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Starting as an adult (finding content) | ||
Tags: Motivation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| juman Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5210 days ago 101 posts - 129 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French | Message 1 of 10 24 March 2011 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am just starting to learn a new language being close to 40 and have tried several materials as Assimil etc but I
find one big problem with them. The content is not interesting... Of course there is a lot of interesting content in them from a pure language learning perspective but I just lose interest when going through ways of saying hello, goodbye, merry christmas and can I order a beer etc. The content in the content is not attracting me. I have tried to start from the other end and just taking a book I want to read and going through it line by line, word by word and that works better for me. Using different techniques to listen and read the book as well as repeating the content over and over I have learnt much more then through pure languagetraining. It also has kept me going for a much longer time which of course is a good thing. Now the problem here is of course that the book is to advanced for me so even though I learn a lot of words and phrases it takes me quite a while to learn each new word (as it is all new) and my sentence progress is really slow. We are talking about a progress of a 5 page chapter in about a month. So is any one else having the same issues? And how do you solve it? Also how do you keep momentum in the real beginning (I am about 3 months in) when every word, phrase, grammatical rule etc is new? How do you split up your training material so you still feel like you are making a progress? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5858 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 2 of 10 24 March 2011 at 3:43pm | IP Logged | ||
I think that most people find the material in standard language courses to be dry and boring. I suggest you (at least for a while) switch your learning to the Internet and begin to read material that interests you. You may find (as I do) that parts of the news are very interesting, constantly changing, and you already know a lot of it in your native language. So read the news in your target language with the pop-up version of Google Translate from the Google Toolbar in Firefox. As well, use the Firefox add-on Globefish to translate sentences. You will find it is very fast to look uo words and sentences, and learn them, while reading material that you find interesting. It doesn't have to be news of course. Whatever interests you. This way, you can stick with it. I see you are studying French. RFI has good language learning on its web page related to the news and other subjects. http://www.rfi.fr/lffr/statiques/accueil_apprendre.asp Here is another technique you may find useful: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=25839&PN=1&TPN=1#299323 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 10 24 March 2011 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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You can't expect the material to entertain you -- that's your job. It doesn't matter what you use, you need to take the vocabulary and sentences you encounter, sort out what it useful to you, and use it with meaningful intentions.
Once a book has introduced you to a complete sentence, the grammar it contains, and a few other words you deem useful, you can create loads of meaningful sentences that apply to your daily life by modifying that sentence ever so slightly (make it negative, past, future, change the subject, change the object, add an adjective, add an adverb, etc.) and supplementing the knowledge given to you by looking up other words you actually need in your life. You need to take control over what's important to you and what applies to your needs. Don't let the method decide for you. Personally, I'm never afraid to skip over the stuff that seems useless in a method. It's not going anywhere -- if you do need it or you realize you shouldn't have skipped it, just come back. If you've understood and can use the basic material that was introduced in the lesson, then you are ready to move on to the next lesson. A quick pace and concentrating only on the parts of the lesson that appear meaningful and useful to you is a good way to keep interest for a longer period of time and to remain motivated to continue with that specific method. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Dragomanno Triglot Groupie Zimbabwe Joined 4995 days ago 80 posts - 98 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Lithuanian, Albanian, Ancient Greek | Message 4 of 10 24 March 2011 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | ||
I definitively agree with it. Moreover, if you are learning a new language from scratch, I can't imagine how you can avoid to go through the basic stuff... Good luck, anyway ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6695 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 5 of 10 24 March 2011 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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My solution has been to use scientific magazines, books and texts from the internet about science, tourism, culture, language and other subjects. In some cases I could read them with the help of a dictionary because I knew some related languages, in other cases I translated page after page after page using dictionaries and grammars, and yes, it was a timeconsuming and not always pleasant activity.
However lately I have preferred an easier method: I use bilingual texts which I mostly have made myself, either from original translations or by using Google translate and Word (the methods have been described in several threads, including my own Guide to Learning Languages). Of course you will have to work slowly in the beginning if you work with a new language, even with a translation, but this is bearable if you are interested in the content. And with a translation to aid you (without doing all the work for you) you can access texts that would be far beyond your level even if your were armed with a dictionary. By the way, you should use a dictionary even when you have a translation, because translations don't give you all the information you need - and translations can be both full of errors and deliberately misleading. Edited by Iversen on 25 March 2011 at 12:53pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Raye Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5146 days ago 37 posts - 51 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: DutchB1 | Message 6 of 10 26 March 2011 at 1:32am | IP Logged | ||
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This is a huge barrier for me; I’m not usually interested in hotel/restaurant/tourist content. But I did get through a Teach Yourself (text & audio) that included enough family life and general cultural/historical topics to balance the tourist stuff. There may also be intermediate texts available that are specialized for grown-up topics (French for Office Workers, French for Science Majors).
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| amethyst32 Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5641 days ago 118 posts - 198 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, French | Message 7 of 10 26 March 2011 at 2:33am | IP Logged | ||
You could try a Michel Thomas course. His teaching method doesn't use dialogues or tourist scenarios and it's quite subject neutral. In my own experience, his courses were a great way of getting started in both Spanish and in French. I agree with you about the greetings and hotel booking approach being off-putting; besides it's not even especially useful if you don't have an immediate need to speak in the language. Good luck in finding something that suits you. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6431 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 10 30 March 2011 at 11:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Check out the threads on Listening-Reading. If you like literature, it's probably the least painful approach. If you don't, I second Iversen's advice.
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