|
 |
Julien Gaudfroy - Learn THEN understand | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6544 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes  1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 25 of 40 07 January 2011 at 9:40am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I'll address my "learn then understand" experience and then also agree with Iversen and Cainntear.
First of all, I would say that I learned French to a my first level of fluency without worldlists or what has been called, in this thread, sinister tools. If fact, my French learning really kicked off with total immersion once living in France and asking ALL people around me to only speak French at 26 years of age. It took one year to move from A2 to C2 levels without any organized work on grammar or vocabulary. Just the total intensity of living in France in French. And it worked, to an extent. I then thought that Learn then Understand was the cat's whiskers. Now? I would not do this again like that and it is not the most effective method for me. For me. Very often I find that meaning can be learned and forgotten - the word is there (even used actively) and then the meaning comes back. So there isn't, for me, a clear cut method of saying "meaning always first". But along the way, a scaffolding is needed, what Iversen calls "evidence" in the post above to "hang your hat on". The reality, again for me, was that I had a language reference of meaning in French from some of my high school studies and drills (2 very weak years) and came with the basics of pronouns, conjugation, sentence structure and, of course, the loan words of English and Spanish. I had a scaffolding enough that the "understand" of "learn then understand" came by itself - those educated guesses allowed by continuous exposure. It is my guess that Julian's extensive learning outside of China created that scaffold. Cainntear really underlines the issue with his words on bias of observation -- we cannot, as individual language learners, come to understand our methods without taking into consideration bias. Considerable discussion has gone on with the issues of learning meaning (or more specifically a definition) and then seeing it shift in a target language. This is one of the issue I have with wordlists and cards - which I now use a lot, by the way - in that I find I fail to learn contextuality or contextual meaning until later, in use. I would think that Julien's method would avoid that issue somewhat but I also am certain that effort has gone on (perhaps not structured through cards or other tools) to memorize with meaning. For me, learning grammar, using lists or cards, in general, structuring my learning accelerates it IF I don't use that time just to do dumb exercises without thinking about the core learnings. Bakunin, your post is curious - one one side you talk about "anecdotal" evidence and feel you are lacking "extensive personal experience" with such approachs - I think what a few here are saying is that out of our own (extensive ?) personal experience this could bring us to the same conclusions (and perhaps did at one point) but that we now understand that it does not -- not out of skepticism -- the people that posted in this thread have demonstrated a deep passion for learning and extensive thinking on the subject. Finally, the book I found the most interesting for learning Chinese characters is Tuttle's which works on visual imagery and mnemonics to try to make the word learning fun. That's the key - a method works if it is not only not a drag but enjoyable. If learning is a chore you won't do it. I think that underlying "key principle" is the unstated truth of using one method over another. Make sure you are having fun! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5182 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 26 of 40 07 January 2011 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
I imagine all of us have at some point tried to learn just by listening (which seems to be Julien's method as presented here), without success. If you haven't tried it have a go and see how long it takes to get bored out of your skull. One thing I would be interested to know is how good Julein's comprehension of written texts and audio material is. It's one thing being able to repeat phrases parrot fashion and another to actually understand what you are saying/reading/hearing. I don't want to be too down on the "parrot fashion" approach, though. I'm sure in social situations this will get you a long way (and a very long way for Julien, it seems). It's just that to me this is really just an impressive veneer, which perhaps covers a shallow understanding which I would always be worried about. But maybe that's a fault of mine. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5422 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 27 of 40 07 January 2011 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Again I want to disagree with this idea of opposing learning and understanding. Learning without understanding is parroting or mimicking; I would hardly call that learning. I seriously doubt that anybody here believes that someone with zero knowledge of a language could "learn" even the rudiments of a language just from listening endlessly to recordings. This won't work because there is no foundation to build on, the so-called scaffolding. Immersion is of course a wonderful learning environment; it is not a method. Immersion is particularly conducive to learning the spoken language because the language comes alive. It is seen and heard in context. Just walking down the street of a city is an exciting visual and aural experience. When you hear the language, you can relate it to immediate concrete experiences. This sometimes why I prefer the term use to meaning. When I go into a pastry shop in France and the person behind the counter says something like "Bonjour, qu'est-ce que je vous sers?", I don't really spend much time parsing the utterance and working out the grammar. What is important is that I learn that in this sort of situation, this is what I'm likely to hear. And while I'm in the store, I may have observed how other customers are responding to that question. So when my turn comes, I spontaneously imitate something that I've heard a moment ago or earlier. Or maybe I have a flash card in my pocket with a phrase "Je voudrais..." that I'm dying to use. It's this learning by doing/using and learning in action that makes immersion so much more effective and fun than studying from a book or listening to CD's. Now, if immersion can be combined with preparation, guidance, instruction, coaching --call it what you wish--, even with those boring books, then the whole thing becomes all the more effective. Edited by s_allard on 07 January 2011 at 4:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5661 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 28 of 40 07 January 2011 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
Plus the sting of embarrassment is there in real life, and not in books and CDs. I have noticed many times that my senses and memory are sharpened by the potential for making a fool of myself. Real life blunders lead to my heart beating a little faster, and my brain magically deciding never to forget something again. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6003 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 29 of 40 07 January 2011 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
The thing is, this isn't what he does at all. Julien does a hell of a lot of stuff, but he has tried to extract a core point and identify it as of particular importance. He knows he does more, and he isn't trying to claim he doesn't, but he has talked up one feature so heavily that his readers think it is the be-all-and-end-all. As speakers or writers, it's our job to make sure we are understood. We cannot blame the listener or reader for failing to understand something we didn't say properly. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5182 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 30 of 40 07 January 2011 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't doubt you, but if you or anyone has seen any mention of the other stuff Julien does, it would be great to know what it is. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5290 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 31 of 40 07 January 2011 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is a good description. But it is an exaggeration to contrast the full language exposure immersion life long learning process with a simple time-limited vocabulary learning, via Anki or whatever list or method. This is not fair! :-) Just put something like "you have learned the basic meanings of the word via some x method, you start noticing it ..." and so on at the beginning of your description and it works, too. And in real life these things always interact anyway. Some words you learn, others you have to guess, then learn, then forget, then guess again, then look up, forget, ask your grandmother... and so on. (Same with grammar.) It has never been any different, except for people who believe in (one-sided) methods (sorry, an exaggeration). Edited by lingoleng on 07 January 2011 at 10:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5422 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 32 of 40 08 January 2011 at 1:04am | IP Logged | |||||
If this description by Bakunin is an accurate representation of this so-called learn by understanding method, then I think we all use it to some extent. Don't we all gloss over words or grammatical constructions that we don't understand until some later point when we have more time to go into certain details? Right now I'm reading Cien años de soledad, and I have to say that if I had to look up everything I don't understand, it would take me a couple of years to read the book. As I keep seeing certain words, I do have a vague sense of the meaning. I just keep on reading and when I have time I look up some words. I still am very skeptical of this idea that if you notice something often enough the "true" meaning will grow on you. I think that one could generally get an idea, let's say of a general category. For example, I know that the author is speaking about a chair because of the accompanying verb. But there is absolutely no clue that it is a rocking-chair. Similarly, I know he is writing about flowers, but there is no way that I can guess or figure out that this particular word means lily. When it comes to grammar, I think the situation is even more complicated. Unlike tangible objects where one can get a sense of the physical thing, grammar is all based on forms of words in sequence. Are we supposed to try to reconstruct the grammar simply by listening repeatedly to the same sequence? This I believe is the height of folly. When would any serious adult language learner torture themselves with this approach when a cursory look at a grammar book would give a head-start to understanding the system? I'm afraid that I don't understand the advantages of this approach. Does it result in better memorization? I think repeated listening is great for training the ear and for pronunciation, but that's nothing new. I think Julien should be here. Edited by s_allard on 08 January 2011 at 1:54am 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. |
