Kaisern Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4886 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Studies: French
| Message 65 of 70 10 July 2011 at 11:16pm | IP Logged |
Thank you Leosmith! Reading this article has shown me why learning Spanish was so easy for me! I spent my initial years listening only to Spanish at home and English at school, and through this I became proficient at both. The common thing between both languages was that I heard them constantly, which supplemented my overall learning. This makes so much sense!
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JayR9 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4700 days ago 155 posts - 162 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 66 of 70 30 January 2012 at 8:21pm | IP Logged |
Thank you Leosmith. Very good post. I have started watching an episode of Mainland drama each day and before reading this post, I used to put a Chinese television channel on in the background whilst sat at the comp. Maybe after reading this I should focus some time to it more.
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kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4847 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese
| Message 67 of 70 06 January 2014 at 3:30am | IP Logged |
Excellent stuff.
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shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4444 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French
| Message 68 of 70 17 January 2014 at 8:29am | IP Logged |
Listening from the beginning is still 1 of the best ways to learn a language. In order to listen effectively you'd start
with videos with English subtitles and then captions in the native language. The more exposure you have for a
language, the faster your progress.
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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 69 of 70 17 January 2014 at 7:48pm | IP Logged |
Depends on the language. If it's similar enough to what you already speak, you can understand more and more without using translations or close captions. Include these when you feel you're walking in circles and getting nowhere. And always allocate some time to listening without those crutches.
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shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4444 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French
| Message 70 of 70 01 November 2015 at 1:46pm | IP Logged |
Like a child learning to speak before learning to write. A language like Chinese, many of the younger generation in the US, Canada and places outside China can speak the native language fluently but never learned to write the characters besides their name.
Being able to read a newspaper to a certain extent is 1 thing, but being able to carry on a conversation can better reflect your fluency.
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