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My Thoughts On Sentence Mining and others | ||
Tags: Goals | Learning Technique/Method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6542 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 9 of 66 19 August 2010 at 5:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I did sentence mining for a couple years with Japanese. It was somewhat effective, but incredibly boring. Way
too much time spent at the computer. So I learned my lesson, and quit it. I still use anki to get on top of a lot of new vocab, but if I start getting too much stuff, I just start deleting decks. There are few feelings as satisfying as deleting anki decks. But I digress... I don't know if I'd vote for the Benny method. Isn't this the guy who bragged about how he was going to learn Thai in a few months, then failed miserably on all accounts? Maybe his method doesn't work as well on hard languages? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6941 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 10 of 66 19 August 2010 at 6:26am | IP Logged | ||
Benny's mission in Thailand was to learn the alphabet and pronunciation well enough to be able to read a written sentence aloud to a native speaker and have him understand, as well as 'asking directions, ordering food, basic small talk and haggling etc. and getting the gist of typical responses, without relying on my phrasebook.'. He succeeded in learning the alphabet and being able to get around without a phrasebook, but in the end felt he hadn't mastered the pronunciation/tones well enough to undergo the reading the unprepared sentences aloud to a native speaker. He never claimed he was going to be fluent, though (his goal was 'basic to lower intermediate'). Here is the post about his Thai mission for reference. I think Benny's always been upfront and humble about his progress, and his motivation for having such a positive attitude is to encourage himself and others, not for 'bragging' as you claim. You really ought to check out your sources thoroughly before spreading such misinformed criticism! Edited by Lucky Charms on 19 August 2010 at 6:27am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6542 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 11 of 66 19 August 2010 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe you're right - I was just repeating what I heard. This looks like the goal only - can you post the link to the
results too? 1 person has 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 12 of 66 19 August 2010 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||
The idea of "upfront" and "humble" kind of crumbles when he dismisses anyone with a different view of learning as not being interested in communication. He refuses to engage in debate, even when you point out where he has made incorrect assumptions. He is not "humble" enough to entertain the notion that he might be wrong. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6542 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 13 of 66 20 August 2010 at 2:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Here is his video and
here is the discussion. I'll try to be more diplomatic this time and just say I'm unimpressed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6941 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 14 of 66 20 August 2010 at 3:38am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm sorry for having brought the thread in this direction, but please let's not make this a debate about Benny himself. The point, for the purposes of this thread, is his idea of making conversation with native speakers the crux of language study, which is not an idea unique to Benny at all. Those who doubt his character can refer to it as 'the Moses McCormick Method' or whatever else they prefer.
Anyway, to bring the thread back on track... I think we usually associate SRS/sentence mining with the 'passive input' extreme of the spectrum (Khatzumoto, Steve Kaufmann), but it's not entirely incompatible with an output-based method, either. Benny has plugged SRS software a lot, for one. Both he and Moses start off by memorizing the bare minimum (Benny with phrases from Lonely Planet; Moses with his set list of things to look up in a new language, including wh-questions and how to answer questions about where he's learning the language). SRS could be used for these 'starter phrases'. Also, I think one of the major points of an output-based learning method is to be corrected and taught new words by native speakers as you go. Many learners write these corrections/new words down in a notebook: these could be input into SRS as well. Conversation-based learners don't spend much time tied to their desks hunting for new words to memorize, but I'm still sure they need to memorize the words they pick up just like the rest of us ;) When I think about it, I suppose 'sentence mining through conversation' is not very different from sentence mining with a book. So maybe the issue isn't conversation vs. SRS/Sentence mining, but output-from-the-beginning vs. starting with an input-only phase - a debate which has been had many times on this forum and elsewhere. Edited by Lucky Charms on 20 August 2010 at 3:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5365 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 15 of 66 20 August 2010 at 3:47am | IP Logged | ||
Absolutely, I'm very unimpressed too. But he does defend himself on his last post in that thread by saying that he wasn't immersing and that he only really had a couple of days of properly learning Thai. I didn't read everything on the thread or his website, but I think it's best to ignore that venture as an exception. He only just got his head around the script and tones (barely) in that time, which was all he was really hoping to do. Overall, his method appears to be good for other languages. Regarding which is better, I'm not entirely sure I stick to either of them. I won't speak straight away, at least to another person, I like studying grammar - bizarrely, and I don't drill sentences to myself although I do have an expanding list of sentences open that I like to flick through at random for 10 minutes a time. I have tried Anki and never managed to get used to the "how hard was this?" voting system and varying repetition. I prefer to just go through words randomly, even if I know them very well. Therefore I can do better with my own limited knowledge of Excel formulae, as that's easier to edit, add to and customise visually. Edited by PaulLambeth on 20 August 2010 at 3:51am 1 person has 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 16 of 66 20 August 2010 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
Exactly -- that's the sum total of the advice on FluentIn3Months (is it being about the site OK then?) -- speak from the start. There's not really a method there, and all the experiences that are presented as being done in the same method are of languages reasonably closely related to those the author already knew. The lack of method on the site is clear from reading the different interpretations different readers have of it. I wholeheartedly agree with the concept of early production, but my problem is that I want to speak, not simply say things, so I find phrasebook style early production frustrating. With fixed phrases, I'm not creating, not expressing myself; I'm just parroting someone else's words. However, when I have done that in the past, I've found myself analysing the grammar in the phrases I've memorised and I have learnt things from using them. The benefit is limited the further the language is from one I already know. (I didn't learn anything from Basque phrases, for example.) I've always got more out of learning core grammar, particularly multiple-verb structures: I want it -> I want to (do) + I can (do) -> I want to be able to (do)... and so on across multiple tenses. Then when there's a thought on my mind, I usually only need to look up a word or two to be able to express what I want, and I'm no longer stuck in a pre-defined world of fixed phrase. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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