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Techniques Without Outside Resources | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| feanarosurion Senior Member Canada Joined 5272 days ago 217 posts - 316 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Norwegian | Message 1 of 7 02 November 2010 at 6:17pm | IP Logged |
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I'm looking for some mental learning techniques that I can utilize without any outside resources. As in, I want something that I can make use of without using a phone, pen, paper, flashcards, etc. The reason I ask this is I have a job right now that essentially involves me standing around doing nothing for long periods of time. I mean, not nothing exactly, but I have to man the post I'm assigned and that can mean doing very little for long periods of time. So, I'm looking for some mental exercises that I can do without any outside resources. Maybe I can have a single piece of paper with me. I could maybe get away with that. But I'm looking for exercises that go a little bit beyond drilling the months, or counting to 1000 (which I have done). I'm open to any ideas at this point. Again, I might be able to bring a single piece of paper with me in my pocket. All I'm looking for is some mental exercises. Thanks in advance for any assistence. Oh, and for clarification, this is for use with Finnish.
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| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5181 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 2 of 7 02 November 2010 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
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How about trying to remember a poem or a song or just a dialogue. You could have it written on a piece of paper and only look at it if you get stuck. Edited by Andrew C on 02 November 2010 at 6:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6002 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 3 of 7 02 November 2010 at 6:30pm | IP Logged |
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Do you have to be silent? Are there other people around?
You can pick a couple of sounds/parts of sounds and practice them. When I wanted to learn Hindi, I would do two sets of pronunciation exercises walking to and from work. 1) Aspiration practice. This was a matter of saying the aspirated sound then the unaspirated sound again and again. 2) Tongue stretches. Sounds in Hindi come from parts of the mouth my tongue didn't reach, so I did some muscle stretches, much like dancers, climbers and various other sportsmen do to make their limbs bend further. What I did was make "t" sounds with the tip of my tongue, moving it backwards and forwards in my mouth. I started with an English T then walked it down my front teeth and out, then walked it back as far as it would go. Slowly, over a couple of weeks, it went further and further, without any strain or pain, until I could pronounce retroflex consonants (and it goes further now than I need for Hindi. Maybe you could memorise a few nursery rhymes and run over them in your head. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5426 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 4 of 7 02 November 2010 at 6:40pm | IP Logged |
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Learn texts by heart. Take a sheet of paper with you that contains only the first character of each word as a reminder. You can get a lot of text on one sheet that way. Here is a webapp that works at least for Latin alphabets:
http://www.downes.ca/memorization.htm Then - recall the text using your sheet - change the tenses of the sentences - change active to passive voice and vice versa - change the gender of the persons or objects (don't know whether this matters in Finnish) - change quotes from direct to indirect speech and vice versa - ... 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5164 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 5 of 7 03 November 2010 at 12:18pm | IP Logged |
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All sounds good advice to me. It's very hard to remember things from scratch when you are doing a job, but if worked at can make a tedious time at work pass with profit.
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5372 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 6 of 7 03 November 2010 at 3:32pm | IP Logged |
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You need to do role-playing.
Imagine situations and conversations you'd have with people. This will very quickly show you what words you need and which you are missing. You have the luxury of time, so repeat the sentences you create over and over and build fluency. Bring a small notebook and a small pen and stuff 'em in your pocket. Use them to write down anything you need to look up when you get back home, or during your breaks, if you have any. If you find this challenging, force yourself to think in Finnish only during increasingly longer periods of time scattered throughout the day. *I don't know what level you are at, so this may not be as useful if you are a complete beginner, but I still think you can pull it off. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5684 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 7 of 7 03 November 2010 at 11:25pm | IP Logged |
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I assume you can't bring along an mp3 player and listen to audio, maybe with only one earbud in if you need to be listening to what's going on around you... because if you can, that would be my first recommendation.
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