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Harm in using native materials early? | ||
Tags: Native Materials | Time to learn | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Footnoted Newbie United States Joined 4843 days ago 35 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 29 19 September 2011 at 4:33pm | IP Logged |
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I started studying French two months ago (after taking two years in high school 25 years ago, now all but forgotten), primarily by working my way through Assimil (New French with Ease) each day. In addition I am supplementing my study with other programs and more to the point I have started watching movies in French and also listening-reading (in small doses, I will confess) a parallel text of Madame Bovary. As one might expect, with the native materials I am understanding perhaps 5-10% of what I hear or read. Is there any harm in being exposed to native materials so early? Edited by Footnoted on 19 September 2011 at 4:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6645 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 2 of 29 19 September 2011 at 4:35pm | IP Logged |
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Probably not, maybe only if you get bored. But if you still find it entertaining to listen to it though you only traps 5
% it can only do you good. It will fill your inner corpus and you’ll eventually learn what ‹sounds right› . 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5946 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 3 of 29 19 September 2011 at 4:37pm | IP Logged |
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The only possible harm I can imagine is becoming discouraged by how little you understand in the native materials. But in my opinion that is not something you should let stop you.
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5367 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 4 of 29 19 September 2011 at 5:07pm | IP Logged |
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I think you are really making it harder for yourself by reading such thick novels as Madame Bovary. While it's not a useless endeavour, it's not the most efficient either. There is no harm in it, though.
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| jed Newbie United States Joined 4802 days ago 12 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 29 20 September 2011 at 1:19am | IP Logged |
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I agree with Arekkusu. There is no harm in being exposed to native materials early on but when you try to use materials that are too far above your current level, you waste a lot of time - you wear yourself out without retaining much.
If you are absolutely determined to continue with Madame Bovary, read just a few lines a day, making sure you really understand them. Then the next day, reread what you have previously done and add on a bit. I feel that if I don't understand about 80% of what I hear, or about 90% of what I read, then the material is too difficult to be efficient - unless done in small portions with lots of repetition. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5714 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 6 of 29 20 September 2011 at 3:56pm | IP Logged |
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I agree with previous members. It will do no harm, but sometimes results my not come soon enough. I think that if you read a contemporary novel or articles about subjects that intrest you (and you might want to actually talk about with people) or interviews with people you like, results would be faster. And by that you I mean, you would sooner have vocabulary and phrases that you are likely to use when talking, emailing, reading blogs, etc. You watch movies, that's great. Thay way you get used to contemporary French talked at its natural pace, you hear little phrases that will make your speech more natural.
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| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 5080 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 7 of 29 20 September 2011 at 7:06pm | IP Logged |
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I've found working with native materials early on to be motivating, personally. I suppose it's because it helps me to know where I stand and how high the bar is for average material that I want to be able to understand. It starts off soul-crushingly difficult, but over time the illusion is that things are getting progressively easier rather than progressively harder. I think I got this idea from Barry Farber's book, where he talked about using native material because it will never get any harder than that (or something along those lines). Obviously some native content is harder than other content, depending on what the subject is and who the target audience is...but I think the basic reasoning make sense.
Very early on, I started using both real native material intended for native speakers, and prepared material for learners. I've gotten something different out of each, so I don't think it has to be a question of only using one or the other. Listening to native content is more like surveillance, where you get a top level overview of what you are dealing with. But there is still more going on below the surface, so you zero in and focus on smaller details with bits of comprehensible input along the way. Over time you keep going back to the native content to compare and see how much more you comprehend, back and forth like this. Or at least, that I is how I approach it. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4851 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 29 05 October 2011 at 11:30pm | IP Logged |
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I started using translations of material aimed at a "young adult" or early teen level. Translations of the Harry Potter series and Alice in Wonderland have been very helpful to me. I started the first Harry Potter book after only a couple weeks of study of Spanish. It was hard going at first, but it got easier and easier.
As for movies, there seems to be a lot of variation. I've reached the point where I can understand around 60%-70% of some movies, and yet I'll put on another movie and not even grasp 10% of the dialog. Peninsular Spanish is pretty clear to me, Argentine is more difficult and Cuban is utterly impenetrable. Plus, comedies are usually easier to follow than dramas. So based on my own experience I would suggest books for the teenage audience and comedy movies. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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