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Selling point of programs/techniques? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| crafedog Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5819 days ago 166 posts - 337 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean, Tok Pisin, French | Message 1 of 4 13 March 2011 at 7:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hello everyone
A topic I've been interested in starting for a little while now is whether or not you've had a personal experience with a program/technique that kind of 'sold you on it'. You were using a program/technique and one day you realised how effective it had been (warning, huge initial post). This can be about either programs or techniques but let's try to keep it away from which programs/techniques haven't helped and you regret doing etc and just talk about the ones that have definitely helped you. The Professor's Shadowing Technique: I used this with Korean for about 2-3 weeks. Not long after doing it, both my Korean teacher and my Korean friend told me that my speaking had improved dramatically. As you can imagine, I was very pleased. It also made me more sensitive to the differences in native speech and learner speech (prosody etc.) which is something interesting to pay attention to. Michel Thomas - I studied Spanish in my final year of university, like a kind of extra course. It was an 'intensive initial Spanish course' which was basically teacher talk for a brief and rushed course. I took it for a year, did some quite pointless exams, memorised some lists etc and went to Spain as part of the final part of the course. I couldn't get out a simple sentence and could barely respond to anything I heard. I was placed in the lowest class in my group. My group had been studying Spanish exclusively whereas I had done a full course and Spanish as an extra course which was difficult but not to the extent that I should be so far behind the others. Also for many people in the group, this was their 2nd language they'd studied and it was only my 1st but still it was a pretty poor achievement considering I had been studying it for a year or so. One of my friends, in the space of a short time, had improved his Spanish massively and had even travelled through Peru for a few months. He used to be the same level as everyone else. I asked him how he did it and he told me about Michel Thomas. He lent me the CD and honestly I learnt more/gained a greater ability from the 12 hour CDs than I did with my entire year long university course. Metalanguage (pluperfect, preterite etc) had been killing my language ability/tests/understanding but MT threw all of that out the window and just taught me how to speak the damn thing. Assimil - Like many on this forum I decided to get Assimil due to the Professor's and other's praise of the course. Sadly like others on this forum I ignored everything that I was supposed to do in the course/everything that had been recommended and did my own thing. Couldn't figure out why it was so popular so I ignored it for a while. Months later I decided to restart learning Spanish but I needed something that wouldn't take much time/was stress-free so I could continue studying Korean as well. This time I decided to read what I was supposed to do and I also read fanatic's posts about Assimil and how he did it. It was about as early as lesson 23 where I realised how much doing Assimil properly had helped. Something about Spanish. It has a personal 'a' so when you mention someone in a sentence ("I want to see Peter") you need to indicate it's a person by using 'a' ("Quiero ver a Peter", not "Quiero ver Peter"). It had been such a long time since I had studied Spanish that I had completely forgotten this but it's one of the earliest things that Assimil teaches/shows. I randomly found a Spanish book that I had been using years ago when I was actively studying Spanish and was at a reasonable level. I opened it up to a random page and saw one of my answers. It looked wrong. I appeared, to me, to be missing the 'a' in the answer. I checked in the back of the book and I was right. I had missed it. In such a short time, Assimil had improved my accuracy and ability to remember that particular part of Spanish. Final one. 10,000 Sentences: In brief, the 10,000 sentences method (Antimoon, Ajatt) claims that with massive exposure to the language, using a Flashcard program/sentences intended for natives, you will eventually develop a 'feel' for the language in that you will instinctively know when something is right or wrong in the same way you do with your native language. I had been doing this with Korean for a little while when one day I was reading a blog by someone who had been learning Korean intensely for quite a while. I looked at his bilingual post and one part of it felt wrong. It stuck out like a glowing red light. In the same way you'd know that "Did you ate it?" feels wrong, but maybe you grammatically don't know why, it just didn't seem right. I didn't know the grammar behind the structure but I'd never seen it used like that, not once and it felt 'off'. I asked my Korean friend what he thought of it and he said it was totally wrong as well. We knew what he was trying to say in Korean but that wasn't the right way to do it. -- Sorry about the huge post everybody but I wanted to praise the above programs/techniques and I was also curious to see if anyone else had had any similar experiences like these. Edited by crafedog on 13 March 2011 at 7:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5299 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 2 of 4 13 March 2011 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Many people tell about a similar experience: They took lessons for some years, learned nothing, (what they mean is they had not become fluent speakers,) and then comes method xy and everything is so easy and effective. Method xy is so effective for one reason only: There is a sufficient base already, and after some repetition and activation things fall in place. I think it is really important to say this, as a matter of fact the first lessons were not for nothing at all, they just did not focus on fluency, they gave you a base for it.
Again I don't see why this is related to Assimil: Going through your old notes or course books would inevitably have had the same refreshing effect. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| crafedog Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5819 days ago 166 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean, Tok Pisin, French | Message 3 of 4 13 March 2011 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I won't deny that my "base" in the language helped (learning how to conjugate the verbs, some vocab) but the ability to use the language came from the MT course. I've used other MT language courses without any 'base' in the target language whatsoever and have achieved a similar level of capability from them.
I don't mean to be rude or anything but did you misread my post? It wasn't a "refreshing effect" as I didn't manage to get it right the first time with my old notes or course books. I had failed to learn it originally hence why I made the mistake that time and many other times before that. It was only learning through Assimil that I had managed to finally learn the personal 'a'. That wasn't an act of 'refreshment' but an act of completely new learning where previous methods had failed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5299 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 4 of 4 13 March 2011 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I understand now, thank you. Some one year university course gave you nothing but useless stuff like conjugations and some vocab, Michael Thomas did a better job by teaching you how to speak, but did not succeed in explaining personal objects (Cainntear won't love to read this), while several attempts to do Assimil the wrong way failed and left room for at least one other try up to lesson 23 with the instructions of Fanatic, these were successful in so far as they actually taught you to put an a before persons. I think I begin to understand why people recommend the use of many different "methods", which nevertheless, according to what you say, work without any interaction or mutual reenforcement. Somehow surprising, but I am open minded. Edited by lingoleng on 13 March 2011 at 7:04pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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