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Another language exercise idea. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| MeshGearFox Senior Member United States Joined 6696 days ago 316 posts - 344 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 29 12 October 2007 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is the intersection of two things I've heard lately:
A) Writing is the best way to retain vocabulary. B) Reading the dictionary in your free time might work too. So, let's say you have a dictionary. Your goal is to pick a page and note every single word on that page. Then, you have to write, say, a short composition using each of those words. Any thoughts on this? 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 2 of 29 13 October 2007 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||
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I think you should use a dictionary that groups words by topics to do so, otherwise it will be quite hard... We had to do this at school and it was quite nice, but the words were always related somehow.
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| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6471 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 3 of 29 13 October 2007 at 3:19am | IP Logged | ||
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The Oulipo movement (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) suggests exercises like this:
- writing a story or a poem that must contain a list of words (even randomly-chosen ones, e. g. we were asked which French words we liked best before receiving this task) - writing a story/poem or "translation" of an existing sentence that does not use certain letters - poems where each line contains one letter more or less than the previous line - poems where each line contains the same letters (plus/minus one) - poem where each stanza has to be thought out from one subway station to the other and written down while stopping at the station I believe all these exercises do not just help creativity but also improve your ability to use a language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6853 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 4 of 29 13 October 2007 at 5:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, Sprachprofi. These tasks sound very challenging. I doubt I could complete them in my native language!
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| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6471 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 5 of 29 13 October 2007 at 6:42am | IP Logged | ||
Actually they are not all that challenging, because you have to think of words first and focus less on the content. That's why some people find it easier to write a poem like this than if they were free to write anything they want - the philosophy of Oulipo. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| glossa.passion Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6322 days ago 267 posts - 349 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, EnglishC1, Danish Studies: Spanish, Dutch | Message 6 of 29 19 October 2007 at 9:10am | IP Logged | ||
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I do agree with Sprachprofi. And here is an example from my English studies three years ago. With the help of an online dicitionary (using wildcards) I've got a list of all English words ending with *llow. I wrote them down in a list and then created this little nonsense-story:
"This bellowing filthy fellow, a follower of the queen, wallowed in vice while crossing a fallow field. Under a weeping willow he took the last swallow from a bottle of wine. He laid his sallow to yellow face on a grassy pillow waiting for the billows to take him away. In his dreams he felt mellowed and he hallowed a hollow, drinking mallow tea and eating marshmallows. He lighted tallow candles and allowed a callow swallow to sit on his shoulder while watching a shallow pond" I can never forget this story and although there might be mistakes in the construction of the sentences, I still can remember the meaning of all words. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6676 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 7 of 29 19 October 2007 at 10:18am | IP Logged | ||
That's mnemonics. In fact, it's the story method. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ilanbg Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6411 days ago 166 posts - 189 votes Speaks: French, English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (classical), Persian | Message 8 of 29 19 October 2007 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can't think of learning random words in the dictionary as being even the slightest bit helpful. 90% of them are probably not going to be words you'll need to know at the point where reading the dictionary would be helpful, and the memory retention on that sort of thing would be awful.
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