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How do you learn verb forms? | ||
Tags: Memory | Verbs/Conjugation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4844 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 1 of 12 20 June 2011 at 10:21pm | IP Logged |
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I would like to know what techniques people here have found effective for learning all those verb forms.
In the past (when I learned Greek and German), I made verb tables on flashcards, and studied the heck out of them by repeating the forms in the traditional manner: luw, lueis, luei, luomen, luete, luousi(n), and so on. I was never very happy with this method, but that's what all my fellow students were doing. Now that I am starting to learn French, I am thinking about making a separate card for each form, as well as a card with a sample sentence for each form. I would not easily be able to reproduce a paradigm this way, but I expect I would have an easier time using and understanding the verb forms. What do you think? Please share your ideas, methods, successes and failures. 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 2 of 12 21 June 2011 at 12:57am | IP Logged |
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I write 'green sheets' with my own compressed versions of morphological tables (rarely coinciding in form with any of the sources I use). I don't deliberately set out to memorize these by rote learning, but use them as constant companions when I study texts - and because this implies that I always see concrete verbs it is enough to keep the endings on the sheets. I make separate sheets for very irregular words (some verbs and most pronouns) because the compressed tables must be kept reasonably free for exceptions in order to be useful. This method functions fairly well because I have to think the system thoroughly through while I decide on the best and most economical formats, and the subsequent use as reference materials gives the necessary repetition. However once I have learnt the outlines and most if the details I may do mopping up operations based on rote learning, but then only of limited parts of the systems - such as specific irregular verbs or pronouns. Edited by Iversen on 21 June 2011 at 4:07am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| megazver Triglot Newbie Lithuania Joined 5929 days ago 34 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Lithuanian, Russian*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Polish | Message 3 of 12 21 June 2011 at 1:57am | IP Logged |
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I just remember them now after doing the Michel Thomas.
Not sure if that's really useful. Sorry! Edited by megazver on 21 June 2011 at 1:58am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4844 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 4 of 12 21 June 2011 at 8:50am | IP Logged |
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Michel Thomas doesn't cover all persons, does he?
And of course that's useful. I was asking what people do. If it works for you, then it's a useful answer. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6040 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 5 of 12 21 June 2011 at 10:05am | IP Logged |
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At the moment I'm experimenting with flashcards (Anki).
I've got a deck displaying just standard verb endings with annotations highlighting irregularities. It's extremely boring to review them but it is concentrating my mind. I'm also in the process of creating another deck displaying conjugation samples of about 150 commonly used verbs. I pick out a sample of 8-12 conjugations of each verb in it's Present, Past, Future and Conditional forms (both Imerfective and Perfective aspects). There are over 70 conjugates for most verbs, but all I want is to see a sample because sometimes the verb stem looks very different when it is conjugated. I don't bother with Imperatives or Adverbials because they behave in pretty much the same way and are easy to remember. I find that this method has improved my reading comprehension. I may have to pause over less common conjugates but at least I'm not simply guessing anymore. However I know I need a more active way of reinforcing the learning. Writing sentences in randomly generated verb forms is one idea. Composing a short text, story or journal entry in LANG-8 is another. At the moment I'm looking for language partners because to use these verbs in everday conversation is, for me, the ultimate test. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5946 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 12 21 June 2011 at 10:09am | IP Logged |
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What Thomas does is quite clever.
First of all, he teaches one person at a time. This is far easier than trying to learn 4 or 6 or 8 persons at once. Secondly, he identifies the commonalities between different forms and exploits them. So rather than memorising each conjugation individually, he'll say (for example) that the "tu" form (you, informal singular) always ends in "s"* but is pronounced identically to the il/elle (he/she/it) form. (Having a look at Wikipedia's Ancient Greek verb tables suggests that a similar rule holds in the Greek present tense, active voice, for all indicative, subjunctive and optative. I have no idea what this all means, but think how much easier it would have been if you'd simply had to learn to add ς.... * or is it almost always? I can't think of any exceptions just now, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 5985 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 7 of 12 21 June 2011 at 12:13pm | IP Logged |
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If the conjugations are very difficult, I just memorize and translate hundreds of sentences containing all possible conjugations using ANKI. I learned Tagalog, and it's very difficult verbs in this way. I also had to consult grammars occasionally.
Spanish conjugation was straight forward enough that I could just drill them with FSI or carry the forms in my head as a tried to use them. I suppose the more difficult the conjugations, the less I want to memorize rules and the more I just memorize tons of sentences. Edited by irrationale on 21 June 2011 at 12:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5701 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 12 21 June 2011 at 1:16pm | IP Logged |
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I familiarize myself with the forms using some kind of conjugation paradigm, which means that I hopefully will recognize the forms when I encounter them. And then I learn them ... more or less like individual words until I have internalized the rules. I can't explain it much better than that; I basically memorize sentences or clauses a specific verb form is used in, and then use what feels like a rhyme scheme to form verb forms that follow the same rules.
For example ouvrir - ouvert offrir - offert Edited by Bao on 21 June 2011 at 2:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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