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L-R success or not story | ||
Tags: Success Story | Listening-Reading (L-R) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6374 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 29 08 September 2011 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I've written about it at some length. I've used it for several languages, with varying degrees of familiarity. For the more familiar ones (Romance and Germanic ones), I have previous knowledge of the languages, and sometimes other ways of studying them. For the Slavic ones, it's the only way I've ever studied them (I've also used a bit of pronunciation material and reference grammars, and later glanced through other resources). Unknown books and radio are a lot easier than TV, in my opinion. Books use a wider range of vocabulary, but this is an area where L-R is particularly helpful. Radio tends to have quite clear enunciation. TV and native speakers tend to have a wider range of tricky bits: unclear speech, regional speech, whispers and yelling, lots of background noise... both can be quite easy, or very difficult. I haven't actually worked much on active production; I've never done the active phase of LR. Doing just the passive phase gives very little communicative ability. The 120 or so hours I've invested in Slavic languages have left me able to understand a lot, though I have some odd gaps in comprehension of everyday things (for instance, when I walk into a Polish shop, some basic shopping terminology is stuff I simply don't recognize - I lack some important words). I can usually understand the vast majority of what I hear 'intermediate' students say, when they're talking among themselves or with native speakers, though I usually find the native speakers talking on their level to be far more comprehensible - I'm less able to deal with foreign accents and foreign mistakes than in languages I've studied with more conventional methods. Native materials vary; sometimes I understand everything at a glance, sometimes I can't capture the gist, but my Slavic languages *are* suffering from severe neglect at present. The following comments are about doing actual L-R (intensive, focused study, with an audiobook and parallel text of a long novel). It leads to quick and drastic increases in comprehension; these also fade quickly if I neglect the language too much. It's also a bit disconcerting - it leads to far more words which look almost unfamiliar, but where I know the meaning. The results really vary with what you put into it. Actually reading the book in advance, and doing step 2 (reading L2 while listening to L2) for a while are both incredibly helpful, even when I can skip straight into step 3 (reading the parallel text while listening to L2, the main step). Intensity seems to be rewarded far more than linearly: doing a chapter or two is still better than many methods of study, but it's not L-R. Taking a day off, or even a day at only doing an hour or two rather than several hours of study is amazingly harmful. Edited by Volte on 08 September 2011 at 1:18pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Abdalan Triglot Senior Member Brazil abdalan.wordpress.co Joined 4981 days ago 120 posts - 194 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, English Studies: German | Message 10 of 29 09 September 2011 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don’t know if my experience may help, but here goes:
I used some methods this year including FSI (1-7/12), Pimsleur (1-3), Assimil (Without Toil 1~120/140 – With Ease 1~80/100), and some others like Paul Noble, Podcasts… Conclusion: Considering I am a normal learner of no exceptional ability but not of inferior quality, the following statement is correct: “No method can give you complete fluency”. In the last two months I decided use native material. “Think of for-learner materials as an appetizer, and native materials as the main course. Textbooks aren't evil, textbook worship is.” Here LR starts - the main dish. Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (Dumas) was the first, but I had lots of problems to prepare the parallel text. Anyway, I think the work itself of aligning, mixing and matching may be useful, as you have to check more slowly both texts and read L1 (this may be considered as the first step of the system: to know the history). l add also some personal comments, footnotes, fix misspellings (even the original text have errors as most of them was built through OCR), and so... Well, I can say I broke through this barrier now and I’m able to produce those texts very fast. Here the books I’ve used so far (~2 months): 1. Jules Verne – Le Tour du Monde en 80 Jours 2. Jules Verne – Voyage au Centre de la Terre 3. Jules Verne – Deux Ans de Vacances 4. Jules Verne – Le Sphinx des Glaces 5. Jules Verne – Les Tribulations d’un Chinois en Chine 6. Albert Camus – Le Mythe de Sisyphe 7. Albert Camus – L’Étranger 8. Stieg Larsson – Millenium 1 9. Saint Exupéry – Le Petit Prince 10. Various – Contes Pour Enfants Some of them can be seen here: http://pt.scribd.com/my_document_collections/3179638 Here’s my method (steps to each book): 1. Chapter 1: LR2 2. Ch1: LR1 3. Ch2: LR2 4. Ch2: LR1 5. … 6. Ch(last): LR2 7. Ch(last): LR1 8. Ch1 through Ch(last): LR1 This way I don’t need to know the book beforehand. Yesterday I spent almost 3 hours listening to the final chapters of Millenium (Stieg Larsson) without consulting any text with 95% of comprehension (maybe more). Edited by Abdalan on 12 September 2011 at 4:42pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4763 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 11 of 29 09 September 2011 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
In what language? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Abdalan Triglot Senior Member Brazil abdalan.wordpress.co Joined 4981 days ago 120 posts - 194 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, English Studies: German | Message 12 of 29 09 September 2011 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
French. "Les hommes qui n'aimaient pas les femmes" (Original title: Män som hatar kvinnor). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| TMoneytron Groupie United States Joined 4796 days ago 70 posts - 83 votes Studies: German | Message 13 of 29 09 September 2011 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Oh, I think most people agree with you and the textbook worship. I don't think anyone actually likes textbooks. It's getting into something that feels like you are actually progressing an is structured FOR you that makes it appealing. The end goal is to be fluent, but it's frustrating to just dive in willy-nilly to native material and be totally lost. I have felt discouraged trying to listening to news on Deutsche Welle or Spiegel.de, so I just went back to my Assimil lol. Yes, it has to be a process as well. Which is why I have switched to audio books like Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Abdalan Triglot Senior Member Brazil abdalan.wordpress.co Joined 4981 days ago 120 posts - 194 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, English Studies: German | Message 14 of 29 09 September 2011 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think there’s a clear reason to choose mainly long books. I’ll give only one reason: Let’s compare 2 books: “Le petit prince” (Petit) and "Les hommes qui n'aimaient pas les femmes" (Hommes). Length: 1. Petit (97 pages, about 3 hours of reading) 2. Hommes (574 pages, 18 hours of reading) If I analyze only the number of words, wouldn’t be much fair because Petit has ‘only’ 14.000 and Hommes has 180.000. OK, how about occurrences, that is, new words? 1. Petit: 2.000 2. Hommes: 12.000 But this also doesn’t give enough data to my analysis because this may be exclusively linked to the length of the book, right? Wrong. See that the ratio (number of words) 14.000 : 180.000 (~ 1 : 13) is different from (number of occurrences) 2.000 : 12.000 (= 1 : 6). If the book is longer this difference increases even more. Conclusion: Communicative input that comes from LR of longer books contains much more built-in review. Repetition is the soul of language learning as you have to read/listen to a word many times before you memorize it. Choosing the 3 main "word groups", namely, nouns, verbs, and adjectives: 1. Petit: (from 2.000 words) -a. Nouns: 700 -b. Verbs: 440 -c. Adjectives: 230 2. Hommes: (from 12.000 words) -a. Nouns: 5000 -b. Verbs: 1900 -c. Adjectives: 1900 This proportion is again apparently unfair. Let’s see the top 100 words of each book by occurrences: -= Pettit =- être 509 avoir 308 petit 188 dire 170 prince 155 faire 98 planète 64 fleur 61 pouvoir 59 étoile 49 savoir 48 répondre 45 mouton 39 voir 37 roi 36 grand 32 vouloir 32 toute 25 personne 25 demander 25 regarder 25 aller 24 venir 24 comprendre 23 dessin 22 homme 22 falloir 22 serpent 21 géographe 21 aimer 21 terre 20 baobab 20 croire 20 seul 19 nuit 19 connaître 19 dessiner 19 ami 18 chercher 18 rire 18 donner 17 allumeur 16 désert 16 million 16 réverbère 16 volcan 16 éteindre 16 trouver 16 boa 15 jour 15 posséder 15 aiguilleur 14 important 13 chose 13 question 13 manger 13 servir 13 sérieux 12 épine 12 bonhomme 12 apercevoir 12 asseoir 12 devoir 12 entendre 12 content 11 autre 11 fois 11 puits 11 vaniteux 11 an 11 ajouter 11 parler 11 prendre 11 eau 10 maison 10 minute 10 explorateur 10 dormir 10 habiter 10 marcher 10 ordonner 10 oublier 10 réussir 10 taire 10 vieux 9 petite 9 même 9 consigne 9 montagne 9 enfants 9 businessman 9 ciel 9 matin 9 sable 9 bâiller 9 laisser 9 mourir 9 tomber 9 triste 8 histoire 8 -= Hommes =- avoir 5909 être 5468 faire 937 pouvoir 817 dire 674 aller 540 vouloir 475 savoir 453 voir 419 trouver 400 passer 347 prendre 332 an 318 devoir 285 demander 280 heure 280 année 276 photo 275 venir 260 comprendre 233 rester 232 arriver 222 regarder 219 autre 211 maison 210 famille 200 mettre 191 essayer 186 tête 182 laisser 180 parler 179 question 179 millenium 178 toute 177 poser 174 femme 167 appeler 166 commencer 164 personne 163 répondre 160 falloir 158 croire 156 chose 154 donner 152 affaire 151 main 150 ouvrir 150 travailler 150 fille 144 vie 144 grand 141 histoire 139 jour 136 porte 135 temps 133 penser 128 sembler 128 groupe 127 homme 124 entendre 123 rendre 123 raconter 120 problème 119 yeux 118 moment 117 devenir 115 père 114 sortir 111 attendre 110 lever 109 minute 107 café 103 réfléchir 102 sentir 101 île 100 hocher 99 gens 98 habiter 97 écrire 96 tourner 96 disparaître 95 fois 95 semaine 95 aimer 94 tous 94 petit 93 arrêter 92 bureau 92 rapport 92 regard 92 rencontrer 92 fenêtre 91 lire 91 ordinateur 91 retrouver 91 seule 91 revenir 90 entrer 89 journal 89 table 88 Do you see? This idea is even more drastic than that pointed by the proportions! The whole thing becomes more interesting if you look closely at the number of occurrences from position 200 on. The words in Petit from position 600 on (400 on my graph as I started at 200) will be seen once (I probably won't learn all from there on as I'm gonna see only once)... 
...in Hommes those positions still score 20 repetitions (Hopefully I'm going to learn a word I saw 20 times!) 
-=- But if you just read some pages per day, both books will give you almost the same benefit (much but not the most, in both cases) as the review will be spread proportionally... EDIT: Added graphs. Edited by Abdalan on 09 September 2011 at 11:40pm 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| TMoneytron Groupie United States Joined 4796 days ago 70 posts - 83 votes Studies: German | Message 15 of 29 10 September 2011 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Abdalan how often do you look up words? Or do you simply read it in English beforehand?
I think I am going to do this with the entire Harry Potter series. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4763 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 16 of 29 11 September 2011 at 4:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks. I was thinking for a moment that you had decided to try out the method on Swedish for a change! (People on this forum seem to study so many languages at once..). I happened to spot a German edition of the Millenium trilogy in the languages section of my nearest large bookshop. I'm tempted to go back and get it as I know the English one quite well. (I'm studying German). p.s. I looked at your link. It all looks very professional. Nice work. Edited by montmorency on 11 September 2011 at 4:27am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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