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Question about the L-R method

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
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Volte
Tetraglot
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Switzerland
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 Message 49 of 89
19 July 2010 at 11:20pm | IP Logged 
Journeyer wrote:
But am I doing something entirely different, or did you mean in general? I'm not sure how to interpret what you meant, Volte.


I haven't been following what you're doing enough to have any idea, in all honesty; I was just responding to the notion of using multiple methods (which certainly has merits) but taking numbers from one specific method at the same time (which often doesn't work). It was a general comment.

On the specific side: good luck with your studies!


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Journeyer
Triglot
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tristan85.blogspot.c
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 Message 50 of 89
19 July 2010 at 11:31pm | IP Logged 
I see. Well, thank you much, then!
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john1000
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 Message 51 of 89
20 July 2010 at 12:07am | IP Logged 
I am at a stage in my learning of Russian where I can listen to L2 and read L1. When I am doing this I will often realize exactly what the audio is saying and can make sense of it (seeing how all the words fit together), but cannot do this without reading the translation. How close would you say this is to "natural listening" ?
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Volte
Tetraglot
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Switzerland
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 Message 52 of 89
20 July 2010 at 1:22am | IP Logged 
john1000 wrote:
I am at a stage in my learning of Russian where I can listen to L2 and read L1. When I am doing this I will often realize exactly what the audio is saying and can make sense of it (seeing how all the words fit together), but cannot do this without reading the translation. How close would you say this is to "natural listening"?


It's a precursor to natural listening. My very limited experience suggests that you're more than 20 and less than 100 (probably less than 60?) hours away from a low level of natural listening, assuming you keep at it.

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Journeyer
Triglot
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 Message 53 of 89
20 July 2010 at 4:56am | IP Logged 
Just out of curiosity, Volte, is LR your primary method of language learning? Do you prefer other methods? Do you have a multiple approach method? I only ask because it seems like the folks here have more or less dubbed you patron saint of LR, now that atamagaii isn't chiming in. :-P

So far, from my also very limited - but so far satisfied - experience, I intend on using it or at least some form inspired by it for as many languages as I can. But unfortunately I don't see how I can use it for every language I want to learn...for example Arabic, simply because I haven't so far been able to locate the adequate literary or audio resources. When I start working on those given languages seriously, I'll look harder, but for some of them, it's simply tough for me to find enough, such as for Arabic, Hebrew, Icelandic, Polish, Afrikaans, Dutch, Lakota, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and Navajo, for example. I'm sure resources exist for most of those languages (although almost certainly not for the Native American ones), but I don't know where.
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ibraheem
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 Message 54 of 89
22 July 2010 at 3:20am | IP Logged 
You can find parallel Bible texts at http://unbound.biola.edu/ for many languages. A search on google can bring up the audio for many of the languages.
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cypherpunks
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 Message 55 of 89
12 August 2010 at 11:40pm | IP Logged 
Journeyer wrote:
But unfortunately I don't see how I can use it for every language [...] simply because I haven't so far been able to locate the adequate literary or audio resources. When I start working on those given languages seriously, I'll look harder, but for some of them, it's simply tough for me to find enough, such as for Arabic, Hebrew, Icelandic, Polish, Afrikaans, Dutch, Lakota, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and Navajo, for example. I'm sure resources exist for most of those languages (although almost certainly not for the Native American ones), but I don't know where.


For most of these "big" languages there are tons of material available. E.g. for Swedish, just look up the Swedish title (e.g. go to its Wikipedia article and click Svenska), tag on "audiobook", "ljudbok", "talbok" or something and then google. You'll find plenty of both legal and pirated options. Expect it to be harder to find text-versions than audiobooks though... You could probably order hard copies online from Sweden though.
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Volte
Tetraglot
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 Message 56 of 89
13 August 2010 at 7:33pm | IP Logged 
Journeyer wrote:
Just out of curiosity, Volte, is LR your primary method of language learning? Do you prefer other methods? Do you have a multiple approach method? I only ask because it seems like the folks here have more or less dubbed you patron saint of LR, now that atamagaii isn't chiming in. :-P


I'm certainly not the patron saint of L-R.

It is my primary, but not only, method for starting new languages intensively. Non-intensively reading parallel texts, accompanied by audiobooks, are also part of my further studies of any given language.

It's a very specific tool, aimed to give you a base in a language quickly. Having an idea what to expect (skimming a grammar summary), and a certain amount of phonetic material are also useful, as atamagaii wrote.

Further afield, I do like RTK (unlike atamagaii).

For specific situations (such as visiting a country, without having put dozens of hours of language study in beforehand), phrasebooks are quite handy; tiny amounts of L-R are almost useless for sufficiently unfamiliar languages. I can't really stand using Pimsleur nowadays, but it did help me greatly with Japanese several years ago (I had no idea how to independently study languages, and it helped consolidate what I'd learned by reading various web pages and grammars, and gave me some useful structures I could slot words from phrasebooks into, with the natural answers being one of the words I'd used and hence would recognize, etc). This also has downsides; I was recently in Hungary, and couldn't understand a word of most of the replies to my phrasebook-aided questioning, though I did always manage to get food and train/bus tickets.

Regardless of situation, a certain amount of 'multiple methods' is necessary after you hit basic fluency. There are precious few audiobooks related to my non-fiction interests in most languages, and extensive reading and listening of a wider range of material than it makes sense to prepare L-R material for is critical for rounding out your knowledge of a language.

L-R is excellent for getting up to basic fluency, if you use it well enough. It's not a silver bullet; something more similar to AJATT in terms of time invested is necessary to get up to the level of an educated native speaker.

A side note: I recently visited Serbia. I've studied Polish and Russian almost purely through L-R (I skimmed a touristy Russian textbook once, have read a few reference grammars, and sometimes surf webpages in those languages or read a bit in them), and never studied Serbian, though I've been exposed to it, a little, occasionally. I doubt my study time of the Slavic languages has hit 200 hours (... I have a bad tendency to get sidetracked from them). I went with a friend who speaks Serbian to about a B2 level, and no other Slavic languages. He estimated I could understand about 90% of a half-hour conversation he had with a Serb - I did follow it, though I got the occasional detail wrong and asked about a couple of words. Needless to say, more complex conversations between native Serbians are much harder to follow, but it was still a surprisingly positive result.

Journeyer wrote:

So far, from my also very limited - but so far satisfied - experience, I intend on using it or at least some form inspired by it for as many languages as I can. But unfortunately I don't see how I can use it for every language I want to learn...for example Arabic, simply because I haven't so far been able to locate the adequate literary or audio resources.


Indeed, it can't.

Journeyer wrote:

When I start working on those given languages seriously, I'll look harder, but for some of them, it's simply tough for me to find enough, such as for Arabic, Hebrew, Icelandic, Polish, Afrikaans, Dutch, Lakota, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and Navajo, for example. I'm sure resources exist for most of those languages (although almost certainly not for the Native American ones), but I don't know where.


There are certainly sufficient resources to construct L-R material for Icelandic, Polish, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish. Audiobooks are readily available. You will have to make parallel texts yourself (unless you can find and want to use texts such as parallel bibles); you may need to scan and OCR the non-English texts for some.

Sprachprofi recently posted about finding a long Dan Brown novel in audiobook form for Arabic. Hebrew and Arabic may also have religious audiobooks that would be usable for L-R, but I fear I haven't explored this. In general, both languages seem to be tricky targets - most audiobooks I've seen have been of work which has never been translated.

I have no idea about the Afrikaans, Lakota, and Navajo audiobook situation; I've sometimes been surprised at what audiobooks turn up where I least expect it.

Good luck.

Edit: I've briefly looked into the Afrikaans audiobook situation. There appear to be plentiful audiobooks in it, but of Afrikaans work; I'm yet to see anything I recognize. If you want to pursue this further, the term is Oudioboeke.

Edit2: There is also a bit in Navajo. “The Five Sacred Medicines” is an example. It's too short for proper L-R, by far, but it's a promising sign. I found it via Native village, which has quite a lot of interesting links.



Edited by Volte on 16 August 2010 at 2:22am



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