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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Andy_Liu Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong leibby.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6787 days ago 255 posts - 257 votes  Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 1 of 8 07 December 2007 at 9:03pm | IP Logged |
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Professor Arguelles,
First, I would like to thank you for having written so many insightful comments about language learning. Ever since I started reading posts in this wonderful forum and, in recent months, your comments, I have been glad to make a lot of progress, particularly since I realized the importance of time management, seeking learning materials, learning techniques, etc. I would be grateful if you would address my situation and, thus, the design of my future learning plans. I believe I may be the first Chinese user here who has questions about long-term planning in relation to polyglottery. My main linguistic focus, however, might very likely be on languages of Europe. Background: I am now a 19-year-old Chinese young man born and raised in Hong Kong, speak Cantonese natively, Mandarin “semi-natively” and English at a somewhat advanced level. I started learning Mandarin since I was 8, but almost neglected it until I turned 18 or so. My recent progress in Mandarin has enabled me to handle conversations with ease, though I cannot comprehend some colloquial conversations totally, especially in films or on TV programs; and except colloquialisms, my education has offered me native command of the written, vernacular language. I started learning English since I was 3, had very passive knowledge until I turned 17. After I started “learning” English properly 3 years ago, I have been developing my learning methods unconsciously, though very slowly. Since I was 12, I received education almost exclusively in English (though the spoken command had been largely neglected). Now, at university in Hong Kong, English is used exclusively during my undergraduate studies, but my academic language is far from perfect and I often have difficulty understanding (fast) spoken language on both TV programs and films. While I can understand a monolingual (electronic) dictionary with much ease, I think I still know too few idioms and common expressions. I guess my English level is enough to survive in an Anglophone campus, but far from “advanced fluency”. Though I have formally devoted much less time on Mandarin ever, my Mandarin has always been much stronger, perhaps because I have had a lot of passive listening through media exposure. In short, I, like many young people around me, can be considered trilingual (to some degree). Currently, I am studying (liberal) arts, and it is quite possible that I would study Linguistics and English later. German adventure: The first foreign language which I had been motivated to learn was German. After I graduated from high school, I became interested in German, mainly because of some family connections, but learnt nothing concrete. Later, after a series of setbacks, which many absolute beginners learning a first/second foreign language would encounter, I simply gave up language study for some months. Since late April, however, I started to learn German (I stopped at the basics) seriously, though slowly, mainly using some audio courses (like Pimsleur) and textbooks designed for reading (in Chinese). It was not until then that I started to pay attention to your posts, and only some months ago did I discover that shadowing and, in particular, the Assimil method (below) are two of the tools that might be, according to what you said, the “cornerstones of success” for many. Future planning: Frankly, I have not considered the idea of “becoming a polyglot”, but rather only think/dream of it, because, up till now, I find it hard to tell whether I can do anything except learning 2 or 3 languages during my university studies (in only 3 years), and life may become pressing later on. I guess it may be better done in a row rather than at the same time, considering the need to reach fluency. Though I can study Linguistics in greater depth later, as the curriculum shows, there is simply little about philology. Language courses at university are hardly effective for “polyglottery”, with only a few hundred contact hours in 3 years and too much boring exercise but without proper speaking drills, etc. So, after reading your old posts, I have determined to become an autodidact (and I must anyway), which is what I have been doing since April. After reading many discussions centred around your posts, since I am interested in European languages, I will faithfully master English, German and French (in the exact order, since German has been my “second” foreign language) in order to read language literature. I also wish to make them my strongest foreign languages. While I tend to avoid wanderlusts, I would like to study, namely, Germanic, Romance and Slavic languages in depth, and so I believe I would need at least, firstly, one representative of each and, later, one or two more of each. Besides linguistic interest, I am also looking for studying opportunities overseas. While my English is near-fluent for studying purposes, I find it hard to finance future studies in an Anglophone country, so, instead, I could possibly consider Germany/France (the two most possible target countries for studies in Europe) if I could pursue further studies, especially about linguistics. While not having a concrete picture of what to learn in the near future (I am afraid of not being able to master any at all, if a plan is too aggressive), Russian (my would-be first Slavic language) and Spanish are quite possible. Some others might include Italian, Dutch, Polish, Czech and Hungarian, all being “neighbours” of German. Esperanto is also possible, considering the prospect of meeting speakers and learners who would share the same interest as language learning. While I admire people for being knowledgeable in ancient languages (like Latin and classical Chinese), which might be important for diachronic study of languages, it sounds like giving priority to modern languages would be more beneficial for practical purposes – like university studies. I have interest in only a few Asian languages. While I am not very into Japanese and Korean at the moment, which might be possible after I become well-versed in some other languages, I am deeply concerned about Teochew, which is now virtually dead in my immediate family, since I am of Teochew descent, but have not been able to do anything except collecting a couple of books. (I guess, thus, that learning a “dead” language would be very different from and more difficult than modern ones. How would that be possible?) Here, I have a question: what other languages do you believe to be important in both linguistics and language literature, besides English, French and German? I would definitely like to focus on those first, before I move onto the less studied ones. Also, because of this, I would regard “usefulness” as important in deciding on the “order” of learning. My learning sequence is quite free. Excluding Mandarin, which is actually not “foreign”, the first three are fixed, followed by Russian or Spanish (4th/5th; Russian might be “difficult” with few known cognates, and Spanish might be “confusing” with the third, French; seems difficult to decide on) and a sixth. That would be a long-term experiment to see if I could go on with some more languages. The main difficulties I have been and would be facing are largely “procedural” – how to start and at least reach a decent stage of learning through, for example and at least, finishing a standard Assimil “with ease” course. Firstly, I would like to tell you my current progress. I am already functional in Mandarin and English. Though I still have a poor ear for them, I believe I can maintain them with much ease through daily exposure, since I could be considered an independent user now. Investment in German: Indeed, I started German more than a year ago, but I say I have been learning it for almost 8 months only, because I did not learn much concrete. Since September, with the help of German with ease (1987) (now at Lektion 89, one lesson daily in a row), I am making quick progress daily. I could not, however, focus on other books, like grammar books, mainly due to time constraints (below). As I move on, I also find that I do not even know what some English expressions in the translations mean, and thus have to spend time on dictionary work with both languages occasionally. Since German is both the first language I teach myself and now the “weakest” one, I have, following your suggestions, shadowed quite a lot but have not done a lot of translation work with the Assimil course. Now, very often some sentences of Assimil would pop up in my mind, representing some sort of intuitive (or reflexive?) knowledge. I have occasionally tried my German on native speakers and advanced speakers (like teachers of this language…), and I have been mistaken for having stayed in Germany for some time. Yet, obviously, it would soon be revealed that I can speak little, mainly because of a lack of vocabulary. Personally, I may consider myself a fan of Assimil (instead of FSI [German], which I find to be somewhat tedious and incompatible with my tight schedules). It would be nice to stick on the Assimil approach, do regular revision and even apply the same principles on other materials/methods, i.e. to turn them Assimil. I have already got “Using German”, but… Starting French: I do not know any French. You wrote in the board about learning languages simultaneously, especially when one tries to tread on the path of polyglottery. When exactly would you believe that I could start learning French? Given my current level of German (and even English), I can do a second wave for later lessons in the coming months and, perhaps, “sweat over” the second volume using a dictionary, doing perhaps one lesson every two days (since I cannot read translations). Of course, I also have other supporting materials. In this forum, there has been consensus among many members that one should not learn languages simultaneously, especially when s/he is not fluent in either. Now that I cannot “forget” German, it seems that it might not hurt to start flirting with French. I shall concur with you about something you wrote that, yes, I, too, do not see the reason of delaying flirting with language X by too long. I keep myself from learning a single French word, thinking that “no, I must at least internalize the content of German with ease entirely”, and after 2 months since being attracted by French, I still know nothing and do not even know how to start with. In other words, if I hold something for too long, then very probably I would have done nothing after months… *Currently, I have Assimil French with ease (1998), a couple of comprehensive audio courses, grammar books and dictionaries, so materials should be sufficient for a kick start. Time management: Owing to the extremely fast pace of living here, even as a new university student, I already find it hard to learn on my own regularly. In a semester, I can only spend roughly 2 to 3 hours daily while I travel 2 hours daily from and to home (with a lot of outside distraction; so the 2 hours are “discounted” somewhat) and around 1/2 or 1 hour at home, not considering the time I need for course preparation (like editing Assimil audios), writing journals about progress and so on. Of course, I would have more time on holiday and during semester breaks, when I can listen and shadow a lot while jogging/going for a walk very often in the park nearby. Other issues: There are two issues that catch my attention. Personally, I believe the Assimil method and its underlying principles (namely “bilingual texts with audios produced by professional actors”, as you have described) would work very well for me. Thus, I think of using transcripts (bilingual texts) as good tools for daily input. Sometimes, however, I would find it tedious to make transcripts, through scanning books/ simply typing. How beneficial would typing, writing or a combination of both be? Also, how do I know if I could move onto the next Assimil lesson or any lesson of other courses? At present, for Assimil, I would compare new lesson texts, check up words when necessary and read notes when prompted without listening. Sometimes I would test my ears by playing new lessons without reading anything in advance. Then I would listen and follow the German text. When I seem to understand most of the text, I would do the following exercise and return to the text, but sometimes I would not understand everything before moving on. Actually, for example, I still find it difficult to understand German particles (doch, mal, genau, etc), and the picture would be further confused by (rough) English translations. While I think doing one lesson daily (in a row) is ideal, even as a learner of the teaching language, it sounds like additional revision during the day could be counterproductive. When I am to do a lesson, if I try to do listen practice for the previous 3/4 lessons, the practice itself would work, but reading their texts would seem not. The above is some of my thoughts about learning plans and current progress. Thank you for your attention. Xie Zhongan 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 2 of 8 09 December 2007 at 6:04pm | IP Logged |
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Mr. Xie, thank you very much for your well-written, appropriately detailed, and thoroughly proper letter. I want to assist you as much as I can, but as I have done with some others, please allow me to address your points sequentially over a number of weeks.
Let me first turn to your question as to what languages follow English, French, and German in importance in both linguistics and language literature so that you can focus on these first. Given your desire to restrict the list to European languages, then: Latin, Greek, Icelandic, and Irish, all of which you can and should study diachronically as living languages rather than merely as historical ones. As you have already singled out the giants, Russian and Spanish, you may want to give these precedence in order to get your representative Slav in the first case and/or in order to avail yourself of any of the enormous opportunities that exist in this world for actual use of the second. On whether or not to study languages simultaneously: the common-sense consensus that this is inadvisable is quite correct and appropriate for the average relatively inexperienced language learner. However, if you wish to systematically study polyglottery, then you simply must attempt this. Only when you are able to do this does it make sense to commit yourself to the path of the polyglot. French and German are totally distinctive entities and there is no logical reason in the world to be unable to distinguish between them as you develop your lifelong relationships with them. If their simultaneous study does confuse you, then by all means leave one alone. This does not mean that you cannot learn them both in sequence, and perhaps when you have done so, you can attempt simultaneous study again and precede with your polyglot plans should you succeed. When it comes to making transcripts, writing by hand with pen and ink as you read and repeat the text aloud is every bit as important and basic an exercise as is shadowing. Try it and you will probably soon concur that it is several fold more effective than typing. Your recurrent procedural question about knowing how to move through various stages and activities is quite complex; let me leave that for next week. Please do give me your feedback to my post about an ideal program at an ideal language academy. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Andy_Liu Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong leibby.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6787 days ago 255 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 3 of 8 15 December 2007 at 10:53am | IP Logged |
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Professor Arguelles,
Thank you. I have just been busy, so I did not have time to say anything quickly… With reference to your thread about lesson planning and another one about studying Germanic languages, I would understand how important Icelandic and Irish could be, how what do they have to do with the major Germanic, Romance and Slavic languages? So, Icelandic is highly inflected, and as I see, in a way similar to that of German, except its linguistic purity. But I guess that would be more relevant to studying the whole family in great depth – or, perhaps, are you suggesting that it would be best to study a family through knowing one or two most important modern representatives, followed immediately by the most representative language(s) that can reflect many features of older languages? I had wanted to know if Russian might be another important language of language literature. Perhaps it would be, rather, just important per se as a representative of a major family. I should have more time now to try French. Though I still have not, I can indeed see through some French things – some words appear in English and some word order patterns are simple to decode, unlike German if I were to learn it again, etc. What does it mean for two or languages to be distinctive? I am never keen on dabbling with languages and would only try to listen a bit as if a language were music with no lyrics. While I have no knowledge in my next target, French, and all others, I can now spot the German “music” very easily, though I still have problems understanding new texts. There might be more problems with my present progress, though, which might be less relevant. While I would concur that an Assimil-style course would contain representative chunks of a language, an actual Assimil does leave out a lot of words, idioms, etc, that one must figure out through other ways. After almost 8 months, my German is enough for starting small talks, but I often can only murmur a few words (and get corrected, given the chance), while being halfway through the Assimil course. I know that I do not have enough practice (with only 1 or 2 hours daily with a single course) and not know enough words... After reading posts in recent weeks (and some very prominent ones), I learnt that it could be important or even necessary to acquire passive knowledge very thoroughly, or else you cannot express yourself freely (write) and, as far as speaking is concerned, with a proper accent. Now, for example, if you could not use “Using German” (in my case, it is possible, but with a lot of dictionary and guess work) or any systematic courses, how possible would it be to use, namely, listening-reading materials (like novels with translations, which would make them quasi-Assimil), perhaps with some independent grammar study? Or, to put it simply: would you consider using bilingual audiobooks at an early stage, like after finishing German with ease (or even as the only formal course, without “Using language X”), for that end? These questions with passive knowledge, in regard to a listening-reading method that has become famous in this forum, have interested me a lot, and have led me to believe that the principles could be altered and adapted to suit individual needs. I have put them here because similar techniques/methods might be needed sooner or later – like at a low intermediate level. Xie Zhongan 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 4 of 8 16 December 2007 at 8:13pm | IP Logged |
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Mr. Xie,
Last week I left unanswered your procedural question about knowing how to progress through various stages of your study. I can describe some basic principles, but ultimately you simply have to find your own way of internalizing the material and your own rhythm for always pushing yourself to improve. Failure to do this is probably the main culprit for any legitimate feelings of stagnation that language learners feel (and such feelings are also often illegitimate given the true nature of the learning curve). Indeed, it is possible to possess the tools for a good method and even to have a good theoretical understanding of how to use them and yet to do this so poorly that you retard your own progress. When coaching groups of college students in the proper practice of shadowing, I am always frankly amazed at how long it takes most of them to get it right despite my being there to guide them—and indeed, many of them never do manage to really master the exercise. Still, try not to be too impatient for progress. No matter what you do to make the process interesting and enjoyable, learning a language well takes time, there is no getting around that. However, from your description of your German studies, you are well on your way—especially for someone from a different linguistic base working on his first self-taught European language! If you are working with an Assimil or Assmil-type method by using the kinds of procedures I have described, then you really simply cannot fail to make progress as long as you continue systematically adding a lesson each day. How are you going to keep doing this, however, given that you are coming to the end of the first volume of Assimil’s German course and you cannot use the second because you cannot read its French base? I do think that someone who has the kind of analytical tendencies I believe I detect in your self-description would profit most from working through several other methods before turning directly to material for native speakers. If you want more of the same, first and foremost you could try to obtain an older version of Assimil’s German (there have probably been at least three), and you could also try to track down a vintage Linguaphone’s German Course, which would provide you with the added benefit of being able to avail yourself of their uniform platform for learning many other languages in the future. If you have shadowed well enough that you are able to read aloud yourself, however, then you need not remain wed to courses with audio. Indeed, you are better off without it when doing pattern drills, for they are much less tedious when you find your own rhythm, so you might try your FSI that way. After you get your basis with Assimil, you should really profit from and even enjoy working through another textbook that takes the older approach of presenting grammar and exercises in an intelligent and systematic format. All in all, given that this is your first self-taught European language, you will certainly need to go through three or four different presentations of the language before you really get grounded, and it is better if they take different approaches. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 5 of 8 29 March 2008 at 10:46am | IP Logged |
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Mr. Xie, how are your language studies coming along? Well, I do hope, but I wonder if I can offer you any further assistance? In any case, I am curious, and I would simply be appreciative of periodic progress reports from those who have sought my counsel in this regard.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Andy_Liu Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong leibby.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6787 days ago 255 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 6 of 8 06 April 2008 at 8:40am | IP Logged |
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Professor Arguelles,
Let me write something about my progress in the past few months, with some further comments. On the whole, I have not made much progress because I have to deal with much coursework. I do have a 'study chart', but lately I have spent very little time on new vocabulary, for example, and have merely tried to maintain previous knowledge and learn a bit of Mandarin and English through daily exposure - since I am taking an English course, I have also read some texts and even listened to recordings I borrowed from my university library. I would like to describe my progress by language: German: In the past months, I am afraid that I did not have much input. The main things I did were to go through Assimil lessons, review them a bit and go through a grammar book (as below). After weeks of disuse, I am getting back to the same manual as well as graded readers. I would like to discuss a few issues. 1. Post-Assimil This is related to another thread. When I am reviewing German with ease for the third time, I find that I already know quite a bit of the grammar, even though my vocabulary is still rather limited. What would you recommend after one finishes a With-ease course? Given your advice above, what could I do if there is no second manual available (like Russian; at a brief glance, I also found the Chinese manuals are not even quite comprehensive, though I do not have to 'learn' it)? Despite limited time, I have identified more 'different representations'. For example, I have exactly a set of textbooks in Chinese which employs a rather old-fashioned approach (so that I did not finish it, though it has been published in recent years). 2. Grammatical study You wrote that, as a variation of the same strategy, using novels directly on day one would mean one may have to be rather 'gifted' to know grammatical rules intuitively. I have gone through some grammar books in the past year. It seems like my basic knowledge is quite good, but I must admit it has been rather tedious. I ended up finding some other ways that might work better than reading rules alone. I used to combine this with things like Assimil and some other 'small' courses, but then it became difficult to go further because I never looked into more difficult texts that often employ more subtle grammatical concepts. I am curious to know if there is 'any' proper way of studying grammar or, if context is important (as in reading bilingual texts), how useful is supplementary grammatical study and how to do it? I am sometimes even struggling with translations because some could be 'unreliable'. Since Chinese verbs are rather 'simple', at least in my own view, I can make perfect sense of texts in my native language while not understanding the foreign texts at all - that is to say, when for example a particular tense, mood or aspect is employed, it is often not exactly intuitive to me. In many occasions, I am forced to read English translations to make sense of the foreign texts - thus I would have to 'master' English (grammar) as well. Then another problem arises: do I need to learn to read grammar? There are quite a few technical terms that, while largely universal, seem to have to be 'felt' through reading grammar in depth. Is it more 'effective', though, if I only focus on sample sentences and just learn technical terms very briefly for telling myself which page to read? If I want to know how 'adjective' works in language X, then I can just flip the book to find the section of adjective and look for useful examples, without having to read literally every sentence in it. Lately, I did it exactly like this: since I thought a grammar book is just an index of grammatical information, I only read it when in doubt. If I did not know a rule yet, I could read and just some short explanations would do. Reading known rules just confirms themselves. French: This is related to something I posted earlier. I have stopped learning German for a few weeks, and have not even restarted my 'dabbling' plan with French. I have only retained a bit of French from earlier lessons of my with ease course. While I can still remember random phrases of those lessons very well, I still have the same doubts I had in the above thread, namely about shadowing (blindly). Even though I have not yet shadowed all lessons blindly at all, frankly, I have been questioning whether I should still stick on blind shadowing. At the moment, I feel that, when I have briefly shadowed and become familiar with the intonation of quite a few early lessons, it may not be necessary to shadow further the later lessons, even though there must be new words there. A closely related issue may be specific for French only (and possibly English whose spelling has been troublesome). So, yes, it is about French spelling which is described as a deep orthography. So, I am exactly learning French with Assimil only, and while I usually understand its rough pronunciation notes (intended for English speakers) they could be quite inconsistent through the course. I tried to figure out the 'deep' rules with a pronunciation book and a dictionary with IPA transcriptions, so that I can use rules in context even before I know them. It worked quite well - at least, I have become more aware of very subtle phonemic differences like lax and tense vowels (if I may call). Would you actually recommend doing this? I did try a bit by transcribing it fully but omitting familiar words as I moved onto the next lessons, almost like how Assimil presents its notes. When I moved on, some new words were/looked so phonemic that I did not have to put any transcription, which meant I already knew some spelling patterns intuitively. That requires a bit of time, but it worked fine. (I added this later) Something about Teochew: On second thought, however, doing the above things with French now seems a bit inane to me. Why? I had thought it would not be very possible to learn Teochew (as written above), especially when my elderly relatives are not keen on teaching it. I had tried to hunt for learning materials, but I managed to find only two very basic courses (1 video, 1 audio; both with texts), and all the rest were simply academic publications that I could not read. I was not motivated to learn, when practically no one around me would speak it, and as I searched the web, many TV programs in Chaozhou were simply recorded in Mandarin only). When I was editing this post, though, I came across many video clips in Teochew on the web with Chinese subtitles. While you wrote that it would not be very easy and useful to learn through videos, in this case, watching videos (TV programs, songs, TV dramas) would be the only way for me to learn Teochew, along with my two courses. The special thing about Teochew is it is not normally written, and, as I see it, it is just as underrepresented as many Chinese languages with 'no' written language. Then, obviously, with no Assimil and very few course books, I would have to rely mostly on aural material. I am writing about this because, to learn Teochew, I cannot use transcriptions - with no dictionaries with audio clips like those for English and French - in the very analytic (and rather tedious) way described above (for French) and have to rely totally on my own ears, since it is largely an oral language. In other words, it seems that, for Teochew, French or any new language, it might be too analytic of me to try to make transcriptions - why do I not trust my ears instead and shadow more? From my experiences with German or, to be precise, the Assimil course, it is not difficult for me to imitate intonation, and so tones of Teochew, but I am still not very sure about phonemes. How possible is it to master phonemes through extensive shadowing, then? Personally, I can read up about separate vowels and consonants of the IPA easily, but knowing phonemes of any language and anything else related to foreign sounds would probably involve purely aural work. English: I must say that I have managed to gain some input even through taking a course, during which I have to read literary texts. I did something different by borrowing an audiobook version of those texts and listened when I had no time to read. I did nothing more than listening and only read briefly afterwards, but my comprehension has been quite good for an 'advanced' learner. ------ Having said that, the more I learnt about the languages I know, including German, the more words and expressions I actually have to learn. They are not only multiplied by the number of languages I would want to learn, but also by that the western languages I am facing have so many combinations of verbs and prepositions. Is it true that, then, in the long run (as is my English), READING is the single way to gain input and thus fluency? Perhaps for orthographic reasons, I dare say I speak German even better than English, but it seems I cannot speak and read practically anything in the former until I read more. And as I learn more, I find it harder to produce output, even when I try to write something that is not too serious or academic in my native language. I hope I am worrying too much. The main thing that may make me worry is that I find, at least in English, there are much more 'little words' (the above prepositions) I can read than write fluently. In real terms, I am now actually more concerned about two issues. It has been rather difficult to spend time on learning these days. I had actually prepared a few translated novels, as part of my listening-reading scheme, and would want to start with something like the Little Prince, but I did not continue after only a few chapters. Though, to be optimistic, I consider myself having had a break after having been learning for 1 year. Back then, I simply had no idea about learning 'a language' and many things in general, and experiences I gained in the past year certainly helped much in finding my own rhythm of learning. Secondly, as old as it may seem, how exactly shall I be 'developing relationships' with languages? Even if I learn English only, my task is still 'urgent', in the sense that I must read incredibly much as a foreign student - I expect I shall be using English for almost any profession, especially if I study further (abroad?). The reality is 'many' people cannot go beyond perhaps the first stage of learning: where one gains some proficiency by mastering thousands of words and most grammar rules. It may sound more digression than seeking advice, but it is one of my feelings about my adventure so far, when autodidacticism is little known in my cultural circle. About a month later, I will be having a holiday and able to concentrate on everything again. This time, I think I will do something more, like reading up about phonetics which may help. I am also considering getting language qualifications in case they are needed for any studying purposes, but at the moment I have no plans other than sticking on learning 'routines' and 'representations', some of which I have not even looked into very seriously. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 7 of 8 10 April 2008 at 2:10pm | IP Logged |
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Mr. Xie,
Thank you for your progress report. It sound as if, even though other concerns, interests, and responsibilities are preventing you from doing much active language learning, you have still managed to mount a solid maintenance program to prevent yourself from losing ground. Well done on that count! To your points: What next for German? Having digested Assimil and feeling a need for more structure and more similar material to shadow, if the 2nd volume is beyond your French, you might certainly try the Linguaphone course or even the Cortina method if you track one down. For grammatical exercises, an old TYS book would provide good training and as well as good vocabulary for you at this point. Of course, if you really want to tackle German grammar seriously and head on, you much acquire and work through Hilke Dreyer und Richard Schmitt Lehr- und Übungsbuch der deutschen Grammatik. As for building vocabulary proper, you already mentioned that you have one graded reader, which is the best recipe for that, so acquire others—there should be no shortage. As for French—as a native Cantonese speaker, you could profitably blind shadow this language for a considerable length of time (perhaps on the order of a month all told) for phonetic purposes provided you did not get bored or frustrated with the purpose, but it sounds as if that has already happened, so leave off. Let us be sure we have been and still are talking about the same thing: until now you have only been walking and talking without knowing what you are saying, correct? Well, now it is time to start understanding what you are saying, i.e., actually working through the course book in a cyclical fashion, so you will still shadow each lesson a number of times before you get to it, but you will get to it within a few days of first blind shadowing it. Then you will continue to shadow it in various stages, but no longer blind. As to dealing with the irregularities of French and English orthography, eminently alert and aware shadowing is probably a better remedy than trying to figure out IPA transcriptions. For this exercise you should sit down, as you will need to write on the text with a pencil, and somewhat abnormally slowed-down recording are actually very useful. Read with your eyes, listen with your ears, speak with your mouth, and, the second you notice something “odd,” pause and mark up the text with your pencil (using several different colors would be good). Do this only as long as you are fully and completely focused, probably only 5 minutes at a time. When you finish, make careful note all that you marked up. Do this regularly, review and revise frequently, and over time you should improve markedly. As for Teochew, I confess complete ignorance. I assume it is a Chinese “dialect” that, as you say, is purely oral? Then indeed, you will have to rely entirely upon your ears and those video clips if you wanted to attempt to learn in the abstract. However, I would think that the only way to really learn a language with next to no resources would be from direct fact to face contact with a helpful native speaker. Finally, for English and yes in general, READING, broad and wide and extensive reading of well-written and meaningful texts is indeed the only way to make deep progress. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| TheElvenLord Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6081 days ago 915 posts - 927 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Cornish, English* Studies: Spanish, French, German Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 8 11 April 2008 at 12:18pm | IP Logged |
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To be honest Andy, your English is fine.
I struggle to mind major faults, any faults i do find are very minor, and even natives make that mistake sometimes. I would say, if you are writing these posts from memory, you have definitly reached a fluent stage. You are even using words a native teenager wouldn't (but should) know. So, really well done. You said " but far from “advanced fluency”. " I think you are close. And, in truth, the more you listen to the same recording (i use podcasts) you will pick out words each time. For example - You listen to it a first time, you get the general gist, but not alot of detail, then you listen to it again and again. Eventually, you will pick out each word in the scentence and know exactly what is being said, even with fast native speakers. Other than that, i would say, the best thing to do is go to America or Britain or Australia or somewhere and speak !! I'm sure you would be fine. TEL 1 person has voted this message useful |
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