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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6608 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 9 of 18

29 July 2012 at 5:49pm | IP Logged

Oh, your profile says you're a beginner in English :) I misread this as "Speaks: English*, Esperanto".

Frankly speaking, you don't seem to have enough interest in Esperanto. There's A LOT MORE fun stuff in the big natural languages like the three you're interested in, especially Spanish. (btw Destinos could be a nice beginning for your Spanish studies) It's never too late to start learning Esperanto, and it will be a breeze when you already speak Spanish and Italian. I know when I was 14 my parents would never allow me to travel using Pasporta Servo anyway :-) (heck they wouldn't even allow this now that I'm 22)
1 person has voted this message useful

EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4586 days ago
140 posts - 157 votes

Studies: English*, German

Message 10 of 18

29 July 2012 at 5:54pm | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

Yes, go for it! The best decision I made in my life was that I started to learn Finnish on my own
at the age of 15, while everyone was telling me to "finish" German first because I was learning it at school.

You don't necessarily need a set thing to follow. You just need options, so that if you're tired of one thing you
could do something else. Try lyricstraining.com if you like music. Later when you're no longer a beginner, try
http://gloss.dliflc.edu/ (!!!)
Finding the right techniques (btw: http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Techniques) is largely about
experimenting. Start with whatever seems sensible to you. Keep going. If you feel you're not improving, change
something.

I've learned much of my Italian and Spanish by watching plenty of football. With your knowledge of Esperanto, you
should also be able to learn a lot by listening. German might be a little more difficult, though you could try whether
your understanding improves if you read while listening to an audiobook - some things will probably be clearer in
the written text while others in the spoken one. I'm going to try this in Danish.

You may also want to try out the Listening-Reading method (see techniques). A popular choice for this is Harry
Potter :)))

emk has given some great advice as well. Although.. um, you're a female, right? language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=30276&PN=1&TPN=1">Our times of "high" and "medium" quality may
last longer. Don't feel guilty when your productivity seems to be lower. Most likely it's just different. Do what
you can do.

Thankyou, I decided it would be a good idea to note down some information, thankyou everyone for the useful
information. I am female, haha :-) I will check out all the links.

Thankyou everyone :D
1 person has voted this message useful

EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4586 days ago
140 posts - 157 votes

Studies: English*, German

Message 11 of 18

29 July 2012 at 5:57pm | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

Oh, your profile says you're a beginner in English :) I misread this as "Speaks: English*,
Esperanto".

Haha, I do that sometimes too :)
1 person has voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6608 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 12 of 18

29 July 2012 at 6:14pm | IP Logged

Also, as you're interested in biology...
I love "______ for doctors" textbooks! although I'm not a doctor haha. Some of these even start right from the beginner level and basic topics like "a healthy person feels happy and energetic. he can walk, he can run, he can jump" :) more interesting than the usual textbooks :)

For Italian, I really love this textbook. I really recommend doing it something like half a year from now.

Edited by Serpent on 29 July 2012 at 6:15pm
2 persons have voted this message useful

EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4586 days ago
140 posts - 157 votes

Studies: English*, German

Message 13 of 18

29 July 2012 at 7:09pm | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

Also, as you're interested in biology...
I love "______ for doctors" textbooks! although I'm not a doctor haha. Some of these even start right from the
beginner level and basic topics like "a healthy person feels happy and energetic. he can walk, he can run, he can
jump" :) more interesting than the usual textbooks :)

For Italian, I really love this textbook.
I really recommend doing it something like half a year from now.

Thankyou very much, i'll check it out!
1 person has voted this message useful

emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5543 days ago
2615 posts - 8806 votes

Speaks: English*, French^B2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
Personal Language Map

Message 14 of 18

29 July 2012 at 9:01pm | IP Logged

EnglishEagle wrote:

I think that is my problem. I don't have a set thing to follow or
complete. Also I don't know how I should practise and learn each day. I know there is
plenty of material, buts its the way that I go about using it. Do I use Assimil for
about 30-60 minutes a day then watch 20 minutes of German TV and 10 minutes of
recapping some unknown vocabulary?

Basically, almost anything will work if you do it regularly enough and don't give up.

But I agree, it's nice to have a roadmap. So let me offer you several, and you can
decide if any sound promising.

(I've been meaning to write this up for a while. Now's as good a time as any!)

Nice appetizers. Some people like to start off with a Michel Thomas course. They
say that this gives them a basic knowledge of grammar, and they can get through it
quickly. Another popular starting point is to figure out the basics of pronunciation.
If this seems tempting, you might want to play around with some interactive IPA charts,
look at the charts of German consonants and vowels on Wikipedia, and see how many you
can already pronounce. No need to worry about the details; just look at the tables and
see how many sounds you can imitate.

IPA charts
German phonology

Assimil every day. I had started and abandoned quite a few languages before
learning French. I would typically give up after two weeks. But when I started French,
I told myself, "I'm going to do an Assimil lesson every day for 30 days, no matter
what. I mean, it won't be easy, but surely I can put in 20–30 minutes of listening
every day for 30 days." At the end of the 30 days, I'd learned quite a bit of French,
and decided to renew for another 30. At the end of 60 days, it was easier to keep going
than to stop. And I basically did nothing but Assimil for my first 6 months.

To help stick with it, try making a Seinfeld Calendar or joining the consistency
thread.

Seinfeld Calendar

If you spend the next 5 or 6 months doing the passive and active waves of Assimil,
you'll be able to carry on a basic conversation in German, and you'll be able to read
books using a dictionary. Then you can decide how to progress from there.

Antimoon or AJATT. These methods involve working with books and movies in your
target language. Basically, you find a whole lot of cool stuff to read and watch, you
pick out 10 to 20 sentences per day which interest you (they're cool; you wish you
could say them; there's something in them you want to learn), you find or make a
translation, and you add them to an Anki deck for periodic review. As Khatzumoto at
AJATT says, you don't learn a language, you get used to it.

Antimoon
AJATT
Anki

I love this technique, and it's a great next step after Assimil. But some people do it
from day one.

Speak from day 1. This is a favorite of Benny Lewis. He travels to an area where
people speak his target language, he brings a phrasebook, and he stops speaking
English. Then he spends his first afternoon figuring out how to buy dinner. From there,
he focuses on whatever he needs next. A month or so later, he picks up a grammar book,
because now he's got lots of grammar questions. It's easy to learn quickly when you
give yourself no choice.

Benny Lewis

Again, this works great after Assimil, but some people do it from day 1. And you don't
need to travel—you just need to find or create situations where you have to speak
German. Desperation will force you to figure out the rest. :-)

Iverson's method. He explains this at great length elsewhere, but his approach
is interesting because he studies grammar very early, and makes a chart with the basic
rules but without any of the exceptions. Then he combines intensive work (where he
tries to understand everything about a short passage) with extensive work (where
he goes for sheer volume). He's got some ideas that I've never tried, but which many
people around here love. He can explain it better than I can:

Iversen's Guide

So you see, there's no one right answer. Personally, I'd suggest that you find
something that you'd enjoy doing, do it every day for a month or two, and if you still
like it, keep on going until you reach A2 or B1. I found it easier to stick with French
because I didn't have to make any decisions—one Assimil lesson, every day.

Once you get near B1, you have zillions of cool choices of what to do next. Enjoy
the trip!

Edited by emk on 29 July 2012 at 9:21pm
5 persons have voted this message useful

EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4586 days ago
140 posts - 157 votes

Studies: English*, German

Message 15 of 18

29 July 2012 at 9:09pm | IP Logged

emk wrote:

EnglishEagle wrote:

Basically, almost anything will work if you do it regularly enough and don't give up.

But I agree, it's nice to have a roadmap. So let me offer you several, and you can
decide if any sound promising.

(I've been meaning to write this up for a while. Now's as good a time as any!)

Nice appetizers. Some people like to start off with a Michel Thomas course. They
say that this gives them a basic knowledge of grammar, and they can get through it
quickly. Another popular starting point is to figure out the basics of pronunciation.
If this seems tempting, you might want to play around with some interactive IPA charts,
look at the charts of German consonants and vowels on Wikipedia, and see how many you
can already pronounce. No need to worry about the details; just look at the tables and
see how many sounds you can imitate.

IPA charts
German phonology

Assimil every day. I had started and abandoned quite a few languages before
learning French. I would typically give up after two weeks. But when I started French,
I told myself, "I'm going to do an Assimil lesson every day for 30 days, no matter
what. I mean, it won't be easy, but surely I can put in 20–30 minutes of listening
every day for 30 days." At the end of the 30 days, I'd learned quite a bit of French,
and decided to renew for another 30. At the end of 60 days, it was easier to keep going
than to stop. And I basically did nothing but Assimil for my first 6 months.

To help stick with it, try making a Seinfeld Calendar or joining the consistency
thread.

Seinfeld Calendar

If you spend the next 5 or 6 months doing the passive and active waves of Assimil,
you'll be able to carry on a basic conversation in German, and you'll be able to read
books using a dictionary. Then you can decide how to progress from there.

Antimoon or AJATT. These methods involve working with books and movies in your
target language. Basically, you find a whole lot of cool stuff to read and watch, you
pick out 10 to 20 sentences per day which interest you (they're cool; you wish you
could say them; there's something in them you want to learn), you find or make a
translation, and you add them to an Anki deck for periodic review. As Khatzumoto at
AJATT says, you don't learn a language, you get used to it.

Antimoon
AJATT
Anki

I love this technique, and it's a great next step after Assimil. But some people do it
from day one.

Speak from day 1. This is a favorite of Benny Lewis. He travels to an area where
people speak his target language, he brings a phrasebook, and he stops speaking
English. Then he spends his first afternoon figuring out how to buy dinner. From there,
he focuses on whatever he needs next. A month or so later, he picks up a grammar book,
because now he's got lots of grammar questions. It's easy to learn quickly when you
give yourself no choice.

Benny Lewis

Again, this works great after Assimil, but some people do it from day 1. And you don't
need to travel—you just need to find or create situations where you have to speak
German. Desperation will force you to figure out the rest. :-)

Iverson's method. He explains this at great length elsewhere, but his approach
is interesting because he studies grammar very early, and makes a chart with the basic
rules but without any of the exceptions. Then he combines intensive work (where he
tries to understand everything about a short passage) with extensive work (where
he goes for sheer volume). He's got some ideas that I've never tried, but which many
people around here love. He can explain it better than I can:

Iversen's Guide

So you see, there's no one right answer. Personally, I'd suggest that you find
something that you'd enjoy doing, do it every day for a month or two, and if you still
like it, keep on going until you reach A2 or B1. I found it easier to stick with French
because I didn't have to make any decisions—one Assimil lesson, every day.

Once you'll get near B1, you have zillions of cool choices of what to do next. Enjoy
the trip!

That's really informative, thankyou! I will note that down and I understand that consistency is the key. I like to be
able to plan a little bit ahead of what I am going to be doing. As I find this helps me stay on track and keep focus.
Once again, thankyou for the tips :-)
1 person has voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6608 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 16 of 18

30 July 2012 at 2:04am | IP Logged

This site has great animation for German and Spanish phonetics: http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/#

1 person has voted this message useful

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