13 messages over 2 pages: 1 2
schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5562 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 9 of 13 09 April 2011 at 3:45pm | IP Logged |
I thoroughly enjoyed that. That's a pretty impressive hard working guy. Doctor, polyglot, publisher, and he writes interestingly and has a nice speaking voice.
The audio files are also useful for German learning, as they come with transcript, and there's also a fairly good correspondence to the English version.
I think the only totally new tip I got was the idea of a coach holiday. I've heard recommendations for using public transport before, but imagine being stuck with the same group for a whole two weeks. That should help the hearing comprehension.
Edited by schoenewaelder on 09 April 2011 at 3:46pm
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| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6552 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog
| Message 10 of 13 09 April 2011 at 4:55pm | IP Logged |
kmart wrote:
I believe you have saved me 70 pages of reading time, hehe. |
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Not really. This article is worth reading, and we have only touched upon it here. My points were mostly critical, but
overall I enjoyed it.
kmart wrote:
But to tell someone that if they haven't got what it takes, get out of the kitchen, is a bit
intimidating. |
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Except for what he said specifically aimed at language majors, I think his warnings about what is required were very
accurate. the false hope all these people on the net give is evil.
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| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5132 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe
| Message 11 of 13 09 April 2011 at 5:25pm | IP Logged |
leosmith wrote:
Some quotes of interest (please discuss)
thewordbrain.com wrote:
] If you are used to having a siesta, put your earphones on and activate the
loop mode. It is certainly impossible to learn words during sleep, but
the sound and music of the new language will certainly enter your brain. |
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In the words of Jason Borne "sleep is a weapon". If I get greedy and try to learn while sleeping, it will be diminished.
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I've not read the PDF yet, but this quote was meaningful to me.
For at least the last month, I've been falling asleep listening to something in Turkish on a loop, whether it's music or spoken word.
More often than not, I've been dreaming in Turkish, and it's usually got nothing to do with what I'd been listening to. When I wake up, I find it's usually a single word or phrase in whatever I'm listening to that triggers the dream.
So yeah, I agree that it's probably unhelpful for learning, but it's a pretty good jumping off point for further expression in the target language.
Just my experience.
R.
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| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5449 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek
| Message 12 of 13 10 April 2011 at 11:15pm | IP Logged |
Thanks to kikenyoy for passing this along. I've been reading and enjoying it. I'd add that in the 10-page version, thee are some nice links for online vocabulary learning, including a program with 1300 words for French, Italian, Spanish and German and another tool for learning verbs. While neither is state of the art, there's useful free content there.
As for the book, I think it hits on some very useful ideas. I particularly like the focus on words. In the language learning biz, there's a lot of talk about comprehensible input, but the focus always seems to be on fixing the content. The good doctor's focus on building recognition vocabulary seems to go about it the other way: You make more input comprehensible rather than making input more comprehensible!
I think there's some sense to this focus on words. Once, a literature professor told me I should try to learn 20 words a day for the next three or four years (in French) to improve my ability to read literature and analyze it. I didn't quite do that, but did make a point of learning new words as I came across them. And it was useful. When you start with a language, it seems like production is harder. But once you've got enough words to say something about most topics, you can't stop. If you want to read intelligent writing and enjoy intelligent conversation, it's not about what you can say. It's about what you're prepared to understand when it comes up. For this insight alone, the doctor's book is worth the read.
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| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5537 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 13 of 13 11 April 2011 at 12:18am | IP Logged |
I thoroughly enjoyed that PDF and got several useful bits of info from it. Thanks for the link. :)
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