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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| ic32987 Groupie United States Joined 6348 days ago 50 posts - 54 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 1 of 15 18 July 2009 at 7:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello all,
I was reading something on learning Japanese earlier (something about a guy that became proficient in 18 months), and he said that learning sentences and NOT individual vocabulary words is the way to go. I've always primarily learned/memorized vocabulary words, and have always preferred dialogue based courses...but never really spent time memorizing and reciting the actual sentences. Has this perhaps been one of my mistakes, and a reason for not progressing in my target language? How are you learning sentences? Constructing your own with the vocab words you learn, and then having your tutor/language partner correct them? Memorizing textbook dialogues until they're second nature to speak? Or just memorizing sentences and the meaning, but not each individual word? And lastly, isn't it an obstacle if you memorize a sentence but don't understand the grammar constructs and the underlying syntax? Jared 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5743 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 15 18 July 2009 at 8:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Jared, aaaall of the questions you ask have been addressed and answered in great detail on the AJATT (all japanese all the time) homepage. If you have questions on his method, why don't you go and read a little more there, instead of asking other people to baby feed the answers to you? Please?
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| ic32987 Groupie United States Joined 6348 days ago 50 posts - 54 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 3 of 15 18 July 2009 at 9:02am | IP Logged | ||
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Because I don't study Japanese and so I'm not familiar with the resources, using Google I ended up on various Japanese forums though not the one you listed, and never quite refound what I was looking for (as I had originally followed a random link). Seeing as I didn't know the name of the author nor the website that I had read this technique from, I ended up wading through pages and pages of 'how to memorize kanji / kana' threads on other forums...so it made sense to ask here...after searching THIS website.
And who says I don't want a more general take on sentence memorization? A technique which works well with Japanese may not work well with Arabic, for instance. So please, let's not argue. I searched. Thanks for the AJATT resource, though. Edited by ic32987 on 18 July 2009 at 9:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6726 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 4 of 15 18 July 2009 at 9:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Jared
I'm not sure how other people approach vocabulary learning, but for me, I use both sentences AND individual words. Whenever I learn a sentence, I ensure that I know each individual word and understand the grammar used in it before I enter it into my SRS. I don't learn the sentences for the purpose of being able to repeat them word for word in a conversation, but more to familiarise myself with the sentence structuring and grammar. In my own opinion, and from my own learning experiences, it's one thing to learn a table of suffixes and their meanings. It's a whole new ball game to be able to apply them effortlessly and unconsciously into a sentence. I hope that using sentences as a learning tool will aid me to apply the grammar & structure quickly and smoothly when I am in conversation. (And thus far, it has proven to be very helpful). Just in case that doesn't make sense, I will give an example (a very simple one, but I hope it makes my point clear). If I have a grammatical and structural understanding of how to say, "How do you do that?" for example, it will be much easier later on for me to create "How do you make that?" or "How do you say that?"... I'll also be familiar with the suffixes used to indicate "you" in it's appropriate form, which can be applied once again in a completely different sentence - however, because I am now familiar with it, it will take far less effort to apply it. I will have the familiarity of intonation to use when asking a question also. I hope that makes sense! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6019 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 5 of 15 18 July 2009 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||
I would say it is, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be using sentences -- it just means that you should use sentences at your level of grammatical understanding. Knowing a word is not just knowing how to spell it, but also knowing how to use it. For a simple (and seemingly trivial) example, take the Spanish word hambre, the Italian word fame and the French word faim, all of which are equivalent to the English word hunger. Knowing this does not mean that a Spanish, Italian or French person knows how to use the word hunger, because they would be likely to say "I have hunger" instead of "I am hungry". Words are interrelated -- certain words go with certain other words, and not with others. Knowing these relations is integral to knowing the word. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5743 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 15 18 July 2009 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm sorry, it honestly didn't occur to me that you read about Khatzumoto (the 18 months Japanese guy) but didn't know about his homepage. Anyway, the answers *are* on his page and I hope it'll be as helpful to you as it is for me (who isn't studying Japanese either) :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ashley_Victrola Senior Member United States Joined 5714 days ago 416 posts - 429 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Romanian | Message 7 of 15 18 July 2009 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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OP might just not have felt like looking through his page that much. It's a lot of info.
I looked on the AJATT website and I thought using sentences made a lot of sense because I do like seeing words in context. That said, I also will continue using words. They two methods help you to do two different things. One will improve vocabulary, the other will improve grammar. In my case the words (and the words around them sometimes) change when they are plural and I like doing vocab lists so I know which plural ending each noun has. So do both. Different benefits to each. As for finding sentences: online newspapers. Edited by Ashley_Victrola on 18 July 2009 at 5:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Yukamina Senior Member Canada Joined 6272 days ago 281 posts - 332 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean, French | Message 8 of 15 19 July 2009 at 12:57am | IP Logged | ||
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You aren't supposed to memorize the sentences, just understand them. You can use a flash card program like Anki or Mnemosyne to review. These programs will automatically schedule reviews for the time that is best for long term memory(spaced repetition system = SRS)
You use authentic sentences in your target language, not one's you've written yourself. If you can't understand a sentence after looking up unknown words and grammar, you shouldn't use it. If you haven't found it yet, this is the AJATT site http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/all-japanese-all-t he-time-ajatt-how-to-learn-japanese-on-your-own-having-fun-a nd-to-fluency You'll have to remove any spaces in the url for it to work. Edited by Yukamina on 19 July 2009 at 12:58am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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