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Copying out by hand | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Nephilim Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 7146 days ago 363 posts - 368 votes  Speaks: English*, Polish | Message 1 of 4 06 January 2008 at 8:57am | IP Logged |
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Hello Professor,
I was interested to read your point in one of last weeks's posts about the value of transcribing by hand as opposed to using a pc or a typewriter. I am surprised that you believe copying out by hand to be both slower and more tiring as my own experience has always been the opposite. For me the only advantage to copying out texts on a computer was that they looked nicer and were more legible - I too have disasterously bad handwriting.I always found that when iusing a computer to copy out texts I would inevitably spend more time fiddling around with accents to Polish letters and this would detract from the actual linguistic work. It seemed like all I was getting was good typing practice, so I abandoned it. I do feel that writing out the language by hand is somehow more natural as there is a direct link from brain, to eye, to hand - the circuit finally being connected when pen touches paper.More engaging, more real and, it has to be said, more in touch diachronically with the thousands of other language scholars down the ages. Marvellous. Questions: 1 When you say transcribing by hand, are you talking about copying out sentences, paragraphs or whole pages of text? 2 Is copying out in this sense a written form of shadowing? 3 Is the aim just to use the language in a controlled way to maintain contact with it or is it to make a connection between the written form and the spoken form - particularly with languages which have a non-roman script or languages like French in which not all the letters of the words are retrievable from listening alone. regards Phil (Nephilim) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 2 of 4 06 January 2008 at 5:35pm | IP Logged |
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When doing the “transcription exercise,” I first read a portion of the text aloud. The portion can vary from a single word to a whole sentence depending on how well I know the language. I then focus on the point of my pen as it moves across the paper and I say that same portion of the text aloud again (and again) as I write it. Whatever my level in the language in question, I find this type of “reading” to be the deepest, and so I keep a dictionary on hand to look up unknowns much more frequently than I do when simply reading and building my vocabulary by context and repetition. I suppose this exercise is, in a very real sense, a written form of shadowing, and it does both help me maintain contact with all the many languages I am juggling and help me make connections between written and spoken forms. However, before you posed these questions, I had not broken it down this way, but rather viewed it in a more holistic fashion. Copying texts has always been an integral part of my language study, but until just over a year ago, I always did this on a computer. Reverting to pen and paper, however, has quite revolutionized the rapport I feel with many languages, and I feel I have solidified and matured in them over the course of the past year in a fashion that eluded me for many years previously. Thus it is that I suggested this exercise. I do not know if it will work for everybody. I do not even know if it would have worked for me in the past—perhaps one has to reach a certain stage in order to become a scribe.
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| 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 4 07 January 2008 at 11:45pm | IP Logged |
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When I re-read what I wrote, I do find my listening understanding has improved. I started writing out Assimil lessons from the 30th since early last month. I did not read out aloud but, rather, listen to a chunk of it, 1 long sentence or 2 short ones, and try to simply listen for sounds and copy words down. I often had to listen for multiple times, and I set as a rule 3 times only. Then, I would listen to the whole passage again and, recently, write down corrections in red (I wrote in blue).
I think copying by hand could be very beneficial and, in some ways, serve something that typing cannot. If you type a wrong word, you might spot it out quickly and do more with spelling than with meaning and even the syntax itself. I am not saying spelling is not important, but, at least for me, I find it very nice to make "more" mistakes through writing, when I learn better with "mistakes" and that does serve as written shadowing. For me, writing appears to be, really, superior. I just think typing is unnecessary, when the "correct" texts, i.e. the transcripts, are already on your books or in an electronic format. I would be glad to buy more notebooks and write a lot, and keep the mistakes as records with my unique handwriting. It may also serve as a copybook exercise where you can improve your handwriting. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 4 08 January 2008 at 1:03am | IP Logged |
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I have copied out tons of genuine text in my 'new' languages, but in the beginning only as part of what I call intensive reading, i.e. I leave space between the lines for a word-to-word translation and a wide margin for comments (for instance about idiomatical use or grammatical oddities). New words will of course go into my word lists. This is the phase where I have to crack an incomprehensible code, so I have only had to do it for a very brief period with for instance Icelandic or Portuguese. But I spent months doing it with Greek and Russian.
Next follows a phase where I skip the translation and just copy the text with a wide margin for new words and a few other comments. And finally I skip the copying and just note down the new words and a few comments about grammar and idiomatic uses of certain words. Just like Prof. Arguelles I find that it is necessary to do the copying by hand, simply because the text sticks better in your memory if you write it. Besides it takes time and practice to acquire a decent and fluent handwriting in other writing systems - you can't get this just by tapping on a computer, though of course it also is worth learning how to deal with strange foreign keyboards. It is worth noting that the slow process of copying out a text forces you to pay more attention on what is really written, - if you just read the same text you can rush through it in no time, but will retain much less of the content (and you will almost certainly skip things that you ought to sit down and learn). For that reason I'm even contemplating to do some copying with Swedish and Norwegian when I start learning these languages. I can read both at native speed, but precisely that is the reason why I need some slowing down mechanism, and copying texts laboriously by hand may be one way of achieving this. Edited by Iversen on 08 January 2008 at 1:03am 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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