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The Sentence Method | ||
Tags: 10000 sentences | Flash cards | Learning Technique/Method | Vocabulary learning | Japanese | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| janalisa Triglot Senior Member France janafadness.com/blog Joined 6825 days ago 284 posts - 466 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Japanese Studies: Russian, Norwegian | Message 17 of 27 16 April 2007 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm a big fan of the sentence method-- I've been using it to increase my vocabulary in Japanese, and I find it to be quite effective. But I think you have to take the right approach to it.
The thing is, when you're first starting out learning a language, you probably don't really need something like the sentence method. You're just trying to get down the basic vocabulary and grammar, and you can probably manage this through sheer memorization. Repetition will take care of itself because these first words and sentence patterns will be so commonly used that you will naturally come across them all the time. Once you get past a certain level, though, sheer memorization just doesn't cut it anymore. There is just *too much* vocabulary to learn. Drilling every new word into your head would just take way too much time and energy, no matter what nifty memory tricks you might have. That's why, at the advanced level, I've stopped trying to memorize things. The best way to expand my vocabulary (and grammar as well) is to first get it into my passive vocabulary through repeated exposure, then eventually, after more exposure, it will move into the active area. But since I'm learning a lot of more "obscure" terms that I wouldn't naturally come across every day, software like mnemosyne is the perfect way of "artificially" increasing my exposure to the word. In this way I'm learning in the same way people learn their native language, only I'm doing it faster. As for grammar, I do read grammar explanations, but I never try to memorize rules. I read the explanation and see that I understand it, and then I simply reinforce it and try to get a "feel" for it by exposing myself to lots of example sentences. For more obscure grammatical structures, I might do this through mnemosyne, but if it's more commonly used I probably wouldn't bother. In this way I let myself forget the grammar rule and replace it with a more natural instinct for how the language works, which I think is the only way to *really* learn grammar. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| awake Senior Member United States Joined 6571 days ago 406 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 18 of 27 17 April 2007 at 7:57am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree mostly (95% :), but I disagree a little bit. I think it's very person
dependent (based on how well they can memorize vocabulary lists). Sheer vocabulary memorization can be combined very well with the sentence method. You can do this with large classes of words and then work them into the sentence method. I think that can really expand your vocabulary much faster than the sentence method alone. Let me give an example. If one of my example sentences involved asparagus, I would use that sentence as a template. I could then go memorize the names of all the vegetables I'm likely to encounter, and then just work them into my sentence method. So, if in my sentence bank I had "My sister tried the eat the asparagus, but it was too salty for her" I'd try playing with it. I'd replace asparagus with as many different vegetable names as I could remember. If I memorize a list of 30 or 40 names of vegetables, I can just drop in those words. My sister tried to eat the potato... and so forth You have to be very careful to avoid introducing errors, so I suggest sticking to the template of your (known to be correct) example sentences pretty rigidly. But obviously this can be used for all sorts of things. If you have a sentence that involves a dog, then you could memorize a list of animal names and drop them in. If you have a sentence that involves a lawyer, you could memorize a bunch of names of professions and so forth.
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 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 19 of 27 17 April 2007 at 1:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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My general position on this question is that while you are a beginner you need a sound foundation in the target language morphology, profound knowledge about 'grammar words' (eg. pronouns and numbers) plus as many other words as you possibly can stuff into your head. Then you have a better chance of selecting which formulations you should try to emulate. Word acquisition is probably the most time-consuming of these initial tasks.
This doesn't mean that you shouldn't try also to get through as much genuine material as possible, but I'm sceptical about a beginner's ability to infer anything useful about grammar or semantics from a text that he or she barely can understand. The reason that you should read and listen to genuine stuff as early as possible is that with such early massive exposure it will be much easierfor you to become fluent along the way. As you get better the main task will more and more be to learn idioms and to get a 'feel' for the language in question. Your chances of learning something useful from a text are much better if you understand it than if you have to look half the words up in a dictionary. When your main focus has become idiomatics and style the dictionary loses some of its initial importance. But even an advanced learner can still benefit from an occasional hour or two with a good dictionary. In principle it is a very logical idea to keep an example sentence ready for every single word to remember it better. But at least during the initial phase it doesn't have to be an actual quote from somewhere, - to learn for instance the typical constructions of a verb it is probably better to memorize standardized construction schemes with pronouns (eg. "to do something to somebody") than to memorize some flowery invention by a wellknown author. Later, when you are ready to delve more deeply into the finer points of style you can turn to these authors again, but even then I doubt that you will benefit from learning actual sentences by heart. Learn constructions, learn idioms, maybe learn a proverb or the beginning of "Hamlet" or Kalevala in Finnish by heart to impress your friends, but apart from that, don't memorize complete sentences. Edited by Iversen on 17 April 2007 at 2:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CaoMei513 Senior Member United States Joined 6780 days ago 110 posts - 113 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 20 of 27 17 April 2007 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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The sentence method works great for me learning Mandarin, the biggest reason being that I learn words best by seeing them in a sentence, not just alone. Plus, you do kindof get a good feel for the grammar that way.
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| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6407 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 21 of 27 17 April 2007 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||
I question the value of using the same sentence repeatedly with a single word substituted. This could be useful if you're not using a spaced repetition system, in order to "drill" the sentence pattern in your head, but animal names can typically be used in all sorts of contexts, a fact that should be taken advantage of. You can often find specific contexts for animals; a lion, for example, would fit well in a sentence involving the zoo or the circus. My current opinion on the sentence method is that it's a good idea, but it's also important to understand the sentence as well. For instance, if you're learning Spanish, you have the English sentence "The window was broken", and the Spanish translation given is "Se rompió la ventana", and you have no idea what's going on in that sentence ("What's that 'se' doing there? Why is the subject after the verb?"), then you should at least look it up. But if you can understand the sentence, then the example sentence is probably all you need. - Kef Edited by furrykef on 17 April 2007 at 8:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6844 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 22 of 27 18 April 2007 at 4:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Regarding the dog sentence I'm with furrekef. For me it's no point substituting the animals. An example from.... English.
This is a red car. That is a blue bicycle. I have a green motorcycle. I don't need to go through these sentences, changing the colours, the means of transportation et.c. to know that they "work". However, some people need this drilling (and they use it in FSI a lot). If a sentence method is going to be used, make sure they are good sentences and not just variations of the same theme (a blue car, a green car, a yellow car...). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6405 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 23 of 27 18 April 2007 at 4:48am | IP Logged | ||
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I decided to try the sentence method for Mandarin, but I find constant repetition of the same thing boring.
In order to make it less boring, I have now chosen some funny sentences from Zompist's phrasebook to work with. Examples: 你们国家的土真美啊! Ni3men1 guo2jia1 de tu3 zhen1 mei3 a! 做为外国人来说，你很漂亮。 Zuo4 wei2 wai4guo2ren2 lai2 shuo1, ni3 hen3 piao4liang4. 如果你去美国，你会发现一毛钱也不少。 Ru2guo3 ni3 qü4 mei3guo2, ni3 hui4 fa1xian4 yi1 mao2 qian2 ye3 bu4shao3. These still give me more vocabulary and more structures. I was careful not to choose any where I didn't understand at least 80% of the characters though. I also like the approach in "Rapid literacy in Chinese", where they introduce 30 characters and one or two structures using one sentences that covers them all, but then they offer small texts with a high occurance of those characters and structures to practise with. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 7118 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes 7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 24 of 27 18 April 2007 at 5:48am | IP Logged | ||
I agree that you need to understand the sentence you are learning but if you know that "Se rompió la ventana" means "the window was broken" do you really need to know what is going on grammatically? Can't you just remember that if you want to say "XXX was broken" in Spanish you say "Se rompió XXX". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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