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How do you actually start a new language? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Maximus Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6691 days ago 417 posts - 427 votes  Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Thai | Message 1 of 22 14 April 2009 at 2:19am | IP Logged |
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This may sound like a stupid and ridiculous question coming from someone who already has several languages down pretty well, but here goes.
How do you actually start a new language? The reason I ask this is because for every language I have learned or attempted to learn in the past I have gone by the same route. Stage one) Linguaphone complete course (main course, the lynchpin of my studies) Maybe pimsleur as suplimentary course for pronunciation and active speaking Some grammar books at the same time. Especially reference grammars (fundamentals) or grammar excercize books Stage two) Systematically working through grammar books (everything beyond fundamentals) (for example JLPT Complete Master series for Japanese) Systematically working throgh dictionaries (in the case of Japanese, Kanji lists) Audio comprehension courses Reading (internet, encyclopedias, novels if possible) Television (movies, anime, et cetera) Self-conversation, Language partners if possible Stage 3) Total immersion in the country where the language is spoken As you can see, stage one is centered around my Linguaphone complete courses. Fortunately for all the languages I have studied before, I have been able to obtain a Linguaphone complete course. For Spanish, Thai, Japanese and Korean there are pretty good quality Linguaphone complete courses available. The ones for Spanish and Japanese are especially well made and high in content density in my opinion. However, I admit that if I had to start a language from scratch without the availability of a Linguaphone complete course, I probably wouldn't know where to start at all. I would be quite lost in all honesty. For language which don't have such specific course available, what must one do? What I want is an integrated and dialogue dense course in its place with accompanying audio. I heared that Asimil is pretty similar to the courses of linguaphone and are available for a wide range of languages. My question is when you start a new language, what course of events take place? Please describe it while paying attention to tthe choice of learning materials. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5803 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 22 14 April 2009 at 8:51am | IP Logged |
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I do a beginners course, then start conversation. I concentrate on conversation until I feel comfortable. It's
oversimplified, but that's essentially how I begin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5953 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 22 14 April 2009 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
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Generally I start well in advance. I read a bit about the grammar and the sound system. Then half-forget it. Then reread it. At some point I learn a handful of phrases to greet, thank, etc the people I know who speak it, and to try out my accent. Then a little bit (or more) later I actually finally get round to actually learning the language itself. I might be imagining it, but it feels like some of the academic reading settles in and lets me start to internalise the logic of the language as I learn it.
Right now, I've got a bucket-load of next-to-nothing languages that I have an unusable foundation in that would allow me to pick up the language properly much much quicker later. Vai, Self-conversation is the first sign of madness. ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6214 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 5 of 22 14 April 2009 at 7:58pm | IP Logged |
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Start an X For Beginners book, working through the exercises, and try to accumulate a basic vocabulary.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5789 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 22 14 April 2009 at 8:09pm | IP Logged |
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Dealing with new languages I always work with textbooks and workbooks. I buy a medium-sized bilingual dictionary already in the beginning. I find it helpful to work through several textbooks and workbooks. Very important is that I buy suitable audio materials because I am always very ambitious to acquire e genuine pronounciation.
To start learning a new language I need: - a textbook for beginners - a workbook for beginners - a medium sized bilingual dictionary - audio CDs in the target language (in the past: audio cassettes) - a mobile CD player (in the past: a walkman for cassettes) Fasulye-Babylonia Edited by Fasulye on 14 April 2009 at 8:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| global_gizzy Senior Member United States maxcollege.blogspot. Joined 5645 days ago 275 posts - 310 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 22 14 April 2009 at 8:30pm | IP Logged |
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I'm pretty knew to self-learning languages. I tried in the past with Spanish but that was a complete failure as I had NO ONE to practice with and when I found out how horrible my pronunciation was, I sort of crashed against a mental wall of "I cant, I cant, I cant" with Spanish.
I started over with French back in December. I started learning from a video game on DS. I tried teaching myself Esperanto. I just dont study enough and I dont like the "random" vocab/grammar acquasition appraoch that the E-USA/ELNA course takes so I'm sort of at a loss for how to teach myself. I'm really busy with my latest Vocational class since January so this is just something I've been pecking away at in my spare time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5707 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 8 of 22 14 April 2009 at 10:42pm | IP Logged |
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You can get language learning DS games?? That's great! I knew I'd eventually find a use for that impulsive purchase of overpriced plastic I made last year...
1 person has voted this message useful |
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