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Learning vocab: Did I do something wrong? | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4636 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes  Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 1 of 18 19 January 2012 at 6:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello,
after I read recommendations of an audio course called "Vocabulearn", I thought I'd give it a try, to check my level and possibly fill in some blanks. There's 3 levels a 4 CDs for each nouns, adjectives/adverbs, idiomatic expressions and verbs. Half of the course goes "production", half "recognize". What I mean is the order in which the words are introduced. When teaching "production", the English term is given first, then the Japanese word. "recognize" works in the opposite direction (with different words, it's NOT the same set of vocab). Having said that, let me introduce you to my problem. I've always learned the "production" way and never thought it'd somehow cause trouble of any kind. Afterall, what you can use, you can also understand, while what you can understand, you can't always use, right? In my case, this seems to be wrong. There have been loads of words I normally should know, but didn't recognize when listening during the first round. Repeating it, I already had the eureka-effect under my belt for those specific words and got them right, but the fact I failed that horribly the first time made me think. Is it possible that you have to actually learn each word twice, in order to 1) recognize and 2) produce it? I thought of this more like some "learning flavour". There would be people learning more easily this way around, others the other way. But that can't be the case here.. I do pick up new words quite fast either way. I didn't try to use vocab I learned the "recongize" route yet, but I sure as hell have a hard time to recognize words I've used like a thousand time already! I text chat on a daily basis and Skype twice a week, about various topics. It's not like I'd somehow get by with 100 words. I already wondered, why, even tho I'm supposed to waaaaaay surpass that "magical 2000", am still unable to get what people say in TV shows. Sure, there will always be blind spots, but to this extent? Yes, people DO speak slurry, but not always, not everyone, not everything. I already wondered if I possibly just learned "the wrong words". I am also not sure whether this could be a general lack of listening comprehension. I seem to do well when listening to Japanese friends on Skype, but it may also be that they speak more slowly or clearly, picking easier words intentionally without letting me know. I already noticed that, while listening to the JapanesePod101 dialogues, I occassionally missed a word I should know, but thought It'd just have been a lack of concentration. I can, however, say that this is definitely not the case. The fact that I don't instantly know that 土曜日 is Saturday or 傘 is Umbreally is kind of outraging! There's something very wrong in my system it seems, and I feel I have to take care of this ASAP, before matters get worse and I learn a couple thousand words more for nothing before I know it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6517 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 2 of 18 19 January 2012 at 6:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, I'm afraid the "if you can say it, you can understand it" thing is a myth. I know the experience. Similar things happened to me at some points when learning Mandarin. I'd ask someone who's speaking to me "What's that word you just used mean?" and they'd stare and say "It means 'X'. You said it yourself ten seconds ago!". I usually learn words in several steps.
1: Learn to recall the L1 when presented with the L2 on a flashcard 2: Learn to recognize the L2 in text and speech and understand it 3: Learn to produce the L2 myself They're not rigid and of course sometimes I swap the steps around a bit, but all steps require effort. Edited by Ari on 19 January 2012 at 6:58am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6532 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 3 of 18 19 January 2012 at 7:01am | IP Logged | ||
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I do think it's mostly a general lack of listening comprehension. The familiar words blend in with those you don't know, making it harder to understand them.
I've experienced something similar with Finnish. I studied lots of grammar over two months, did various exercises in writing, but I only listened to music and not to the spoken language. And despite the regular spelling, I couldn't understand anything when listening to speech rather than music. I then listened to texts for beginners while following the transcripts and that helped a lot. And now I'm discouraging everyone by recommending those texts and saying they're easy:/ I checked out once and I'm not sure I remember how Vocabulearn works. Is the order fixed? This might've been the problem, same as with word lists. And are these individual words or sentences? From now on, you may want to do more sentences. Not necessarily learn them by heart but just for example add them to anki, maybe with a gap in the place of the main item you're trying to learn. include audio. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4636 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 4 of 18 19 January 2012 at 7:17am | IP Logged | ||
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For nouns, verbs, adjectives/adverbs, it's just only the words. I'm not sure whether it has to do with the order of words though, as each CD covers a few 100 words already.
Learning them in order would be a step further than "just the words". I miss maybe 1 out of 10 in the "production", but more like 8 out of 10 in the "recognize" mode. The pronunciation is clear and at a normal speed. They're not in context, which I found not bad, because it's often pretty easy to get them in that case - kind of smells like "a cheap shortcut". (I have to add, that while listening to the Jpod dialogues at slo-mo, I usually get them all - JPod presents dialogues 1) at normal native speed, 2) at slow motion, 3) with translation) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6485 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 5 of 18 19 January 2012 at 9:21am | IP Logged | ||
I agree. I see the op isn't living in Japan, and wonder what he does for listening. I used to have a similar problem, then I started listening from the beginning and that pretty much solved it. I wish I had done this when learning Japanese, and for that matter, all my languages. But it worked great for French and Russian. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4636 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 6 of 18 19 January 2012 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I listen to things randomly, all kinds of. Course material, for example. It is in so far confusing, as I originally started out with Pimsleur and Thomas, and I'm listening to JPod101 daily, atleast 2-3 lessons (currently on halt in favour of Vocabulearn, but that'll only take a month or so, I guess, it's only 6.000 words, and I'm also using ANKI to get the unknown words into my head faster).
I thought that was supposed to help. Edited by atama warui on 19 January 2012 at 1:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6485 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 7 of 18 19 January 2012 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | ||
Are you just listing the stages your brain goes through when you acquire language here, or do you actually have unique study techniques that target the 3 steps? By unique, I'm asking if you do anything different than the average learner (for example, flashcards plus listening). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6405 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 8 of 18 19 January 2012 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have found this problem to occur only with Chinese. When studying French, Latin,
Italian and the like, it was enough to learn "Production" and that would automatically also let me recognize the words. I cannot exclude that the problem would occur with Swahili, except I've been faithfully following Assimil's passive wave - active wave strategy, so I never actually learned to produce a word before I could recognize it. So this could be a problem that concerns all languages that are far enough removed, or it could be specific to Chinese due to the high number of words that sound the same or very similar but don't mean the same. Edited by Sprachprofi on 19 January 2012 at 3:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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