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What’s your favourite language tools? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5837 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 5 26 May 2013 at 10:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just to see what tools people use?
I saw a rant by someone on a torrent site who was promoting an old course from the 1950s. He was saying that this course, some paper and a pencil was all you need to learn the language in question, claiming that people learned faster in the past when good self-discipline and hard work was the method used. I certainly learnt English without any fancy tools. But then, the cool apps etc can help make it more fun! They can mean you can do micro study 5 minutes at the bus stop or 10 minutes while waiting at the dentist's. It might make language studies avaialable to people who would never pick up a dusty 200 page book, but who might surf onto a cool website with their mobile phone every now and then. Swings and roundabout. This said, what tools to do use? I use: Anki (I'm an addict and made my own flashcards. ) Regular language books, the exact same type they use in schools. After all, I know this approach worked for me in the past. Audiobooks and Podcasts on my iPod. Electronic dictionaries on my smartpone. Member of a language site (although to be honest it's a a bit rubbish - LiveMocha) What about you? What tools, gadgets and other things to you use in your language studies? Which would you recommend, and why? Edited by cordelia0507 on 27 May 2013 at 2:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 2 of 5 26 May 2013 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Procrastination from my university subjects. There is no bigger reservoar of
time :-D Language courses with audio, both at schools and self-teachers aimed ones-there are both jewels and rubbish in both cathegories Anki-no need to explain I believe. Real books! My favourites, my precioussses :-) TVshows and movies! My other favourites dictionariesboth electronic and paper ones. grammar books with exercises I can't see why those I hated so often. When used properly, they tend to be among the best tools you can ask for. language sitesItalki is great, I use it less than I should. native internet including wikipedia, university lecture powerpoints etc People The least predictable and reliable source. Nonetheless, sometimes the most amazing tool 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5837 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 3 of 5 27 May 2013 at 2:27am | IP Logged | ||
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I loved your list Cavesa! Well written and interesting.
Well let's say that Rutracker.org has been quite a big resource for me as well! I've watched everything from old classics, to modern soaps in Russian. With and without subtitles. One interesting project would be picking a nice film that hasn't been subtitled, produce subtitles and then ask for feedback. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 5 27 May 2013 at 4:16am | IP Logged | ||
- binder, lined paper (stay away from that graph paper), mechanical pencil (stay away from the HB ones), spare lead, eraser - language textbooks (hard copy or in .pdf) from the familiar offerings in Teach Yourself or Colloquial to FSI to stuff that's usually only familiar in the country of origin (e.g. some of my Polish and Finnish textbooks). - MP3 player which holds only the audio that accompanies those textbooks - dictionaries (often hard copy, but I use a few online ones which are almost as good as if not better than my best ones in hard copy) - reference guide to grammar of my target language (hard copy preferred but sometimes I got to make do with a combination of online summaries and the grammar notes included in my textbook) - authentic material in my target language (usually prose or non-fiction in my target language, but I'll take in comic strips, news reports, summaries of hockey games etc. in my target languages) - movies/cartoons/series/interviews on YouTube or webpages of television stations (especially when available with programs that have subtitles in my target language or English - e.g. the daily news broadcast in Northern Saami on YLE comes with Finnish subtitles) - HTLAL and Unilang for forums, but I haven't been successful with language exchange sites in a while (I did have some success several years ago, though). LiveMocha was a waste of my time. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| baskerville Trilingual Triglot Newbie Singapore scribeorigins.com Joined 4245 days ago 39 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: German*, Japanese Studies: Hungarian | Message 5 of 5 19 June 2013 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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All your lists are interesting. I'll try to implement them in my own studies too :)
My list: - regular text books for grammar and reading - podcasts - iPhone - for podcasts, dictionary apps, Google Translate app and audiobooks - paper dictionaries - Nintendo DS and Canon Wordtank - and definitely HTLAL! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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