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Study Log IX | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6952 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 1 of 1 14 September 2007 at 3:04am | IP Logged |
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I thought it about time I begun a new Study Log entry since my current language study marks a slight departure from what I've been doing up until now.
For the time being, I'm going to be focusing mostly on Listening/Reading across the board in all languages. It will be an interesting experiment to see how it works across languages at different levels of ability. I have already been using it in Spanish - I have finished A Christmas Carol and am trying to decide what to listen to next. I had been looking at Great Expectations but the audio is either synthentic or appalling quality - I can't decide which. For French, I have taken Luke's advice posted elsewhere and I've started with Journey to the Centre of the Earth, for German I have begun the Little Mermaid*. I would have liked to use an L/R method for Catalan but there appears to be a lack of material that I can use**. So, I've decided to pick up my Italian once again. I did an O-level in Italian for 12 months about 30 years ago, so I'm intrigued to see what happens with it using L/R. The Adventures of Pinocchio is out there, so I'm on Chapter 3 of that. Initial conclusions: Firstly, for a language known reasonably well, I definitely dislike parallel translations and I would prefer to maintain a glossary/wordlist approach. This is not particular surprising to me since I've never got on that well with parallel readers in the past. I have found with both Cuento de Navidad and Voyage au Centre de la Terre that regardless of whether an adequate translation exists in the L1 for an unknown or "known" unkown, I always look the word up (typically because I'm looking for a root meaning or a nuance plus other examples of its usage) and then add a glossay entry to the L1 text. I never refer to the translation to interpret the structure only for quick verification of a word. At this level, I think L1 needs to remain in the background as much as possible. For languages at a beginner's level, however, material at a relatively low level would be required for a glossary/wordlist approach. I tried listening to the first chapter of Pinocchio on LingQ but having no structural knowledge on which to "hang my hat", I found it impossible to get into the material - I had no feel for what I was hearing despite the fact that I have recently read the story in translation to my son. I fear I would have ended up looking up and anlyzing every single word. Having a parallel translation speeds up the process of picking out patterns and understanding the structure. Therefore, I have been able to proceed without looking up everything - knowledge of French and Spanish (and possibly deeply-buried 30-year-old Italian) helps me pick out cognates or take a guess at a meaning. In addition, I've been reworking the Gutenberg translation as I go along to better match the structure of the Italian. Secondly, I have been unable to avoid an "intensive" reading approach to this method. I expected this in Spanish and French since I'm keen to ensure that I understand everything I hear/see. However, I am also doing the same thing in German and I've found in Italian as well. Not sure if this is good or bad but it manifests itself in working through a "section" listening and highlighting everything I don't get, listening to that section again and then moving on. These "sections" are then revisited the following day prior to starting the next ones. A "section" has been an entire Stave for Dickens, a Chapter or two for Verne and a paragraph or more at a time for Anderson and Collodi. The size of what can be "coped" with is obviously related to language level. It's clear, however, that I should revisit the material used at a later stage in its entirety and more than once to ensure all is not forgotten. Thirdly, for a language known reasonably well, L/R doesn't appear that useful for ramping up Aural Comprehension - the speakers generally seem to speak more clearly and more slowly than a news reporter, for example. The converse is that, for languages at a beginner's (or even intermediate) level, I can see this giving a massive boost to the ability to comprehend spoken L2. Right from the start you are shoved in the deep end - way beyond the "What's your name?" of lesson 1 of a course. Fourthly, I'm enjoying the process immensely. I've never listened to an audiobook in my life having always preferred the feel of a real book - I've only been using eBooks because of the ease of doing dictionary lookups which speeds up "intensive" reading immensely (but see below). I'm the first to admit that I generally read cr*p fiction in any language. You won't find the classics on my bookshelves (my history books would, however, bore most people to tears), so I've been surprised how much I enjoyed Dickens in Spanish and am enjoying Verne in French. Actively, I'm currently doing nothing for French, German and Italian. For Spanish, I've just started watching films in English with Spanish subtitles. I've had a little play with this in the past and I've found it good for circumlocution strategies because subtitles typically convey the dialogue meaning in a simplified manner. I'll work through a load in Spanish and then try the same in French. I've written a little reader for subtitle files so that I can display L1 on one side and L2 on the other and work through the subtitles as a translation exercise. German and Italian, I'm going to keep Passive for the moment until some quantity of "comprehensible input" have been worked through. On a sidenote, I have recently bought this so that I can return to reading "real" books in Spanish. It's not got every single word in it but I've only had a few to-date that are missing. I had been reading La cuarta alianza by Gonzalo Giner but I've put it to one side since I fear it belongs to the really cr*p fiction genre (I may be being unfair but I've got plenty of other stuff to read). I've moved on to La orden negra by Jose Calvo Poyato which seems much more enjoyable and actually appears to have a cohesive plot. Andy. *I obtained the audio from http://German-grammar.de but for some reason best known only to themselves, the German text doesn't match the audio. What appears to matching German is, however, available from http://www.andersenstories.com so I'm making use of that instead. **it needs to be on-line and free Edited by Andy E on 14 September 2007 at 3:06am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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