|
 |
Which learning methods are most indelible | ||
Tags: Memory | Learning Technique/Method | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5316 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 1 of 28 07 June 2011 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
The other day, I taught a friend a bit of French for about 20 minutes while we were walking on the street. Besides English, this was her first experience learning a foreign language. I mostly used sentences that referred to what we were doing at the time (walking, getting on the bus, etc.). It went well, but it left me to wonder how much she had actually retained.
A few days later we went out with some friends, and even though we hadn’t spoken again about what I taught her, she said one of the sentences to one of our friends. It surprised me that she would remember anything after all this time, let alone a complete sentence. When I asked her about it, she said that some of the phrases had stuck in her mind and that she’d been repeating them in her head all that time. Empirically, it would appear that being taught while walking on the street is an efficient way to learn a language. I know that I retain more when I’m exposed to the language in real life, but no one’s ever taught me that way so I’d never experienced it firsthand. I wonder how much you could achieve if you spent all day walking around and teaching the language. Maybe I should find a guinea pig and test it! I suppose this is similar to what Michel Thomas did. I have no idea whether being outside or being active makes any difference, but this would obviously be impossible with a group. So I ask you: which learning methods have the most lasting effects? I'm not referring to vocabulary only here -- an issue that has otherwise been addressed many times before --, but rather to the acquisition of a language as a whole. Which way have you learned or taught, for either a short or long period of time, that has yielded the strongest effect, and the most lasting and indelible acquisition experience? Edited by Arekkusu on 07 June 2011 at 6:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| I Am Steve Newbie United States Joined 4863 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Studies: French | Message 2 of 28 07 June 2011 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
Walking gets the blood flowing faster to the brain, which sounds like it'd make a difference. The "Shadowing" technique requires that you are doing something active while studying the language. Also, Michel Thomas was against mental repetition. He wanted his students to avoid thinking about a language when he wasn't personally teaching them. Edited by I Am Steve on 07 June 2011 at 6:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5316 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 28 07 June 2011 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
He told them not to try to remember, but I'm pretty sure he expected them to rehash that info later, and probably counted on it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| I Am Steve Newbie United States Joined 4863 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Studies: French | Message 4 of 28 07 June 2011 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
He made it crystal clear he was against typical memorization techniques (mental
repetition included). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6517 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 5 of 28 07 June 2011 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is the central principle used by Cecille of Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau. Quoted from her website:
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 28 07 June 2011 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
If that's the opinion of the great Michel Thomas then I'm against the great Michel Thomas.- a sensible use of repetition techniques is simply the key to remembering things. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| I Am Steve Newbie United States Joined 4863 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Studies: French | Message 7 of 28 07 June 2011 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
He used a lot of repetition when working with his students personally.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5353 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 8 of 28 08 June 2011 at 5:08am | IP Logged | |||||
He had developed a methodology that could quickly teach a fair amount of content and had it structured so that an almost SRS like effect occurred when using the course. He would return to certain parts of content which had to be actively recalled, and this revisiting of older taught material and using it as a context to teach new structures and words helped the student to remember the material in the long-term, without the need for chanting vocabulary or conjugation tables or using some other memorisation technique. I don't think he was against students memorising in traditional ways in general, just when doing one of his courses. He felt it was not necessary given the structure of the course and if you have the time to do lots of memorisation, you should instead use it for doing the course as you would soak up the material through the way it was presented without needing to resort to personal active memorisation. Edited by jazzboy.bebop on 08 June 2011 at 5:09am 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
