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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 49 of 170 20 October 2014 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
depends on how traditional is traditional, haha. I think most of us agree that choosing the materials is just the first step and the techniques matter much more. Many of these techniques can be used with easy native materials/dictionaries/translations. Edited by Serpent on 20 October 2014 at 7:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 50 of 170 21 October 2014 at 7:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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I admire those people who have written detailed posts about the subject here. I really can't be bothered. Starting
with the title of the thread, I believe the whole thing boils down to the following question: Can a language learner, either the experienced professional or the beginner, learn Mandarin passively just by exclusively watching authentic videos without translation for 30 minutes a day? In my mind, the answer is clearly: NO. End of story. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5308 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 51 of 170 21 October 2014 at 7:07am | IP Logged | |||||
I admire both the people who respond to this 30-minute thing, and those who respond to that 300-word thing. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4533 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 52 of 170 21 October 2014 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
Except that he is watching with English subtitles, so it's not a pure experiment (not that I am sure what a pure experiment would mean anyway). Edited by patrickwilken on 21 October 2014 at 2:07pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 53 of 170 21 October 2014 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
I find it interesting that he's so close to where I'd personally place the dividing line between possible and hopeless. If he tried listening to Mandarin news radio covering local events in China, I'd expect the chance of success to be zero. If did some Assimil lessons, or made MCD cards, or messed around with subs2srs, I'd expect his chance of success to go up quickly. But he's an experienced language learner, watching kid's TV, with and without English subtitles—and he has enough dedication to stick with it for a year. It seems plausible that he might eventually succeed. I mean, thanks to the pictures, and the subtitles, and the huge amount of time available, there's got to be some "i+1" input in there somewhere. I keep mentioning subs2srs in this thread because it does a few things which might help: 1. It presents the audio with bilingual subtitles. 2. It provides efficient repetition. 3. It creates "earworms". You know how you can often sing the lyrics of a song, and even get the intonation mostly correct? Out of all the intensive listening tools I've tried, subs2srs allows me to stretch beyond my current level by the widest margin, and it does the best job of burning stuff into memory. The second best thing I've found is endlessly looping audio and trying to write it down, but even that is less effective in the long run. 150 hours of subs2srs with interesting native materials would go a very long way. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| victorhart Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States mandarinexperiment.o Joined 3707 days ago 66 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 54 of 170 21 October 2014 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
The idea of the blog came much later than the idea for the experiment, and it's not like I'm making money off of it or generating a large amount of traffic. I agree that 30 minutes is far too little, and my initial idea was two hours per day, but I just can't fit it in (I'm currently at 35 minutes daily and I do hope up that slightly over time). My question, however--setting aside for a minute your objections to the video-only methodology--is why one can't be serious about studying a language with 30 minutes a day. Do you think retention will be too greatly compromised? To me, the only limitation to such a small daily commitment of time is that learning will take a very long time. My hypothesis is that I will attain an intermediate level of listening comprehension after 6.5 years (or 1,200 hours). Even if I do reach that goal, if I continue afterwards with the same time restrictions, I'm guessing I would take a similar amount of time to achieve advanced comprehension and perhaps twice that again to speak fluently. So, without adding characters and reading, that would be like 26 years! OK, I can see why you think this is a stunt, but the truth is I'm at a point in my life that I feel like I can make such long term plans. And if I'm speaking fluent Mandarin at 61 years old without having had to sacrifice anything (except a silly online blitz chess habit) and becoming a total Chinese cinema buff, what's the harm done? I also believe that at some point down the line (perhaps when my daughter is all grown up) I will be able to put in significantly more time. Your doubts about my prospects for success are absolutely legitimate, but c'mon patrickwilken and s_allard, you don't find any redeeming value to the experiment? Edited by victorhart on 21 October 2014 at 4:05pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| victorhart Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States mandarinexperiment.o Joined 3707 days ago 66 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 55 of 170 21 October 2014 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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emk and others,
I do have a word list where I jot down the my own phonetic version of words I am able to decipher (one per day on average) and the exact movie or video source and time in which it appears. The goal is to help focus my listening and be able to zero in on those terms when I watch the movie a second (or third, fourth, fifth) time. Occasionally (and hopeflly increasingly), I also write down a phonetic transcription of the phrase in which that word occurred. Is there any kind of electronic flashcard or other digital tool that might help me organize this better? (Again, the point is to assist in re-watching video sources, and not to study the list in isolation). Edited by victorhart on 21 October 2014 at 4:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 56 of 170 21 October 2014 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think it might be useful to explain how I use subs2srs. I start with: 1. A movie or TV show that I utterly adore, because I'll be repeatedly watching pieces of it out of order. 2. (Mostly) accurate subtitles in my target language. 3. Subtitles in my native language. I spend an afternoon in full geek mode with some combination of Handbrake, subtitle OCR software, subs2srs and custom Anki card templates, and when I'm done, I have a deck of about 1,000 flash cards for a typical movie. Here's what the cards look like on my phone. On the left, you have a card with a small image and an audio clip. On the right, you have the back of the card:  
Some things worth noticing: 1. The audio and the image are the most prominent part of each card. 2. The French subtitles are present on the back, but I only look at them if I'm in doubt. 3. The English subtitles are printed in a smaller font, so I'm encouraged to ignore them. 4. The subtitles include three lines: the current line, the one before and the one after. Similarly, the audio includes an extra ~1.5 seconds before and after. This gives me more context, and makes the cards useful even if the alignment is off. Some advice for reviewing: 1. Aim to delete 80–90% of cards on the first pass, and another good chunk after a few reviews. You only want to keep the stuff that's interesting. 2. Pass the card if you can more-or-less understand it. 3. Don't stress about about choosing the right button. 4. Start introducing about 10 cards per day for the first month. What to expect: 1. Anything you can understand in isolation on a single card can be burned into your head like an annoying top 40 lyric, complete with intonation. 2. Within 20 to 30 days, even really difficult cards may undergo a weird transition where they suddenly seem perfectly obvious. 3. Rewatching the original material after a month should show a dramatic difference. I used this a lot at the intermediate stage. I only stopped using it because it's too annoying to go through the whole ripping/OCRing/card making process when I understand 90+% of the dialog on a TV show. If I had a one-button version of this that I could use the capture hard bits of dialog on French TV with no hassle, I'd still use it heavily today. This seems like it might be very much in keeping with the philosophy of your experiment: It uses nothing but TV and subtitles, it involves no explicit grammar study, and once you've spent a day fighting with the tools, the actual process of reviewing the cards is brainless and fun, and it can be done in a low-energy state. Seriously, these are the easiest cards in my deck. What this would add to your experiment: Focused repetition of the most important lines of dialog, maintaining much of the original context. You could pick a favorite movie or episode, spend a month reviewing it in subs2srs, then go back and watch the original with greatly boosted comprehension. You may also be able to find pre-made subs2srs decks for cool Mandarin movies. You might consider downloading a deck for your favorite movie, and maybe doing 5 new cards a day, just to see what happens. Or if you decide not to do this now, keep it mind for later, in case you reach the 500 hour mark without seeing as much progress as you want. Edited by emk on 21 October 2014 at 4:18pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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