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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6945 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 33 of 90 08 April 2007 at 12:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Maybe, maybe not, or maybe not much less - I wouldn't want to trust my intuition in this case. It's hard to assess how likely one is to succeed with ALG, but since most of us will never be able to try its full implementation anyway, perhaps it's not such an important question. It is, however, interesting that some forum members reported learning to understand a lot of French after several passes of doing nothing but watching French in Action videos. Some of them may have delayed doing anything else until after the videos, and it would be interesting to know how good a pronunciation they ended up with in such cases. Edited by frenkeld on 08 April 2007 at 12:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6584 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 34 of 90 08 April 2007 at 1:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Wow, lots of discussion I missed out on.
First of all, I'm not a proponent of the ALG method. I find it interesting, and it seems reasonable, but I have no experience with it and I don't know that much about it. My personal anectodal evidence tells me that my pronounciation benefits greatly from listening without speaking. This is how I learned English. I hadn't spoken very much English at all before I went to Chicago for a semester, and my Public Speaking teacher still exclaimed "You have no accent!" after my ceremonial speech (which is, of course, not true. I have a heavy American accent). I attribute all of this to Luke Skywalker and Bruce Willis. They're the ones who taught me English. A similar thing occured with my French. I took a French class last semester, full time studying. I'd been doing six years of French without learning squat, but I'd spoken it a lot. And I spoke a bit during this class, but I still had fluency problems and not too great pronounciation. Towards the end, there were no classes, just home studying for written tests, so I didn't speak at all. I did, however, watch loads of French movies. Something like three or four a day. Then I got to the final test, the oral exam. And the teacher asked me, surprised: "Have you been studying at home much? You sound so much better!" Interesting is of course the fact that I had already spoken a lot of French, so I ought to have damaged my future fluency. Maybe I have, I doubt I could pass for a native speaker. But the listening approach definately helped my pronounciation. --- With all this in mind, my own approach to the ALG method is still something like this: Listening to a lot of the language before speaking it seems like a sound (haha) idea. In any case, it probably won't hurt. After my silent period, chorusing will probably be my method of choice for getting good pronounciation. Not until after both of these periods will I try to form my own sounds (though I will start to think in the language as soon as possible, to practice forming my own sentences). To me, this seems like the practical version of ALG's rather extreme method. --- Oh, and as for their attrition problems, well, I don't really think much about that. My French class had big attrition problems; more than two thirds of the students bailed out before the end. Still, The few who remained had a good command of the language. I learned so much more during that semester than during my six years of high school French (which had a much lower attrition and produced much more graduates). From what I've read, just about anyone who finished the ALG method comes out with more or less native command of the language, something that few, if any, other methods can do. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6677 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 35 of 90 08 April 2007 at 11:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree with you, but "shadowing" is the same you are describing. The first description of the process of shadowing in this forum was here: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=22&KW=shadowing
In another thread seems people names it "echoing": http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=410&KW=shadowing About "chorusing" I found this: http://olle-kjellin.com/SpeechDoctor/LP98_Top.htm http://www.chinese-forums.com/showpost.php?p=69241&postcount =12 And here an interesting article about shadowing from an english teacher: Shadowing: What it is, and how to do it? http://individual.utoronto.ca/douglasorme/HelpAdvicePages/Sh adowing.html Very practical and interesting. Maybe it's bad to begin speaking the language too soon, but it seems "shadowing" while listening (or listening and reading), it is very good from the beginning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6449 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 36 of 90 08 April 2007 at 11:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I believe it might be a good exercise after a certain number of hours of listening. I don't believe you'll sound like Homer though :) You wait a second after the first word is uttered? I've actually done that before I heard about "shadowing" for the fun of it. I cannot do it for long though.I get a headache from all the "disharmony" and mixing of voices. Mental shadowing seems more practical.
Chorusing is when you listen, learn the sentence and pronounce it at the same time as the speaker? I've done that too for the grand total of maybe 20 minutes. Maybe the whole point in what I'm writing is that we should experiment and try many things. I find chorusing a bit tiresome. I imagine it would be most practical with something like Pimsleur tapes? The ALG method might be most practical for related leanguages. Edited by reineke on 08 April 2007 at 12:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 37 of 90 08 April 2007 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's what Ardaschir called "shadowing". I believe slucido is using the term "chorusing" synonymously. In Ardaschir's world, shadowing can go on for several minutes straight, accompanying an audiobook or monologue/dialogue based lesson like Assimil. Edited by luke on 08 April 2007 at 12:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6449 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 38 of 90 08 April 2007 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks, I'll try playing with it. I was thinking of trying the ALG thing too, maybe for Spanish. However some 200 hours of "traditional" work should give me some very good results while with the ALG method I'd need some 1600 hours of listening. Hmmm, do I really care that much about sounding 99% "native" and how badly can I possibly butcher Spanish with a wee bit of care using Pimsleur and having in mind that I already speak Italian? It's Spanish, after all, not Chinese. So this creates a funny situation where ALG seems more appropriate for languages where you need to pay a lot more attention to pronunciation and exactly these languages require a frightful amount of listening time with the ALG method.
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| LilleOSC Senior Member United States lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6693 days ago 545 posts - 546 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 39 of 90 08 April 2007 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This sounds really complex.I tried reading that, but it is difficult with the numerous technical terms.Can you summarize it, and explain it in simpler words? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6449 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 40 of 90 08 April 2007 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The last bit is most relevant, I think, as they bothered to find out who studied language actively and who had poor knowledge of it. The desired result for us, language geeks er enthusiasts is to see the same parts of the brain fire up as those of a native speaker. This seems to be the case with the people who had good knowledge of the language. I doubt they all followed the same method. They did mention one caveat though: all subjects spoke two related languages. The most important sentence:
"attained proficiency is more important than age of acquisition" 1 person has voted this message useful |
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