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Heinrich Schliemann’s memorizing method

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MLSUSA94
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linguisticventures19
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 Message 57 of 63
05 June 2009 at 6:04pm | IP Logged 
Oh sorry, I feel so embarrassed >_<


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divexo
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 Message 58 of 63
09 September 2010 at 4:19pm | IP Logged 
This is an interesting thread, sorry to revive it!

I'm just wondering, how would memorising a book or text help with language learning? Or is this purely for more
advanced speakers?
I've always had a strong point of memorising, and so i could probably get fairly good at it once i become used to
the language, but i see no point in that as i wouldn't understand what i'm learning, or do you also memorise the
translation as well?

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Andy E
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 Message 59 of 63
10 September 2010 at 2:31pm | IP Logged 
divexo wrote:
This is an interesting thread, sorry to revive it!


No need to be sorry :-) I totally missed this thread first time round.

Quote:
I'm just wondering, how would memorising a book or text help with language learning? Or is this purely for more
advanced speakers?


As I've not tried it, I can't personally comment on the efficiency or otherwise of memorising L2 texts. For that read pentatonic's post on Page 6 of this thread. However, what I would suggest that if you were to wait until you were at an advanced level, it would be of little more use than memorising texts in your native English other than to impress others - 30+ years on I can still quote the opening Chorus from Henry V. I'm not saying anyone should be impressed but it was a fairly pointless skill in terms of my English language learning aged 15 when I did it (although not in terms of passing English Lit. O-level which was, in fact, the original purpose).

Quote:
I've always had a strong point of memorising, and so i could probably get fairly good at it once i become used to the language, but i see no point in that as i wouldn't understand what i'm learning, or do you also memorise the translation as well?


I can't see any point in memorising without understanding as was pointed out on Page 3 of the thread:

JasonChoi wrote:

By the way...I suppose this may be obvious, but it may not be for some:

I think it's important that the memorized content be fully comprehensible. Prior to applying this memorizing approach to languages, I've tried memorizing random phrases/expressions, which I was able to recite, yet I did not completely understand what I was reciting.



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divexo
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 Message 60 of 63
11 September 2010 at 11:27am | IP Logged 
Thanks for reply.

I'm not really sure I'm a fan of this technique. I think if i'm memorising anything, it'd have to be a more isolated
sentences or even words themselves, i personally think that's more efficient.
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BartoG
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 Message 61 of 63
11 September 2010 at 11:30pm | IP Logged 
I've never memorized whole books, but I have memorized short passages from literature. Often, I remember unusual words because they came up in a poem that I liked. I think that if you can memorize books because you mentally see the story unfolding as you go through the words, this could be quite valuable. Because I tend to skim, I don't see it working for me in terms of memorizing books by brute force. But I can imagine that I would better remember an elegant phrase, an amusing turn of conversation or even a colloquial way of saying hello better if my association were with a scene in a book (or, these days, movie or television show) than because it was in a language book. It's not for nothing that Assimil goes for funny, hence memorable and memorizable dialogs.
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polyglossia
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 Message 62 of 63
18 December 2010 at 7:08pm | IP Logged 
Hi there...
I'm glad i found this thread on Schliemann... This guy is worth it.
I remember the first time I read his biography, I was so enthralled, I couldnt believe what I was reading !!
Now regarding to his achievements, he then used to speak 15 languages fluently:

french, Spanish, dutch, Italian, russian, swedish, modern greek, latin, ancient greek, turkish, arabic, danish, norwegian, and I dont remember the last two...

As for myself, I'm trying a "child immersion" learning method... That is regardless of how a language is written (I'm not even considering grammar drills), I'm listening to some paragraphs (namely the equivalent of an Assimil dialogue page ) , listen to it three or four times and then repeating what I do hear... At this step of the process I dont even know what I'm learning is about... I'm focussing on sounds... Once I mastered the whole page, I look at it, and read it immediately so my "french spelling" doesnt alter the writing i'm currently reading... Then I know it by heart and I can recite it whenever I want.. I dont need any paper or whatever, it's just like learning sthg from the sound melody (like the children do actually)... It's tiring, I can tell you but it's worth trying... Though I (momentarily) give up the study of hebrew, I do still remember a whole page of it... I learned it in 1998.. we are in 2010...
Now, I simply guess that the best method is the one that fits you!! If you feel more comfortable with grammar drills, just go for it... But I'm currently following this process for greek and it works, though I dont speak yet, but it's just a matter of time... I did manage to become conversationnal in Spanish in one month studying 10 hours/day... In this case, I followed the Schliemann method, but with dialogs (true ones, not the "made up"ones by Assimil) and it worked since five month later I met a couple from Chile with whom I spoke Spanish (though it was a little bit hard at the beginning since I had to accustom myself to their special pronunciation)..

Hope it helps to contribute...

Edited by polyglossia on 18 December 2010 at 7:11pm

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Merv
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 Message 63 of 63
10 January 2011 at 5:30am | IP Logged 
I've been doing this method myself and I think it works wonders. It especially helps if you internally know what's
going on, almost sentence by sentence, and then the target language just clicks into place. It's best if the work of
literature is long narrative touching on many aspects of life and possessing a wide range of vocabulary. I would
think that poetry and more stream-of-consciousness type literature would be less reliable due to the translators
license in conveying the message rather than directly translating word-for-word.

But Schliemann had it right, as apparently did Kato Lomb and Emil Krebs. The written word is no less valuable for
learning a language than the spoken.


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