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Best Method or More Time ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6244 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes  Studies: German | Message 201 of 430 30 April 2008 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Learning solely through exposure takes too long for anyone ambitious enough to target many languages. It is possible, but the amount of time needed is just too great. The more exotic the language, the longer it takes. Time spent on the job matters both in terms of the number hours punched in and how wisely these hours were spent. Insisting on having fun and spending a whole lot of time on trying to decipher some basic concepts that could be learned quickly through an organized approach is counterproductive. Some people would not find this approach even “fun”. Love for a language is helpful but not necessary for a successful outcome. Love is generally overrated and perhaps misplaced. I find content crucial but this is perhaps personal preference. Love for the content will take me further. If a language is the exclusive provider of such content so much the better. As for love, nothing wrong with a quick romp with an easy gal or marriage of convenience with a rich but perhaps somewhat unattractive lady. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and you learn to love while counting her treasures.
Kato not oly used textbooks, she also (gasp) did the exercises. Using authentic materials is the natural next step after breaking the ice with grammars/textbooks etc. Steve has a method that works for him and he values it. He may dislike grammar but he has strong opinions about methodology. He's the vocabulary/repetition guy. Khatzumoto is all about having fun, spending thousands of hours on the language, watching movies etc and he does not like organized courses or textbooks. However he did “mine” textbooks and grammars for example sentences which pretty much is another way of saying he read through them and learned by heart the best examples - a pretty standard and boring learning method. Learning 10,000 sentences by heart through a computer program somehow strikes me as painful. He also likes to talk about thousands of hours of exposure/input/fun as if it was chump change. Repetition is a great tool for language study. It’s been used for ages because it works and it’s never been fun. Edited by reineke on 30 April 2008 at 8:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mcjon01 Newbie United States Joined 6105 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 202 of 430 30 April 2008 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My only problem with what Slucido is saying is this: I love studying Japanese, regardless of what "method" I'm using. Since my love is for the language itself, it's easy for me to spend hours a day studying, whether it be through FSI drills or shadowing Assimil dialogs. However, I've noticed, even at the early stage that I'm in, that the method I use directly affects the rate at which I learn in the time that I study. All other things completely equal, some methods just work better for me. This implies that the method used does matter, and not just because the feeling of being more effective is tricking me into spending more time studying, since it's not.
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| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6472 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 203 of 430 01 May 2008 at 3:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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I am reading and reading the messages and I really don't understand where do you disagree.
What point do you disagree? 1, 2, 3 ...or 13 or everything? I am saying methods and specific techniques aren't that important. The most important factor is time. If you use any combination of methods that include input and output, you will succeed. If the most important factor is time, passion and motivation, hence it's very important your methods stir up your passion. Do you have any problems with the above statements? I hope most of the people don't have any problem As far as I understand, some of you have problems with ONE specific method: Using real materials from the beginning and ONLY real materials with DISTANT languages, For example: an English learning Korean or a Korean learning Spanish. Is that? I am saying: if one person (maybe one person of 1000,000 people) LIKES a lot this approach, he will succeed if he feel passion and work time enough. Why ? Because if he don't use this approach, he he will GIVE UP their work. Maybe this person is weird, freaky or stupid from our point of view, but we are dealing with SUBJECTIVE creatures and if he feels bad with other "efficient" methods, he will FAIL. If I understand, here some people think this person is completely wrong and this method is IMPOSSIBLE with DISTANT languages. I think you all agree that it's perfectly possible with closely related languages. My father learned Català only interacting with native speakers. Here we have two situations: 1-People fully immersed in the target language in their target country. Do you agree? If an American go to live in a tiny Korean village and nobody speaks English. Do you think he will succeed only interacting every day with natives? As far as I know, Koreans are humans, they have a human brain, Korean is a human language, Americans are humans and they have a human brain, so it's only a matter of time that the American brain learn Korean language. Other examples: -You go to 15th century I think people who traveled and live in China or other eastern countries didn't use Assimil or Pimsleur or a lot of dictionaries. In fact, most of the people was illiterate. -I know immigrants who learn Spanish with interaction. Moroccans, Argelians, a lot of Africans and so on. Their natives languages are distant and a lot of them are illiterate. -I know several cases of westerners who went to prison in eastern countries and they learned the language without any method and pretty well. I can not understand anybody think it's impossible. 2-People in their own country who want to learn the language from scratch with native materials: If you agree, with the previous point, I don't understand what problem do you have with this second point. If one person out of 1,000.000 likes a lot this method and he has a lot of passion and time, he will succeed. Maybe he is very weird and freaky, but he will succeed. Why? Because he use input+output and time. Immersion in their own country. -Input: a lot of native materials, mainly audio and video or whatever. -Output a lot of interaction with native speakers of his target language who don't speak English. It's immersion in their own country and he will learn with some sort of Physical Total Response. If he use "more efficient" methods, he will fail, because he will give up. We are dealing with subjective creatures. Edited by slucido on 01 May 2008 at 4:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6472 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 205 of 430 01 May 2008 at 4:07am | IP Logged | |||||
Because you need to believe that the method you feel works better for you, it's OBJECTIVELY working better for you. If you need this belief, use it. This belief is part of your method. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6472 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 206 of 430 01 May 2008 at 4:10am | IP Logged | |||||
:0) Yet again!!! What's it the BEST method out of the THOUSAND best methods you can find in this forum? Please, read a little from the beginning... :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mcjon01 Newbie United States Joined 6105 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 207 of 430 01 May 2008 at 4:24am | IP Logged | |||||
In which case, the net result is still that the method works better for me than other methods. Whether this is because of learning styles or a placebo effect on my part doesn't matter in the least. What's the point of making a distinction if the end result is the same either way? It's all just semantics, and it doesn't actually affect how you go about learning languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ChrisWebb Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6060 days ago 181 posts - 190 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean | Message 208 of 430 01 May 2008 at 4:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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We know from history that Egyptian Hieroglphics could not be deciphered by those who were passionate about deciphering them and devoted huge amounts of time to the task. It was only when the Rosetta Stone was uncovered and people could access the translations in already known languages that hieroglyphics became readable. In fact even this wasnt enough and it took the realisation that there was a relationship with Coptic for a Coptic speaker ( Champollion ) to really crack the code. If it were possible to break into an entirely alien language without the need for non-native material ( or a native teacher ) this would almost certainly not have been the case.
I think most would agree that immersion with access to native speakers is actually an effective method and not no method at all. As for the supposed placebo effect we seem to have ample testimony from multiple posters in this thread alone to conclude that better methods do in fact have an effect above and beyond that of a placebo. Edited by ChrisWebb on 01 May 2008 at 4:47am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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