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Teach Yourself A Foreign Language Quickly | ||
Tags: Learning Technique/Method | Book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Calro2 Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 6732 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese, French | Message 1 of 3 28 January 2011 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my local library I came across this interesting book (the title of this post) written back in 1981 by Emmanuel Azzopardi. I only found 2 brief mentions of it on this forum, so I thought I'd start a topic on one of the many ideas covered in the book. Briefly scanning the book left me humbled; sometimes I get it into my head that an old book on language learning couldn't possibly teach me anything new after being on this and other modern language learning forums, but I was sorely mistaken. Yes, some of the tools are outdaded (cassette recorders and dictaphones, what are those? :)), but a lot of the ideas that have become big fads in recent years on this forum (including a very interesting take on what you could call the L-R method) are covered in this 1981 book and probably other earlier works that I'm ignorant of. There are too many ideas from the book to cover in this post, so I won't be able to do a summary, but I will mention the section Azzopardi wrote on oral expression.
Oral Expression I love coming across techniques that I haven't tried before and appeal to my way of learning. I found Azzopardi's approach to oral expression interesting. He makes a distinction between fluency and accuracy, stating that fluency should be the primary aim. This is not to say that he doesn't believe accuracy is important; he says you should have "reasonable accuracy", but that you should not be tripping over yourself worrying excessively about this because it will get in the way of your ability to express yourself naturally and without hesitation. Presumably, you would have some reasonable accuracy by the time you get to the oral expression stage anyway as his method emphasizes comprehension (lots of input) before expression. I'm interested in trying this because even though I can converse in my L2 and L3, I do sometimes get stuck worrying about grammatical structures and lose the flow of the conversation. This also makes me reluctant to start long conversations. One of the interesting techniques he employs in this endeavour is practicing with parallel texts and trying to do spoken translations from L1 to L2, improving your speed with practice and focusing on getting your meaning across, not necessarily grammatical accuracy. He goes a step further by saying it's better to work off a sound recording in L1 and do a simultaneous oral translation into L2. He recommends making a sound recording of the text in L1 to work from. I may just work with the written texts instead (making L1 recordings sounds tedious right now, but I may try it out). It seems like a great idea, especially if you don't have a native speaker at your beck and call for constant practice and correction. I will experiment and combine this practice with my simultaneous reading, listening and speaking exercises, and recording myself speaking for 10-15 minutes a day on any topic I choose. Anyway, there's a lot of interesting material in the book that nicely addresses some of the challenges and experiences of hardcore self-learners (such as all the members of this forum), including "mind setting". This is in line with something else that I've found works very well for me, but I don't do regularly enough: when I expose myself to lots of listening material in L2 or L3, especially just before bed, it takes some effort to stop myself from thinking and expressing myself in L2 or L3 when I wake up. That's the end of my long ramble :). Cheers! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pfn123 Senior Member Australia Joined 5075 days ago 171 posts - 291 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 3 31 January 2011 at 4:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the suggestion. I just bought a copy on Abebooks after reading your post. I look forward to reading
it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Calro2 Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 6732 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese, French | Message 3 of 3 06 February 2011 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||
Oh wow. I hope you find it useful. There are so many techniques mentioned in that little book, so I'm curious to know which ones you end up trying and how they work for you. Right now I'm just focusing on the author's techniques for improving oral expression to reduce my hesitancy and make my speech more fluid. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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