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L-R summary: July 2008 passive edition | ||
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6382 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 1 of 55 07 July 2008 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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A summary of my experiences with L-R: July 2008 passive edition.
EDIT: I've added useful links at the bottom of this post, to the initial L-R thread and condensed explanations of L-R. I'm frequently asked questions about L-R that are not ideally answered by pouring through a dozen threads, some with hundreds of posts. This post is an attempt to summarize what I know about L-R at this point. First: I am not an expert in L-R. I have never gone through all the steps atamagaii suggests; most importantly, I have never done the active stages. Hence, I cannot comment significantly on them. I hope to change this in the near future, as I am soon going on vacation and will have the time available to try; if I manage to do so, I will prepare an 'August edition'. ------------------- My experiences - general summary, in no particular order: - Intensity matters. At half an hour a day, L-R is marginally useful. At 2 or more hours a day, it's significantly better. - Atamagaii's 10 hours or more per day may well be extremely effective, but I find myself simply unable to do more than 3-4 hours per day. - Joy is essential; so is being well-rested. Lack either, and this method is painful drudgery; with both, it's fantastic. - The memory recall curve is a huge factor; this ties in closely to intensity. - L-R allows the fastest gains in passive understanding of anything I've ever heard of, by far. It also allows extremely quick loss of understanding. The less learnt so far, the more quickly it disappears. After I started understanding spoken Polish from new sources (ie, arbitrary radio shows, which I'd never been exposed to before), I'd start getting increasingly confused after about 15 minutes, until about the hour mark, where I would understand very little. The upside is that this understanding comes back even more quickly with further L-R. Similarly, I retained very little from my first two Polish L-R trials, but learned much more quickly at the start of my third because I had done them. - I enjoy speeding up the audio the third time I L-R a substantial book, such as "The Master and Margarita"; it makes the language at normal speed seem slow, and hence even easier to understand. It also seems to change how I process auditory input, in a way I do not yet understand. I've made significant gains in understanding spoken language, even in I haven't actively studied in the last year, such as French; I suspect it's somehow related, but I don't really know how or why. Similarly, I've become better at intuiting sound shifts, recognizing loan words, etc, even in languages I have no background in; last week, I managed to understand a Slovenian political broadcast which made extremely heavy use of English loan words, while I was taking a break and channel-surfing satellite TV, something I do once every few years. I've never studied any Slovenian, or any Southern Slavic language. - It's possible to gain a reasonable level of understanding of factual written and spoken sources (such as wikipedia pages and short news broadcasts) in significantly under 100 hours of active study; I did so with Polish, my first Slavic language. - Phonetic study is absolutely essential. Studying a language with minimal pairs you can't hear is unnecessarily frustrating and inefficient. I learn to distinguish minimal pairs by looping words differing only in the relevant sound until I'm comfortable with the distinction; this has always taken less than an hour, and can be done entirely in the background while my attention is elsewhere. When there are three similar sounds, I first loop each pair until I'm comfortable with the difference, before looping all three. I like supplementing this by looking at the IPA descriptions at some point, but I don't think this is essential. - Parallel texts are much, much more useful than texts only in the language you already know. It doesn't matter much for the first few hours, but the more you do, the more it matters. - Extensive listening, such as to music and the radio, 'on the side' from studying with L-R, helps, but extremely marginally. I don't think a dozen hours of it is as useful as 15 minutes of L-R, until it becomes comprehensible input; at that point, it's still significantly less effective. - Reading without audio in the target language hurts progress. At least for me, it significantly messes up my internal model of how things should sound. I can map what I'm hearing into my internal model without problems, so it doesn't hurt comrehension, but it does hurt production and accent. This has been a painful lesson; reading without audio is the primary method I've used for the last decade, until finding this forum. - I'm not sure about the best way to approach a new writing system. I cannot yet comfortably read Cyrillic, although I can pick out some. I almost prefer it this way, as it reduces the temptation to read without audio while I'm still at such an early stage. - I 'grasshopper', or jump between subjects. For the sake of rapid progress in the form of hitting basic fluency in a language, this is disastrous. For what I care about - gaining a reading knowledge sufficient to read anything I specifically want to, general auditory comprehension, and a better feel for language - it works quite nicely. - For joy, it's important to like the book you're using, the speaker's voice, and not be frustrated by your tools - unstable software is terrible. ------------------- My experiences - language by language: I have done some degree of L-R for Spanish, Dutch, German, Polish, and Russian, using source texts in English and French. Of these, the Polish was the most significant, followed by the German. I've tried L-R'ing Polish several times. The first couple of attempts were extremely brief, but gave me a small base in the language; I supplemented them by skimming several grammars of Polish and repeatedly listening to the phonetic clips from the Wikipedia page on Polish phonology, making sure I could distinguish each sound from the similar ones. The third attempt was the only one where I put in a significant number of hours; by the 15th day, averaging less than three hours per day, I could understand news broadcasts. I was on Chapter 15 of "The Master and Margarita", an approximately 18 hour audiobook, for the second time. I started a 4th attempt when I honestly didn't have the time to put in; it quickly fizzled as a result. My current level of Polish varies drastically between passive and active use. Passively, I can understand factual articles, but miss almost all wordplay and a significant amount of creative uses of language, in both spoken and written form. Actively, I can do extremely little. I managed to understand every question that a Pole I met by chance on a local bus posed for me a couple of months ago, but had to do most of my replies in English; I managed to say what my name was in Polish, and how many years I'd been in Switzerland (although I had to ask how to say the number), but everything beyond that was beyond my ability to answer in Polish. German was the first language I L-R'd. I had previous exposure to it, have taken a few intensive courses in it, and was at at least a solid A1 level, approaching A2, and possibly higher due to Assimil and other exposure in the years since those courses and evaluations. After L-R'ing a short Kafka story of about three hours, I found myself thinking fluidly in German for about an hour, and it was actually difficult to force myself into English or Italian during that time. I stopped L-R'ing German due to lack of resources, and because I wanted to try a language from a sub-branch of Indo-European that I had no previous exposure to; I should restart it at some point. The rather small amount I did does not seem to have had much permanent effect. My texts were only in English. I L-R'd two Roald Dahl books, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Matilda" in Dutch, one time each, using an English text but no Dutch one. It helped my understanding of the spoken language significantly; this has persisted. I did about a dozen hours of Spanish L-R; my texts were only in English. I already understood almost everything in the language, due to the similarities with Italian and the base I acquired reading short parallel articles about a decade ago. This helped solidify my knowledge of some of the differences, and increased my familiarity with Spanish expressions that do not have close Italian equivalents. My active use remains negligible. I've done about three hours of Russian L-R. My aural comprehension has increased from about understanding about one word each minute (usually cognate to English), when listening to the radio or instructional movies, to understanding most words which are clearly cognate with Polish, as I've adjusted to the sound shifts, and some words which seem distinctly Russian. It's no longer rare for me to understand complete sentences I've never heard before, but I still usually don't. ------------------- A brief comparison of L-R with other methods. There are a number of methods I hold, or have held, a high opinion of. Here's a quick summary of how they compare to L-R, in the significantly limited way that I've done it. Michael Thomas: it feels painfully slow after trying L-R, to the extent of being nearly unusable - at least, this is my experience with it for Mandarin. Also, hearing the accents of the students was painful, and my own accent even more so. I think this course is worth getting for the explanation of the tones at the beginning (I consider this explanation brilliant and highly effective and usable, and I'd previously failed miserably with using and hearing tones), but perhaps not worth using beyond the first CD. Outside of the Mandarin course, I think it's best for people who have never gotten the hang of a non-English grammar before, and I've seen it used to great effect by such. Both L-R and MT build up models of grammar so that it feels natural, but in ways that feel very different. Pimsleur: I continue to consider this the best course for gaining survival skills in a short period of time, although I also find it unusably boring at this point. Still, if I were to be dropped in a country speaking a language unknown to me with 4 days warning, I might well use it; it was extremely helpful for solidifying my minimal Japanese into something usable in preparation for my trip to Japan a few years ago. In terms of gains per study hour outside of simple touristy phrases and understanding basic responses (which shouldn't be undervalued: in tourist situations, these can be vital knowledge), there is no comparison. Assimil: I consider this the opposite of L-R in many ways. To gain a significant knowledge of several languages at once, with a little time each per day, I consider Assimil unmatched, at least with its good courses. However, it tends to be highly graded; this is vital for making serious progress on small amounts of time regularly, by internalizing each lesson and moving on to the next one. This also makes it nearly unusable for L-R style long, intensive sessions, where the mixture of levels found in authentic material is critical. For making progress in one language quickly, L-R is unquestionably superior; for making progress with minimal amounts of time per day, Assimil unquestionably is. I tried "L-R"ing Assimil Polish at a point after my third Polish L-R trial. This is where I came to the above conclusions on Assimil vs L-R. Possibly also of note was that I found the first lessons absurdly simply and understood them without having ever looked at the text, the lessons in the middle at a reasonable level, and the lessons near the end too difficult. I strictly stuck to the format of listening once, then reading both texts, focusing on the English one, as I listened a second time; after doing this, I moved to the next lesson, regardless of the results. The second step was needless for the early lessons, and it would have taken more steps to be comfortable with the later ones, if in fact I could have been without spending the time to properly internalize more. Doing it over the course of two days rather than one may also have been a good idea; after about 2 hours, I would probably have benefitted from a long break, and my concentration suffered. The three courses mentioned all have the property of allowing for limited active use in less study hours than L-R does; this may be a plus or a minus, depending on your goals and how much active use as soon as possible motivates you. --------- Edit: Useful links The initial thread introducing L-R on this forum.. It's rather long and unwieldy; I recommend clicking the 'printable' link if you intend to read it Miss Stokortka, słodka poliglotka. Sztuka uwodzenia (in Polish). In a nutshell (one page): L-R in a nutshell (one page, in Polish). L-R overview (in Polish). If at least a few people are interested and atamagaii has no objection, I'll take a stab at translating at least the one-page document to English when I get back. Edited by Volte on 14 July 2008 at 4:14pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| blindsheep Triglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6303 days ago 503 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 2 of 55 07 July 2008 at 2:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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A couple notes... 1) intensity definitely matters... I too max out at about 3-4 hours normally... an interesting question is what is the time per day switch between LRing and Assimil... I agree that with 2 hours a day, LRing is better, with 15-30 min Assimil probably is... at what point does the efficiency tilt from one to the other. The trick is, with LR it´s still really difficult to over a longish period of time consistently do 2 hours a day... as far as finding the time. I can do it with 1-1.5 hours, but two and beyond for me is difficult, however I recognize this is just my own time management... but I´d guess many people cannot consistently give 2 hours every day over the course of a month.
Regarding parallel texts, I think this is evidenced by my LRing experiences with German... I´m starting to think parallel texts matter most in sweeps 2-3 assuming you do 3 sweeps of a book... I did my LRing without parallel texts for the majority of it and I think I may regret that somewhat... I think I would have picked up words with less exposure with the parallel text due to the visuals. It would have helped make my learning more explicit I think and thus probably more transferrable to new works. Going to LR next with parallel texts again and will note what I find out. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6382 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 55 07 July 2008 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
I would if I had any grounds to do so. Unfortunately, the only language I consider myself intermediate in is Esperanto, and I have been unable to find suitable L-R material for it. For languages where I'm at basic fluency (either both actively and passively - that is, Italian - or only passively), doing a small amount, such as an hour, per day is somewhat useful, but still significantly less so than doing it more intensively. The same is true of languages in which I could be considered an 'advanced beginner'; I would classify my German thus. Using audiobooks, with or without texts, once one has a reasonable level of comprehension, is a useful technique. That said, without intensity, I don't think it can really be considered the same thing as L-R, and the results decrease significantly, though they're still better than with most methods of study, in my opinion. The best way to find out is to try. And lastly, a side note: I cannot conceive of someone doing 10 hours/day of L-R for several weeks and only ending up at an intermediate level or below, no matter what the target and base languages are. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6852 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 55 07 July 2008 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just want to thank you for such a detailed and informative post. I'm struggling with L-R right now and your experiences and ideas are very helpful.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7148 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 6 of 55 07 July 2008 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Volte. This is the "Top Post of the Month" in my book. Edited by luke on 07 July 2008 at 9:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7261 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 55 07 July 2008 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your post, Volte. I've been rather sceptical about the L-R method but I think I'll try it soon after reading your post.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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