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Rate of Speech And Clarity DOES Matter | ||
Tags: Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4636 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 33 of 40 20 August 2013 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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In reply to the original post:
I don't think output is "getting a bad rap" from anyone. For some people output isn't important because they're learning the language to read books, watch movies/TV and listen to music. Practicing output is a waste of time for these people. If you do want to be able to speak with natives then naturally you'll have to practice output. The question is when and how. In FSI you start right off the bat doing production drills. In Assimil you go through a passive stage and then an active stage. Some learners take the Assimil approach further with massive input and pretty much no output. This gives them unbalanced abilities. But by not focusing on output they're able to spend more time doing useful things with the language(books, movies etc). Those people with high passive/low active ability will inevitably sound like what you've described, or worse, when they do speak the language. But you've got to keep in mind that they are still in the early stages of their active learning. This isn't the end product. Where others have drills, these people have mincing around awkwardly with natives. Their abilities will improve the more they do this. You prefer to drill yourself into decent proficiency before going out into the wild, others prefer to learn on the job and look silly. It's just another case of different learning strategies for different people. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Itadakimasu Diglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4187 days ago 31 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 34 of 40 20 August 2013 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually I'm making this post, because I didn't drill active proficiency on earlier, and I regretted throughout the entire intermediate stage. I passively listened to Japanese for years without ever opening a book, and while it did wonders for my vocabulary, I could barely speak nor could I read. So what good did all the vocabulary do me? I tried to find solace, and I guess it was cool to be studying while have a really high comprehension level, but aside from that; in the real world I was useless. I'm trying to get people to not make the same mistake I made. You should be studying output from the beginning if possible. That way by the time you get to the 4-6 month mark, that's 4-6 month of vocal training you will have and you will start to develop "your own voice". You will have made hundreds of mistakes and will have had hundreds of reference examples with native speakers of things you could improve on. You WILL be much further along in a B2/C1 goal than someone like me who didn't do said activities. Hiding in a cave and listening to language might make you understand it. But ultimately we learn languages to communicate and communication is a skill. Even in our native language. 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 35 of 40 20 August 2013 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Firstly, I would avoid saying "we learn languages to communicate" as there are many other worthy goals. There are tens of thousands people learning a foreign language to write scientific papers in and don't care about speaking, there are people learning mostly for reading or and so on.
Speaking from day one doesn't necessarily mean a lot of reference from natives. Not everyone can move to another country or pay a foreign conversation partner or tutor. And perhaps it would have been different had you opened a book, there are more factors. And there are as well people in favor of the silent period who are very successful. I believe all the extremes are wrong. Not speaking for half a year is one of them. Speaking at all costs from day one even though you need more to get some order into the chaos can be just as harmful in my opinion. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Itadakimasu Diglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4187 days ago 31 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 36 of 40 20 August 2013 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cavesa..you completely misunderstood me. And that example was pretty extreme to say the least. I've never met anyone in real life that said they wanted to learn a language to write scientific papers. Most people who want to do something like that are linguistics majors or people on this forum. The average person(to include myself) wants to have a decent speaking/writing/and reading ability. And I've asked hundreds of people the question. Never have a gotten "research or science" unless the person was in university doing some thesis.
If you notice in my prior post I said that if I could go back I would do both. I never said anyone should do nothing but output or input. But was saying that if worked on from the beginning in conjuction with each other the person will be better off in my opinion. Also some online tutors charge as little as 5 dollars an hour or the same price as a Mcdonalds combo. I don't have money, but 15 dollars for 3 hours isn't bad. Edited by Itadakimasu on 20 August 2013 at 10:18pm 1 person has 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 37 of 40 21 August 2013 at 1:54am | IP Logged | ||
Shadowing is: 1. You start off knowing nothing or very little about what a chunk of audio means or how to say it properly. 2.a You repeat simulataneously with the audio many times (usually around 20-30 plays by the end) 2.b You introduce the translation and eventually the L2 text 2.c You cycle through the material; retiring the well-known and adding the fresh. 3. You transcribe the audio (Scriptorium) (4). Optional extra: type out the transcription and write the translation underneath to create an interlinear text This is described by Arguelles in the 1 hour video. I followed his advice firmly at the start, but as I grew to understand why the technique works, I was able to play around with it a bit. You start off by knowing nothing about the language, and how you go about learning it is by learning chunks of it systematically. So you get to the point where you know how to speak, write and hear a specific chunk of the language. You do it enough and you can understand novel constructions... so long as they use the same vocabulary and structures you have previously "conquered." The point of speaking simultaneously is to pack in all three activities at once - listening, speaking and comprehension at real- life speed. It's simply about efficiency. After finishing Linguaphone and Assimil it works just as well with more advanced materials. Edited by Retinend on 21 August 2013 at 2:01am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4636 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 38 of 40 21 August 2013 at 2:14am | IP Logged | ||
I don't think this is correct. We learn languages for lots of different reasons. I certainly don't study Latin to communicate. And I could communicate with most French speakers in English anyway. The real advantage to learning a language for me, outside of the fun of learning, is being able to read great literature. If I had to choose between being able to chit-chat with a contemporary frenchman or being able to read Apollinaire... Pretty easy choice for me. But for you it's different. Speaking is more important but your original strategy didn't take that into account. Edited by AlexTG on 21 August 2013 at 2:15am 4 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 39 of 40 21 August 2013 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Itadakimasu, meet any of approximately 90% of PhD students (even though it starts with the BA or MA) with other than English native language. They need to fill their exam requirement and to write papers and articles in English. Most of them have got real trouble speaking (so do their professors) and they don't care. They somehow get the meaning across, have the vocab from reading but listening to them is a real pain (as it is for them to speak). So, no it is not an extreme. It is actually a very common example of an alternative learning goal. I am not speaking of linguistics majors. The reading goal Alex mentioned is another very common alternative.
Some tutors are not that expensive but to get the amount of practice you mention, you still need a lot of money. Not everyone can give that. Students, young parents or people from big families, old people in retirement, unemployed and so on. Self speaking or corecting yourself based on audio is fortunately much cheaper. But it's not the natives' feedback you spoke of even though I consider it to be very valuable. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Itadakimasu Diglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4187 days ago 31 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 40 of 40 21 August 2013 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | ||
No doubt. I agree with that as well. In fact, weren't we just talking about using shadowing/michel thomas, pimsluer etc a few pages back? I just use the tutoring as a supplement to the audiobooks and curriculum I choose myself. Hell, if it's Spanish, I could just go outside. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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