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Technique to Studying Several Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4122 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 2 11 August 2014 at 10:50pm | IP Logged |
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Hi guys, I would like to know if anyone here have ever tried to do something like
chaining languages you are learning as a way of reducing interference I explain: Defining "using a language as base" = studying by books written in that language, translating to that language, searching grammar topics in that language if necessary, keeping notes to explain concepts in that language etc. etc. I do something like that: My native language is Portuguese, so it makes a lot of interference in any language I'm learning, so I use Portuguese as base for the L2 language I know the most: English. Whenever I need to learn/study anything in English and I need some sort of translation to understand and there's no escape, I'll rely on Portuguese. French is the main language I'm studying now (for what I focus most of my time/effort) and is an almost basic fluent language. So, it's my second best L2. I use English as a base for studying French, never using Portuguese. Russian is a secondary language I'm studying now (for what I focus some part of my time/effort) and I am a beginner in that language. Therefore, I use French as a base for studying Russian, never using Portuguese or English. I think, since English is already built, I'll have less interference by using Portuguese as a base. As my knowledge if French is still being "constructed" I use a non-native language as support, whenever needed and so one, chaining from the most strong language to the most weak. What do you guys think about this? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 2 of 2 12 August 2014 at 12:05am | IP Logged |
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The basic idea is good, but doing it sequentially like that is pointless and can even be harmful, imo. I generally avoid L1-based resources, apart from the Slavic languages and sometimes the pronunciation information.
For me the main downsides of this specific approach are that you limit the materials you can use. For example, with French you have tons of Assimil courses available, but you only allow yourself to use it for one language??? Also, for the Romance languages French or Portuguese make more sense. And unfortunately it might take a while before you're able to use only Russian-based materials for your next language. Although the good news is that you can use foreign materials even if your TL is better than your knowledge of the base language. I've used a great German-based textbook for Finnish, for example. Obviously this assumes that you use several resources in different languages. But really, only the biggest ones even offer enough resources for learning a language to a high level. Many need to use English-based or monolingual resources once they are past the basics. ...which brings me to the next point. Not using L1 (much or at all) is good, but if you stick to specific pairs, there's still the risk of learning the equivalents between the pairs, but having difficulties switching between other languages. And I'm not sure what you mean by constructing, but this sounds kinda similar to "finishing" a language. Don't worry about finishing, just keep going. Edited by Serpent on 12 August 2014 at 12:18am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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