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My Thoughts On Sentence Mining and others | ||
Tags: Goals | Learning Technique/Method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 25 of 66 23 August 2010 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
I was discussing your website with other people. It was not a tangent to discuss your website when others brought it up. You addressed me directly in your reply, and now you're taking the high ground with this, saying I'll be the one egging you on? OK, then, take the high ground. It's windy, wet and lonely up there. I'll be in the pub, in the warm. Edited by Cainntear on 23 August 2010 at 9:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 26 of 66 23 August 2010 at 10:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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This has kept me thinking for a while, and maybe I'm going off on a tangent, -
but perhaps it all comes down to patterns, and to providing a well-balanced sample size to be able to make out those patterns and judge their importance. Input-focussed learners probably let the frequency with which certain features appear structure their learning (at least I do), whereas output-focussed learners establish a great deal of the structure of their own learning in the dialogue with other speakers. Input/output focus can be extreme to either end, but it can also be a pretty balanced medium, and of course it also can change. But I think the main difference is that the input-based learner learns a new item, makes assumptions about how it works in real life and then tends to observe proficient speakers to prove or disprove said assumptions, whereas the output-based learner learns a new item, makes assumptions about how it works and then tends to try it out with proficient speakers to prove or disprove said assumptions. Some person might prefer a very large sample size just to be sure, whereas the next person might happily use the first conclusion they jump to, because if it's wrong it's going to be corrected soon enough. I guess you could learn a language to a high level regardless of strong personal preferences in focus, given enough time and stamina (for input-focussed methods) or enough patient native speakers and awareness of body language/indirect correction etc (for output-focussed methods) On the other hand, even a lot of input over years is no guarantee for anything, not even for good comprehension; and the most patient native speakers you can talk to every day don't mean that you will actually pick up more than you need to communicate your most basic needs - it all depends on the way you use the opportunities given. Wait, and what happened to my thoughts about the perfect sample size to actually comprehend a pattern and subsequently learn to manipulate it? I really wonder if something like that exists, how different it is for different individuals and on what factors it may be based. (I vaguely remember that people with schizophrenia tend to base their assumptions on very small sample sizes ... I wonder if that pertains for them and foreign language acquisition?) 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| mpete16 Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 5521 days ago 98 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Tagalog, English* Studies: German | Message 27 of 66 24 August 2010 at 12:28am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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@irishpolyglot That's right, you didn't really outline your exact approach to learning
languages in detail. What I meant was that you focus on output from the very beginning, whereas the guys at Antimoon do the opposite: they focus on input. The guys at Antimoon don't like grammar exercises, whereas (correct me if I'm wrong) you don't mind doing them to fix up your weak points in the language. I wanted to compare both of your "methods"/"language learning mentalities" because they seemed like polar opposites. @Bao Interesting post, you give me a lot to think about. :) PS. Thanks for changing the topic. I thought this argument was gonna end up like the one at "DLI Links". EDIT: Just to make it clear, when I say "Sentence Mining", I'm referring to the Antimoon style of sentence mining, not AJATT. (They're a little bit different) Edited by mpete16 on 24 August 2010 at 12:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5632 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 28 of 66 24 August 2010 at 1:07am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Antimoon! haha - that's pretty much as polar opposite to my approach as you can get. I've read some posts and been mentioned as the antichrist there once too :P Actually... maybe I'm the "moon"? lol - Definitely a good choice for opposite approaches to try out :)
Of course, I disagree with most of that method, but that's pretty obvious when you compare either of our sites. I think the antimoon method works well for people in a completely different situation to me with hugely different goals for their target language. Not outlining my exact approach, is actually part of my approach. I use suspense (as well as other social cues) a lot to maintain interest from the person I'm communicating with. I prefer to give away all my secrets in pieces and based on themes. The theme of the German mission was looking at studying and its actual usefulness to the speaker (and I was discovering this myself as I studied a lot for my exam). The theme of this Hungarian mission is getting over the idea of languages being "hard" and something I'll be mentioning some more in the next posts, and already did in my most recent one (since I am apparently learning one of those "hardest languages" and totally disagree with the concept). The next mission will also have a theme that I know a lot of people in this forum will like. I prefer to present my ideas relevant to my current mission and to that theme. It helps me phrase it and present it better. To be honest, I wouldn't be able to outline absolutely everything I do if pressured to. But after a few differing missions I'll have learned how to explain it better. You are right that I don't mind doing exercises and learning grammar. Although I do encourage people to avoid grammar as much as possible in early stages and come back to it when they are somewhat confident in the language to fine-tune their communication abilities. I'm somewhere between the grammar lovers and grammar haters. I actually very much enjoy studying grammar, especially due to my more technical mathematical background, but don't find most of it at all useful in beginner to intermediate stages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6549 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 29 of 66 24 August 2010 at 1:10am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
I assume this is what you're talking about:
which is wrong, because you didn't say you were "going to learn Thai in a few months". I apologize. Here's what you said in your blog:
Which should explain some of the confusion about your goals. But later on you got more specific:
and in the Thai Visa Forum:
On the Thai Visa Forum you said you got too busy with work. Here you said you were on vacation. But for whatever reason, you were only able to study for 15 hours. So you canceled the reading part of your goals, tried to memorize some phrases, and made a video, using several takes and editing. In case you missed the many comments, your tones, vowel lengths and prosody were not good; much of your video would be incomprehensible to natives. In my opinion, you failed every single point in your goals. It's very understandable, since you only put in 15 hours, but you still failed. And I understand you like yourself, as everyone should, and you want to put a positive spin on it to make you feel better and make your followers happy. But what I can't understand is this:
Shouldn't it be 0 stars? You say people don't understand your goals, but I wrote down all the tangible points I could find above. Could you please explain your grade? 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5632 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 30 of 66 24 August 2010 at 7:34am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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@Leosmith I really don't like repeating myself - the purpose of the mission was to dip my toes in an Asian language. Your summary of my mission shows that you are being very selective about what you copy and paste and quoting me out of context.
I was on holiday for the first half of my time (as that was the purpose of my visit) and then working intensively for the final weeks since I had not received as much work during the middle weeks as I had hoped. The stars are just a random grading system I made up. As I said to Cainntear, I'm not an academic and I don't use systems that do nothing but punish students. I focus on my achievements, not my "failures", but the only thing I didn't achieve in this case was reading to a native. If you think I deserve 0 stars you are deluded. I achieved what I wanted with the language in a few hours of study plus one weekend and made a video to show it in action. My tones were not perfect, but they were totally understandable. If you don't understand them that's your problem because the natives I spoke to did. I don't care about perfection, I'm about efficiency. I also don't care about impressing needlessly negative people like yourself - it would be pointless for me to try to focus on proving my way as the only way to everyone in the world. I'm just sharing my ideas and people can take them or leave them. What is it with you two? I find this obsession with my dabbling in Thai totally irrelevant to this discussion. Please STAY ON TOPIC. My Thai mission has been discussed at length on the thai-visa forum and everything that can possibly be said (including insulting me countless times) has been said. I will not answer any more taunts from ANYONE about that topic on this thread. If you have some other stupid argument please go read the discussion in the thai visa forum - there's nothing new you can say and I've already answered all demands for answers several times over since I left Thailand. Edited by irishpolyglot on 24 August 2010 at 8:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6378 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 31 of 66 24 August 2010 at 8:40am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Can we put an end to this? It's not going anywhere and is only angrying up the blood.
Let's get back to the original topic, sans the bickering. Edited by newyorkeric on 25 August 2010 at 10:16am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| feanarosurion Senior Member Canada Joined 5280 days ago 217 posts - 316 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Norwegian | Message 32 of 66 24 August 2010 at 9:18am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
OK, here's my attempt at getting things back on topic.
I'd like to politely disagree with this, because I am a firm believer of sentence mining, and in fact, I really quite enjoy it, despite adding every new word into SRS and looking for sentences for each of those words. You're certainly right in that it takes a lot of work, but I find it to be a good way for me to find as much material as possible to expose myself to. I have a very good dictionary with a number of example sentences for each word, and I type each of those sentences up and add them into SRS. That way, for most words I encounter, at least the most common and useful words, I get a number of sentences using the word, which will inevitably contain additional new words that I can look up. I find it to be a good, self-replenishing method of getting as much new input as possible, and I find the work it takes to get it up and running to be a small price to pay. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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