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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5449 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 12 06 August 2010 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Okay, I'm going to give you the method I use for learning languages (in this case German) and I'd like your
opinion on it. I still have summer holidays, so I have more time to focus on German before I start university this fall. One hour per day learning ten new words (I'm a slow learner) One half-hour per day reading German (Der Spiegel, Focus, book etc) One half-hour per day listening to German radio (B5 Aktuell) One half-hour per day watching euronews auf Deutsch So what do you think of my method? That's the order I usually do these activities too by the way. I know an hour to learn ten words may seem like forever, but that's how long it takes the words to 'stick'. I write out the words and make flashcards out of them too. It seems quite basic, but it seems to work okay. I probably just need more practice writing in German too, right? Maybe I should get a German penpal or write a blog in German. Danke, Brian 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5303 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 2 of 12 06 August 2010 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Being a slow learner is ok, of course, but in this case I find this extreme. I think you do something wrong. At First: Repetition is your friend, and inevitable. Forgetting is absolutely natural, everybody forgets things (singularities we can neglect for this purpose), and by repetition we tell our brain that we want something to stick. I consider myself a good learner, and I forget tons of things. (But when I repeat or "relearn" them, things are much faster than the first time I learned them. You can see this, when many people write, that their learning at school was for nothing, and that they learn things much faster and better now with method "xy". Well, actually they just had not really forgotten what they had learned.) Don't worry about it, I would say, don't aim for instantaneous perfection, it is quite unnatural, repetition does the trick. Try to get this one hour down to 10 minutes of real, but not too hard concentration. Already in these 10 minutes you can do something like five to ten repetitions of all the words, try to speed up and do more repetitions instead of trying to force the words into your memory in a single step. I think this can really pay off, and I am sure that it is possible for you. Please try it for a week and then decide yourself, if you are really slow (what is perfectly fine) or do it the wrong way. Addition: Why not put the euronews before the pure radio, from easier to harder? And if you really want to spend the hour for words, then split it up in quarters, at the beginning and as review after each of the other activities. Edited by lingoleng on 06 August 2010 at 5:45pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 3 of 12 06 August 2010 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The words is the weakest point here.
Why are you learning these words? The reason it's taking you so long is that you can't really predict what words you're going to need. So you're studying these words, and then you've still got to learn whatever words come up in the news. Better to start with the online newspapers and extract new words from there. These will likely appear on the radio and TV news, and hopefully in follow-ups to the original story later in the week. Your brain doesn't like learning words it has no use for, so don't force it. Learn the words you need. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| michaelmichael Senior Member Canada Joined 5262 days ago 167 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 4 of 12 06 August 2010 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Are you putting the words into anki ? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5449 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 12 06 August 2010 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
No, I make regular paper ones, which are a lot more awkward I guess. I tried using Anki once, and due to my terrible IT skills gave up on it. I should try it again though, now that I probably need it more than ever. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5449 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 6 of 12 06 August 2010 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, at the the moment I'm using the McGraw's German vocabulary book, which gives you thousands of words in different categories (today I learned rarer words like ''der Kronleuchter'' etc). Would it be better to pick out words from der Spiegel etc and make a list? Will it make a difference to my learning ability? I'll definitely try it tomorrow. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| michaelmichael Senior Member Canada Joined 5262 days ago 167 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 7 of 12 07 August 2010 at 12:31am | IP Logged | |||||
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0dI2VyLDWw&feature=PlayList& p=4221D2E6B440D79B&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1 there are 7 videos. I only watched 4. It will take about 20 minutes to watch it. If you follow the videos, you should have no problem. The interface is very intuitive and well thought out, I am very tempted to even say idiot proof. the one thing I didn't learn from the videos but rather from the forum, was http://swac-collections.org/index.php . You just drag the mp3 sounds into the box, and voilà, you have audio with your flash card . I also have http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ , which is a little less convenient, to record the sounds that the other site doesn't have. I know for sure that anki will be a much better method than the one you are using. Space repetition is superior to cramming words for an hour and then never looking at them again. If after the videos, you still don't like anki, I would recommend the gold list method. http://www.usenetposts.com/goldlist.htm . Edited by michaelmichael on 07 August 2010 at 3:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jerrypettit Groupie United States Joined 6031 days ago 79 posts - 103 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 12 07 August 2010 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You REALLY need to use Anki (I use Supermemo). I think you would double your learning
rate and it's less tedious (to me). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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