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DIY Corpus for learning a language | ||
Tags: Learning Technique/Method | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5422 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 9 of 18 24 December 2010 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I should point out that the demo for Michel Thomas French at the site given by Cainntear does not include any French at all. It's Michel Thomas talking about the ground rules. Also be forewarned that Michel Thomas has a strong Polish accent in his French (and English).
I tend to agree with Arekkusu. A basic grammar book, a good dictionary and some DVDs with subtitles will do the trick. There are a ton of books and courses out there. I can't vouch for any of them, but you could take a class somewhere if you need a structured approach. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 10 of 18 24 December 2010 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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We tend to waste a lot of time either learning useless stuff or trying to figure out what's actually useful. This is probably one of the most common mistakes of people who end up never learning the language they spent so much time working on.
Save yourself the hassle; here's what's useful: 1) whatever comes out frequently in the natural language you are exposed to, and 2) whatever you need to express yourself in real life situations. Expose yourself to natural language and spend some time thinking about your communication needs (the words you need, the things you want to say, etc.) and you'll progress swiftly. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| carlonove Senior Member United States Joined 5978 days ago 145 posts - 253 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 11 of 18 24 December 2010 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think if you're interested in studying vocabulary from lists there's no question using a "DIY corpus" is going to be beneficial. Even if you don't use it for straight up memorization, you can still take a list generated from a Harry Potter text and create a custom dictionary using Google Translate. Also, the ability to pull up all of the sentences containing a given word or phrase is great, even if it's only to reinforce the syntax or definition of a new or unfamiliar word "in context".
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| RedBeard Senior Member United States atariage.com Joined 6094 days ago 126 posts - 182 votes Speaks: Ancient Greek* Studies: French, German | Message 12 of 18 24 December 2010 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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One thing that is mentioned early in Loom of Language is: remember that fluency/skill in reading is not the same as fluency/skill in speaking. If your goal is light reading in the target language then maybe your word list will work out perfectly. If your goal is active speaking in your daily life, then television, radio and movies might be a much better choice.
So, a person studying English because they want to read Twain, Lewis, or even Tolkein does not need to know the slight difference between "Hey, what's up?" and "Hello." However, the person who wants to watch Hollywood movies or speak English daily should know such intricacies. My personal example - I don't do any online chatting and there is little chance of getting to speak in German in my daily life. (Almost no chance of practicing Esperanto...) So I know that reading is what I should concentrate on. If my word list were to contain Atari /|\ terms and information -- well, so much the better! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cazgram Senior Member United States Joined 5649 days ago 34 posts - 45 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 13 of 18 24 December 2010 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, great thoughts everyone.
@lingoleng You're probably right about the quality of professional corpora. I spent quite a while deleting things I thought were the same word, only to realize that using them in different contexts changed the meaning and had to start over. Like Cainntear said, reinventing the wheel. I still might eventually try the Frequency Dictionary you mentioned. @Arekkusu I spent most of yesterday fiddling around with the corpus I'd built, trying to figure out a way to use it. By around 8pm, I realized I'd wasted the entire day, so I opened up Le Petit Prince and started trying to read it, copying words down to a wordlist that I didn't know. I only spent about two hours on it, but felt just reading it accelerated my mind to a different level. I really love playing around with approaches/techniques/etc. but I agree with everyone that using DIY frequency lists might not be the best use of time. I might pick this idea up later, once I'm further in the language, but for now I think it's a consensus that it will hurt more than help. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 14 of 18 24 December 2010 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
And I don't even think you need to commit words to a list -- just scribble down new words as you come across them. If you read the book frequently enough, you will inevitably learn the words that you've scribbled down several times. 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 15 of 18 27 December 2010 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ermm... what? It's an hour-long French lesson. It starts with the instructions, as you would expect.... 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 16 of 18 28 December 2010 at 1:21am | IP Logged | |||||
I hate to give the wrong information. So I went back to the Michel Thomas demo site and again listened to the Listen now for free French Audion Clip, and it did not contain a single word of French. The other language links worked quite well (I didn't try them all I'll admit). Maybe other people will have better results. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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