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Memorizing without learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4699 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 5 31 March 2012 at 6:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Is it possible to memorize a big chunk of L2 material, say an Assimil with Ease book, and not learn how to speak the language, assuming that you know the meaning of what you are memorizing?
Many language learning methods seem to be built around memorizing, yet you hear people worrying that they are memorizing dialogs rather than "translating" them. Frankly, at my humble A2-ish level of Spanish, I sound best when I am throwing out a sentence straight from _Spanish with Ease_. When I build my own sentences, I do best when I graft together pieces of what I have "memorized". Is this a bad thing? I seem to remember going through a stage like this with other languages I've learned. You know half a sentence from here, half a sentence from there, a word from somewhere else, splice it together and say it. steve Edited by sfuqua on 31 March 2012 at 6:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4637 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 2 of 5 31 March 2012 at 8:47am | IP Logged | ||
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It's certainly possible to memorize chunks of a foreign language without
learning the language. For example: it's not uncommon for second-generation Muslims to memorize large chunks of the Koran without knowing Arabic well (or sometimes even at all).* Of course, that's an extreme. I think we all splice and dice a little even in our native language, and it's not bad unless the memorization becomes a crutch. Tommus's Dutch islands topic** advocates using short pre-memorized islands of speech as a way to grease the wheels of a conversation. This isn't exactly the fear you're talking about though. *Here are a couple informal discussions I pulled from Google that tangentially mention this fact: http://abooali.wordpress.com/chapter-2/ http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/quran.htm **http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp ?TID=31482 Edited by Hekje on 31 March 2012 at 8:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4591 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 5 31 March 2012 at 11:07am | IP Logged | ||
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It is possibly to memorize a language without learning it. But what happened here is for me only natural.
I learn any language with any method in small chunks. I store together "I am going", "I went", I go" in one shelf, and "to the town", "to the village" ... in other shelf. At the beginning, my recall was slow. The sentence "I am going to the town" had a silence in the middle - and now I can recall both parts much faster. Does the pause in a sentence means one didn't learn to speak the language? IMHO, it simply means one did learn it just enough to speak, but not well enough to speak fluently on his/her level. In the beginning, it is a personal decision for me. Will I limit myself to learning slower or will I go through the material faster with the provision that such pauses in speech are acceptable? The later has one advantage for me. One needs certain amount of repeats to recall such chunk of language fast. Going through more material means I get the repeats too, only they happen naturally through use, not through drilling. In certain sense, this is also one of the differences between Michel Thomas and Pimsleur approach. One gives you time to think, the other gives you certain amount of time to answer. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5915 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 4 of 5 31 March 2012 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
I think that when you repeat an Assimil lesson so many times that you come to know it almost by heart, AND you know the meaning in the right page AND you look thoroughly into the structures in the left page that are new to you, reflecting on how they are formed and how each part contributes to the whole meaning, AND you read the small grammatical notes, then learning the language is somehow a side effect. That's why they use the terms "assimilation" and "without effort". It's only natural that you know those chunks better than the ones you consciously build using explicit grammatical rules. Actually I think it would be great memorising texts that are relevant to you, not just my tailor is rich, but my family, my work, my favourite film, etc. That way you have those chunks readily available and, like with the Assimil texts, you're drilling patterns that you can reuse anytime you want. Now, if you skip all that but the actual memorisation, then I've got no idea what could happen. Singers do often memorise foreign language versions of their songs. I suspect that you could be memorising foreign sons for ever provided that you always forget the previous one, but there can only be so many songs that you know at any given moment without actually knowing the language. Edited by Javi on 31 March 2012 at 5:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kyle Corrie Senior Member United States Joined 4763 days ago 175 posts - 464 votes | Message 5 of 5 31 March 2012 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Of course it's possible. But what would be the point?
The best example I can think of is the movie 'La Cité des Enfants Perdus' (The City of Lost Children'. Ron Perlman can't speak any French, but he managed to memorize his entire dilogue in order to film an entire movie in the language. Of course, in his case he got paid and was able to add to his resumé. For most practical reasons I don't think it'd make sense to do such a thing. If you're interested in watching a short scene of him doing it then click the link below. La Cité des Enfants Perdus - Petit frère 1 person has voted this message useful |
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