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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| LittleBoy Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5302 days ago 84 posts - 100 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 1 of 11 22 November 2010 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Simple question: If you could design a course, what would it be? Specifically, what methods of teaching and practising would you implement?
I'm not asking about what languages it would cover, nor for comments that say "my dream course would be in the country...". I'm looking for specific types of exercise, types of material. How would it deal with grammar? How would it teach different scripts? Would vocabulary be decided for you, or could you learn what you wanted, if it was applicable at your level? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5122 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 2 of 11 23 November 2010 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||
I don't know that you could ever design a one-size-fits-all dream course. Aside from the obvious differences in what's actually important in any given language (tonal or agglutinative/non-agglutinative, etc.), different people have different goals in why they want to learn a language. That's why so many different courses exist. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 23 November 2010 at 12:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5552 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 3 of 11 23 November 2010 at 11:47am | IP Logged | ||
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One thing that I find frustrating with most traditional courses is they constantly introduce both new grammar and new vocabulary at the same time, which I find quite a handicap to freely thinking in the language. So:
Learn grammar + practice using with familiar vocab. (say 1 week) Learn new vocab + using recently learned grammar (say 3 weeks) repeat (I think Michel Thomas sort of does it, or at least the steps are so small that it's manageable). And also both grammar and vocab need more reinforcement through repetition but in different situations, whereas a lot of course seem to have exercises that just test everything once. I recall that "French in Action" did this well (although it's a while since I saw it). Edited by schoenewaelder on 23 November 2010 at 11:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| B-Tina Tetraglot Senior Member Germany dragonsallaroun Joined 5519 days ago 123 posts - 218 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Polish | Message 4 of 11 23 November 2010 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't given much thought to that question yet, but off the top of my head I'd say that such a course has to include:
- learning words in context - possibility to split the course in daily tasks (in a way that the user won't be overwhelmed by the input) - possibility to access the course online - possibility to reach an online high-score which allows the user to compare his progress with other users In general I'd love to see a course connect to the opportunity the internet offers, e.g. allowing direct research on the internet for the context/frequency of a certain word or expression (including re-transfer of a new context into the vocabulary of the course). Chances are that I'll come up with some other ideas later on :-) Edited by B-Tina on 23 November 2010 at 11:35pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| bnz Diglot Pro Member Germany Joined 5115 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 11 24 November 2010 at 10:46am | IP Logged | ||
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In general, the publishers need to relax the licensing issues of the courses and make the material ready for use in all kinds of media. The main reason that people don't progress in learning languages is that they have an excuse not to learn.
For example, the book is too heavy to carry everywhere, it is too much work to type in the vocabulary into your flashcard application, your computer is broken, or whatever. The solution is let the customer purchase the course and make it available everywhere, i.e., you have a book, you have a computer application, you have a web application, you have an iphone/ipad application, you have Excel/CSV vocabulary lists for import into your favorite flashcard application and so on. If the courses are reasonably priced, I am sure that the customers will value such a philosophy and pay the price even though they could probably copy the material from the Internet. It is literally driving me mad that I can't have my Korean book on my iPad as I am commuting in a train quite a lot. It would make my life so much easier and it is in fact the reason why I am currently looking into building a Do-It-Yourself book scanner. Once I have the book scanned, they won't make any more money from me. It's a lost business opportunity due to fear that the material is copied if you ask me. Edited by bnz on 24 November 2010 at 10:47am 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 6 of 11 24 November 2010 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I mainly use textbooks to get easy texts while I'm a beginner. After that I prefer genuine texts (if possible accompanied by a literal translation) + grammars + dictionaries + travels (when I'm ready for it).
The treatment of grammar is generally too flimsy in modern courseware, so regular grammars would always be my prime source for grammatical knowledge. However insofar the course book tells about grammar I think that it should use almost similar sentences with slight, but significant changes because that will show you how the mechanics of the language work. Instead some authors just give a lot of isolated examples, and you can't learn a system from that - such an isolated example can only illustrate a rule which you learnt as a rule. Vocabulary in a textbook will necessarily be scattered because it comes from concrete texts. So I use wordlists based on dictionaries to add to the vocabulary I get from texts. In this perspective the words that should occur in a textbook should only be most common ones including 'grammatical' words (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions etc.) and "chunks", i.e. short filler expresions that you can use to keep your conversations running. It is however OK also to have some lists of more 'advanced' words from a certain area, for instance the names of family members or prepositions that are combined with a certain case. Special subjects like time and numbers should be covered extensively in one section each. All words in the book should be in the index in the back of the book. Silly combination games and everything that reeks of multiple choice should be banned! Text samples should not necessarily follow some imaginary visitor who visits local families, - I would prefer texts that have a more factual content. But this may be a matter of taste. On the other hand the total ban on silly games and multiple choice is not a matter of taste - it is a clear "no" to some worthless junk which textbook authors feel obliged to provide for people who haven't got a clue about language learning yet. As far as I remember I have never heard spoken sources (tapes, CD's) attached to a textbook system that weren't ultra-boring (and far too slow - better pauses than slow motion). The best general format I have ever met was that of GLOSS, where you had some audio AND a transcript AND a translation, - althought the specimens at GLOSS were too difficult for beginners and sometimes had a bad sound quality. Simple texts, clear voices who speak more than one sentence at a time while leaving some short pauses for thinking and reaching for the PAUSE button, please. And again I would prefer some factual content instead of bad imitations of sitcoms. And then the whole thing should come at a reasonable price, if not downright for free. Edited by Iversen on 24 November 2010 at 1:13pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ALS Senior Member United States Joined 5796 days ago 104 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Finnish, Russian | Message 7 of 11 26 November 2010 at 9:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Michel Thomas with a broader selection of languages, less annoying students, and companion courses for learning to read. Get on the Scandinavian languages, MT!
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Garrett85 Newbie United States Joined 5423 days ago 4 posts - 7 votes Studies: French | Message 8 of 11 26 November 2010 at 11:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think I have a really good solution, or at lest it would work really well for me and people in my position. I drive two hours a day two and from work. The best program I ever used was the pimsleur method. There full course is 100 thirty minute lessons. They where great. But once finished I was left wondering, what now. I still don't feel fluent, very good at getting by but far from fluent. I mean, it wasn't like I could just pop in a French DVD or pick up a French book and start reading. And thus far, no other program can even hold my interest the way pimsleur did. But for all it's praise, it stopped to soon and feel far short the reading material.
So here's my plane. Built a whole new system directly on top of the current pimsleur system. As a person is working through pimsleur's 100 30 minute lessons, they will have a host of thin reading material books. At the start, each book will have stores mostly written in English, but after each successive lesson, the English words will gradually be replaced with the choice language. The stores will become longer and after a new word is learned from pimsleur's audio, it will never again be written in English through out the written set. The stories should come with accompanying audio as well. I'M now sure what should be done once the 100 pimsleur lesson has been learned, but I think this is a really good place to start. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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