|
 |
What methods do you currently use? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| slymie Tetraglot Groupie China Joined 5220 days ago 81 posts - 154 votes  Speaks: English, Macedonian Studies: French, Mandarin, Greek Studies: Shanghainese, Uyghur, Russian | Message 1 of 5 16 December 2010 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I realize there is a form for individuals to keep a log of their studies and progress, but I was hoping some could share their current language learning regimen, including materials, methods, and time used.
I will start first, though I sometimes change methods (sometimes a bit too often) I have my basic structure for learning which goes as follows. *I am not saying this is the best method, and of course if you have opinions please share. This is just what I do and I'd like to know how different my study methods are. 1. Basic level - A book such as Teach yourself or Living Language, Rosetta Stone, and a silly program like Let's Talk! or whatever that has games for learning basic vocabulary. I have used pimsleur in the past but back then I had 1 hour train rides to work, now I opt for something faster. Somewhere in the middle I will learn the full alphabet as well as the names of the letters, numbers, days of the week, months, how to tell time, pull a bunch of useful sentences out of a phrasebook and memorize them, as well as think of sentences I will often have to say i.e. "I am a vegetarian but I still eat beef on sundays" ect. I will generally spend the most time per day at this level, as I think since you are not using the language its best to cram as much into a short period to boost into a level where you are comfortable speaking. 2 hours a day/language minimum, 5 days a week. 2. Low-Intermediate - I will find a college textbook and continue studying that. Get a grammar book such as Barrons or Schaums and start doing the excercises, find language exchange partners or get a tutor to sit there and listen to me speak in target language. I carry around a notebook and write down every new word I see or hear.I begin to watch movies in target language (with English subtitles). 1-3 hours a day (not including watching movies). 3. High-Intermediate - I focus more on speaking, looking for chances to practice. I buy some simple books in the target language, either short stories or encyclopedia type books. (for chinese I had this book that explained to kids how to do science experiments, it was great for the descriptions of movement and instructions. i.e. pour one cup of water into x, stir, then place the cup into the fridge ect.) 4. Low Advanced - I buy newspapers and read articles that interest me, underlining words I don't know, looking them up after reading once, then reading again. I watch movies with only subtitles in target language, pause and rewind when I don't follow or understand. I try to mimic lines from the movie, especially actors who's voices I think sound interesting. I've also just started to use Iverson's lists, I think they are great for this level and above, and possibly high intermediate. 5. Advanced - Just read and watch movies, at this level you probably will have friends who speak the language so no real 'studying' is needed. You will encounter new words, but having someone explain them to you in the target language is good enough. Currently I study like this: 1. Uygur - (near-intermediate) I'm lucky to have a good friend who meets me on sundays and tutors me in exchange for my English. I spend 3 days a week, 1 hour per time studying (I'm not looking to achieve fluency here, just enough for basic conversation) 2. Shanghainese - (intermediate) I live in Shanghai so the old ladies who work the corner shop are the only teachers I need. I have a textbook and study it about 4 hours per week. As above I'm not looking to give speeches in Shanghainese, just learn enough. 3. Russian - (intermediate) I have nightschool twice a week, 2 hours each time and the classes are kind of crap because my classmates never study so it takes us 6 months to finish one level of textbook. I did Berlitz Russian and now working on living language. The grammar really does my head in. I spend about 2 hours a day with Russian and its really the hardest language I've studied, Chinese was much easier to grasp for me. I listen to Russian music and watch movies with English subtitles, and thought that being fluent in another slavic language would be an advantage but no... its hard. 4. Chinese - I currently study Linguistics, and all my classes are in Chinese. I watch Chinese movies or English movies dubbed in Chinese (at the theater). 5. Macedonian/Greek - Just watch movies occasionaly, unfortunately don't have reading material here. When I return in the summers I have plenty of time to practice as many of my relatives don't speak English. I spend probably 3-5 hours per day learning, 5-7 days a week. (sometimes I take the weekend off) I aim for about a chapter per week at the beginner level (depends on how easy it is of course) I like to keep that pace and if I get to sunday and there is still some part of the book that is not sticking or I just slacked off, I just move on and take a look at it a week later, when it seems to become easy all of a sudden. So yeh that's me. Edit * wow how could I forget, I have an Itouch with Anki and my recordings to listen to on the go. Very very helpful. Edited by slymie on 16 December 2010 at 5:09pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Monte Cristo Newbie United States Joined 5173 days ago 26 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 5 16 December 2010 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
French
I use the Berlitz Self-Teacher: French. After I'm finished with that I'll use Assimil's Using French. Hopefully by then I'll just use strickly native materials, such as movies, TV shows, reading the newspaper, etc. Russian I bought Assimil's Russian without toil online for around 5 bucks total, and I've heard that it's a very good method. So I'm just going to go through that thoroughly then just converse with my Russian friends. Edited by Monte Cristo on 16 December 2010 at 8:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 5 17 December 2010 at 1:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Take this with a pinch of salt as I haven't learned any languages to an advanced level yet so I'm very much still learning about how to learn a language efficiently. But aren't we all? So this is just my experience with French (which I learnt the basics of at school and am now studying on my own) and Italian (which I taught myself the basics of in a couple of weeks).
For going from no knowledge to basic knowledge, Pimsleur combined with something written (phrases, grammar, etc.) works well for me and I find that I can absorb a lot of stuff in a very short time. With both French and Italian I found that I could easily do 4 or 5 Pimsleur lessons per day before reaching the point of diminishing returns. Of course these were both "familiar" languages to me as I had done some French at school and Italian has a lot in common with French; if it was a more foreign language like Russian or Japanese I'm sure progress would be a lot slower. For going from basic to intermediate and beyond, I find that a combination of courses (e.g., Assimil, French in Action or equivalent), plenty speaking practice (solo stuff like reading from books and shadowing, as well as conversation), and input from native materials works well. Each one reinforces the others and makes sure I cover all the bases. I also try to think in the language a lot while I do other things. This seems to be giving me steady progress in French. Speaking practice is essential at this stage so I'm going to start work with a tutor for this soon. As for time spent it really just depends on how much free time I have between work and other hobbies. Some days I'll study for 5 hours, some days I'll be lucky to squeeze in 15 minutes. Back when I was unemployed I did a lot more. I fit in some reading and listening at work if I don't have much on but obviously I can't practise my speaking while I'm at my desk (actually I have done a couple of times when the others have been out for lunch; and I did recently find out that a co-worker in a different part of the building speaks French so I may start planning some strategic coffee breaks...) To be honest none of this is revolutionary at all and most likely resembles what 90% of people on here are doing... Edited by garyb on 17 December 2010 at 1:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JPike1028 Triglot Senior Member United States piketransitions Joined 5389 days ago 297 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Portuguese, Czech | Message 4 of 5 17 December 2010 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
It depends on the language, but I usually just try to accumulate as much as I can. For example, in Swedish I have Dover's Essential Swedish Grammar and Hugo's Swedish in Three Months. For other languages I use Assimil, Berlitz Self-Teacher, TY, Michel Thomas, Pimsleur, Readers, Native-language books, Native-language radio stations, etc. It pretty much comes down to what I can get my hands on I will use. I do not believe that there are any bad materials out there. Some may be more comprehensive, but ultimately the more materials I have the more ways I have to look at a given type of structure or idea.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7148 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 5 20 December 2010 at 3:26am | IP Logged | |||||
This is taken from an exchange that I had with someone:
To stage 1) I should add that I often get a solid two-way dictionary between my target language and English holding between 30,000 and 60,000 entries in total. Depending on the language I may also get even larger two-way dictionaries (and not necessarily those involving English, as I've found very good use for Finnish-Estonian dictionaries or Serbo-Croatian-Hungarian dictionaries), monolingual explanatory dictionaries (especially handy for Estonian) or just other specialized materials (e.g. dictionaries on slang or idioms, handbooks with conjugational tables). 3 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. |
