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Practice LESS to speak better? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4833 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 1 of 8 25 July 2014 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some interesting ideas from Aran Jones, the author of the "Say Something in ..." courses:
link In case the link doesn't work, the book title is "Should you practise LESS to speak better Spanish?: How laziness might help you become a more natural speaker The following research paper is cited in support of the ideas: link to paper Paper title is: Second Language Processing Shows Increased Native-Like Neural Responses after Months of No Exposure Excerpt from the conclusion:
Disclaimer: I am a regular user of the SSi Welsh courses, and have looked at some of their other courses, but I have no connection with the company 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 8 25 July 2014 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's interesting.
One thing I wonder about is how much of this is market driven, rather than results driven. Other things that make me wonder... Does the period of limited exposure serve to reduce inhibitions in the testing?
Regarding the "30 minute refresh" before testing. Was that something that would tend to bring together the whole language? I.E., listen/reading an interesting and well understood story or set of stories from the training. E.G., a set of Assimil lessons. One other thing I wonder about is whether "limited exposure" over time is best delivered in tiny doses, or intermittent immersions. E.G., Is it better to do 2-5 minutes a day several days a week, or do a couple of intense days per year. Edited by luke on 25 July 2014 at 4:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4449 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 3 of 8 25 July 2014 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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As a language learner, I can understand giving your brain a chance to relax every once in a while would
be beneficial. Every once in a while you take a break. When you come back to your studies, you would start a new page and see our problems / difficulties from new angles and may be able to find solutions. However, when it comes to learning new words & phrases, even if you are going to take time off your learning, it is best to keep adding new ones every week. Part of the problem of learning a new language is mastering the grammar which is simply knowing the structure / patterns in a language. The other part is having a large enough vocabulary. If you already acquire a large number of words & phrases, then speaking is just a matter of adjusting your accent to sound like natives. The other day I was watching a program in Chinese 北京新发现 (New Discoveries in Beijing). The show talked about electronic gadgets and what they can do. Watching it I am less focused with Mandarin grammar or the Beijing accent than very specialized words & phrases on the show such as the magnetic strip on a credit card, the term used for a gold colour square-shaped "chip" on the card. The 2 terms that were used a lot was 信息 for electronic data which is interchangeable with 资料 and 隐私 for personal privacy used in the context of protecting your private info stored in electronic devices. I don't think any Chinese language learning series or phrase book would get into these kinds of specialized words & phrases. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 4 of 8 25 July 2014 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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If I read the Amazon description correctly, the "book" is 11 pages long! Amazon's full title is also, "Should you
practise LESS to speak better Spanish?: How laziness might help you become a more natural speaker." This smacks of marketing hype, considering that the "book" includes a 50 pound voucher for one of the author's courses. Now I admit that I did not read this book but I did read the research paper referred to. Interesting stuff but it should be pointed out that it focuses of the ability to recall elements of an artificial language. What I take from all of this is that taking a break while learning allows the brain to consolidate material acquired. Makes sense to me. Isn't that we all do when doing some intense learning or training? How laziness might help you become a more natural speaker is beyond me. Has anybody read the "book"? Edited by s_allard on 26 July 2014 at 1:56am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4833 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 5 of 8 25 July 2014 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes. It's not a big book (£0.77 or $0.99) and I'm not going to reveal the contents, but
it does include a link to Aran doing a 10 lesson Dutch course, which since it's on Youtube, is public material: Aran Jones learns Dutch in one day He says that after doing this intensive session, he left it for a week, then did the last 2 lessons again, and remembered almost everything. He then left it for 3 months, then did the last 2 lessons again, and remembered almost everything. He says he will now leave it for a year, and repeat those last lessons again and see if he still remembers everything (i.e. answers most or all the prompts correctly).
I think he is referring to the part of the research that talks about learners brains processing the language like native speakers in some circumstances. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6602 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 6 of 8 25 July 2014 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think a more important issue here is that language learning takes time, and if you can afford waiting, it's better to be patient instead of rushing. Plants need time to grow, and language also needs to grow in your mind. But plants should also be watered, and similarly we need exposure.
One reason why the Super Challenge is not the same anymore (for me) is that I no longer believe in the original idea. It works greatly if you need to break out of the textbook bubble, and if you study only a couple of languages. You aim for 10k pages (or now 5k), and you know how much it will take. Even if you fail, you still see improvement, and you know it was the best possible use of your time. But I think it's actually much more important to keep going for 20 months (and beyond!) than to reach any specific mark. (For example, I still haven't hit the SC numbers in Finnish or English, at least if we count books and video only) I won't set clear minimums and maximums, but the goal simply shouldn't be achievable fast or easily. I think for many the SC filled the gap between succeeding in the shorter-term challenges (6WC, Tadoku) and actually making long-term progress. For me the previous challenge also did that, as I started reading more than I ever did. What matters most in terms of the original topic is that related languages can help each other, so that less "watering" is needed (interesting how Memrise uses this metaphor too!). I made lots of progress in Spanish despite officially only doing one 6WC and two part-time Tadokus before and after the SC. Wow this got long. I mostly mean that learning should be efficient, not fast. And with efficiency, feel free to choose the parts that matter most to you. "Passive skills only" is not a failure, unless you were aiming for active skills and didn't gain them (common situation after formal learning). I personally think that unless you need speaking or writing to get motivated, it's much more efficient to learn to understand first. Of course assuming you have the time for that. Edited by Serpent on 25 July 2014 at 9:01pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4833 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 7 of 8 26 July 2014 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Serpent: A very interesting post.
Elsewhere, I've connected the ideas mentioned in the original post, and the paper, with the premise behind the Goldlist. Now, whatever you think of that system or David James, his whole reason for this system is one of efficiency, and of not going over material you already know. That's how he claims to know (at least to some level) 20 languages. And he also readily admits that his system "only" gives you passive knowledge, but he doesn't regard this is such a bad thing, since, according to him, you can easily activate it by 3 days of immersion. He would further say (I've read it in one of his many blog articles) that activation of a small amount of language (or poorly learned language) is actually wasted effort, and you are far better waiting until you have a much better knowledge (and a far larger vocabulary) before attempting it. Now, I'm not sure I agree with him there, but it's a point of view worth considering. Moving slightly on, there seems to be a sort of dichotomy of models of language learning between: Large bursts of concentrated effort, followed by longish breaks. or Small doses repeated regularly, and of course mixes of the two. This has been discussed on HTLAL quite a bit in various ways, and while my instinct is for little and often, it's possible that large bursts with longer breaks may turn out to be more efficient. I'm really not sure. For most of us, it's probably determined to some extent by outside pressures in any case; we don't have complete freedom of choice. Edited by montmorency on 26 July 2014 at 5:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5986 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 8 of 8 26 July 2014 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't read the book, but what the paper suggests is that you can improve in a language even if you stay away from it for a while, not that this improvement will be greater than the one you'd get just by keeping using the language. Besides, in the paper the language was learnt to proficiency before taking the break. With a real language there's so many vocabulary items, grammatical exceptions, idioms, phrasal verbs, conjugations, ect, that the idea of a break sounds ridiculous enough without considering that it will actually teach you more language. I just prefer to learn this month expressions while last month expressions go through whatever process the learnt stuff has to undergo inside my brain.
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