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Text memorization and imitation

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rjtrudel
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 Message 25 of 95
24 September 2010 at 2:39am | IP Logged 
Cainntear wrote:
rjtrudel wrote:
I would
say yes. I think you memorize a lot more than you think you do.

I never said memorisation isn't useful -- I just called the argument invalid.
Quote:
If I asked you what the "most useful part
of (your) learning regimen" was you would probably say Michel Thomas. But based on what you say in
message 7 of this posting ,I would then have to remind you that actually, your answer is "less than 50%
accurate".   

That's an average. You cannnot be anything other than 100% right or 100% wrong to a question of that
nature.

I always say I believe MT is the best thing, not that my experience is "proof" of this. That's a major
difference.

So maybe you should start saying that although there is a less than 50% chance that I'm right, I believe
MT is the best thing, or do you not include yourself in the statistics you use to dispute other peoples beliefs
in what worked for them?
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Ari
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 Message 26 of 95
24 September 2010 at 4:38am | IP Logged 
rjtrudel wrote:
So maybe you should start saying that although there is a less than 50% chance that I'm right, I believe
MT is the best thing, or do you not include yourself in the statistics you use to dispute other peoples beliefs in what worked for them?

Cainntear never disputed the students' belief in what worked for them; he disputed the author's uncritical acceptance of it as a scientific fact. When he says he believes that MT is a great course, he's making a statement equivalent to that of the students, whom he has not criticized. He is not making a statement equivalent to that of the author, whom he did criticize. Thus avoiding hypocrisy. There's a marked difference between stating a belief and writing a conclusion in a scientific paper.
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slucido
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 Message 27 of 95
24 September 2010 at 8:25am | IP Logged 
uuuuaaaa wrote:
Please, start fighting about something useful, like:

WHAT WOULD BE THE MOST EFFICIENT "DEPTH" OF MEMORIZING?



I agree. This fighting is useless. I don't care about the "scientific thing", I want to talk about the most important high proficiency student's method = textual memorization and imitation.

I would like to know about the best methods to learn foreign texts verbatim.

The goal is learning this foreign language (L2) living in your own country (L1).

Assimil would be a good option, because starts from a low level, it has L1 translations and the audio is L2.

If you have an intermediate level, a good option might be news reports transcriptions with audio. Sitcom series with the scripts is another option.

Is it better to learn them verbatim and maintain some of them in the long term memory or is it better to learn them verbatim and then forget them and start with another audio text? What do you think?

And most important:

How do we memorize them verbatim?
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Andy E
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 Message 28 of 95
24 September 2010 at 9:22am | IP Logged 
uuuuaaaa wrote:
3. Personal question to Andy, since he is the one trying this approach: why do You choose option "b" over "c"?


Currently I'm in the Passive Wave of Assimil and reproducing L2 (even from memory) while looking at L1 would form the Active Wave.

Regarding the other options, I'm leaning towards removing the first letter hint text entirely - this was always my goal long-term but I'm wondering if it's too much of a crutch. Instead what I shall probably do is use the first line of the dialog as the prompt. Alternatively, it may be possible to have no hint at all other than the lesson title which is probably the ideal but may make it more difficult without adding some other memory trigger.

Another reason....

I'm intrigued to know whether I actually need to bother with the Active Wave at all.

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Andy E
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 Message 29 of 95
24 September 2010 at 9:27am | IP Logged 
slucido wrote:
Is it better to learn them verbatim and maintain some of them in the long term memory or is it better to learn them verbatim and then forget them and start with another audio text? What do you think?


Currently I'm leaning towards the former(and I may add the advanced Assimil courses to the mix as well). However, it's entirely possible that the excitement of reciting "der Tee ist gut, wie ist der Tee, er ist gut" may fade somewhat when it pops up in Anki in 6 months time.


Quote:
And most important:

How do we memorize them verbatim?


I'm open to any other suggested techniques other than the one I outlined above. Time efficiency when learning is the key goal for me together with maintaining the knowledge long-term.



Edited by Andy E on 24 September 2010 at 9:28am

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slucido
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 Message 30 of 95
24 September 2010 at 9:58am | IP Logged 
Andy E wrote:

Quote:
And most important:

How do we memorize them verbatim?


I'm open to any other suggested techniques other than the one I outlined above. Time efficiency when learning is the key goal for me together with maintaining the knowledge long-term.



I am thinking about a combination between the Loci method and your first letter method.

Every lesson in a loci and then a chain with one keyword image for every sentence.

Training with the keyword sentence and the first letter method seems a good method to practice recalling every lesson.

Listening the audio while reading and then chorusing many times is very important. We need to be sure that our pronunciation and prosody is as good as possible when we recite aloud verbatim using this mnemonic devices.

Writing the lesson as you recite them is another important technique.









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Cainntear
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 Message 31 of 95
24 September 2010 at 10:07am | IP Logged 
s_allard wrote:
As has been so often the case in discussions with Cainntear, I prefer to move on to more enlightening pursuits. I think the paper under discussion here is an important contribution to a body of thought that I would call the formulaic language or lexical grammar hypothesis of second-language acquisition. If I can simplify it to the extreme, this approach states that spoken language is made up of set phrases such as collocations and fixed formulations that demonstrate much linguistic probability. This is why we are able to finish another person's sentences and supply missing words in a conversation. By systematically learning these set phrases--through memorization and imitation (my addition)--the learning process is accelerated and better results achieved in spoken fluency.

The idiom principle/lexico-grammar cuts both ways.

It is clear that we can and do learn fixed phrases, but we learn these in our first language by hearing them significantly more often than similar original and/or spontaneous sentences.

It seems likely that if we expose ourselves frequently to an original, non-fixed phrase, we will learn it as a fixed phrase.

The paper quite aptly demonstrates this:
Y_Ding wrote:
The practice enabled them to ‘‘borrow for writing and speech’’ (W), i.e., borrow the
collocations and sequences for productive uses. W said that she was still using many
of the sentences she had recited in middle school. For instance, while other students
used ‘‘Family is very important,’’ she borrowed a sentence pattern she had learned
from Book Three of New Concept English (a popular set of UK-imported textbooks
in China): ‘‘Nothing can be compared with the importance of family.’’ This made a
better sentence, she said.


A better sentence by what criteria? To me it is rather stuffy and overly formal. It seems quite archaic -- I can imagine one of the Brontë sisters' characters saying it. It is superficially a good sentence in many ways, but it represents a flawed internal model.

All speakers favour language that is easy to recall. It's easier to recall a fixed phrase than reconstruct it from first principles. This appears to lead to overuse of fixed phrases. I had a friend who learned "out of the blue" and overused it massively, using it when it wasn't appropriate, and I've heard an awful lot of the same type of "idiom abuse" from foreign learners since.



Edited by Cainntear on 24 September 2010 at 10:16am

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Sandman
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 Message 32 of 95
24 September 2010 at 10:43am | IP Logged 
From reading the article it sounds like the students had all spent a truly massive # of hours studying and using this method, which at least to me suggests it might not be all that efficient of a way to go about things. But with all the memorization and imitation of real native language I can see how a very good feel for the language would be eventually ensured.


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