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Best Method or More Time ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6462 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 1 of 430 22 April 2008 at 5:54am | IP Logged |
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I think that methods are not that important. The most important factor is TIME and LOVE devoted to the target language.
Thinking about that, I think the best methods are those that manages to scratch more of your time without you been aware. For example, I think the DVD movie methods are the best.Why? Because people devote more time to the language without been aware. Time flies when you're having fun 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5938 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 2 of 430 22 April 2008 at 6:15am | IP Logged |
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If time is limited, are some methods not a more efficient use of time than others ? Why is it that an hour of Michel Thomas, FSI, L-R, or Assimil, seems a lot more effective than some other courses, such as Teach Yourself X ? Edited by DaraghM on 22 April 2008 at 6:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6452 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 3 of 430 22 April 2008 at 7:53am | IP Logged |
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I tend to agree with Slucido. Sure some methods will suit you better than others, but time spent on the language is a much more decisive factor.
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| asad100101 Diglot Senior Member Pakistan languagel.blogspot.c Joined 6242 days ago 118 posts - 137 votes Speaks: Hindi*, English | Message 4 of 430 22 April 2008 at 8:09am | IP Logged |
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Effective method is directly proportional to more time spent on the language without getting bored. If you love watching movies,you will spend more time on watching them. If you love listening to audiobooks, you'll spend more time to listening to them. The only difference would be is that an audio-book listener would have much better vocabulary than that of dvd-watcher counterpart. After reaching to an advanced level, I think, all methods would work in the end. But, sure, in the beginning stage, none of these methods would work. You need a help of easy materials then. I am sure you would not like to jump into high level stuff right from the beginning even though you have a lot free time and unfettered love for learning a language. Trust me It was a painstaking experience for me to read Readerdigests and novels right from the start. I got better because I had read a lot of easy materials inthe beginning and had
reviewed a lot of newly-acquired vocabulary. So saying that having time and unfettered love at your disposal is more than enough to learn a language successfully then I disagree with this line of thinking. If it is that easy then everyone knows many languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6226 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 5 of 430 22 April 2008 at 8:29am | IP Logged |
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I strongly have to disagree with the idea that time is much more important than method.
Let me clarify a few points first. - Time spent is vital: without it, no method is useful. - A variety of reasonable techniques seem to take similar amounts of time. That said: it is entirely possible to spend hundreds or thousands of hours very ineffectively. I'd say that primarily learning from materials purely in your target language, which are not artificially graded or made comprehensible is the most obvious way to do so. This is useful at later stages, and an amazing waste of time at early ones. I don't think any amount of time with "English as she is spoke" would be well-spent either. I've personally spent hundreds of hours listening to various languages. In the more unfamiliar ones where I had the least base, I still learned a little - but it's really not comparable to using any of the methods which people have successfully used and advocated on this forum. Reineke wrote about his experiences learning Italian in a similar way as a child - and estimated around 4000 hours to reach a decent level of comprehension of cartoons. Compared to estimates of time to reach basic fluency/FSI level III of around 200 to 600 hours, that's about 10 times less efficient - and I consider that a rather significant factor. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6159 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 430 22 April 2008 at 10:12am | IP Logged |
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Disagree with that. Time matters a lot, but I think so does the method. A bad method with lots of time will not yield the same results as a good method with lots of time. Edited by zerothinking on 22 April 2008 at 10:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ipanema Newbie United States Joined 6315 days ago 37 posts - 38 votes Studies: French | Message 7 of 430 22 April 2008 at 10:16am | IP Logged |
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I think it was somewhere in this forum where a person sited an experiment by a guy that tried to see if he could
learn a language simply by "osmosis", if you will. Without actively studying the language--I believe it was Thai-- he listened to it for several hours per day, only. After several months of only listening, he learned 56 words. Lots of time spent, but very ineffectively. I think people tend to want to find that ultimate ONE WAY to learn a language. But I believe that's unrealistic. I feel that each of us have to find the best way that suits us as individuals, but do it efficiently. The more efficiently we use our time, the more we get out of it and the more we enjoy it. I'm also of the belief that a person's approach should be varied: some time spent on reading, passive listening, writing, repeating, conversing, etc. So, a combination of fun and enjoyment, time spent, consistency, variety of effective methods and approaches, etc. is key. That's my opinion, anyway. ^^ 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6992 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 8 of 430 22 April 2008 at 10:20am | IP Logged |
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One of the "Lessons Learned from 50 Years of FSI Experience" was that "time on task" is one of the key success factors. Of course in that context, they already have an effective and proven methodology.
So, having said that, I think that a bit of experimentation to find what works for me personally has been useful. I also know that it is easy for me to waste too much time thinking about how to learn more effectively, rather than actually learning. As the venerated Professor lamented, too often professionals in language learning spend an inordinate amount of time on theory and not enough on their own language learning quest. Hence, their theories may not be as effective as they would be had they had a personal and ongoing language learning journey. I don't mean to be derisive in any way, but if it's easy for a professional linguist to become an armchair quarterback, how much easier is it for the language learning student such as myself to get bogged down in thinking about learning, rather than the taking the actions that make language learning actually occur? Edited by luke on 22 April 2008 at 10:22am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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