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Regretful Tactics in Language Learning | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 17 of 23 13 October 2013 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have a book buying habit in general so language learning just feeds into that. Though
even moreso before discovering HTLAL when I still had the belief that fluency relied on obtaining the perfect course. I have since found that each educational material is just another tool in the toolbox. Another major problem is spending way too much time reading language learning forums, blogs, articles, etc in relation to actual time spent studying or exposing myself to the language I'm trying to study. All the time I have spent fretting about the "proper" technique could have been spent actually studying. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 18 of 23 14 October 2013 at 10:47am | IP Logged | ||
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When I started with French I wasted a whole bunch of time with relatively useless things like Busuu and trying to read news articles that were too far above my level, and I think that's partly why it took me a while to pick up momentum and consistency.
And I'd say my biggest mistake (although I wouldn't use the word "tactic" as it wasn't deliberate, I was just ignorant) was ignoring pronunciation from the start. I suppose I just didn't realise its importance and I assumed I'd simply pick it up as I went along. Result: having to spend a good couple of years trying to correct bad habits. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Richard Burton Newbie Spain Joined 4330 days ago 34 posts - 64 votes Speaks: Ancient Greek* | Message 19 of 23 14 October 2013 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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One little thing I would say, is looking to too many words suddenly, one day, and not revising or allowing them to sink in, making sure they are registered in long-term memory.
For me, the greatest mistake is working without full knowledge of the phonological system and ist relationshipt with the writing system. This is bad because creates all sort of bad habits that will impose double work later: create the good habit, erase the bad habit. But then again, virtually everyone makes this mistake, it is a quirk of mine and dont want to bother you with it. Edited by Richard Burton on 14 October 2013 at 4:25pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 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 20 of 23 16 October 2013 at 1:56pm | IP Logged | ||
I wouldn't call what you did shadowing, because Arguelles's Shadowing as per his 1hr video prescribes a core of written practice in the "scriptorium" (a notebook in which you write out the shadowed text). One regret I have concerns my scriptorium - about two months ago I hit upon the idea of using coloured highlighters to mark noun gender (blue, pink, yellow) with its relevant modifiers ("the", "a", possessive pronouns, adjectives) and also to mark word endings which are either in the dative or genitive case (orange). In addition to this I also began to add the plural endings in superscript above the nouns. Colour associations are easily memorized, and since nouns are rarely used just once in a text, there is a lot of useful repetition. This has worked wonders for my retention of the genders and plural endings, as well as clearing up what I would call "constituency perception," e.g. identifying what's a subject and what's an object or indirect object. I wish I had made this discovery earlier because not knowing plurals and genders well really frustrated me when I tried to speak. Also, since I do all of this vocabulary work in the context of my ongoing scriptorium work, it adds variety to the process of filling the pages, and it doesn't require tedious and time consuming work purely on vocabulary. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| languagenerd09 Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom youtube.com/user/Lan Joined 5098 days ago 174 posts - 267 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai | Message 21 of 23 16 October 2013 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Strangely, for me, I don't seem to get much out of learning via the general consensus of
using a course book like assimil, teach yourself etc. I seem to learn more from using flashcards, listening to music, watching films, translation sites like tatoeba and generally watching videos on youtube. It's strange and I don't know how. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 22 of 23 17 October 2013 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are so many and I have tried quite a lot of them personally in past:
-giving up -expecting one method/technique/course to take you all the way from zero to fluency -going through too many sources at once -expecting a usual language class to be enough for yout to progress reasonably -starting native exposure with radio and classical books without any regard for your level and interests. Unfortunately, a high % of language teachers is to blame here. I am constantly hearing things like "trying to read Harry Potter first? what an idea!" or "yes, I hate listening to the radio but my teacher said it would help me". -forcing yourself to do things you hate. you trully dislike watching news in general? what the hell makes you think you will spend twenty minutes a day watching them in your target language for months? You hate grammar exercises? so why don't you try some alternative method instead of just procrastinating? -not focusing on correct pronunciation right from the beginning. just repeating after audio and perhaps doing some boring exercises in the first few weeks can save you so much trouble later! -not listening enough. Well, I am one of those who like to listen a lot and I even do a Pimsleur but I have noticed on myself that I just have huge trouble to remember words I have never seen though. It has little to do with being a visual learner, I would rather say that I prefer to get the bigger picture as much as possible right from the start. But one thing is for sure, in my opinion. Anyone (any kind of learner at any level learning any language) can profit from some more listening. -learning a language you don't want to learn. Unfortunately, we often cannot avoid it. Schools are forcing English or another language of no choice (or very limited choice) down our throats no matter whether we like it or not. No wonder most people learn so little and gladly forget it soon after leaving school. But so many people are doing the same thing to themselves in their free time. Society/boss/parents think I should learn this language. But who says I won't raise my emloyment potential just as much by getting a rarer skill or that it wouldn't be better to migrate to the particular country? An example. I am often speaking with various nurses and we speak of languages as well. The women had often considered leaving for Germany as it would be the most practical option (very good money and work conditions while still being able to go home often to see friends and family). Yet they are all learning English and they suck at it (true, some are better, some are worse. but none is really good at it). It is hard for them (the older ones have usually even got a previous experience with German and find English too irregular), they have little motivation apart from "English is necessary" or "everyone needs to learn English", they know very little about how to learn cheaply (and the courses are quite expensive considering their salaries so they don't think much about what else to do as it would be likely tied to further costs) and even if they succeed, it will be a worthless skill because there are already thousands of other nurses speaking much better English (often a secondary native language or language of their education) applying for the same job in the UK/USA/Saudi Arabia and so on. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5188 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 23 of 23 17 October 2013 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Flashcards and learning from lists are my biggest regrets. I don't think they have much to do with
understanding real language. Today I would only learn from context and always with audio and if possible a transcript and translation to help when I need. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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