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  Tags: Thanks | HTLAL
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
69 messages over 9 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 1 ... 8 9 Next >>
leosmith
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6552 days ago

2365 posts - 3804 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 1 of 69
05 March 2008 at 11:18pm | IP Logged 
I am approaching 1000 posts, and I've made a promise to myself to retire at that point. This place is addictive,
and it's a great excuse not to study. However, if it weren't so excellent, helpful, interesting and entertaining, I
wouldn't be here. I'd like to thank each and every one of you for tolerating me, schooling me, and keeping it fun.

On the way out the door, I'd like this thread to be a place where you can talk about the member you've found the
most helpful to you. Interpret this any way you want. This is your chance to show thanks and appreciation to the
incredible contributions a favorite member has made.

I ask that you follow these loose guidelines. First, only one member mentioned per post. Second, please tell us
how they helped you, and third, within your post please include the most useful post of your helper, or a link to
your favorite thread.
1 person has voted this message useful



rob
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 6167 days ago

287 posts - 288 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin

 
 Message 2 of 69
06 March 2008 at 3:14am | IP Logged 
I think this is a nice idea for a thread, and I can immediately think of three people I would consider my favourites. However, I'll stick to your guidelines and only mention one, which means that Professor Arguelles clearly stands out. The fact that he has gained his own room shows this, and he has provided many posts which are extremely well considered. I find his post on the Germanic Family to give great insight into his way of thinking, and the fact that he provided us with his personal study charts says more in numbers than words possibly could.
1 person has voted this message useful



leosmith
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6552 days ago

2365 posts - 3804 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 4 of 69
06 March 2008 at 2:23pm | IP Logged 
Many people have helped me a lot, so it's really hard to choose. But probably the one I think about the most is Linguamor. Her relentless insistence on comprehensible input have forever changed how I think of language learning. She was fair but tough, which made her somewhat controversial here. My favorite post of hers contained links to some very interesting papers on leaning languages with tutors:

Linguamor wrote:
leosmith wrote:
Do you use a lot of TPR with your students Linguamor?

I sometimes use something similar to TPR, mostly involving the language learner selecting pictures and objects. A lot of vocabulary can be learned in a short time in this way.
leosmith wrote:

Also, would you really learn a language like this?

If I had access to a tutor well-trained in comprehensible input techniques, then I would choose to learn a language with the help of a tutor using these techniques.


This article discusses how to quickly begin learning a language with a tutor.
http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/gt/kickstrt.htm

This article discusses language learning with a tutor for the non-beginner.
http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/gt/nonbegnr.htm


Linguamor, if you are out there, thanks, and I hope you will return some day soon!
Leo   
3 persons have voted this message useful



vanityx3
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6463 days ago

331 posts - 326 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 5 of 69
06 March 2008 at 2:39pm | IP Logged 
I will have to say I found atamagaiiiiiii very helpful, but perhaps in an unexpected way.
Even though she was very controversial and never helped me directly, she did help me indirectly. I mean this as in reading the L-R system thread and all the posts, I started getting excited about language learning.

The posts made me think and they made me want to learn more and more French.

The thing I think about most is just exposure, the more exposure I can have in French the better, and I think this is a backbone of L-R.
atamagaiiiteikiruiii wrote:

As I wrote above it's all about THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF EXPOSURE IN A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME.
And enjoying the process, of course.

atamagaiiiteikiruiii wrote:

Using a language is a skill, you can’t acquire it without practicing it. If you want to learn how to swim it’s no use to analize the chemical composition of water instead of plunging into it.
Any action, from a simple one, like putting a finger into your nose, to a most complicated one, like acquiring a new language or writing a masterpiece, involves the following:
1. goals (your own or other people’s)
2. tools (your knowledge, creativity, freedom, open-mindedness, TIME /believe me, fractions of a second count/, materials, friends, etc)
3. control (external: somebody else does it; internal: you yourself do it)

It DOES matter who sets your goals or chooses your tools for you.

You all seem to overlook one important factor:
if you don't enjoy (I might say "passionately in love") the texts you're going to "listen-read" to, you won't get much out of it, you're attention will be constantly distracted and you will get bored.

Imagine you’re a biologist and you’ve been crossing frogs with snails and cloning sheep since you were in cradle – it’s your life, you know hell of a lot about it, it makes you happy and you can’t imagine your life without it. One day you discover there’s a wonderful new theory on how sheep can be grown into lions. Unfortunately it’s in the clitty-titty language, and you don’t know it. So you decide to learn the wonderful clitty-titty in a day
vanityx3 wrote:
Alright, so today I listened to the first 7 chapters of Le rêve, which took about 4 hours. I took no breaks and I read along in English.

--
Something strange I've noticed. I'm starting to think in French, but it is just random non-sense. It will be lots of words, but it is like a noun here a verb there, past participle her, no sentense just random words. Maybe this is the first stage of thinking in French subconsciously, I don't know. I've never expierienced this before.


That's exactly what happens in the incubation period. If you go on L-Reading intensively, full sentences will start to pop-up sooner rather than later. The brain is finding its way through the maze and building up a coherent system.


Even though I was inevitably to impatient for L-R, I did retain my enthusiasm and found ways that do work for me and that are fun at the same time. I will always remember that I need to be passionatly in love with the language I'm learning for myself to learn it.


So in a weird way, I found atamagaiisdajkhru very helpful, though only indirectly.





Edited by vanityx3 on 06 March 2008 at 7:18pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



Seth
Diglot
Changed to RedKing’sDream
Senior Member
United States
Joined 7226 days ago

240 posts - 252 votes 
Speaks: English*, Russian
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 6 of 69
06 March 2008 at 3:50pm | IP Logged 
I have enjoyed reading the posts of SolidSnake.

Whether or not I agree with everything he says, he's taken dedication to a new level and has done this whole learning a foreign language thing the right way in my opinion.

I think one of the most important principles he has adhered to is working hard on one language and only on one language at a time. If I could do everything over again this is definitely one thing I would be much more diligent about.

Good luck, leosmith. I agree that is far too easy to waste a lot of quality free time reading posts on this website instead of studying.


Edited by Seth on 06 March 2008 at 3:53pm

1 person has voted this message useful



leosmith
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6552 days ago

2365 posts - 3804 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 7 of 69
06 March 2008 at 4:04pm | IP Logged 
Two quick comments. I'd like this to be more than just a praise thread - I'd like people to be able to read examples of these helpful folks, perhapse getting inspired themselves. So please don't forget to include a favorite quote or link that helped you. Feel free to update your posts to include these.

Also, I asked that we mention only one helper per post because I think it's more classy to devote a whole post to a single person. After all, they deserve it. But using seperate posts, feel free to post about as many people as you want, even if they've already been mentioned.


1 person has voted this message useful



Ra
Diglot
Newbie
Norway
Joined 6141 days ago

14 posts - 19 votes
Speaks: Norwegian*, English
Studies: German, French

 
 Message 8 of 69
06 March 2008 at 5:11pm | IP Logged 
Iversen without a doubt. His posts are really informative, and his writing style makes them a pleasure to read. The list of languages he know makes him sort of an inspiration as well.


His first post in this thread is a good example.


1 person has voted this message useful



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