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Kato Lomb - How I learn languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| monica Triglot Newbie Croatia Joined 4736 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Romanian*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Croatian | Message 1 of 7 07 November 2011 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have been reading Kato's book "How I learn languages" (which by the way you can
download here: http://tesl-ej.org/ej45/tesl-ej.ej45.fr1.pdf) and I am pretty impressed by the fact that she learnt languages so fast and so well. I would like to hear impressions from those who have read the book or heard about the method and/or tried to apply it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Longinus Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4812 days ago 26 posts - 53 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Polish, Macedonian | Message 2 of 7 08 November 2011 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I enjoyed reading the book, and there are a lot of useful tips. I liked the emphasis on novels and books in the target language, the utility of radio broadcasts (now easy to find with the Internet!), and her multifaceted approach to a language. The one thing I have had difficulty with is her idea of reading a novel in the target language, without prior study of the language, and without using a dictionary. I find this to be extremely difficult, and not that helpful. I actually tried this with a Croatian novel, and gave up after about 50 pages. It was very difficult to concentrate when you did not understand very much of what was happening in the book. It might work if you have a lot of shared vocabulary--it would probably work for me with Spanish, for example. If my Russian vocabulary was better, I might have had better luck with the Croatian. So I have gone back to a traditional graded grammar for Croatian. Most of my study time is spent on Russian these days anyway.
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 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5782 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 7 08 November 2011 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
I am for 100 % sure that this recommendation would not work for me either! Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4800 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 7 09 November 2011 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree. I tried that with the first Harry Potter book in Spanish before I had studied any Spanish at all. Between obvious cognates and my flimsy knowledge of Latin from high school 50 years ago I was able to figure out a little bit of it. But I never got past page 2. After I went out and bought a Spanish/English dictionary I was able to start making a little more progress, although it was still slow and painful. Then I went to a thrift store and picked up a couple second-hand Spanish textbooks and started learning the grammar. After that the Harry Potter reading really started cruising right along. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Longinus Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4812 days ago 26 posts - 53 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Polish, Macedonian | Message 5 of 7 09 November 2011 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's worth noting that others have had success with this method--i.e., that of reading and listening to target language materials without other aids. Here's one example, with lots of details provided if you read through the various links:
http://www.apronus.com/norsk/ But, this person was studying a language (Norwegian) where he already had a lot of vocabulary cognates from his excellent knowledge of English and German. Probably this method would be only useful when you have a knowledge of one or more related languages. On the website given above, there is some documentation of a friend of his who tried learning Finnish this way. His experience sounds extremely painful, and the experiment was abandoned after a short time. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6060 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 6 of 7 10 November 2011 at 7:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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It is interesting trying to just 'read Finnish' because it is totally phonetic, I can sound it out in my brain, even if I don't comprehend that well. Sometimes what I do is I translate out the headlines of news stories word by word with dictionaries and everything, but then I just read the article without pausing. If it's a news story where I basically know what's going on from other sources, it's not that bad.
But a novel? I don't know. I'm tempted to make a go of it. Anything but that Harry Potter, though, I'm sick to death of Harry Potter. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| monica Triglot Newbie Croatia Joined 4736 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Romanian*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Croatian | Message 7 of 7 10 November 2011 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Actually, on pages 148-149, in the chapter "How I learn languages", Kato Lombo says that
at the same time she goes through a textbook of the target language and does all the exercises (thus getting acquainted with the grammar). That sounds much more feasible, although I don't rule out the possibility that somebody could learn a languages only by reading - especially if it is combined with listening. I have a friend from Ukraine who came to my country and after 2 months he was able to get by in Romanian pretty well and in less than a year he spoke it fluently, without ever reading a single textbook. He says his only tool was a Romanian-Russian dictionary. Edited by monica on 10 November 2011 at 3:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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