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Does translation help speak a language ? | ||
Tags: Speaking | Translation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4391 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 1 of 20 24 December 2014 at 11:38am | IP Logged | ||
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AS a preface : I have been studying German mostly passively , I consider myself low C in oral comprehension . At the beginning I also studied the grammar and did some translation work too . I've spoken German with people for no more than 10 hours in addition to some self-talking .
I 'll go now to the point : I have recently started to work with a language partner on skype and I've noticed that I still make basic mistakes especially in the stracture, most of which I wouldn't make If I were writing . The fact that I still don't feel entirely at ease speaking on skype ,with a person I don't know very well although she is nice , also doesn't help . I am aware that here probably the plainest solution would be to simply speak much more and get corrected , but unfortunately I can't speak that much German here , not on skype too . Would you think that some more translation work would help me better stracture my thoughts ? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5265 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 20 24 December 2014 at 11:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Albysky, in this situation I think you need drills more than you need translation exercises. Drills are not "fun" in and of themselves, but they will help make structures ("stracture" is a misspelling) automatic. Edited by iguanamon on 24 December 2014 at 12:20pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4391 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 3 of 20 24 December 2014 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | ||
Translations from L1 to L2 seem to me a more complete exercise than drills . Drills are only about filling gaps , they generally tend to be on a very specific topic . If you have a good set of sentences to translate I think it is more effective , you have to come up with a whole sentence and not just a couple of words . So my question remains unanswered :-) Edited by albysky on 24 December 2014 at 5:36pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4447 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 4 of 20 24 December 2014 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Translation and conversation are related in some way but they should be treated differently. I know someone who
speaks Chinese as a native language but tend to stumble on English. Although she was educated in English and can write fluently, but her pronunciation isn't always accurate. A while back I had a subscription of PHP magazine from Japan. In it was an article about the poor conversation skills the Japanese had with English although many can translate flawlessly. The problem is because they were not in an environment where spoken English was a necessity. Just thinking about a language doesn't mean you are comfortable speaking it when you meet a native speaker. It is like someone who takes lesson playing a music instrument. Learning to read notation symbols is 1 thing but doesn't mean that person can produce a nice sound. The 2 needs to be worked on separately. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 5 of 20 24 December 2014 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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The thing is that you're still basing your thoughts on your native tongue and not the TL.
The point of the drills is to automatise starting poins in your TL so they are fixed and ingrained in your system. This automization forces you to step away from the crutch that is your native language. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 6 of 20 24 December 2014 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I tend to think that translation only makes it worse.
When you say you wouldn't make such mistakes in writing, do you mean that you write correctly from scratch or you spend a lot of time fixing minor things like endings etc? If it's the latter, writing more should help. Otherwise I basically agree with iguanamon, but if you find drills boring, try these options: -shadowing and maybe scriptorium. that's what I did in a similar situation in Finnish. I *had* done many exercises in writing but somehow this wasn't enough. -making your own exercises -"playing" with the vocab/sentences -SRS using cloze deletion Edited by Serpent on 24 December 2014 at 6:02pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4391 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 7 of 20 24 December 2014 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes I find drills boring , I have tried shadowing and I can say I like it under certain conditions , like speeches no more than 15 minutes long , speeches relatively easy ( I shadowed the assimil perfectionment for German ), I couldn't shadow a radio program or an audiobook , they are way to difficult even in the case I can understand almost everything , is it normal ? What do you shadow with ? When I write , it doesn't take me ages , for sure a bit longer . It is not only details, like endings ,that I got wrong , but also things like using the infinitive instead of the past participle or the conjugated verb , wrong or bad use of linking words etc .... I also managed to put some full correct sentences together by the way :-) Edited by albysky on 24 December 2014 at 8:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 8 of 20 24 December 2014 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I generally do shadowing with Assimil, or more recently I've started shadowing little bits of what I'm listening to, not always and caring more about the general rhythm, intonation etc, even if sometimes I might replace this or that sound with a different one. This kind of shadowing is actually part of the LR method too.
And yeah, it's normal to have difficulties with radio or audiobooks. That said, no offence meant but even in English you'd benefit from getting some corrections in writing, like on lang-8 or similar. Unless your German writing is better than English for some reason, I'd say writing more should make your German grammar more automatic, including the basics. You could write with no dictionaries/google/grammar book first, then a few days later use the aforementioned tools to improve your text and finally either toss it or get external corrections. (Or keep it for later but don't reread your own texts too much) 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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