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Thoughts on L-R

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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 9 of 19
11 March 2008 at 6:04pm | IP Logged 
The last in my series of under-edited posts that I've been sitting on - some short notes on having used L-R with artificially speeded up audio.

----
Overall, I found listening to artificially sped-up audio quite helpful.
Benefits:
        - normal speech now seems slow.
        - as I'd hoped, it largely kept me from overanalyzing.
        - While phrase order had previously started seeming natural, particles seem more so now, especially 'na', which was quite problematic to me when I was creating all sorts of half-baked overliteral translations in the spare time I had during L-R.

Possible side benefit: atamagaii mentioned that auditory memory lasts 0.6 seconds. I haven't independently looked this up from other sources, but it seems in-line with my personal experience. Regardless of the exact value, I can fit a larger portion of a phrase or sentence into this rather limited time while associating it with meaning.

At this point, my largest problem is that I can't put in very long, focused sessions over the course of more than a couple days in a row (although it can certainly be argued that I haven't even put in one properly intense day). I've found myself forgetting a few words which I knew yesterday, such as 'gdy' and 'kilka'. Overall, I'm learning, but the forgetting curve is definitely kicking in, and harder than I'd like.

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kealist
Senior Member
United States
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111 posts - 124 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Uyghur, Mandarin, Shanghainese

 
 Message 10 of 19
12 March 2008 at 3:29pm | IP Logged 
Volte wrote:
The last in my series of under-edited posts that I've been sitting on - some short notes on having used L-R with artificially speeded up audio.


One question: At what point did you find yourself having ample time to analyze sentence structure, versus trying to catch up with matching the two parts of the texts together.   I am just curious because after 3.5 hours of Mandarin, I can almost continuously keep my place with the English and the Mandarin (with passages I have repeated), but sometimes (long paragraphs) its very very difficult but that could be the fault of myself in how I organized the text, and I'm not able to pay complete attention to each sound so much at that point. If I begin to get to that point, maybe I can start to pay more attention to the details of the characters.


Edited some of my thoughts

Edited by kealist on 12 March 2008 at 4:26pm

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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 11 of 19
12 March 2008 at 5:48pm | IP Logged 
kealist wrote:
Volte wrote:
The last in my series of under-edited posts that I've been sitting on - some short notes on having used L-R with artificially speeded up audio.


One question: At what point did you find yourself having ample time to analyze sentence structure, versus trying to catch up with matching the two parts of the texts together.   


There's no one exact answer to that. I definitely didn't at the start. After a while, I started being able to for the really easy, short paragraphs - the ones that had one sentence of simple dialog. I'm not sure how long it was until I reached this point, though I know I was doing it in the second pass through the book, from the beginning - I forget if I was during the first - which suggests that I was doing so by about 20 hours in. I've been actively trying to avoid analyzing sentence structure too much at this point (I did so quite a bit earlier on in this experiment), so I'm not quite sure where I'd be at if I were still doing so, but I could do so with most paragraphs before I stopped that particular approach.

kealist wrote:

I am just curious because after 3.5 hours of Mandarin, I can almost continuously keep my place with the English and the Mandarin (with passages I have repeated), but sometimes (long paragraphs) its very very difficult but that could be the fault of myself in how I organized the text, and I'm not able to pay complete attention to each sound so much at that point. If I begin to get to that point, maybe I can start to pay more attention to the details of the characters.


I found some long paragraphs difficult even relatively far into this experiment; it wouldn't entirely surprise me if I would -still- find some hard. I do find that I tend to wander around a little more in such paragraphs.

When it's been a matter of reading both English and Polish and half-tuning out the sound, or focusing mainly on the English text and the sound, I've chosen the latter.

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brian00321
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6541 days ago

143 posts - 148 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German

 
 Message 13 of 19
13 March 2008 at 1:39pm | IP Logged 
kealist wrote:
Volte wrote:
The last in my series of under-edited posts that I've been sitting on - some short notes on having used L-R with artificially speeded up audio.


One question: At what point did you find yourself having ample time to analyze sentence structure, versus trying to catch up with matching the two parts of the texts together.   I am just curious because after 3.5 hours of Mandarin, I can almost continuously keep my place with the English and the Mandarin (with passages I have repeated), but sometimes (long paragraphs) its very very difficult but that could be the fault of myself in how I organized the text, and I'm not able to pay complete attention to each sound so much at that point. If I begin to get to that point, maybe I can start to pay more attention to the details of the characters.


Edited some of my thoughts


If you don't mind me butting in, I think how well you know the text (and maybe the audio) depends on how much you can start analyzing. When I first did LR I speed-read sentences/ whole paragraphs ahead, held on to the meaning, visualized, imagined, and just paid attention to the sound. I find it more beneficial, for me, to do the text a 4th time. It's like a groove that you just start to pick up after a certain amount of time. Trust me you'll feel it once it kicks in. I really can't explain it.

Currently I think I'm at the same stage as Volte in LR (90 hours or so; I don't keep count). If I know a story before hand and just listen to it in German with no text I know at least 75-80% of what they're saying and can pick out words one by one.

Since you only have 3.5 hours in LR I say don't have much to worry about. You still got a ways to go. I say things will start clicking by the 30-40 hour mark. Maybe a little longer. But think about 45 hours you'd be spending on Pimsleur compared to what you'd get out of this in the same amount of time. I was skeptical at first about LR but went ahead with it. Honestly, the best and most beneficial hours I've spent in language learning, if you can call it learning. Just remember the key point to it, love.

Edit to Volte: You don't think you're ready for the active stages of it yet? I started nitpicking and doing translations on the first chapter of my book. Not by hand, but just with the text and maybe a dictionary every now and then with a word I can't translate, keeping the definition in my head instead.

I found that after I listened to the chapter again and read the text just in German all the pieces that were scattered were now coming together. Now instead of just attaching a meaning to a word I can tell my brain "yeah, that's exactly what so-and-so word/phrase means". I mean psychologically knowing every word. And this was done in about 45 minutes. I'll probably start a journal and keep people updated with the active phases of LR.

Edited by brian00321 on 13 March 2008 at 1:52pm

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vumaverick
Newbie
United States
Joined 6049 days ago

3 posts - 3 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 15 of 19
13 March 2008 at 2:30pm | IP Logged 
a question: how early in the learning process can one begin L-R? I.e., is this appropriate for a rank beginner just starting out in a language. or should one complete some structured (e.g., assimil) study first, then embark on L-R?

Edited by vumaverick on 13 March 2008 at 2:41pm

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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 16 of 19
13 March 2008 at 3:48pm | IP Logged 
brian00321 wrote:

If you don't mind me butting in, I think how well you know the text (and maybe the audio) depends on how much you can start analyzing. When I first did LR I speed-read sentences/ whole paragraphs ahead, held on to the meaning, visualized, imagined, and just paid attention to the sound. I find it more beneficial, for me, to do the text a 4th time. It's like a groove that you just start to pick up after a certain amount of time. Trust me you'll feel it once it kicks in. I really can't explain it.


Interesting; maybe I will try "The Master and Margarita" a 4th time. I've felt a few different things that are various sorts of grooves, but I'm not sure if they include the one you mentioned.

I'm actually finding doing L-R with a French text as the base to be useful for visualizing things more vividly. It gives me a fairly clean distinction between visualization and language/words, while I have a much blurrier one with English, and I actually visualize a lot more with the French, despite my slightly more fragmentary comprehension.

brian00321 wrote:

Currently I think I'm at the same stage as Volte in LR (90 hours or so; I don't keep count). If I know a story before hand and just listen to it in German with no text I know at least 75-80% of what they're saying and can pick out words one by one.


I wish I was at that point; I'm barely over halfway to the 90 hour mark, at under 55 hours.

I'm finding L-R with Polish to be much slower going than it was when I experimented lightly with it with German, Dutch, and Spanish; the difference is probably due to my original levels of familiarity with the languages and their close relatives, though. Polish is the only one I was an absolute beginner at.

brian00321 wrote:

Edit to Volte: You don't think you're ready for the active stages of it yet? I started nitpicking and doing translations on the first chapter of my book. Not by hand, but just with the text and maybe a dictionary every now and then with a word I can't translate, keeping the definition in my head instead.


I've been nitpicking the translation since extremely early on. I haven't written out any translations, in either direction, but I do sometimes to some degree in my head, in both directions. I can't think particularly flowingly in Polish yet though, or understand more than basic radio broadcasts in it, so I'm waiting to do (my interpretation of) the active stages of L-R.

brian00321 wrote:

I found that after I listened to the chapter again and read the text just in German all the pieces that were scattered were now coming together. Now instead of just attaching a meaning to a word I can tell my brain "yeah, that's exactly what so-and-so word/phrase means". I mean psychologically knowing every word. And this was done in about 45 minutes.


I should give that a try as well. About how well were you understanding individual words before doing this - how many were you understanding/not understanding?

brian00321 wrote:

I'll probably start a journal and keep people updated with the active phases of LR.


Please do!



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