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Listening-Reading system | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| HTale Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6376 days ago 164 posts - 167 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)* Studies: French | Message 89 of 489 14 July 2007 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Your first post actually recommended Harry Potter books! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 90 of 489 14 July 2007 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
She gave them as an example of an appropriately long text, but when she states an opinion about the actual quality and content, it's been universally negative. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| siomotteikiru Senior Member Zaire Joined 6359 days ago 102 posts - 242 votes | Message 91 of 489 14 July 2007 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As to Harry Potter.
You can use it if you like it very much or have no other choice. Many people, not only children, like it. I've made parallel texts of the HP books in English-Polish-French-Spanish-German, seen some translations into some other languages, the quality was rather discouraging, plenty of ommissions, paraphrazing, and simply errors. But still some children liked to "listen-read" to them, probably because it appealed to them psychologically. HP has its merits, too: 1. it's easily available: e-texts + audio in soooo many languages 2. very long 3. modern 4. quite simple I cannot stand it because of poor artistic quality and it's damn boring. You could use it when you've reached the stage of "natural listening". The ideal for "listening-reading" would be if the first few hours were translated word-for-word and commented grammatircally - I did it for Le petit prince in French and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in English. For Polish learners, of course, learning the respective languages. A lot depends on how close the two languages are related. For instance, for a Pole learning Russsian, the word-for-word translation is not necessary, and you can start from more difficult books. The same applies to French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and even English for a speaker of Romance languages. Edited by siomotteikiru on 14 July 2007 at 8:48pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 92 of 489 14 July 2007 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm not having that much trouble not having a word-for-word translation for Polish, with no previous experience in Slavic languages, even though I've only done the first few hours so far. The structures don't seem that exotic, and there are a fair number of cognates with German, English, and even a little with Persian, which helps me make correspondances.
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| sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6375 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin | Message 93 of 489 15 July 2007 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I wonder how effective this method would be if using songs and translated lyrics instead of books. It's been difficult to find material to listen-read in Japanese, but I did find this website which has lyrics, romanizations, and translations for over 2000 Japanese songs. All one would need is to find a source for the songs themselves.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 94 of 489 15 July 2007 at 10:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The major problem I could foresee with that is that songs are -short- (and tend to use slang, fairly free grammar, etc). You won't get the benefits of reading a long work by a specific author - that he/she has his/her own distinctive vocabulary, which, happily enough, is somewhat repetitious, so there are less new words as the book progresses. I also expect you wouldn't get into the same kind of flow; I'm using the method with audiobooks, and finding it extremely easy to become entirely absorbed for an hour or more at a time. I've experimented extremely lightly with songs and written parallel lyrics in the past (previous to reading about this method; I just stumbled across them occasionally), and I didn't find the results that great. One option for listen-reading Japanese would be the book "Breaking into Japanese Literature"; it has parallel texts, and its homepage contains mp3s of all the stories. I personally haven't used it - the stories are way too dark for my taste - but this kind of resource definitely exists. I also know that siomotteikiru has quite a lot of parallel texts for Japanese (but mainly not with English as the other language). If she can find the resources for Japanese/Polish texts, I have a hard time imagining that Japanese/English could be -that- much harder. That said: if you decide to go for the song method, it would be an interesting experiment. If you do, please post your observations! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6357 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English* | Message 95 of 489 16 July 2007 at 12:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm also using books, but would be interested in hearing of variations with other media.
Part of the fun of this is designing the method to suit your preferences. I took siommottkeiru's idea and turned it into something that, so far, is working for me. I think this is a good way to make use of this, or any idea! One of the things I've discovered is that a long book isn't as necessary as an enjoyable one. I am currently using my approach on an 8 hour novel for French, a 3.5 hour story for Spanish, and a 4.75 hour story for Italian. Each is a different length, but each contains a wealth of vocabulary, grammatical patterns, dialogue, and narration, such that I feel like with each sweep, I'm downloading the language into my brain. It's quite a feeling. With Spanish, the language I'm most familiar with due to FSI, I'm still in awe at the richness of vocabulary and language contained in a relatively short novella (26,000 words), and feel as if I just turned on a fire hose of knowledge, and only have to drink it all - which, coming from FSI, is no small feat. I can only imagine how much more this will do for French and Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 96 of 489 16 July 2007 at 1:10am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Would you mind describing how you've modified it / how you're currently doing it, and what variations you've tried?
I agree entirely that the source being enjoyable is absolutely vital. I don't have a fixed opinion on how important length is yet, beyond thinking that extremely short stories or songs are probably too short, and that something like Kafka's "The Hunger Artist" or "In the Penal Colony", at over a half hour but under an hour is ok but probably bit short. "Animal Farm", at 4 hours, seems better lengthwise, but I've found that I'm not very excited about it. "The Master and Margarita" is significantly longer, and thus far, I really like it; I'm still doing a first pass just reading English, with no audio, for it.
Yes, it's an amazing, addictive feeling. I'm having an absolute blast using this method for Polish, which I was previously very, very close to entirely unfamiliar with (I'd overheard a few words of it a couple of times in my life; the most I'd seen it written previous to trying this approach was probably on Peterlin's page, on the parts where he has the same text in Polish and English). It seemed extremely useful for German too, but I decided to try to do a previously unknown-to-me language, in a branch of Indo-European I have no experience with, for the sake of experimenting. I'll stick to Polish for at least a week before seriously considering branching out and using this method for other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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