kimmitt Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4979 days ago 33 posts - 38 votes Studies: French
| Message 1 of 22 05 June 2011 at 11:40pm | IP Logged |
I have been reading about this elsewhere on the forum - why is it widely thought that
this technique will only be of benefit if you use it intensively for long periods over a
few days?
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lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5326 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes
| Message 2 of 22 06 June 2011 at 12:15am | IP Logged |
kimmitt wrote:
I have been reading about this elsewhere on the forum - why is it widely thought that this technique will only be of benefit if you use it intensively for long periods over a few days? |
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Because this is more or less what Atamagaii said,
Atamagaii wrote:
If you do L-R not intensively enough, it will be useless for you. The more difficult the text you begin with, the more intensive L-R should be. Two hours a day seems to be the minimum for relatively easy texts. |
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(I quote from a compilation by Atamagaii and made public by Volte: Listening-Reading collection
I may be allowed to comment that I feel that even shorter periods can be useful, but the main point is certainly that you need a certain repetition during one session for maximum effect. So if a word or phrase shows up only once during a single session, it may take many sessions until you can learn it, what is not optimal. But optimal solutions are often not practical ...
Edited by lingoleng on 06 June 2011 at 12:20am
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Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6467 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 3 of 22 07 June 2011 at 6:43pm | IP Logged |
kimmitt wrote:
I have been reading about this elsewhere on the forum - why is it widely thought that
this technique will only be of benefit if you use it intensively for long periods over a
few days?
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It depends on the language, and your level in it, to some extent.
If you're a beginner, and the language isn't quite close to one you already know, anything other than intensity with L-R is an exercise in frustration, I find.
On the other hand, Atamagaii has claimed that as little as two hours/day can be useful for a very close language to one you already know (for instance, your second Romance language). S/he's also written that parts of L-R will still be of benefit, even if you don't use it as a package - for instance, if you reduce the intensity. Anecdotally, I have to agree with him/her on this.
The explanation Atamagaii gives for why intensity is important is the forgetting curve. I'm not convinced that that is a complete explanation, and I don't know enough to explain exactly why intensity is so important. But when I skip a day, or drop down under an hour or two in the middle of an intensive study period, it does feel a lot less effective.
Sorry this isn't a more complete answer - but I hope it sheds a little light, nonetheless.
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Abdalan Triglot Senior Member Brazil abdalan.wordpress.co Joined 5074 days ago 120 posts - 194 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, English Studies: German
| Message 4 of 22 10 June 2011 at 4:11pm | IP Logged |
I'm 'L-R'ing Le Comte de Monte-Cristo.
The main problem I faced was in preparing the parallel text. I spend about 1 hour to
each chapter (reading and making it really, so to speak, “parallel”), resulting in more
than 120 hours to set the material ready to be used.
Each chapter is about 30 min long, so if you do L2 and L1 once without stopping, here
goes more 1 hour. It is recommended repeating 2 or 3 times this step. So, to each
chapter you spend between 3 and 4 hours (to each 30 min of new text).
But the whole process (the book) is to be made 2 or 3 times, so...
Anyway, I’m impressed with the results.
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supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 5022 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish
| Message 5 of 22 10 June 2011 at 11:12pm | IP Logged |
While using LR as my main starting method with Spanish right now, I too can advocate on using it for long periods of time in a row. Having done it for forty hours over the last 8 days gave me some great results (you can read it in my log). In the beginning of a new language, I think that LR is only useful when you use is for long sessions (5-10 hours a day) to get a great immersion into the language.
However, once you have a basis and are intermediate, I think LR is also useful for shorter sessions. This because you can now start and try to really see all the words and grammar you already learned in practice! This is a great way to really ingrain the knowledge you already poses!
And, when you can already understand about 80-90% of what you hear/read, it is way easier to pick up the new words as there are just less words you have to focus on.
Hopefully this has been helpful, as I think it is written a bit chaotic..;)
It is a real good method and I advocate everybody to use it!
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carlonove Senior Member United States Joined 6014 days ago 145 posts - 253 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian
| Message 6 of 22 11 June 2011 at 12:15am | IP Logged |
Abdalan, if you would rather shell out some money rather than aligning the text yourself, you can get a parallel English-French version of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo from Lulu:
Le Comte de Monte-Cristo
Edited by carlonove on 11 June 2011 at 12:25am
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patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7043 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map
| Message 7 of 22 11 June 2011 at 12:33am | IP Logged |
Abdalan wrote:
I'm 'L-R'ing Le Comte de Monte-Cristo.
The main problem I faced was in preparing the parallel text. I spend about 1 hour to
each chapter (reading and making it really, so to speak, “parallel”), resulting in more than 120 hours to set the material ready to be used. |
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Regardless of the results, I would have preferred to have spent those 120 hours learning the language with another method rather than preparing for L-R. Each to their own!
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RMM Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5255 days ago 91 posts - 215 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Swedish, Japanese
| Message 8 of 22 11 June 2011 at 3:25am | IP Logged |
When I want a parallel text that I don't already have, I just open up the English document and then re-size it so that it fits half of my computer screen, and then I do the same for the foreign language document on the other half of the screen. It's a bit annoying to have to keep scrolling down both documents, but setting this up takes about 30 seconds, rather than 120 hours (provided of course that I have digital copies of the texts).
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