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Traditional Comprehension Exercises | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5697 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 17 of 26 25 April 2012 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Disagreed. Out of a group, I tend to be the person who remembers lectures, past outings with the group, the topic of the conversation we just had before we got sidetracked etc. best just because I do not encode the actual linguistic details, but compress the meaning and link it to my general knowledge, my episodic memory and my knowledge about the other group members. In fact, in the long haul I remember a lot of detail that way; what I cannot remember are details that seem to be irrelevant. I don't care if Sally buys 150g or 200g of cheese, what I'll remember is that she bought cheese, an amount fit for household consumption, and used the metric system. Edited by Bao on 25 April 2012 at 1:05am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6528 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 18 of 26 25 April 2012 at 12:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Same here. In the long run I remember a loooot, but I don't keep irrelevant details even in my short-term memory.
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| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4840 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 19 of 26 25 April 2012 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm not quite sure what you are disagreeing with, but a well made comprehension exercise should not ask for boring or irrelevant details. A well designed comprehension exercise should test if you have caught the main point of a text or audio. I have no doubt that there are poor exercises which ask things like "how many pigs were there?" rather than "what did the pigs do when the wolf blew their house down?" But comprehension exercises like those on the defense institute website ask for details that you ought to be remembering if you understood the text properly. So comprehension exercises should basically be checking if you can remember the important details of what you have just been told. How is that not a real life skill? Back to the sports analogy, just because some PE teacher tortured you in middle-school, does not mean that exercise is bad for you.
Again, not sure what's being disagreed with here. A good comprehension exercise should ask for details like what Sally bought, not the exact amount or colour. Edited by Jeffers on 25 April 2012 at 6:15pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6528 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 20 of 26 25 April 2012 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I still think that apart from discussing the story with someone, all those exercises require a specific skill which you need only... to complete them. :D Those questions are either too easy or too difficult, and in both cases you don't need them to decide you need to reread part of the story.
Anyway, good for you if you enjoy those exercises and know where to find good ones. I was mostly disagreeing that if these tasks are difficult for you, you need to do them more. Many of these tasks DO suck and are mostly designed so that the teacher could check whether you understand. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6082 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 21 of 26 26 April 2012 at 10:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Some of the best comprehension exercises I've seen, tend to be very short, and test something relevant.
E.g. In Spanish Menú. Especial del día. Papas asadas con lechón. Question: Is this meal suitable for somebody with a dairy allergy ? [Update - Removed the extraneous las. Thanks MrWarper.] Edited by DaraghM on 27 April 2012 at 10:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5157 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 22 of 26 27 April 2012 at 2:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
(Lose that 'las'!) Hard to say, I had to think it over. Lechón is a piglet that's been fed just milk before being slaughtered, but not a dairy product itself, so... no. However, an acquaintance of mine is allergic to egg yolk and she has to be wary of the craziest things like French fries (oil reuse? maybe...) or cheese (egg, really? come on!) so... who knows for sure? Just keep your epinephrine syringe at hand ;)
Which is precisely the kind of situation most of language study happens in, anyway -- so it makes quite a lot of sense and makes 'us teachers'' lives easier :) Last week I conducted an experiment with several friends to check on attentiveness and comprehension. I read them the first paragraph of a short SF story and they'd let me know if it was interesting enough to pass them the whole text or not. For this to spark any interest, one key word is essential. Whether I read it in a TL for very advanced students or in the NL of others (no possible TL comprehension problems here), ALL of them missed it so nobody was interested in the rest of the story until I pointed out what they overlooked. Let's try it here: Ted Chiang - What's Expected of Us It's a tough choice! This is a warning. Please read carefully. By now you've probably seen a Predictor; millions of them have been sold by the time you're reading this. For those who haven't seen one, it's a small device, like a remote for opening your car door. Its only features are a button and a big green LED. The light flashes if you press the button. Specifically, the light flashes one second before you press the button. Edited by mrwarper on 27 April 2012 at 2:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5887 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 23 of 26 27 April 2012 at 4:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Ted Chiang: "The universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological." I am thinking of adding Universe to my list of languages I would like to learn (assuming I ever get past the hell of French). Edited by Spanky on 27 April 2012 at 5:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5697 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 24 of 26 27 April 2012 at 5:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Predict/before?
... this seems way too easy, I think I don't get it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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