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Best way to master correct conjugation? | ||
Tags: Morphology | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 25 of 41 18 November 2012 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Iversen, what I wrote about is so far the fastest way for me not only to recognize grammar points, sentence patterns, agreement (grammatical or register agreement) and word usage, but to internalize it and be able to use it. And I think I mentioned before that the gap between my passive and active skills usually is higher than that one of people around my skill level.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 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 26 of 41 18 November 2012 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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What kinds of texts do you use? What kinds do you see yourself using?
That's a bit like my idea with making your own exercises. I think I'd write out the known meaningful words normally though. Like, a recent tweet from my timeline: 2 – Reyes logra su segundo gol frente al Betis con el Sevilla en liga, el primero lo marcó en octubre de 2003 (2-2 en Nervión). Revuelta >>> Reyes l s segundo gol f a Betis c e Sevilla e liga, e primero l m e octubre d 2003 (2-2 e Nervión). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5714 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 27 of 41 19 November 2012 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
I sometimes come up with alternative translations and sometimes the answer keys provide alternative translations. I'm not sure which manuals you preferred, but most of those that I've used were designed in such a way as to limit the number of answers you could have given. You're not translating Chaucer here, they're usually very basic sentences. By the way, I don't think I said you should only learn a language through translation drills, quite the opposite. I said, for me, the fastest way to internalize grammar rules from the start is to work my way through a good grammar-translation book. A good one will give me in a very short amount of time: an overview of all the most basic structures, vocabulary, verbal phrases, collocations; all the tenses; all of the morphology; the full conjugation system of the language; a nice chunk of the traditions and culture of the country that hosts the language. You're expected to produce the language yourself as proof of your understanding. There's no intentional memorization involved, which, for me, is a nice advantage.
This sounds like a rather advanced "mistake" to me. The grammar-translation manuals I use assume no knowledge of the language.
With "cued memorization" I'm assuming you're still translating? I'm not sure that I see an advantage, especially in that you're comparing a rather advanced exercise to an exercise intended for complete beginners. I don't see why you would have to choose one of the other; it would seem that you could use one after the other, or if you were on an intermediate or higher level and for some reason wished to work your way through a grammar-translation manual, you could do this and cued memorization in conjunction (the exercises supplied by the books accompanied by answers, your alternative phrasing of the exercises not). Edited by Rout on 19 November 2012 at 4:44am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 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 28 of 41 19 November 2012 at 1:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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"No intentional memorization", except that you're typically expected to memorize the word lists from each lesson and there's not enough comphrenesible input for that to stick.
Knowing all the grammar is advanced fluency, so I see no reason to do all of that when you're not even intermediate at anything else. The initial internalization doesn't have to involve production. Not for everything anyway. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5714 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 29 of 41 19 November 2012 at 2:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Yes, I did. I started with Pimsleur so I had a good pronunciation and naturally absorbed a lot of grammar. I went through Michel Thomas and learned the grammar more fully, but, to me, his accent was unpleasing (even though he would probably be considered a native) so I tried to get through this quickly. At this point I could speak, but I sounded kind of childish. I then went through Teach Yourself German by John Adams, and Hugo's Simplified German. After this my speech was very good, if not a bit antiquated (both courses being from the mid-20th century); this was the single biggest gain in ability I had in German. Except for a lack of vocabulary at times, I could express nearly anything I wanted to say. I then went through German without Toil, which I blind shadowed, shadowed, copied via scriptorium, and listened to in the background. This helped my vocabulary and helped to strengthen my grammar, but I'd get random recall of some pretty antiquated lines which I think made my German sound kind of "funny" and my listening ability was still below par. I then went through German with Ease only listening to the dialogs over and over and over (usually in the car) until I understood everything. I'd really only look in the book as a last resort. This helped my listening comprehension soooo much. I'd also simultaneously began composing on my own in German, using a more complete grammar and usage books (Hammer's German Grammar and Usage, Using German: A Guide to Contemporary Usage , etc.) and had access to probably the best online dictionaries available for any language (dict.cc and leo.de) as well as other online resources such as linguee.de (I'd also listen to the occasional podcast). I'd have all my writings corrected at lang-8. At this point I was ready for native materials and watched all (some 400 episodes) of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. I'd watched and loved the shows as a kid, and it was at just the right level so that I knew almost all the vocabulary, I just had to "listen" and focus; most of the idiomatic language I could understand from context and I looked almost nothing up (i.e. natural learning). About midway through the series I had my "epiphany moment". I was listening to and understanding everything without concentrating. The idioms, slang, and other colloquialisms I picked up from the show (which were universal and "regional friendly") were all I needed to make my German sound pretty much completely natural. As a began to watch TV, I simultaneously began to devour readers. After the show was over I moved on to native texts. None of this was done in a vacuum; there was some overlap in some of the things I did and time to time I'd try new methods out then move onto something else if I didn't like it or see improvement. There were probably a few things I forgot to mention as well. But this is basically how I taught myself fluent German in 1.5 years. Studying German for me was like therapy (I had a very stressful job at the time). When I'd do translation exercises, etc. I'd zone out (look up "flow psychology").
If you keep listening to something you already know and like (e.g. a show) that tends to have repetitive vocabulary (e.g. a series of shows), then you will have your epiphany.
Well, if I was going to live forever I'd probably just live in the country for five years, but for all intents and purposes efficiency is a major concern. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5714 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 30 of 41 19 November 2012 at 2:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
I'm not sure which type of grammars-translation manuals you've used, but most of the vocabulary lists in the old Teach Yourself manuals that I use are accompanied by reading exercises afterwards (e.g. constructed paragraphs in the beginning and excerpts from literature later on). You then do translation exercises, and if you don't remember something you look it up in the list. I don't know (don't care) if you're "supposed to memorize" it. It's a grammar-translation manual, not a vocabulary-translation manual (though I do invariably pick up lots of words just from using them, especially verbs which are a pain for me).
Agreed, but with one distinction: knowing all the grammar, to me, is intermediate fluency, knowing all the proper usage is advanced fluency. That is to say, learning grammar is, in my mind, a mostly a beginner-intermediate task while learning proper usage and "code-switching" between registers is more of a intermediate-advanced task. Edited by Rout on 19 November 2012 at 2:39am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 31 of 41 19 November 2012 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
I was referring to the kind of cues I mentioned before, namely the first letter method. I use this for initial acquisiton of grammar points and sentence patterns right from the start. Basically I go through a lesson text, try to spot and understand the new material, and then I memorize it, rather than doing grammar drills using explicit rules or forming new sentences on my own. I only repeat it once, the next day, but that alone is enough for me to be able to use most of the new material. As I stated before, it corrects my memory bias for informative over structural parts of the language. Translation exercises can help me spot points I need to improve, but I need a proficient speaker to correct my translations. Admittedly, I feel uneasy drilling the exact sentences given in the answer key of an exercise book because I've seen too many mistakes in such books. (Exercises in my English class are pretty fun, almost every single exercise sheet we get has at least one mistake, unidiomatic or ambiguous sentence, or a sentence that is completely useless as an example for the grammar point us students are supposed to learn. Not claiming to have native proficiency myself, but I can spot many of those. And without a good teacher, those exercises would be a disaster. Yet, apparently it's easier to explain the mistakes in those exercises than make up a whole new set.) As for my last postings, I tried to explain why I don't work with grammar-translation for example, in order to give potential readers a chance to figure out whether their learning style is similar enough to mine that they might profit from the method I mentioned in the same way. Edited by Bao on 19 November 2012 at 5:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5714 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 32 of 41 19 November 2012 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting. I see no fault in any of the books or methods I'm using, but I could see how this might be profitable (if not a bit labor-intensive) for a language with a dearth of such materials. Maybe I'll give it a try one day. Have you tried MCDs for memorizing the structural parts of the language (I'm assuming you mean prepositions, adverbs, etc. as opposed to nouns/verbs?)? You use context as the cue instead of the first letter as a cue. Have you experimented in using the last letter of each word, the number of letters each word has, etc.? Is there a link you could provide where this discussion is taking place? I'd be interested to see how many other people are learning the basics of language in this fashion.
That's a fault in the materials you're using, not the method. If you feel comfortable enough in English, you should give the old Teach Yourself series or Colloquial series (pre-1980) a try. I don't remember any mistakes. Even if there were, I really don't think it would hinder you from becoming fluent - the structure is the only takeaway you should have. These sentences aren't supposed to be rooted into your heart's nadir (use Assimil or authentic materials for that). You should do them while you're still a beginner to help springboard you towards intermediate fluency. You're English seems Advanced, I'm not sure why they're still having you learn in this fashion, especially if you're advanced enough to spot something that's unidiomatic.
You didn't mention, or at least didn't name, your learning style. From what I gather from the intentions behind your approach, it seems similar to mine (i.e. I learn by doing), though I prefer to memorize rules, not examples, not even cued ones. Maybe your learning style is closer to Heinrich Schliemann who used to memorize essays he wrote and thought would be useful (corrected by a native speaker) then memorize an entire book. I'm not one for memorizing (though I have been experimenting lately). Sounds like too much work. I gain proficiency and automaticity with the rules by simply using them through reading, writing, listening, and speaking (but initially translations). Edited by Rout on 20 November 2012 at 5:02pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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