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Results of speaking after comprehension? | ||
Tags: Silent period | Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 17 of 47 28 October 2013 at 3:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I pronounced all r's as in French, except in English. I didn't have to learn the rolled r
until I studied Russian. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4666 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 18 of 47 28 October 2013 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am doing the exact opposite. That is, the day I started learning Spanish about a month ago, I did my first conversation exchanges, and have done them every day since then.
I'll race you. ;-) Edited by tastyonions on 28 October 2013 at 3:44pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6826 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 19 of 47 28 October 2013 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
I had a Spanish-speaking friend evaluate my pronunciation after my first week. I read a random news article to her. I was slow, and I didn't understand much, but she said my pronunciation was good (her main correction was that I need to better differentiate my l's and r's - no I'm not Japanese). In general, I'm pretty decent with accents and imitating them, so I'm not too worried about the pronunciation aspect of this experiment. In Glossika's experiment, he had native Polish speakers correct him after they watched his reading videos. I was amazed by their patience. Maybe they enjoyed the story he was reading... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 20 of 47 28 October 2013 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
Speaking involves several activities, and reading aloud only helps you with two of those: converting letters to sounds and making the mouth movements that correspond to the intended sounds. Reading aloud doesn't help you with equally important tasks like retrieving relevant vocabulary, organizing grammatical correct sentences and inventing suitable things to say. If I have understood the proponents of silent periods correctly then reading aloud can take place during the socalled silent period, but it is surprisingly hard to find a clear statement about this. I tried to Google "silent period" + "reading aloud", and all the quotes on the first page of hits had the teacher reading aloud and the student listening ... which incidentally would make me fall asleep or flee. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 47 28 October 2013 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Here's a sample of the DELF B2 exam I sat. It's basically high-school level stuff: reading comprehension, a 250-word persuasive essay, and a 10 minute presentation on a current events topic with a 10 minute Q&A. The passing score is 50 out of 100. About 10 of the 100 points require reading the examiners' minds (grr), and another 25 or so require high-school level academic skills. The idea is that if you pass the exam, you can probably survive your first semester as a foreign student at many French universities, though it might not be fun. For a less academically-oriented exam, the French also have the TCF. This actually is one of the reasons I doubt that passive skills can be fully "activated" above a certain level without either (a) plenty of time and work, or (b) intense immersion. I'm pretty confident I could pass the DALF C1 reading comprehension section without any trouble, and I've been speaking French at home for a year and a half. But I'd still have to work pretty hard to prepare for the DALF C1 oral exam, which would basically require me to function comfortably with university-level topics. I mean, I can speak comfortably about daily life, and I can discuss intellectual subjects with a patient listener. But I can't discuss intellectual subjects with ease, not at the level required for C1. The sheer effort of finding sufficiently precise vocabulary leaves me with insufficient mental bandwidth for easy and correct speech production. Maybe some people find this easier than I do. But I can't personally imagine leaping from passive C1 skills to active C1 skills in a few weeks. Perhaps 3 to 6 months in really intensive immersion, perhaps as a university student living in a dorm, with lots of talking. I think even FSI students tend to graduate with speech skills slightly below this level—they often report trouble fully participating in fast conversations between natives, particularly conversations involving professional "gossip" about diplomatic issues. And Khatzumoto, who was an extreme case of strong passive skills without much speaking, felt hesitant doing job interviews, and he definitely needed to warm up first, and work around his weaknesses. But here is where I must defer to the experienced polyglots at HTLAL. Do any of you have an easier time reaching the point where you're truly at ease in the academic/professional registers of your target languages? Can you imagine achieving this quickly, starting from a level where you can read academic texts and understand TV without major problems? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 47 28 October 2013 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm also like the OP in terms of using my vocal chords when I'm alone, though I tend to prefer shadowing. And this works well for me. My main reasons not to claim basic fluency in Polish, Italian and Spanish are grammatical accuracy and active vocabulary. Both of these things can be learned without hours of conversations. Right now I'm focusing on reading books (well, not in Spanish), and I'll start my final attack when I go back to using Anki after the Super Challenge is over. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 23 of 47 28 October 2013 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
The opposite is more common among "completely non-native" language learners, who complete a coursebook and have enough reading skills to start a simple book but their listening skills are not good enough for most native materials, and unfortunately they are likely to focus too much on "artificial" recordings in that case. As I've already said, I believe the majority of leaners don't do enough listening. I mean for example when I'm watching football, I often feel the need to tweet something in the language in question. For me listening is generally better in terms of getting me to think in the language, but this may be because I'm an aural learner. Similarly when I'm reading, sometimes I just *want* to read aloud. If you don't suppress these moments when you have so much language in you that you need to let it out, you won't be purely passive. And I'm inclined to think that B1 is the maximum you can achieve while keeping the language fully inside your head. Edited by Serpent on 28 October 2013 at 4:34pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 24 of 47 28 October 2013 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@AML:
I voted 1-3 months, but I think you could help yourself a lot in getting to hit the ground at least walking at a steady pace, if not running. As others have said, reading aloud will help a lot, but you need more. Self talk will also help a lot, if you can discipline yourself to do a lot of it, and really challenge yourself. What you are really aiming at is the ability to speak freely and spontaneously, and that means lots of practice, even if it's only with yourself. You might try courses like Michel Thomas, Pimsleur or SaySomethingInSpanish, where you have to respond in the TL to English language prompts. However, if you don't like those, or get fed up of them, you can fairly easily become your own Michel Thomas, at least up to a point. Simply write yourself a script in English. Use imagination and commonsense, and start with the kind of grammar and vocabulary that you've been learning or been recently exposed to, and throw in new words as you come across them. Read the English (no need for it to be out loud) and then say (out loud) the equivalent in Spanish. Repeat if you feel you need or want to, but in general, just keep going. e.g. I go to work by bus each day. My car is in the garage. I go to work each day because my car is in the garage. The girl in the cafe says I am good looking. The girl in the cafe says I am good looking but still she doesn't like me. The girl in the cafe says I am good looking but it was her friend who bought me a drink. I walk to the bus stop each day. I walk to the garage. I walk to the garage where my car is. My car is not working. My car is not working, so I have to take the bus. The bus didn't come, so I had to walk. ... ...etc, etc. You want a lot of not too obvious repetition and a mixture of simple and more complex. Revisit familiar themes with slightly changed vocabulary or perhaps with new tenses as you learn them. The thing is, I think you have to do a lot of it. Now, you won't have recordings of the "correct" Spanish to model yourself on, so you will have to correct yourself. Not such a bad thing (but don't be afraid of mistakes!). Hopefully the listening you will also be doing will give you lots of exposure to pronunciation, intonation, stress, etc, which you can try to incorporate when you do these scripts and any other speaking you do. You will also be picking up new vocabulary from your reading and listening, and of course, they should go (in English) straight into the scripts. It's probably worth recording yourself now and again to see how your pronunciation is going, but I wouldn't overdo this. Don't obsess about either pronunciation or grammar. On the other hand, if you use podcasts or audiobooks, I'd say it's definitely worth trying shadowing some of the time. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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