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| jingwumaster Newbie United States Joined 4667 days ago 33 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* | Message 17 of 32 22 June 2013 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks again, I'll check them out to. I still listen to HIM, my favourite albums by HIM are Greatest Love Songs Vol. 666 and Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights. Also I like a couple songs by Opeth (Swedish band I believe), my favourite is "Dirge for November" and "Windowpane".
I apologize if posting off-topic things upsets anyone. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 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 18 of 32 22 June 2013 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||
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;______;
"daddy, tell me about your youth" - "omg it was so cool" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 19 of 32 22 June 2013 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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If I should add just one thing to jingwumaster's first message then it would be the use of bilingual texts (and if you can get subtitles to spoken sources then accept them, but don't trust them) The point is that you can get many of your doubts cleared on the spot, which makes your range of comprehensible input much larger and any deficiency in your immediate memory less harmful. This is even more important when your main tasks are the passive skills.
I would however suggest that you do try also to reach at least a basic level in the active skills - otherwise German will just not be integrated as a permanent part of you mind, and it will rust in no time if you stop your stream of input. Right now I'm learning Irish, which is a language I have very little hope of ever needing in practice. I started out using the texts in a textbook, but switched to bilingual text made with a machine translator (with German as your target language you have probably less problems finding good humanmade translations, but they must be very literal - otherwise they will be confusing). And recently I added Harry Potter I to my bilingual repertoire. But even with a bilingual text you need to be at a certain level to use it extensively, so in the beginning you basically have the choice between intensive study of short texts and LR, the listening-reading method, which presupposes that you can get a very long recording with both a transcript and a translation. It is much easier to take ten-twenty lines of text, for which you have a translation. Add a some blank paper, some pencils in different colours, a really good dictionary and maybe a simple grammar which you know well enough to look things up in it - then you have a toolbox, which can break down even the German fortress. As a supplement I'll mention the phases I recently have used with my intensive text studies, not because they necessarily all will be necessary, but just to show the progression: 1) copy the text sentence by sentence and write a hyperliteral translation underneath or after each sentence - even if you use a bilingual text. Include grammatical remarks if you have had problems with something. All new words go into one (or two columns) to the right of the paper for later inclusion into a wordlist. 2) same thing, but drop the translation (unless some passage has been so difficult that you want to retain your complete solution). 3) read the original and look up all new words, then write your own translation and try to reconstruct the original with the help of the translation. 4) Drop the copying and the written translations, but keep a sheet of paper or booklet (or even some electronical gadget) within reach for new words and interesting grammatical observations. Edited by Iversen on 28 June 2013 at 1:10pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 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 20 of 32 22 June 2013 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, I'm so surprised! For me the whole point of intensive reading was focusing on each individual sentence and even phrase/collocation until the whole sentence makes sense. I've never thought of it as of compiling your own custom glossary that contains all the words you need and none that you already know.
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| jingwumaster Newbie United States Joined 4667 days ago 33 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* | Message 21 of 32 22 June 2013 at 10:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Iversen, (htlal legend)
I really appreciate your contribution to my thread and I have a couple things to ask you about your post. You mentioned developing at least a basic level of active language or else you could lose the language easily, so that makes me curious as to whether or not you would consider writing German in notebooks and elaborate talking to one's self on par with speaking, in terms of activating the language? Because I plan on doing those things to, even if I don't actually speak it to people. Also if yes to this question, then I could use a site like lang-8 to have natives correct my writing. What do you think? Onto your phases, 1. Do you use a separate notebook for this? Also, instead of just a hyper-literal what about including a more idiomatic translation under the hyper-literal translation? I've seen other polyglots do something like that. 3. This seems similar to Luca's back-and-forth translation method, if you're aware of Luca's method then would you say this phase is the same as his main method or does it differ? I've seen that many polyglots tend to do something like this at some stage in some way. I suppose it could help impress the language's structure into your brain more, which is probably the point, unless I'm wrong. Two more general questions, Do you find that each phase tends to last some approximate amount of time or do you just go by feel as to when it is time to move onto another phase? Would you recommend doing this with Assimil? If not then how would you recommend using Assimil? Because I have it and don't know if I should do things this way from the beginning or complete Assimil and then do things this way with native text. Thanks again for all your help. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 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 22 of 32 22 June 2013 at 10:44pm | IP Logged | ||
Assimil already provides translations so I'm not sure what you want to do with it, but you can always do scriptorium. But you don't need to use native texts straight away. The usual "stick to one resource" advice is mostly for eternal beginners who are always looking for a better coursebook. Edited by Serpent on 22 June 2013 at 10:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 23 of 32 23 June 2013 at 12:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I throw out my wordlists when the pile becomes too high, so unfortunately I'll never end up with my own personal dictionary, nor a complete glossary to a whole book. But while I work with a certain text I have a complete list of the words I have looked up (or guessed from the translation of a bilingual text), and when I reread the text - which now is my main method of doing repetition for wordlists based on texts - I do indeed have a personal glossary lying right beside it.
As for the use of hyperliteral translations it is logical to me that their purpose is to show me exactly what the meaning and role of each element in the original text is - a freer 'idiomatic' translation would have to conform to the rules of the base language, and for some reason my teachers during my school and study years found that important. I don't - the one and only purpose of the translations is to help be to keep the all meanings and grammatical observations in the original text available to me until I can do this trick directly from the original. They are not meant for the prying eyes of literature aficionados. jingwumaster suggests "including a more idiomatic translation under the hyper-literal translation? I've seen other polyglots do something like that." Yes, and also the Assimil and Kauderwelsch booklets. But my hyperliteral translations are enough for me because I normally remember fairly well what I thought when I wrote them down, and I give hints in the text if an expressions seems especially opaque. I do recognize the need to learn the appropriate translations - or rather: idomatic counterparts - of expressions you use frequently in your own language. And therefore it may be a good idea to note down anything useful you come across - but not as part of the translation, rather as a supplement to the wordlist. However there isn't room for long expressions in the column to the right on my sheets so usually I usually just underline such expressions or write them twice, and then I memorize them again when I run through the text the second time. The logical thing would of course to give them the 'full wordlist treatment. I know about Luca's back-and-forth translation method, but when I tried to find one video about about it I couldn't find it among all his 70 or so videos. The passage that came closest was around 10 minuts into this video, and there it seemed that he used it for longer texts and with a substantial time lapse between each round. I prefer compressing the whole thing into one process just as I have done with the wordlist method. Nevertheless Luca and I share a positive view of the general concept of retranslation - the main difference lies in the timescale. As for the duration of the phases it is hard to say something precise because it depends on the texts you find and on the degree of relationship between the languages. But I have spent by far the shortest time in phase one and only with languages which were quite diferent from my old languages - like my Greek some years ago or Irish now. Phase two has taken far too long for me in Russian, probably because I almost never hear the language and languages are meant to be heard. But now I have dropped the mere copying and switched to the phase 3 exercises, which are more likely to help me activate the language. Btw. the 'scriptorium' of profArguelles is different from my phase 2 copying in two important ways: he reads the texts aloud while writing, and he has not mentioned a separate column for new words. And finally, what do I recommend concerning Assimil? Actually I have never owned a full course from Assimil, but their language guides are excellent, both because of the concise grammatical sections and of the use of hyperliteral translations. However as a general rule you should stop using texts from textbooks as soon as you can find something tractable from genuine sources. I like to use scientific and cultural articles because they mostly are wellwritten and rather short, and besides I find their content much more attractive then the pseudo-stories or (even worse) unconnected sentences in textbooks. But others may prefer literature or the informal style in blogs, and right now I am using Harry Potter books in two languages, with more to come - no rule without exceptions... Edited by Iversen on 24 June 2013 at 1:00pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jingwumaster Newbie United States Joined 4667 days ago 33 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* | Message 24 of 32 23 June 2013 at 4:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your input Iversen. I've watched some of your videos on youtube and have found them useful and interesting.
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