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The Listening-Reading Method | ||
Tags: Listening-Reading (L-R) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Abdalan Triglot Senior Member Brazil abdalan.wordpress.co Joined 4969 days ago 120 posts - 194 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, French, English Studies: German | Message 9 of 22 11 June 2011 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There are some reasons I decided built the parallel text myself.
1. First, it is Portuguese-French. It seems there isn’t anything like that around. 2. I bought the book “O Conde de Monte Cristo” (Portuguese version - Editora Publicações Europa-America.) some years ago. Never read. Nobody could believe how many errors of translations; insertions; and words, phrases and paragraphs cut off in a (even good) translation. The saying “Tradutore, traditore” really means something. So, I wanted to do like a friend of mine who made his own translation (or treachery, if you like) as a gift to his grand-children. My friend’s translation. 3. Up to now I didn’t find even one good parallel text Portuguese-French, so here goes my “espírito de artífice” (quality of craftsmanship) building it myself. Afterwards I can exercise my “espírito de cristão” (It's better to give than to receive) and share with my friends. 4. The work itself of aligning, mixing and matching may be useful, as you have to check more slowly both texts and read L1. l add also some personal comments, footnotes, fix incorrections (even the original text have errors as most of them was built through OCR), and so. I doubt there is one human being or machine that can realize my 120 hours in 30 seg. 5. I have a software that can do text statistical analysis if it is a digital copy, of course. I aim to use it also. A pop-up dictionary is ‘vachement’ useful (do you ever asked why Atamagaii would use a pop-up dictionary as the text is already translated? Only creating your own text is possible to know why.)
I doubt you can *only* resize the text a of 50 hours novel with a work of 30 seg and get it to the level of the so-called “parallel text”. Well, “Optimal input is comprehensible”. This means that you really got the meaning of the sound that came to your ears (through reading L1) and even have a chance to have a glance in a fraction of a second how it is written in L2 (all of this during 5, 6, 10 hours a day). If your text is only partially matching, I doubt it is useful spend 30 seg).
Hum. You may have a point there. But, ‘to my own’, I already finished Assimil (‘with easy’, ‘new with easy’ and ‘without toil’ – all three generations simultaneously), Some FSI (Vol 1), Thomas, and tried most of the methods around. I don’t find any, as far as language learning is concerned, that can offer me more than a work of literature of Dumas would (as never I act ‘Regardless of the results’). Any hints?
Thank you, carlonove. -=- About the topic: The main point in LR, IMHO, is that consist of set of materials aimed at subconscious language acquisition (not learning). In some aspects it may be even more useful than talking with natives, (simply being a native speaker of a language does not in of itself qualify one as a teacher of that language) as we often ‘smooth’ our speech to a slower rate and clearer articulation, less slang and fewer idioms in talking with learners. LR has characteristics that encourage acquisition at the fastest possible rate, as the writers do not use only vocabulary of high frequency, syntactic simplification or shorter sentences. But, there are requirements sine qua non and I see that most of those who use it, miss some of these points. OPTIMAL INPUT IS COMPREHENSIBLE, that is, you have to UNDERSTAND what you hear. If you don’t understand the message, there will be no acquisition. It is practically impossible, for instance, for someone to acquire a second or foreign language merely by listening to radio, or watching TV programs that teach foreign languages, unless the acquirer speaks a very closely related language. Even children sometimes fail to pick up family languages when it is used to “tell secrets”, – so, in practicing LR you have to read the translation. Books are NOT GRAMMATICALLY SEQUENCED or focused on one structure. This is a must if you aim fluency. Communicative input that comes from LR contains built-in review. Maybe here one finds the reason to “of benefit if you use it intensively”. In Le Comte de Monte-Cristo I got astonished as I saw that in 20/100 chapters I had already 90.000 words. This means that I’ll have more than 450.000 by the end of the book. But I doubt that Dumas uses more than 25.000 different words (I’ll answer in few days), so do you see how much of review? This fact is related to the so-called IDIOLECTIC. We don't have to worry if we the passé composé this minute was only partially understood, it will be part of the input again... and again. Recycling minute after minute (if the book is big enough). Further, we can select the material that is INTERESTING AND RELEVANT TO US. In such a way our focus itself is the communication (the subject, the message, of the book) and not (only) the (grammatical) form of the language. “Grammatically-based syllabus reduces the quality of comprehensible exposure and distorts the communicative focus” Sometimes when practicing LR I even forget that the message is ‘encoded’ in French (in my case). How much of nice subject we can find in a book that teaches language? FSI: Je suis heureux de faire votre connaissance. Il est heureux de faire votre connaissance. Mon frère est heureux de faire votre connaissance. Mon père est heureux de faire votre connaissance. Ils sont heureux de faire votre connaissance. Mon frère et ma soeur sont heureux de faire votre connaissance. Mon ami est heureux de faire votre connaissance. Je suis heureux de faire votre connaissance. Le Comte: - Mais vous savez donc plusieurs langues ? - Je parle cinq langues vivantes, l'allemand, le français, l'italien, l'anglais et l'espagnol ; à l'aide du grec ancien je comprends le grec moderne ; seulement je le parle mal, mais je l'étudie en ce moment. - Vous l'étudiez ? dit Dantès. - Oui, je me suis fait un vocabulaire des mots que je sais, je les ai arrangés, combinés, tournés et retournés, de façon qu'ils puissent me suffire pour exprimer ma pensée. Je sais à peu près mille mots, c'est tout ce qu'il me faut à la rigueur, quoiqu'il y en ait cent mille, je crois, dans les dictionnaires. Seulement, je ne serai pas éloquent, mais je me ferai comprendre à merveille et cela me suffit. » ... il savait déjà, d'ailleurs, l'italien et un peu de romaïque, qu'il avait appris dans ses voyages d'Orient. Avec ces deux langues, il comprit bientôt le mécanisme de toutes les autres, et, au bout de six mois, il commençait à parler l'espagnol, l'anglais et l'allemand. [edited: my English s*cks. Fixed some misspellings] Edited by Abdalan on 11 June 2011 at 10:09pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| carlonove Senior Member United States Joined 5909 days ago 145 posts - 253 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 10 of 22 11 June 2011 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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That was a very informative post, Abdalan, and aligning such a sizable book is a commendable task. I hope you'll share the completed text when you're finished; even if there aren't a lot of Portuguese speakers on the forum it would make life much easier for someone who wanted to align either the French or Portuguese with another language. You should ask your friend to submit his translations to Librivox.org; there are probably people who'd voluntarily record them in audiobook format, especially if the other translations are so poor.
How exactly did you work through the three Assimil courses? What are your thoughts on the differences between each edition? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6938 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 22 11 June 2011 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I prefer reading a book with accompanying audio entirely in the target language, after having gone through at least one language-learning course. If the books are simple enough, then in 120 hours I can read a few of them. I should point out that I haven't tried the intensive L-R which you are referring to since, unfortunately, I don't have the time to spend such long periods continuously absorbed. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| RMM Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5150 days ago 91 posts - 215 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Swedish, Japanese | Message 12 of 22 13 June 2011 at 8:07am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Abdalan, I didn't mean to suggest that what I can throw together in 30 seconds is in any way the equal to a well-done true parallel text. It's just that for me the deficits are well worth it, if I can save 120 hours of work. I mean, you can get a lot of language learning done in 120 hours of actual study instead. If you believe that it was worth it for you, then bravo for finishing such a big task. I've done L-R with and without parallel texts, and I personally can't tell all that much difference. I think I pick things up a tad quicker when I can check the translation quickly, but mostly I just stick to L1 or L2 texts in any given pass through the text with the audio.
How much of a benefit do you feel that having a parallel text has given you as opposed to simply doing L-R with the text in one language and then in the other language later? If I've just done a run through with L1 on a chunk of text then I can usually remember the meaning when I go back to L2 audio-L2 text, even without a parallel text (I usually don't go longer than a chapter (and sometimes less) before switching languages to make sure that I can still remember the meaning). Also, with a book that big do you make several passes over the material or would that just take too much time? (I think the original proponent of this method suggested that three times through with L2 audio-L1 text should be enough). Or does having a parallel text mean you don't have to go over the same material so many times? By the way, I should mention that I've only tried the "two windows open next to each other in different languages" strategy on languages for which I already know the basics. I think that it would probably be too difficult to keep both texts together for a language of which I knew very little. Edited by RMM on 13 June 2011 at 8:18am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Wompi Triglot Groupie Germany Joined 4879 days ago 56 posts - 64 votes Speaks: German*, Spanish, English Studies: Czech | Message 14 of 22 16 June 2011 at 10:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Just tried the technical version described in the second part with Harry Potter Part 3 German <-> Czech. The result is quite impressive. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tbone Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4914 days ago 92 posts - 132 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 16 of 22 16 June 2011 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I've been working on an html file which displays two (local, in my case) text files side-by-side. When you scroll one
panel, the other one scrolls, too, proportionally. Works fine on Safari, but not at all well on Firefox. Trying to keep it simple. Development will continue. Has saved me a boatload of time, but you don't get the perfect matching you got with the by-hand bilingual- texts.com files. Corresponding paragraphs may not be exactly across from the one you're reading. Edited by tbone on 16 June 2011 at 11:08pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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