|
 |
Reducing Self-Study Method Abandonment | ||
Tags: Burn-out | Self-Study | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 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 17 of 139 27 August 2013 at 3:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Which prism? :O
idk never heard of this... that would be ridiculous tbh. And it's okay :) I never run out of languages to learn, you know :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 18 of 139 27 August 2013 at 6:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I think the fundamental problem of all self-study methods is the one-size-fits-all approach to teaching something that is quite individual and social. The reason most people abandon self-learning methods is that they (the people) get bored quickly, especially if there is no compelling reason to learn a language.
Trying to learn a language on your own from a book or a computer without some kind of human contact is simply deadly. That is why working with a tutor essential if you want to really make progress? How many people ever do all those exercises at the end of each chapter? Nobody, in my opinion, unless there is a teacher looking over their shoulder. How many methods could one call exciting and fun to read? I must say that I did find some Spanish grammar books actually quite interesting and enjoyable. But this is a very personal thing. This means that all of us have a shelf full of materials for each of our languages. Each of those individual books, methods, tapes, CD's, DVDS's, websites, etc. contain some nugget of information that takes us one step further along the learning path. That's perfectly fine because no one book or method can do everything for us. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7204 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 19 of 139 27 August 2013 at 8:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
What helps me finish a course are several things:
1) Passion for the language. That's number one and cannot be overlooked. If a course is able to continue to pique the student's interest in the language, that is helpful. Several features of Assimil make it especially suitable for someone like me. 2) Short lessons with audio - daily demand isn't too high 3) Covers a good bit of the language. 4) Intuitive, not grammar heavy. 5) Notes are often interesting or illuminating. 6) The "waves" feature allows one to move on before perfecting the material and return to it later feeling a sense of accomplishment for what was once now difficult is now manageable or even easy. 7) On the goability - audio can be used anywhere - quickly and easily. 8) Humor Things that make it hard to finish a course of action: a) Unpleasant voice b) Boring material c) Material that is too difficult. d) Long lessons when lifestyle doesn't support extended study sessions. Edited by luke on 27 August 2013 at 8:19am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gitaa Brother Newbie United States Joined 5100 days ago 23 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English* | Message 20 of 139 27 August 2013 at 8:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I've had the opposite experience with Assimil. Last week I was at Lesson 81 / 32 of New French With Ease and
decided that although this has been a fun experiment, I really didn't need yet another language that I wasn't fluent in. After two days, I felt like all the structure had fallen out of my day and realized that I was pretty much addicted to my daily lesson. I am doing it in a hard core way, to a certain extent following Professor Arguelles's method (e.g. shadowing lessons 1-5, reading-listening lessons 6-10, blind shadowing 11-16 in addition to the regular passive and active waves - daily lessons are currently taking 90 minutes this way). Perhaps this makes a difference? Perhaps the method appeals to people who are happy to put total faith in the method for a hour or so a day in exchange for not having to think about what they are doing. In my experience, if you do it the hard way, you will internalize everything in the book in five months. Then you can figure out what exactly it was you wanted to do with the language (or you can just ignore it for a year and reactivate everything by repeating the second wave ;-) ). 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6469 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 21 of 139 27 August 2013 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I'm not sure how helpful this thread will be for your purpose, Alexandre, because the
reasons that experienced language learners abandon a program are probably very different from the reasons the typical person abandons a program. Anyway, here are my top reasons for quitting a textbook. In parenthesis I will put how likely this is to affect more typical people: 1. Quitting or pausing the language entirely, typically because of real-life interference or because the motivation is no longer there. (++ | Also because the language turns out to be harder than expected) 2. The Perfect Method Syndrome, i. e. I have discovered another course that might just be the fabeled Perfect Method. (--) 3. Developing distrust that the course will lead me where I want to be at a reasonable speed, e. g. because of bad choice of vocabulary or situations, or good words that just don't fit my personal goals. (--) 4. Looking for more variety, usually leading to switching to native or native-like materials. (+) 5. Finding lessons too hard (bad explanations), or too complex to work through: lessons are so long I have to come back to the same lesson several times with an incomplete understanding of what is taught. (++) In the case of the Finnish Challenge, I abandoned Assimil because of reason 3. A lot of times, the reasons have nothing to do with the textbook however. I wouldn't be surprised if 80% novice language learners give up on a language course no matter how good it is, simply because they are not used to studying languages, didn't think it would be so hard, aren't used to putting in hours regularly, or suddenly have to spend more time on real-life. This happens to lots of us as well - just look at the number of TAC logs at the beginning of the year and now. Edited by Sprachprofi on 27 August 2013 at 1:55pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 22 of 139 27 August 2013 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Very interesting comments by everyone!
So courses should make it easy for the student to reintegrate the lesson plan or provide an effective way to identify where they should restart...
Agreed. I think a lot of lesson plans rely on traditional choices (post office, long lists of body parts or names of extended family members, etc.) rather than looking at the actual frequency of such words. Even if inexperienced learners didn't realize that investing time in these words is a waste of time, it's bound to have an effect on how slowly they become effective in the language and, ultimately, discourage them.
This is happening with a course I'm currently working on. Frankly, there can't be that many people finishing the course if I'm having a very hard time completing lessons midway through it... I also know of many people who barely made it past lesson 1 of the course they tried for this very reason. Then again, others complained of courses being too easy, so finding the right balanced is obviously not that simple, but not being too hard while remaining challenging should be feasible. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4143 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 23 of 139 27 August 2013 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
While lots of good points were made in this thread already, I think that we can't discount the simple fact that the
human brain craves novelty. Anything that's too repetitive will - eventually - lose most people's interest. I think that the "perfect" program should involve variety, be flexible to the learner's needs, take into account personal interests and include lots of access to native materials. I really don't see how a packaged program can do all of that. While there are no doubt some very good language programs, I don't think that any of them on their own could be "enough". I think that's the main reason why experienced language learners use a variety of different resources: because one resource can't possibly meet every need of every learner. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 24 of 139 27 August 2013 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
As an author of book(s) and method(s), @Arekkusu knows only too well that it's one thing for people to purchase a method, it's another thing to find out what they really do with the product.
There is a substantial market for language learning products because there is much interest, often short-lived mind you, and for some people a real professional need. English, of course, is the elephant in the room here. In my opinion, language learning by self-study is a bit of an oxymoron. You can't learn to speak a language by yourself. You need to speak with somebody. With the development of the Internet and cheap telecommunications, I think we are seeing the next wave of so-called self-study products. I'm not talking only about online learning; I'm talking about interaction with native speakers or tutors. I've noticed the proliferation of companies offering services by telephone and Skype. iTalki is just one example. And more to the point, that great beast of self-study methods, RS, has introduced so-called social learning with live conversation and learner communities. Instead of having to listen to the dreadful accent of Michel Thomas or some other irritating voice for hours while you try to mouth the words, you can now speak with real people about real subjects of interest to you. Anywhere, anytime. This can be fun and exciting. This is the future. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
