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How did you learn your languages? | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| stout Senior Member Ireland Joined 5371 days ago 108 posts - 140 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 17 of 25 26 March 2010 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
You have a point about living the country of your target language.Living in France or Japan does not guarantee you fluency or near fluency in French or Japanese.The best policy is to keep working at your target language.Then hopefully you will achieve fluency or at least a very good knowledge of your target language... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| stout Senior Member Ireland Joined 5371 days ago 108 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 18 of 25 26 March 2010 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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| JS-1 Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5983 days ago 144 posts - 166 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), German, Japanese, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic (Written) | Message 19 of 25 27 March 2010 at 7:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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Irish: School
Spanish: School (secondary only) French: Michel Thomas, Assimil. Much later, FSI to speed up my processing of the language. German: Michel Thomas, Assimil. Japanese: Assimil, various grammar books, and Heisig for Kanji. Arabic: Assimil -French version as it has more content than its English counterpart. Ancient Egyptian. Some old grammar books. Akkadian: Grammar books. Sumerian: Grammar books. Edited by JS-1 on 27 March 2010 at 7:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 20 of 25 27 March 2010 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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School + Exposure + Desperation (had to learn to be understood).
When you are younger you don't think about it, or question it so much, you just go with the flow and do what you have to do. Lately I taught myself some Russian through self-studies. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Impiegato Triglot Senior Member Sweden bsntranslation. Joined 5433 days ago 100 posts - 145 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Italian Studies: Spanish, French, Russian | Message 21 of 25 27 March 2010 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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English: in school, at the university, by watching movies in English. In addition to this, I spent one week in the UK. :-)
French: six years in school (two lessons a week) and one university course Spanish: in school and by immersion in Spain Italian: several years at the university Russian: one year in senior high school Edited by Impiegato on 27 March 2010 at 5:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| loveroflanguage Groupie United States Joined 5366 days ago 57 posts - 83 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 22 of 25 28 March 2010 at 5:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ok, warning: this is a bit long but you asked! I don't know Arabic fluently, I am still learning but have not been totally devoted like I should be. Being Muslim, it is imperative that I do learn Arabic as I need to learn Quran, say my prayers in Arabic and understand them. I do know some versus of Quran in Arabic but I learned them barely knowing what they mean. Now, my intention is to learn Fusha Arabic to know Quran/prayers and MSA + a dialect (Egyptian). I am starting with the Fusha (Madinah University books), because I have the 3 book course plus audio to do it and it supposed to be helpful on MSA spectrum as well, I've been told. I have a LOT of Arabic tools to choose from but sticking with a few to not get confused or overwhelmed.
Ok, so I am doing this to learn: every a.m. I wake up and find an Arabic news station playing the news, usually Al Jazeera or something. I don't know or care right now what they are saying, just trying to get my ear attuned to the language and some immersion in. I try to study the same amount every day, which is about 30 minutes but if I feel like it, I do more but no more than an hour and a half. I learned from a book to also make sure that I pick a time of day that I am most alert and energetic because the mind doesn't retain when you are tired and you don't put as much effort in it. I make my own vocabulary cards at the end of each chapter and go over them throughout the day. At the end of the week, I review all the previous lessons/vocabulary and use my index cards all weekend. For each lesson I do in the book, I have a notebook and copy the lesson word for word, lesson for lesson, including the instructions; a website suggested it because it helps you to retain it better by reading, writing and hearing; its tedious but it really works! I also do Rosetta Stone Arabic but only on the weekends as something to break the total monotony. If I need to, I will start over and re-do the lessons to make sure I have them down. I watch Arabic movies, kids cartoons and listen to Arabic music--which I love! I also have read the Master of Languages (to me, at least!) Barry Farber's book, "How to Learn Any Language". Love that book! I try to do as much as he suggests in his book. I read it almost every few weeks! lol! I also have a Quran program which recites versus and teaches you how to say them word by word. Its a great program. I have access to a native speaker--my husband but he thinks my attempts to learn are "cute" and thinks I will never do it. Great motivation for me. Plus he's Moroccan dialect and I have no desire to learn Darija right now. I am in the process of finding people at the mosque to practice on. LOL, poor them! So that is what I am doing; I was told and I read that if I kept this pace up for a year, I should have a vocabulary of about 3,500 words. I have some grammar books that I will be adding to the mix in time but for now, I have all I can handle. I hope that I will be able to know some words and understand small talk in 9 or 10 months. Its hard waiting! JuJu Edited by loveroflanguage on 28 March 2010 at 5:03am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| loveroflanguage Groupie United States Joined 5366 days ago 57 posts - 83 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 23 of 25 28 March 2010 at 5:09am | IP Logged | |||||
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P.S. if anyone is looking for a deal in on Assimil programs, they are on sale at Languagequest.com for $49.95 a language--except Dutch and French, for some reason, which is $59.95.
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| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5470 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 24 of 25 28 March 2010 at 8:50am | IP Logged | |||||
Same here, but the case of English is speacial as it's the dominant language and there's strong incentive, especially for people who like media in general, to just use it in every day life. If you want to learn another language like that, you'll have to go look for material and in some cases you might not find any. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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