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An R-L-R Experiment for Norwegian | ||
Tags: Listening-Reading (L-R) | Norwegian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5409 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 1 of 9 31 March 2011 at 5:59pm | IP Logged |
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Last night I was reading through some theads on L-R again and came across a thread regarding R-L-R and thought it an interesting thing to possibly try out.
I've just read through the first three chapters of the first Harry Potter book in Norwegian whilst listening to the English audio book (Stephen Fry version) and felt fairly comfortable doing it and noticed that I was starting to pick up quite a few words and with far more speed than the usual way of L-Ring. I'm going to spend the next few days spending as much time as possible doing this and see where it takes me. I am currently recovering from glandular fever (known as mono in the US I think) and have the next couple of weeks off due to the Easter break so have plenty of time to try this out. I will also be conducting some very intense Assimil sessions for French during April and will be logging that in a different thread. First of all, I am aware of some of the limitations of R-L-R, namely pronunciation, however with Norwegian I am good at pronouncing things correctly seeing as I have been visiting the country every year for usually a month at a time since I was a baby as my mother is Norwegian. In fact my very first word was actually the Norwegian word for biscuits/cookies, "kjeks". I had my priorities right back then ;). My knowledge of grammar and vocabulary is still fairly poor but when I do say something I sound like I am far more fluent than I actually am and I am able to read things out loud accurately the vast majority of the time, so with that in mind I thought I might give R-L-R a try. Assuming I do end up getting a lot out of it, I will later read through the books in Norwegian with the Norwegian audio and do some shadowing to ensure I attain correct pronunciation. I'll make an update at the end of each daily session and write a little about what progress I feel I have made. I am quite optimistic for this and hope I can get near a stage of natural reading after about 30 - 40 hours. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5409 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 2 of 9 01 April 2011 at 2:36am | IP Logged |
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Right, so that is my first day done.
I've R-L-R'd the first eight chapters of the first Harry Potter book which has taken approximately 4.5 to 5 hours and have been noticing some improvements to my vocabulary and definitely to my reading speed which is a bit of a no brainer I suppose. I take about a 10 minute break after each chapter to give my eyes a rest as I need to focus my attention very well. Thankfully I have not found any problem with finding myself just listening to the audio and having to frequently try and find my place. From about chapter 6 I slowed the audio down in Windows Media Player by 40% as I found the narration would go at quite a speed not allowing me much time to look at the sentences and this certainly seems to have been of some benefit. I will try and spend at least the same amount of time on this tomorrow. I am quite pleased at the results so far and hope that the further I go there will be an exponential increase in vocabulary acquisition. Edited by jazzboy.bebop on 01 April 2011 at 2:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tbone Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4982 days ago 92 posts - 132 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 3 of 9 01 April 2011 at 6:11pm | IP Logged |
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This will be interesting to follow. I just started L-R yesterday for Spanish (stage 3 since I'm familiar with Spanish).
I'm wondering if at some point it would be good to do a round of R-L-R to help the brain make all the connections faster. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5409 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 4 of 9 02 April 2011 at 5:33am | IP Logged |
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This is now my second attempt at writing today's report since Vista decided on its own that it was okay to log off and install updates without any kind of prompt asking if I wanted to allow it to do so, destroying a post I spent 30 minutes writing. Thanks Microsoft, I admire your programmers faultless reasoning in allowing your wonderful operating system autonomy in this respect...
Today I completed a further seven chapters with this method taking four hours and twenty minutes, chalking up a total of roughly nine hours. I am quite impressed with the progress I have made with this method so far. I am continuing to learn more and more vocabulary but importantly the rate of acquisition is increasing too which makes it even more exciting for me. I find the method a very comfortable one too and can happily spend hours a day doing it, even now when I have not fully recovered yet and am quite tired throughout the day. I think there is one big advantage that R-L-R has over L-R and that is that you get to spend more focused time with the L2 content. Assuming you are reading in a familiar alphabet or with characters you are very familiar with, you can usually read faster than the narrator in an audiobook will speak. This allows you more time to focus and analyse the L2 content and it seems less transient than just listening to the content. I find the words easier to remember seeing them on paper rather than by hearing them and I expect this applies to most people. You have the ability to skim read a sentence first and weed out words and clauses you can already fully understand and draw your attention to ones you are not sure of, something you can't really do when listening to your L2 since you have to go at the speed of the audio. This also helps when you get sentences with multiple clauses as translations will often shuffle these around so you can better appreciate their placement and better focus your attention. To be honest I am somewhat surprised at the relatively negative reaction to this method that I saw in the thread devoted to R-L-R. I think it could be a very useful supplemental method for most people to help improve their reading comprehension, vocabulary acquisition and help identifying various aspects of grammar. Yes, it doesn't help your pronunciation or listening but why is that such a problem? I don't think many people solely use one method for learning a language anyway. I think that when I reach a stage of being able to understand almost everything without the L1 audio I will read through the books again but with the L2 audio instead to improve listening ability and shadow it to improve pronunciation. Then later I could go through the L1 version of the book if I wanted to and translate into L2 like in the final stage of the L-R method. I wouldn't think this perhaps the best method to start of with though as you should at least have a good idea as to the pronunciation of what you are reading first and knowing the basics will help things move along much faster since you can move your focus to words you don't yet understand. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's session where I will be moving on to the second book. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5325 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 9 02 April 2011 at 12:44pm | IP Logged |
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Hi, nice to see someone learning Norwegian! I am of the general opinion that every method that works for you, is a good method, regardless of what other people think of it. And finding something you can bear to do for hours is always a very good thing. Good luck! I'll keep an eye on your progress, and if you need any help, just let me know!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5409 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 6 of 9 02 April 2011 at 1:47pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks a lot, Solfrid. I might take you up on that sometime. :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5409 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 7 of 9 03 April 2011 at 1:33am | IP Logged |
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Today has been quite a light day for using this method due to tiredness and laptop trouble.
Managed to do 2 and a half hours giving a total of 11 and a half hours, finishing the last two chapters of the first book and the first chapter of book three. Decided to skip book two as I had used it not long ago for a little normal L-R experiment and want to enjoy rediscovering the stories of the other books. It is not like I am lacking material. Progress has been a little slower today due to my tiredness but I'm steadily improving my ability to read. Having an early night tonight (if you can call half 12 early) and hope I can do considerably more tomorrow. I've noticed I've started having random Norwegian words and phrases pop into my mind throughout the day though which is a good sign. My brain is creaking away trying to process it all. Sov godt alle sammen. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| janalisa Triglot Senior Member France janafadness.com/blog Joined 6881 days ago 284 posts - 466 votes Speaks: English*, French, Japanese Studies: Russian, Norwegian | Message 8 of 9 03 April 2011 at 6:10am | IP Logged |
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This sounds like a really interesting method. I might try it with Spanish!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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