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Plateau at B2/C1, immersion doesn’t work | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 17 of 18 23 May 2015 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
To improve your grammar, there are many books with explanations, examples and exercises. When I was at that point, there were fewer, so I am surely missing something. But the one I had the best experience with was Murphy's English Grammar in Use. It is the middle volume of a three volume set published by Cambridge. Since you are writing like this, the first one would be too easy for you probably. The last one is the most detailed and very useful too. The middle one was enough to help me with all the grammar needed for my CAE exam. From speaking with a few more friends who have taken the CAE, they found it sufficient as well. That means it is a pretty good book to collect various intermediate learners and take them to the C levels. You seem to have a good spread of literature across genres. But you might as well get to new authors and ones that are even more demanding or just different in writing style. I know your pain with the British shows. While I have no huge problem understanding, I still need to be more focused when watching Sherlock, Doctor Who (at least with some of the Doctor's protagonists) and the Red Dwarf than when watching Grimm, Once upon a Time, CSI Miami and so on (truth be told, Sherlock is more concentration demanding than most French or Spanish shows for me these days). I am sure you will get better with more experience. The exposure works. One note about italki: It seems to not be clear in some of the posts but Italki is not just about tutors and exchanges. The best part, in my opinion, is the notebook. You will get corrections to quite long writing attempts. From what it seemed to me, Lang8 was more about a few sentences long pieces, italki is more open to larger articles. No need to pay for it, no need to gather any points etc. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 18 of 18 23 May 2015 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've written in my log and Cavesa seems to think alike regarding the use of subtitles. Subtitles in L1 proved to work quite efficient, in the case of Russian, for example. I watch a Russian soap opera with subtitles in English only, not Russian, and I noticed that I have a better understanding of spoken Russian phonetics than of other languages I've been studying for the same time but without any subtitles. That is, I could practically transcribe the Russian I hear even when I don't know the meaning. Since I'm also reading and I tend to find the same words in books again, this works as a reinforcement.
What happens when I watch with subtitles in my native or a strong language is that I quickly apprehend the meaning of the sentence, because we tend to read faster, and so I have time to read and then when I listen to the sentence in Russian I know its meaning and I can work on associating meaning and sound (plus intonation and the like). That is why I tend to do a multiple subtitle approach, to paraphrase iguanamon. I watch audio which has been dubbed into L1 without subtitles (an American series dubbed in French), native audio with L1 subtitles, native audio with native subtitles, then the final step of native audio without subtitles. There is also the possibility of having double subtitles: this is typical of Singaporean shows in Mandarin with subtitles in Chinese and English, as well as CCTV series. For languages like French this wouldn't be necessary but for more difficult languages this start as rhytmically forced parallel reading that then evolves into getting rid of L1 subtitles and then of any subtitles. Each of these techniques complements the other. Since TV shows tend to use colloquial daily small talk words I end up hearing the same words several times throughout the shows (again, Singaporean TV comes to mind) and by watching each show with a different combination of audio and subtitles I benefit from all the approaches at once without having to rewatch or do SRS (both of which I dislike). Sometimes technical limitations force you to choose one over the other, as has been the case with Mandarin (double), Russian (L1-only) and Georgian (none at all). 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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