12 messages over 2 pages: 1 2
kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4890 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 9 of 12 15 January 2013 at 4:32pm | IP Logged |
I've used Michel Thomas to jump start dormant languages. The lessons are short and fast-
paced enough that I don't mind repeating them, and his courses give a good overview of a
language's structure.
I've tried grammar books like Teach Yourself and Living Language, but find that I don't
really have the patience to focus on them properly when I feel like I already know the
language. As a result, I move to fast through them and the method fails me. This might
be a matter of learning style, though - they work for others, and they work for me when
it's a new language.
1 person has voted this message useful
| mezzofanti Octoglot Senior Member Australia mezzoguild.com Joined 4749 days ago 51 posts - 112 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (classical), Arabic (Egyptian), Irish, Arabic (Levantine) Studies: Korean, Georgian, French
| Message 10 of 12 15 January 2013 at 5:15pm | IP Logged |
You never really forget a language.
My advice is to jump on Verbling or italki and talk to people. You'll be rusty as hell
for the first hour or so but then you'll be amazed at how quickly it all comes back to
you (speaking from experience).
One or two conversations and you'll be back to where you left off.
Not to disregard the advice of others here but I don't believe input methods are what you
need to reawaken your languages.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Carlomagno Newbie United States Joined 4339 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes
| Message 11 of 12 22 March 2013 at 5:44am | IP Logged |
It's been some time since I first most these posts. I have finally gotten around to finding time for some serious review.
Here is a question that I would like to pose:
Overall, which is a better system for studying verb conjugation, learning the conjugation of specific common and useful verbs, or instead focusing on the "rules" which would enable one to conjugate any particular verb?
I can see reasonable arguments for following either of these. When I was first learning French and Spanish, I had books for each about verbs which, among other things, highlighted the 55 most important verbs in those languages. While of course those weren't the only verbs I learned, they were the ones I focused on. This didn't seem like a bad idea at that time, especially a relatively small number of verbs (as well as words in general) make of the most frequently occurring ones in any language. Certainly, one would want to expand vocabulary and know that there are situations where it's necessary to need to know another verb (or other word). I'm not saying that one should be restricted to any set group of words/verbs, simply that it might be better, on the whole, to prioritize some over others.
I'm just looking for thoughts on the matter, if any of the posters on this forum happen to have a view of it one way or the other.
1 person has voted this message useful
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5561 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 12 of 12 22 March 2013 at 12:22pm | IP Logged |
If you are studying French, a relatively large number of verbs do not fall into the primary pattern, but there are only a relatively small number of alternative patterns, so it makes sense to learn the rules.
If you are learning German, a relatively small number of common verbs do not fall into the primary pattern, and there is a relatively large number of alternative patterns they can follow, so learn the individual verbs.
Other languages may be available.
1 person has voted this message useful
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