what you don't do at all - how far it is from ideal is a bit academic, in a way.

Teango wrote:

Thanks to both of you for all your advice on this subject so far, and if you could answer these questions on LR, I'm sure it could prove really useful for future learners, me included. :)


I'll consider this post worthwhile if someone comes back after reading it and does enough L-R to shoot holes in the bits where I need to overstretch my experience to try to answer.

1 person has voted this message useful



Emerald
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
languagedabbler.blog
Joined 6243 days ago
316 posts - 340 votes 
Speaks: Hindi, Gujarati*, English
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 6 of 10
25 May 2010 at 5:27pm | IP Logged 
Teango wrote:
Thanks for posting this, Volte. All good advice, and I like the allusion to the Little Prince at the end of her/his reply.

Would it be possible to clear up a couple of points for me on LR? I'd really appreciate this.

LR QUESTION 1

In the original post, the first part of LR system (to put it all very roughly in terms of learning Spanish via English) read something like this:

1. Read the book in English

2. Read the book in Spanish, whilst listening to Spanish. Do this either:
a. ...until you can follow both comfortably, but are not learning anything much new.
b. ...until the end of the book, if you find that you're actually learning quite a bit during this step.

3. Read the book in English, whilst listening to Spanish. Do this 1-3 times from beginning to end. [edit]

In terms of the bare bones of the method, is this about right?



Exactly the questions I had, so thanks for this.



Teango wrote:



1. Read a page/paragraph in English

2. Read a page/paragraph in Spanish, whilst listening to Spanish.

3. Read a page/paragraph in English, whilst listening to Spanish. Do steps 2 AND 3 from beginning to end 1-3 times.




I do this but without strict guideline of how long it should be. If I find a passage easy enough to understand, I might do the whole page. At other times, I would stop after two sentences. I feel there is no point in going through a whole paragraph if I didn't understand anything. But this is only the first time I am experimenting with it so might change. However, so far, I do like it.

Alongside sort of regularlish L&R, I also use a modified version of it, where I do both reading and listening but not at the same time.

MY CURRENT MODIFIED VERSION IS THIS:

Listen to and read a book in Spanish (a book that I already know well in English. This is important)

Listen to audio of the book in Spanish (I do this while commuting etc.)

At the same time (but not while listening to audio - so in the evenings at home in my case), I read the book in English and in Spanish. This is where I don't worry about length. I read in English first, usually a pargraph though could be longer or shorter depending on the context. Then I read Spanish. If necessary, I read English again. If not, I move on.

I also jot down any key vocab I want to add to Anki. I don't stop to look up meaning here. I just make a note of Spanish words, and then once I am done with the session, I look them up in the dictionary, and add them to ANKI.

After this step (where both just the audio listening is complete, and Spanish/English reading is complete), I will read the book in English, while listening to the audio in Spanish.

Then listen to the audio in Spanish, while keeping up with the reader by reading Spanish out loud (currently, I can only do that with certain parts).

Then read the book only in Spanish.

*Listening to just audio alone can be added in at any point for listening practice.

I know it is not the original LR method, but that's where the inspiration comes from anyway, albeit based on my time constraints and my learning methods. I can't devote 10 hours in one day - I have neither the time, nor the attention span for that. I prefer shorter sessions several times a day, as they keep me fresh and are more productive.
1 person has voted this message useful



Juаn
Senior Member
Colombia
Joined 5343 days ago
727 posts - 1830 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*

 
 Message 7 of 10
25 May 2010 at 6:25pm | IP Logged 
I think this is a great method, but people should be their own judge of what works for them. Other than the general outline of L-R, in my opinion you should not fret over how many times or in what sequence you read each paragraph. Just experiment and see what works best for you. I do agree though intensity produces the best results.

In my case, I need to understand everything before I move on, so I dissect every sentence and look up each unknown word, until I'm satisfied I know the reason behind every form or declension. I'll do parallel text (without audio - too cumbersome for me) when I'm at the stage where I can appreciate and refine my understanding of nuance, subtlety and connotation.

As for audio and pronunciation, I prefer to subject myself to massive amounts of natural speech, like listening to the news, watching TV and listening to the radio as much as I can.
1 person has voted this message useful



Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6437 days ago
4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 8 of 10
25 May 2010 at 6:33pm | IP Logged 
Juаn wrote:
I think this is a great method, but people should be their own judge of what works for them. Other than the general outline of L-R, in my opinion you should not fret over how many times or in what sequence you read each paragraph. Just experiment and see what works best for you. I do agree though intensity produces the best results.


Agreed on all points.

Juаn wrote:

In my case, I need to understand everything before I move on, so I dissect every sentence and look up each unknown word, until I'm satisfied I know the reason behind every form or declension. I'll do parallel text (without audio - too cumbersome for me) when I'm at the stage where I can appreciate and refine my understanding of nuance, subtlety and connotation.


At the level my Esperanto is at (significantly above the low end of basic fluency, and significantly short of advanced fluency), I increasingly use this approach, but I find it very inefficient and painful as a beginner.

Juаn wrote:

As for audio and pronunciation, I prefer to subject myself to massive amounts of natural speech, like listening to the news, watching TV and listening to the radio as much as I can.


That helps, but at least for me, it doesn't help anywhere near enough.



1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 10 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3750 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.