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Tags: Motivation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| madbear Newbie Poland Joined 7144 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English | Message 1 of 6 31 May 2009 at 6:39pm | IP Logged |
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There’s been much being said that the input ought to be enjoyable. On the other hand, the common advice is read books, magazines, newspapers, watch TV and listen to the radio. This all sounds simple, but there are still many guys who try to push themselves through stuff they don’t really care about. So, how do you actually combine these two: input and enjoyment? I would especially welcome advice from native speakers of languages other that English and guys who managed to achieve higher level of sophistication in their language studies.
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| delta910 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5877 days ago 267 posts - 313 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, German | Message 2 of 6 31 May 2009 at 6:45pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I know it probably isn't too popular on this forum but try out lingQ?(It's a free sign up) You get to chose your material and the sound comes with it. It really is helping me increase my input vocabulary. Or you could just Youtube Steve Kaufmann and watch some videos on what he recommends.Not much else I could recommend.
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| Ashiro Groupie United Kingdom learnxlanguage.com/ Joined 5804 days ago 89 posts - 101 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 6 31 May 2009 at 6:49pm | IP Logged |
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Music is good. It can be fun/moving/exciting even if you only understand a few of the words. It compels you to learn it better.
Games are good for drilling too. Though not necessarily monolingual. Basic word games like crosswords and wordsearches are immensely addictive (for some). I've 'wasted' 2-3hrs playing Spanish crosswords. It's helped my verb conjugations no end! I like foreign films too but I've found the type of film that most readily 'translates' itself is horror. Fear and suspense are quite universal. So you find yourself absorbing the language gradually while enjoying the emotional impact at the same time. In contrast I can watch a comedy sketch and although I understand parts the humour goes well over my head and I get frustrated = no enjoyment. Humour is very culturally tied. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Yukamina Senior Member Canada Joined 6266 days ago 281 posts - 332 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean, French | Message 4 of 6 01 June 2009 at 3:18am | IP Logged |
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I'm mostly learning Japanese to enjoy the media, and since I'm upper intermediate, I'm not too limited in what I can understand. Japan has tons of the stuff I enjoy(light novels, anime, manga, etc) so I can easily avoid the stuff I'm not into(new, blogs, gameshows and so on).
I still get input from less than exciting sources, though. Sentence examples from study resources, dictionaries and stuff like that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| WANNABEAFREAK Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong cantonese.hk Joined 6829 days ago 144 posts - 185 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Cantonese Studies: French | Message 5 of 6 06 June 2009 at 3:36pm | IP Logged |
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I'm a big fan of http://lingq.com because of the wide range of topics...
Though I like to watch dramas as their is a story that is nice to follow... dialogues, news, books etc seem to get a bit boring after a while. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5653 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 6 06 June 2009 at 7:29pm | IP Logged |
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I believe that motivation is the key factor in being able to continue learning day after day, to really do the work rather than sit back and be content with "being interested" in learning a language. And, for me, motivation comes from having material that I want to keep working through. In my case, I'm mostly interested in learning to read, so I concentrate on finding excellent reading material. I've found that the classics work for me and if I'm in the earlier stages of learning a given language, I make sure to have a literal translation for the material. Ideally, this would be a bilingual edition of a book, such as poetry with English and the original language on facing pages. It also helps if the material breaks up nicely into daily chunks. Thus, even though it can be harder because of matters of interpretation, I've found that poetry works well. It's very satisfying to work through an entire sonnet (or something comparable) in a day.
I've used this method with Persian (last year a friend and I did a sonnet-like ghazal by Hafez each day), German (recently I worked through Goethe's Roman Elegies and then read a chapter a day of Hesse's Siddhartha, a novel written in simple enough style that I didn't need a translation to help), and Italian (Petrarch's sonnets, which happen to number 366--perfect for a one year program!). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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