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Text memorization and imitation | ||
Tags: Memory | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7106 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 33 of 95 24 September 2010 at 11:26am | IP Logged | |||||
That was my impression as well. However, we need to distinguish between the method "Text memorization and imitation" and the method of applying the method - which is one of the things this thread is aiming at. Short passages were being repeated 30-50 times**. I've no actual idea how short is short - it may be longer than an Assimil lesson but it doesn't take me that many repetitions to memorise a single dialog even using my somewhat simplistic (and probably inefficient) "brick-by-brick" approach. I've separated entirely the memorisation and the conscious imitation. I begin imitating the dialog once I've memorised it - typically I shadow the lessons in the car to and from work once it's already in the Anki schedule. **although thinking about it that also includes their imitation practice so obviously my shadowing entails more repetitions for me than I suggested above. Edited by Andy E on 24 September 2010 at 11:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6678 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 34 of 95 24 September 2010 at 11:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Apart from Andy's method, I am thinking how to use SRS (Anki) to reinforce this text memorization and imitation method. I assume we always have audio and transcription. When we learn verbatim a lesson (or article), if we have problems with some word, we can use multiple cloze deletions and the complete sentence and audio in the answer card. This implies editing the audio with Audacity. We can introduce the AUDIO and the COMPLETE SENTENCE in every ANSWER and these cloze deletions in the QUESTION without audio. This will reinforce your previous verbatim efforts. We read aloud the sentence in the question card guessing the missing word and then we can check if our pronunciation and missing word are right. For example, if we are learning Spanish and we have and article and this a long sentence: "El proceso de defensa del organismo irrita el tejido intestinal y, como consecuencia, se crean algunos compuestos, denominados radicales de oxígeno, que son los encargados de matar a la salmonela." Imagine you have problems with these words: "irrita","intestinal", "radicales"and "salmonella". We can work like this: Q:"El proceso de defensa del organismo [...] el tejido intestinal y, como consecuencia, se crean algunos compuestos, denominados radicales de oxígeno, que son los encargados de matar a la salmonela." A:"El proceso de defensa del organismo irrita el tejido intestinal y, como consecuencia, se crean algunos compuestos, denominados radicales de oxígeno, que son los encargados de matar a la salmonela." Q:"El proceso de defensa del organismo irrita el tejido [...] y, como consecuencia, se crean algunos compuestos, denominados radicales de oxígeno, que son los encargados de matar a la salmonela." A:"El proceso de defensa del organismo irrita el tejido intestinal y, como consecuencia, se crean algunos compuestos, denominados radicales de oxígeno, que son los encargados de matar a la salmonela." Q: "El proceso de defensa del organismo irrita el tejido intestinal y, como consecuencia, se crean algunos compuestos , denominados [...] de oxígeno, que son los encargados de matar a la salmonela." A:"El proceso de defensa del organismo irrita el tejido intestinal y, como consecuencia, se crean algunos compuestos, denominados radicales de oxígeno, que son los encargados de matar a la salmonela." Q:"El proceso de defensa del organismo irrita el tejido intestinal y, como consecuencia, se crean algunos compuestos, denominados radicales de oxígeno, que son los encargados de matar a la [...]." A:"El proceso de defensa del organismo irrita el tejido intestinal y, como consecuencia, se crean algunos compuestos, denominados radicales de oxígeno, que son los encargados de matar a la salmonela ." Edited by slucido on 24 September 2010 at 12:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 35 of 95 24 September 2010 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm quite pleased to note that, with one well-known exception whose name shall remain unspoken, everyone here agrees that some form of memorization and imitation is a basic technique of foreign-language learning. Hence the discussion is really more about the tools and the implementation.
It seems to me that there is a big distinction to be made here between spoken and written language. I've always thought of memorization and imitation in the context of spoken speech. So, I tend to emphasize learning dialogs and narrative language based on authentic sources of spoken language. The goal here is verbal fluency. Frankly, I would not try to learn a literary text by heart. That said, however, I am beginning to think that maybe one could speak of visual memorization, if that makes sense, that could be applied to examples of written language. The goal is not so much verbal fluency as developing a form of visual recall of writing patterns. I have to give this more thought. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6014 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 36 of 95 24 September 2010 at 2:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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No s_allard, there are no exceptions. Everyone here has accepted the usefulness of memorisation and imitation, but is debating the volume of it that is helpful.
Now, slucido, If you're trying to memorise long texts using SRS, a couple of techniques spring to mind: Prompt with a line, try to recall the next line. Prompt with the first line of a passage, try to recall the whole passage. Your fill-in-the-blanks idea is quite interesting, but it sounds like something that could get very easy very quickly, so it might be that you spend a lot of time entering data for not a lot of practice. It seems a better use of filling in the blanks than most language tasks. I recently wrote a blog post about cloze tests and gap-fills, and your task fulfills the sort of semantic scaffolding that gapfills were originally designed to provide. It's just a matter of picking the right material and finding a way to produce the material quickly. Again, though, I'd prefer to see a bit more variety, but it's an interesting idea. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| uuuuaaaa Newbie Poland Joined 5359 days ago 5 posts - 12 votes Studies: Finnish | Message 37 of 95 24 September 2010 at 3:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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While memorizing long texts you have to remember A LOT of EXTRA INFO, like order of
sentences, which seems pointless from a language learning perspective. On the other hand, this seems helpful from perspective of... (surprise, surprise) public speaking. Which can be a nice way of explaining survey's results. That is why I really like Andy's "first letters hint" method. You are still trying to do everything like interviewed students: pay attention, imitate, learn the whole thing by heart... just spare yourself remembering useless "order" information. Clear advantage, so why would you want to drop it Andy? Think about it as trying to apply "Pareto principle". Could reciting texts with a hint give 80% of effect with 20% of the effort? And maybe using a fairly literal translation as a hint would be more natural, easier to maintain long term? Since you don't encounter those "first letter" hints while actually using a language in real life. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6678 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 38 of 95 24 September 2010 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm making it up as I go along. I don't know if what I am explaining might have some usefulness. I was thinking about a way to reinforce the Andy method with mnemonics and a SRS alternative.
I think you are right about the Pareto principle. Maybe it's possible to work with both things: 1- First letter hints. 2- Setences with questions in L1 and answers in L2 with audio. I think some people here use Assimil sentences (no whole lessons) in two kind of cards: 1-Passive: Q: L2 A: L1 2-Active: Q: L1 A: L2 Maybe this approach can be used as stand-alone method apart from listening and shadowing every lesson. But we are talking about memorizing whole lessons or the whole book. Does this textual memorization have any advantage? The only obvious advantage I see is to be able to practice and review the language (L2) anywhere, without books, mp3 players and other devices. You have the lessons, dialogs and lessons in your head. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6678 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 39 of 95 24 September 2010 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The goal of the "first letter" technique is recalling as soon as possible.
http://www.productivity501.com/how-to-memorize-verbatim-text /294/
This is easier with your native language or languages that you know well, but it can be too difficult with completely unknown languages. Regarding foreign languages, I think we need to use intermediate steps previous to the "first letter" technique. For example, first two letters and multiple cloze deletions in the same text. We do these things to get familiarity with the text and to be sure our pronunciation is good enough The intermediate steps give us just enough information to recall the original audio (text) without reading the full original. For example, is you learn Spanish and you have this text: "La jueza no ha querido oír los argumentos de los abogados y ha rechazado dejarla en libertad bajo fianza." Listen the audio and read several times trying to shadow it. The cloze deletion step could be: 1-"La jueza no ha q[...] oír los argumentos de los a[...] y ha rechazado dejarla en l[...] bajo fianza." 2-"La j[...] no ha [...] oír los a[...] de los a[...] y ha r[...] dejarla en l[...] bajo f[...]." The two letters step could be: 3-La ju no ha qu oí lo ar de lo ab y ha re de en li ba fi The first letters step: 4-L j n h q o l a d l a y h r d e l b f. Final step: 5-Repeat verbatim. In every step you read the text several times without the audio and struggling to recall the whole text. Edited by slucido on 24 September 2010 at 7:19pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hardheim Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5202 days ago 34 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, French | Message 40 of 95 25 September 2010 at 2:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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I can absolutely vouch for this method of learning a language. I was a missionary in Switzerland, and the training missionaries were given in German over 8 weeks allowed these guys to converse decently in most day to day situations and very good in theological discussions. About 5 hours a day was spent on language study, about half of which was learning a set of 10 discussions word for word; no errors, everything was done to perfection. The rest of the German study was foundational grammar, a crash course in about the most common 800 words, and some basic phrases.
In my mind, the foundation for the German these guys learned was absolutely the memorized discussions. They need to reproduce them, but also have to be able to translate them in English; in other words, they weren't completely parroting in the process. The missionary training program received some national recognition while I was there in reference to their ability to get complete newbies up and functional in a very short period of time. I saw nothing in the program regarding grammar study etc.. that was much different from high school or college German. But, I feel the memorization part gave a broad enough selection of functional sentences that became part of your DNA by the time you were finished with the program. It kind of allowed you to hear if something sounded right or not without thinking about it based on the models you had already memorized. It's been abouth 25 years now, but I believe the number of memorized sentences totaled about 500. I've actually thought about using a method like this to help with my french and Spanish. I guess there is a use for those Assimil books after all. That seems like a great source for a wide variety of functional sentences. Edited by Hardheim on 25 September 2010 at 2:31am 9 persons have voted this message useful |
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