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Getting Grammar and Vocabulary Down

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
12 messages over 2 pages: 1
Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4912 days ago

2151 posts - 3960 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 9 of 12
23 January 2014 at 6:41am | IP Logged 
I checked the FSI site I use, and the don't have the fully detailed course for Russian (if that even existed). They do have the FAST Russian course, which is a quicker introduction designed to teach the speaker enough to get by at a pretty good level. It is detailed enough to have 8 tapes of audio.
http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Russian
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kujichagulia
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 4850 days ago

1031 posts - 1571 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Portuguese

 
 Message 10 of 12
23 January 2014 at 6:44am | IP Logged 
You shouldn't want to get grammar and vocabulary down. You should want to get them up.
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Fieryterminator
Newbie
United States
how-to-learn-any-lan
Joined 3962 days ago

5 posts - 5 votes
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 11 of 12
24 January 2014 at 11:39pm | IP Logged 
Jeffers wrote:
I checked the FSI site I use, and the don't have the fully detailed course for Russian (if that even existed). They do have the FAST Russian course, which is a quicker introduction designed to teach the speaker enough to get by at a pretty good level. It is detailed enough to have 8 tapes of audio.
http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Russian
I see. Thank you for checking that out for me.
1 person has voted this message useful



shk00design
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 4447 days ago

747 posts - 1123 votes 
Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin
Studies: French

 
 Message 12 of 12
25 January 2014 at 12:48am | IP Logged 
From personal experiences I took French at the elementary and high school levels. In elementary school I was
taught simple words & phrases and a of boring subject-verb conjugations. In elementary I've been getting high
grades but the transition to high school was awkward. All of a sudden the teacher started requiring us to read a
French novel and several short stories. People in our class had never read a children's book before and in no time
many people started getting lower marks.

A year ago I started brushing up my Mandarin in a different way. I've been doing research on 2 polyglots: Moses
McCormick & Luca on YouTube. Instead of relying on phrase books alone first I look for common words that
different languages share (what polyglots call cognates). In French we have "le docteur" for doctor, "photographe"
for photographer and use as a starting point to build your vocabulary. To get yourself up in your conversation you
would be learning things that you can start a conversation with natives such as: "Where you're from / what region
of the country you're from", "what makes you interested learning his/her language", "you are attending class", etc.
Your main focus should be on listening. I used to watch a lot of Chinese videos with English subtitles and
stopping every few minutes to replay a word or phrase and looking in an online dictionary when necessary. Unlike
repetition of the same phrases 100x, I'm watching something interesting so after a stop I look forward to the next
part of the video. In 6 months I watched a few 1h Chinese drama series in 20 episodes each (some with English
subtitles). In the process compiled over 300 words & phrases including over 50 4-character proverbs. Like Moses I
also get into online discussion blogs and submitted my ideas in Chinese and got replies.

Yesterday I was talking to a lady in Mandarin. The conversation started with where I was from and ended with
whether or not I run a business before switching back to English to accommodate a 3rd person who doesn't speak
Mandarin. My Chinese is at a comfortable conversation level but my French hasn't reach the same level. I'm relying
all sorts of films with English & French dialog and subtitles in English & French. I can watch the same movies a few
times with English & French subtitles and do cross comparison.

What about grammar? Moses, Luca, Steve Kaufmann and others would tell you to build enough words and phrases
to communicate first. Brush up your grammar on the side but the main focus is on listening and speaking to
natives and understand the main ideas what was said.

Edited by shk00design on 25 January 2014 at 12:52am



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