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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5266 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 9 of 170 05 October 2014 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | ||
My 8th grade science teacher once taught us about molecules always being in motion. He said that if a person had his/her hand on a desk for a long enough time, eventually the molecules would line up in just the right way for that person's hand to go through the desktop. Of course, this could take several millennia or eons to happen.
There are more efficient ways to learn as an adult. We can take advantage of all that we know, and have learned how, to do as an adult. A basic textbook, a phrasebook, a dictionary, a grammar, parallel texts and transcripts help to make the incomprehensible, comprehensible in a much more efficient way than "waiting for the molecules to line up just right". Combine these materials with TV, or audio and you're on to a winner. Or, hey, just keep doing what you're doing and expect a different result, maybe the molecules will line up just right! Edited by iguanamon on 05 October 2014 at 4:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Michel1020 Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5021 days ago 365 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch | Message 10 of 170 05 October 2014 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | ||
For one thing we all manage to be quite fluent in our native language before we even know grammar exist. In my opinion - grammar is not the thing to start with in any language and more so not in language with exotic script (exotic to what you know). 72 hours of listening to Michel Thomas or other similar stuff is not a bad idea - of course not 72 hours in a raw. Whatever your method - refusing any help outside of it, would be quite stupid - but the opener says he knows this video only is not the best one. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4148 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 11 of 170 05 October 2014 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | ||
We have several years of passive input before uttering our first words, often a few more years before anyone outside of our immediate family can understand us, and then sometimes a few more years of dodgy grammar. We also have patient, dedicated teachers who repeat ad nauseam for us, delight in any attempts we make to communicate, and simplify their language when we don't understand. Our brains are wired for repetition. We want to watch the same cartoon 45 times and read the same book 3 times a day for a month - not because we know logically that it will help us acquire language, but because we're wired to enjoy it. You can't compare the way that infants acquire language with the way that adults learn languages! 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6586 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 12 of 170 05 October 2014 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm afraid I'm tending to agree with the majority here. As a learning method, this will be extremely inefficient, bordering on useless, and as an experiment it will not bring any new knowledge. Watching movies is an amazing, powerful and fun way of learning a language that I recommend wholeheartedly. It can take you from beginner to intermediate with tons of fun along the way, but it will take thousands of hours to get you from zero to beginner.
So consider taking our advice. There are many seasoned language learners here, and we are all saying this is a bad idea. However, go through an Assimil course or get to the ChinesePod Intermediate level and then start watching, and it's a great idea. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4258 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 13 of 170 05 October 2014 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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For whatever it's worth, I spent 1000s of hours watching films in many different languages over several years before I started studying languages, and specifically Japanese media for over a decade since I was a teenager. All I think I picked up was several single word exclamations.
Of course I wasn't trying to learn any of it, so it's not quite the same as if I was actively trying to figure things out. I just mention this to emphasize that the language isn't going to just soak in automatically. I think you'll be able to know very quickly if your method is working or not. If you're not actively and continuously figuring out new words while watching, it's not working. Edited by YnEoS on 05 October 2014 at 3:35pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4642 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 14 of 170 05 October 2014 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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This experiment has already been performed many, many times, the technical term for the
guinea pigs is "Kung Fu buffs". The results are not promising. Similar results have been shown for other languages, see "Anime buffs", "Bollywood buffs" and "European art house buffs". Edited by AlexTG on 05 October 2014 at 4:03pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5536 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 170 05 October 2014 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is a very enjoyable and effective method starting around B1. But I've never heard of anybody starting from zero and succeeding.
Based on first-hand experience with Buffy, I know that's it's possible to turn 40% comprehension into 95+% comprehension just by sitting on the couch and watching TV. This is just Krashen's theory of i+1 input in action. And of course, if you can't get "i+1" input, there are ways to bridge the gap, as I mentioned in the cheating and consolidating thread. But the gap between "zero comprehension" and "native children's TV" is too big to bridge easily. Even shows like Sesame Street and Caillou assume very well-developed language skills. Shows like Teletubbies might work—they're aimed at a far younger demographic—but there's very little verbal input per hour. Of course, there's also French in Action and Destinos, which try to produce video that can be understood from the very beginning. But I'm not sure they actually have enough hours to get you all the way to native TV without some sort of supplementation. I think the best approach for adults who want to learn extensively is to use parallel L1 text, L2 text and L2 audio, and use that to bootstrap understanding. Good implementations of this idea include Assimil, L/R (particularly in a semi-related language) and subs2srs. When evaluating extensive methods, I would suggest asking yourself two questions: 1. Can I make this input at least semi-comprehensible? 2. Can I enjoy this process? If you answer "Yes" to both, it will probably work. If you answer "No" to (2), you'd better be prepared to either burn your ships, or to provide extraordinary quantities of will-power. If the answer to (1) is "No", well, I've heard of multiple attempts, none of them successful. If you do end up succeeding, I'd love to learn what you did differently. Edited by emk on 05 October 2014 at 5:31pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5770 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 16 of 170 05 October 2014 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | ||
... I learnt to do two or three toddler-like mispronunciations of Mandarin words from watching an episode of the Teletubbies. (Then again, my aim was not to learn anything, but to laugh with my friend at how stupid we were watching Teletubbies in Mandarin in the middle of the night, so I don't know if that counts.) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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