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Regretful Tactics in Language Learning | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4306 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 1 of 23 12 October 2013 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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In the time you've been learning languages, what would you have done differently?
There's no shortage of poor methods for learning languages and bad advice that gets thrown around with assumed authority. Every publishing house will tell you that their way is the best way, it seems. It's easy to get over-enthused over to be later disappointed. It's very disheartening to realise that the hours you poured into a language probably count for only a fraction of the progress you would make in a different manner of study. That's why forums like these are so essential. To help each other out, I think it's worthwhile to focus on failures as as well as successes. Though it's interesting to debate about the relative merits of different techniques, I think it's probably more useful to ask which haven't worked for us, or what bad habits we wish we had avoided from the start. Which techniques and tactics were complete failures? Why did they fail? Which techniques and tactics were mild successes, but could have been done more effectively? What small differences add up to greatly improved learning? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4232 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 2 of 23 12 October 2013 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have one very bad habit: I'm constantly dropping any guides/ textbooks/ methods. Even if they're helpful.
This is so annoying that I'm not sure if it's better for me to learn language with less textbooks and selfstudy guides than German (that was a joke). Another bad habit of, to be precise, bad circumstance is that I'm very pessimistic. It has its effect on languages learning too. I have no idea of my real English level for a loooong time during school, because my absolute unsureness in grammar lead me to one conclusion: I can only translate, but not speak of write. Soon after I finished the school with best possible mark (5/5) on English and when my pessimism wasn't holding me anymore, I improved my English quite fast, managed to transform my passive skills into active, etc. Here's the result (I finished school two years ago). That's funny, but it seems that I'm condemned to walk that way with German. I know exactly where are my problems, but I'm not at all trying to fix them, but I keep complaining about that often. Of course, this situation wouldn't last forever and eventually it will work out, but now I'm pretty pessimistic about my German and its perspectives. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5406 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 3 of 23 12 October 2013 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Two things :
- not putting audio first. My recent experience with Say something in Welsh (and less recent experience with Michel Thomas courses) left me convinced that, even if I like textbooks and really enjoy working with written material, having a audio-only introduction (or more) to the language is unvaluable in getting used to produce/recognize the sounds. - not trying to adapt the material to what suits me most, e. g. I find easier to remember information about the structure of the language than to remember vocabulary. The problem is that lots textbooks are build the other way round, each lesson has very few grammatical points but is loaded with wordlists. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gunshy Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4115 days ago 28 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French | Message 4 of 23 12 October 2013 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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As a varsity student: an irregular sleeping pattern. Help me somebody!
Edit: But I suppose that isn't a tactic... :D Edited by Gunshy on 12 October 2013 at 3:54pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5389 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 5 of 23 12 October 2013 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | ||
Exactly! A lot of people will say, "But I'm a visual learner - I need to see it written down!" Of course it's hard to follow an audio-only course for anyone but I think it's worth it to stick to it to develop good speaking skills and listening comprehension. I don't have scientific proof, but I feel like many people I studied French with would have had much better pronunciation if they hadn't had the "interference" at the start of seeing the words written down, forever unable to separate in their minds the English and French phonetic systems. And for learning Irish, I just couldn't deal with the written language at the start. Audio helped me a lot. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 6 of 23 12 October 2013 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the worst habit I have is focusing too much on audio when you have a script to
get used to (Korean, Hebrew). I am probably also guilty of not enough conversation practice in some languages. And there are some weird customs I just don't like picking up. I haven't noticed anything that completely failed, though, just stuff that was slower than other stuff. Shadowing and repetitive exercises are pretty much part of that last set. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Belardur Octoglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5609 days ago 148 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2, Spanish, Dutch, Latin, Ancient Greek, French, Lowland Scots Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Italian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Korean | Message 7 of 23 12 October 2013 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd like to agree with the importance of early exposure to audio as a launching pad. In languages where I
began with more audio I have generally had more success. That said, in many cases I transitioned from those audio introductions in a couple of cases to native audio, reading and very limited conversation, which has left me pretty unbalanced in a couple languages. I really should have dealt with written production much more seriously, and from an earlier stage (this may be a personal issue, though, as even in my strongest language I have to edit to catch stupid mistakes that I never make speaking). Not making the transition to reading comfortably was also bad for me in some weaker languages that subsequently lost significant ability. L-R type stuff worked great for the receptive skills, but I may have focused too much on it at the expense of other things. I'll second that shadowing and substitution exercises weren't so helpful for me. That said, a grammar overview re-written by hand was invaluable for me in some cases. My conclusion: if I were to do everything again, I would work more with written production and push harder for reading comprehension in different scripts, after the audio-heavy early stages that work well for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| namsskogan Newbie Norway Joined 5593 days ago 18 posts - 53 votes Speaks: Norwegian* Studies: German | Message 8 of 23 12 October 2013 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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This topic has been discussed before on this forum:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=18109&PN=1&TPN=1 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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