|
 |
Topics of Language Study | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Grammatiker Diglot Newbie United States jabbernut.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5202 days ago 17 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Armenian, French, Arabic (classical), Esperanto | Message 1 of 3 17 January 2011 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | ||
|
When it comes to learning any language, especially when learning it alone, it is
important to create some semblance of structure in your studies. When starting a language, what would you begin with? What topics are the most important to focus on first? In what order should those topics be approached? What I want to create is a sort of list of topics for study. That is, starting with the broadest categories (i.e. vocabulary, syntax, etc.) which are broken into subcategories (pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, etc. and sentence structure, agreement, morphology, etc. respectively), I want to create a comprehensive list of topics which encompass all of the features commonly required to learn a language. My problem seems to be that I can't decide on what to focus on or improve upon. Generally, language textbooks have various approaches that start basic and move onto more advanced topics, but how are those arranged? What methods and arrangements have you, the language learners, used? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elagabalus Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5186 days ago 12 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English*, PortugueseC1 Studies: Mandarin, German, Russian, French | Message 2 of 3 27 January 2011 at 4:01am | IP Logged | ||
If you mean what language points (topics?) need to be learned and in what order, then my take is that people get PhDs in those very questions, so 1) the jury's out and 2) they're fields of inquiry rather than answerable questions at this point. But, it would be great to get a consensus among polyglots of how to approach grading and structuring their syllabuses for learning. There are YouTube videos from some HTLAL members where they go into some small detail about they order their studies (Glossika talks about learning adverbial structures so you can talk about how you are and feel right away, and Moses McCormick has a set order: KeyWords, Questions about your learning, Negations about your ability (I don't speak well, but I am improving etc), and your personal biography, all so that you are prepared to deal with a learning situation in chatrooms very quickly). Other ideas: if you look at Margarita Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish, she starts with the past tense before anything to springboard the learner into the language with something that they can use right away. You could also go to landmark books in applied linguistics and see how they resolved the problem, or take a more pragmatic approach and copy the structure (table of contents) of particularly useful language courses and text books (or copy their approach and improve upon it), or certain teachers and polyglots. Some landmark publications (in English at least) might be A.S. Hornby's "Guide to patterns and usage in English" and the later Cobuild Pattern Grammars which came out of the seeds of Hornby's work, and also later on there was D.A.Wilkins' "Notional syllabuses: a taxonomy and its relevance to foreign language curriculum development" where he got away from a grammatical grading of the syllabus and instead focused on what end languages were employed for, and structured the syllabus from those fundamental categories. Then, there's the natural order theory which says, according to famous studies in language acquisition, that languages are learned in the same order regardless of how they are taught. This implies that learning from a tourist phrasebook should be equally useful to a grammatical tome. So long as you are methodical, any approach should work, according to that approach. Then there's "Loom of Language" which has been discussed on this forum innumerable times, so I won't repeat it. Anyway, there are some ideas, and I agree it would be interesting to see a general consensus on approaching self study in a structured but self-sufficient approach. A lot of people have systematic approaches to studying, but not a lot of focus on language structure itself. Edited by Elagabalus on 27 January 2011 at 4:03am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6667 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 3 of 3 27 January 2011 at 7:50am | IP Logged | ||
|
I think it is important to avoid the "paralysis by analysis" situation.
2 persons have voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
