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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6553 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 113 of 191 13 July 2007 at 1:57am | IP Logged | ||
Comprehensible input is input. An example would be a movie you watched, a CD you listened to, a book you read, etc. It can be used by a technique, method, system, program, etc. but it is not a technique, method, system, program, etc. in and of itself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6362 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English* | Message 114 of 191 13 July 2007 at 2:02am | IP Logged | ||
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I believe comprehensible input to be a method, a technique, and a form of input - all at once. As in, all three, together. You don't have to. I realize you do not agree with my usage of these terms, leosmith, but I do not intend to change them. And I will not argue with you about them further. Edited by FSI on 13 July 2007 at 2:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6912 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 115 of 191 13 July 2007 at 2:53am | IP Logged | ||
If you want to repeat the phrases, how hard can it be to press the pause button on your CD/cassette player? In my opinion that's cheaper than paying for "audio with pauses" (spreading the material over more CDs). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6362 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English* | Message 116 of 191 13 July 2007 at 3:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Quite true. What's the point of having the program use up program space repeating itself? I would much rather have a course fit as much into its space as possible.
After all, who goes through a course just once? To learn anything well, you've got to do it several times. Imagine reading a book where every third chapter, the previous chapter was repeated. You'd take it back for a refund, pointing out the binding error - or at least, I would! It's the same with an audio course. If it's 4 hours of new material, you'll learn far more from it over 5 or 10 reviews than you'd learn from a 6 hour course where half of the course is spent reminding you of what you've already learned. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6780 days ago 526 posts - 536 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 117 of 191 13 July 2007 at 8:06am | IP Logged | ||
Hey, isn't that the Pimsleur method!? They spend half the course on reminding you of what you are supposed to be learning. I think the advantage of Assimil is that the audio is completely in the target language. People who compare the number of hours don't seem to know this. Pimsleur and FSI courses are more than half in English. And someone mentioned that Assimil doesn't give you enough time to repeat the phrases. I think it does once you get up to the same speed as the recording. Anyway, for me and the Chinese course I have, I have to remove all of the gaps. I don't want to be wasting my time listening to all that dead space. As for drills, who needs 'em? I ask this because a drill makes you think! When you are speaking the language, do you want to be thinking about the language, or do you want to just speak the language? If you answered, I want to just speak the language, then you've got to get rid of the methods which make you think about the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7095 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 118 of 191 13 July 2007 at 8:27am | IP Logged | ||
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In the end I think the base method, regardless of the course, looks something like this:
Dialogs/readings/phrases + repetition = proficiency. That’s it. All the rest – drills, SRS software, dual texts, back translations or even shadowing – is just salt. Call it salt or a security blanket, you have to find a way to master the pronunciation, understand the grammar, and remember the phrases. The difference between strategy and tactics of learning has been the big lesson of the Assimil debates here on the forum. John 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Seth Diglot Changed to RedKing’sDream Senior Member United States Joined 7227 days ago 240 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Persian | Message 119 of 191 13 July 2007 at 11:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Notice that I said "not EVEN room to repeat words/phrases." I find that to be a pretty poor method of instruction in itself. In fact, I'm glad the discussion has come to that point. There certainly is evidence pointing to the advantage of listening to input and THEN being prompted to recall on one's own or form one's own answer over simply repeating what one has heard. This seems to be what is so fundamental to Pimsleur and FSI (Note: I am not saying that Assimil is nothing but a listen and repeat method, but the comparison is relevant.)
As for hitting the pause button in order to repeat in isolation...well...I guess so. Though I imagine one would invariably cut off pieces of the next word upon unpausing. The "book with the third chapter repeated" is simply a scarecrow. No offense, but that's a confusion of my argument. Of course one wouldn't want such a book. With books the reader controls the pace and progression. Not so with taped material. Moreover, I was talking about a little bit of space so that the learner could repeat. I never said anything about the taped material repeating itself. And no, drills do not make you think. You certainly can if want to. But if you have to go through the steps, then you probably won't have time to give the correct response in time. That's why they create automaticity! If you can do them correctly, then its almost axiomatic that you've done it without "thinking yourself" through every step. And more than HALF of FSI is English?! Wow, maybe the one's I haven't seen. But in general that couldn't be farther from the truth. One more thing. I am not entirely impressed with the "context" that Assimil lets you learn through. It is very hard to follow context when almost half of the words are new words of the less. Here is how one line from Assimil Persian goes "_____ is the _____ ______ of the year." The missing words are "spring," "first," and "season." Now please tell me how that is meaningful input when one must at least follow very close to the translation to understand what is going on. But with if one is focusing that intently on the translation it is hard to focus on the acutal words that you are supposed to be learning. And the rest is "just salt?" Ok, if you say so. If you want to abandon the entire research program of applied psycholinguistics, then go ahead. Well, maybe we could say it just ain't the same without salt. Once again, it almost seems to boil down to whether or not you like to shadow. For me it is very unnatural to listen and speak at the same time. Edited by Seth on 13 July 2007 at 11:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6946 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 120 of 191 13 July 2007 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | ||
If someone prefers pauses or some other features and can find a course in the right format, there is no reason not to use it. Suppose, however, you really wanted to learn a language for which there existed an Assimil course, but no Pimsleur or FSI. Do you think you would've failed? People did learn languages before FSI and Assimil. The backbone was a textbook with dialogs or other short readings, adequate translation aides to understand them, and grammar explanations. The only thing lacking in such a textbook was sound. As soon as dialogs could be recorded and made available to the learner, one had necessary and sufficient tools to learn the fundamentals of the language. A typical modern non-academic example of such a package would be a Teach Yourself course, but if you look at Assimil as a fairly comprehensive graded collection of dialogs with translations, plus some grammar notes, it still qualifies. The only nonstandard feature would be the paucity of grammatical explanations, which can be easily remedied by a separate workbook, if one feels the need. So, you have your dialogs, your recordings, and your grammar, as much of it as you want. What more does one need? Edited by frenkeld on 13 July 2007 at 1:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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