|
 |
Listening-Reading system | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies | ( Topic Closed) |  |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6906 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 41 of 489 09 July 2007 at 11:59am | IP Logged | ||
|
According the posts by Ardaschir (who I believe is the one who brought up the term here) it is indeed imitating what you hear, at (roughly) the same time (hence the "shadow" - it doesn't occupy your space). I think the confusion lies in when you're supposed to speak out the word or sentence. (the different methods have been discussed to death, and are explained briefly HERE)
2 persons have 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 42 of 489 10 July 2007 at 2:31am | IP Logged | ||
I have tried out the Russian texts at this site. It is a nuisance that accents are put in spaces that break up the words, - that disturbs my reading, but I have reacted by downloading the texts and replacing the cumbersome spaces+accents+wowels with bold wowels. Furthermore I put the translations below the translated sections instead of after them, - most of it can be done with a with a bit of search-and-replace in Word. However I don't follow the rule about just reading through the material, - it seems to me that I learn a lot from looking up strange word forms and other things which pure skimming won't give me. So I do an intense hardcore study of one section first and only afterwards I start skimming. By the way the texts are easier than those of GLOSS, and the translations are more literal which is how I prefer them to be. When I have been through all texts in both sources I hope that I can do without the translations. It took me half a year to get there with Modern Greek so Russian will probable take the same amount of time. Edited by Iversen on 10 July 2007 at 4:09am 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 43 of 489 10 July 2007 at 4:29am | IP Logged | ||
I think I could 'activate' a language in a week, if I spent all my time reading/listening to, thinking, speaking AND studying the language, - but ONLY if it was close to a language I knew well. After all I did something like that with Portuguese in November last year, - it took me a month to learn Portuguese, but I also had my job and a couple of other languages to tend to. However the reason that I could do it was that I knew Spanish and several other Romance languages fairly well so that I could start gobbling up genuine texts almost from the start of the process. The other languages also gave me a lot of vocabulary, - most of the 'learned' vocabulary could be inferred, and I just had to learn a few thousand purely Portuguese words plus a number of 'false friends'. I'm fairly sure that I couldn't absorb a complete grammar and at least 20.000 words in one week if I had to start from scratch - even using texts with translations. It may be a question of memory: I remember things better when I understand them and have learnt them in an orderly way, - others may be better at absorbing and inferring the elements of a language that they get presented just as a stream of words. But in that case I'm astounded that the world isn't full of people who learnt Basque and Japanese and Inuit and Urdu in one month just for fun. If it's that simple why don't they do it? Edited by Iversen on 10 July 2007 at 9:13am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| MarcoDiAngelo Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 6444 days ago 208 posts - 345 votes Speaks: Serbian*, English, Spanish, Russian Studies: Thai, Polish | Message 44 of 489 10 July 2007 at 11:16am | IP Logged | ||
|
Siomotteikiru, I would really appreciate if you could answer me a few questions:
- What about forgetting? How to make sure that you will never forget your language that you've learned in a week? - Can one achieve the same goal by watching movies? - How good are you in conversation, once you have finished R-L method? Really fascinating posts, indeed! Please, inform us more. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| siomotteikiru Senior Member Zaire Joined 6358 days ago 102 posts - 242 votes | Message 45 of 489 10 July 2007 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I do feel guilty I’m not answering your questions.
I don’t know how many words there are in Der Prozess (“The Trial”) by Kafka, I’ve never counted them. However, I DO know that you can understand each single word in the book after thirty to forty hours of “listening-reading”, provided it’s done in one go, to prevent forgetting and to do the right amount of good quality input. (Garbage in, garbage out.) If you work on it 10 to 12 hours a day (I can do it easily), after a week’s time (70 to 80 hours), you’re able not only to understand what is being spoken (if it is not too technical), but you’re in a position to speak as well, enough to be able to engage in small talk at least. In 70 to 80 hours it’s possible to “listen-read” to 3 to 5 average novels, and that’s quite a lot. The first one will be a little bit difficult, but the rest will be much easier, you’ll be able to “shadow” it (=repeat after the reader) at the same time, and I DO know from my own experience that when you’ve “shadowed” 3 to 5 hours, you can speak as well. It does not matter if you repeat every single word, it is the amount that counts. Taking part in a conversation means first of all to understand what is being said to you, and if you do, you can react accordingly. A great deal depends on the “density” (new words per minute) of the texts you “listen-read” to and “shadow”. If it’s too low, it won’t be possible for you to put across your thoughts in a coherent way, simply your vocabulary would be too poor. Using a language is a skill, you can’t acquire it without practicing it. If you want to learn how to swim it’s no use to analize the chemical composition of water instead of plunging into it. Water for a language learner are TEXTS: spoken and written. As to Japanese. Contrary to the popular belief, it is one of the easiest languages there are! The way of thinking is a little bit different, that’s all. Why don’t people learn it in a week then? The answer is simple: nobody knows it’s possible. There are no parallel texts available, and to get an audiobook is almost a miracle. Even if you have a printed edition, you cannot scan it or proofread it to make an e-text to be able to use a pop up dictionary to check the meaning of kanji. Who’s to blame then? Publishers and teachers. They just make money, they don’t give a damn whether you learn anything or not. People are just tricked into buying their “services.” Any action, from a simple one, like putting a finger into your nose, to a most complicated one, like acquiring a new language or writing a masterpiece, involves the following: 1. goals (your own or other people’s) 2. tools (your knowledge, creativity, freedom, open-mindedness, TIME /believe me, fractions of a second count/, materials, friends, etc) 3. control (external: somebody else does it; internal: you yourself do it) It DOES matter who sets your goals or chooses your tools for you. PONDER and you’ll see why almost nobody knows anything properly. “If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run.” PS I can share hundreds of parallel texts (novels) in many languages. Happy-go-lucky Miss Hopper Likes to be done good and proper Radosne nic bez granic poezJA "Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. " Bertrand Russell "Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so." Bertrand Russell "There's an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere." Bertrand Russell "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. " Bertrand Russell A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; Bertrand Russell 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6436 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 46 of 489 10 July 2007 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | ||
There are most certainly parallel texts. I have two (unfortunately, in the form of printed books; one is Japanese literature for beginners, and the other is about tea ceremonies). My list of free audiobooks has a few Japanese entries, although I don't yet know where to get corresponding texts, much less parallel texts, for them. Something like European Corpus Initiative Multilingual Corpus I might interest you (it includes Japanese); I have no experience with it. I found it on a long list of multilingual corpuses. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6383 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 47 of 489 10 July 2007 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | ||
Euh... I don't suppose you'd care to elaborate on the above a little bit, would you?!.. I'm sure lots of people here would be interested to find out how they can learn to make sense out of an average Japanese newspaper article in a week. I have seen many accounts and methods regarding the study of Japanese, most optimistic of those still take out 1-2 years for getting anywhere near decent proficiency. I'm not saying doing it in less time is not possible but I would be very interested to learn HOW... And in fact, there are tons of e-texts available in Japanese and I posted one link to an audio source just a day ago. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| siomotteikiru Senior Member Zaire Joined 6358 days ago 102 posts - 242 votes | Message 48 of 489 10 July 2007 at 10:38pm | IP Logged | ||
|
My idea of parallel texts seems to be different from yours. I thought I made it clear in my first entry:
1. An AUDIO recording by professional actor(s), in mp3 or wav format 2. E-texts in VERTICAL COLUMNS, side by side on one page 3. Texts should be long, up to 50 hours. Anything else may slightly resemble the idea. A while ago I uploaded a sample of what I mean by parallel texts. As to Japanese once more. You can make sense of an average newspaper article not in week but straight away: www.stultorum.pochta.ru\aaaa\J_sample_parallel.rar There may be “tons of e-texts available in Japanese”, and in fact I have THOUSANDS myslf, so what? Are they parallel? What about the audio? Where is it? What about the translation? The only I got is “The New Testament”: Japanese and English e-text + an audio recording. BUT they are not parallel, the e-texts are just two separate files, and the recording is on cassettes. When you say “most optimistic of those still take out 1-2 years” it means nothing to me. What kind of exposure is it? EXPOSURE: {new text (audio+written, see above)} divided by {minute times hours times days} Hours and days should be counted from the first moment you start learning, sleep and anything else INCLUDED. The text can be measured in pages or words or minutes (silence and music excluded). Only if EXPOSURE is known, any meaningful discussion makes sense. You can get to the stage of “natural listening” just in a week, and to be able to speak using two to three thousand words and simple sentences. As to the writing and reading it might take a little bit longer, three to five hundred hours of “listening-reading” should be enough. And you most certainly shouldn’t drill kanji using flashcards or Heisig methods. A simple introduction, say the book by Len Walsh, is enough to get an idea what kanji are, the rest is done by “listening-reading.” Some are wise, and some are otherwise. Happy-go-lucky Miss Hopper Likes to be done good and proper. Radosne nic bez granic poezJa 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
