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Harnessing the power of native materials | ||
Tags: Native Materials | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4258 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 9 15 December 2013 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
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Explanation is needed; of course, any native material can be used for the purpose of language learning. Probably each one of us has read a novel in a target language or is at least in the process of doing so. However, there are native materials that are simply amazing for the purpose of learning.
I was once browsing something related to language learning (can't for the life of me remember where) and someone said that children's encyclopedias are great tools for expanding one's vocabulary especially with building a good all-around vocabulary. Long story short, the purpose of this thread is: -to find out what sort of native materials are especially good for learning -what field are they good for -where does one go about finding them and so on. I will edit into this post to best of my abilities all suggestions that are deemed good. I'm sorry if such a tread already exists and if this is in the wrong subforum, but I really did have no clue whatsoever as to what sort of things to search with. The list Illustrated (children's) encyclopedias Perks: often interesting, and entertaining, help with building an all around vocabulary so that one learns a tidbit of everything Minuses: Often heavy, clumsy and expensive, a pain in the bum to carry around. Some of these that are for children tend to be a bit juvenile in themes and text, but this is not something that plagues the entire genre, as there are adult-oriented ones too. Good for: building vocabulary Where to find: usually in the non-fiction or children's section of the bookshop Examples: Harper Collins Visual Dictionary -series (Estonian version, for adults)/(Russian, another series, for kids) Edited by Henkkles on 15 December 2013 at 3:57pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6110 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 2 of 9 15 December 2013 at 12:39pm | IP Logged |
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Blogs and Travelogues
I've picked up a lot of colloquial phrases and vocabulary by reading travelogues (here are some in Polish). This has been my main source of idiomatic expressions too. I get to enjoy interesting facts, anecdotes and stories plus some great photos which keep me reading. Edited by Mooby on 15 December 2013 at 12:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5537 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 9 15 December 2013 at 1:47pm | IP Logged |
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In General (French)
For French native materials, my favorite source is Amazon.fr, and my favorite way of discovering cool new things is SensCritique. Remember, your regular Amazon account should work on any of their sites, and shipping is cheaper if you order a bunch of stuff at once. Graphic Novels Perks: Fun to read, full of colloquial and conversational language. Images make it easier to understand what's going on, making it easier to learn vocab from context. Minuses: Outrageously expensive once you get past low intermediate levels. Good for: Improving conversational and colloquial vocabulary. Getting ready to watch TV. Where to find: For French, Izneo (thanks to goeffw, IIRC). Or Librairie Planète BD in Montreal, when I can get there. Television Series Perks: Fun to watch, full of colloquial conversation, long enough that you can get used to voices and specialized vocabulary (which is very helpful at low intermediate levels). Cheaper than movies per hour. Images make it easier to understand what's going on, making it easier to learn vocab from context. Minuses: Hard to use at lower levels unless accurate subtitles or transcripts are available. Moderately expensive (only multi-season box sets are a really good bargain per hour, but you have to buy lots of hours). Good for: Building robust listening comprehension. Learning conversational speech. Where to find: Amazon's site in your TL. When you're starting out, look for high-quality dubbed series (with subs if possible!); they tend to be a little easier. For French, see French movies and series with accurate subtitles. Why I like native materials Native materials give me two things: a source of hypotheses about the language ("Oh, so maybe that works like that?") and a source of data to confirm or reject those hypotheses ("Ah, so you can say it that way." "You know, I've never seen anybody say it that way."). When I use native materials in practice, I ask lots of questions and make lots of tentative guesses. To give an example, I wrote down a stream-of-consciousness as I read the title page and page 1 of Peter Rabbit using parallel texts in English and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Edited by emk on 15 December 2013 at 1:48pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5570 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 4 of 9 15 December 2013 at 3:55pm | IP Logged |
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http://www.hypnoweb.net/ is also an essential source of transcriptions for learners of
French. With Buffy and the Simpsons, I converted the VF transcripts of the series I was working on into PDFs and then had them printed into a book by Lulu. I use video editing software (in my case ISky Soft Video Converter) to make MP3s of the episodes (i.e. converting from video to MP3) and then chop them down into scenes so I can study the series as you would a language course. With encyclopedias - it is often possible to get them aimed at younger age groups - and so have slightly simpler language. I find starting off with encyclopedias aimed at 9- 11 year old's are the most promising. Edited by Elexi on 15 December 2013 at 3:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4149 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 5 of 9 15 December 2013 at 4:08pm | IP Logged |
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TV shows are great, because you have lots of time to get used to characters' speech patterns. For me, I find TV
shows much more useful than movies. Children's book series are good for the same reason. You can get used to an author's language patterns (or a translator's patterns). The third book is always easier than the first. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4538 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 6 of 9 15 December 2013 at 5:17pm | IP Logged |
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I live in Berlin so I am blessed with plenty of material to help me learn German.
What I think is really useful is just reading and getting immersed in a story. I personally couldn't stomach really young children's books, and started reading when I was at about A2 the Hunger Games trilogy, which was probably a bit advanced. I then stepped down and read through both Harry Potter and the Percy Jackson series (PJ is actually easier than HP and is worth a look). I tend to read semi-intensively. So am looking up words, but it's obvious to me when a text is too hard and I can't read it quickly enough. I find hard scifi - which I love - just too hard at the moment. I have been hoping to get into some grittier crime novels but I am only just now getting to the level where I can read them easily enough. My basic rule of thumb is that if I can't read a 350 page novel in a week then it's too hard. Children's books are good because they tend to be very concrete in their language, and tend not to use idioms very much. Unlike EMK I haven't really got into graphic novels, largely because I like using ebooks and using a built in dictionary as I read. In parallel I have been borrowing lots of videos from the library and local video store. TV series are great to get lots of input and repetition. I have actually avoided really good German movies as I wanted to wait until my German was at about a C1 level so I could really appreciate them, so I have just been watching lots of dubbed shows. I have almost never used subtitles as I want to force myself to listen as carefully as possible. As you can see I am mostly used translated/dubbed materials. For written text this has actually been helpful as German sentence structure can be quite long, which can be quite hard to read when you don't know many words. German translations of English text (at least at children/young-adult level) seem to preserve some of the syntax of the shorter English sentences which makes things easier. Edited by patrickwilken on 15 December 2013 at 5:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6602 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 7 of 9 15 December 2013 at 10:51pm | IP Logged |
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Sports
Advantages: fast speech, emotions, visual clues, getting to know your L2 culture in an accessible way (books are for later). The vocabulary is more varied than many think, but repetitive enough that you can pick up a lot, especially in a related language. Works great in tandem with reading sports sites and later biographies of the people involved. It's also simply one of the best things to watch if movies are still overwhelming. How to watch: satellite tv, online streams/tv, club channels. Afterwards also short clips on youtube, I highly recommend to watch at least them if you have any interest in sports. Edited by Serpent on 15 December 2013 at 10:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| betelgeuzah Diglot Groupie Finland Joined 4406 days ago 51 posts - 82 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: Japanese, Italian | Message 8 of 9 15 December 2013 at 10:58pm | IP Logged |
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Online video games
Perks: colloquial "everyday" language used when communicating with people, written language with vocabulary up to the level of a novel depending on the source material. Enhances one's reading comprehension and written output skills immensely. Nowadays voice chat-based communication methods are also more and more popular, so if you join the right community these games can function as constant practice of all four dimensions of language learning. Massively multiplayer games have the additional perk of being constantly updated with more content, so you'll never run out of things to do in the target language. Minuses: If you don't care about gaming you'll have a harder time being interested in the game. It can be a massive time sink although nowadays this isn't really true anymore. Requires a lot of money to start if you don't have a powerful PC or gaming console. Edited by betelgeuzah on 15 December 2013 at 10:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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