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Top Ten Language Learning Mistakes | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5822 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 25 of 51 02 December 2009 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
They're rarely in language, and often only very slightly about language. Most of them are just little juggling tricks and pretty meaningless. My favourite example of this is the "match the sentence halves" or "match the question with the answer" type questions. Using generic Foreignese: 1) Flubadubadub moneyo flubalub? 2) Flubadub sleepio dub aflubadub dub? 3) Rubadubdub breadio rub adub dub dub? A) Dubaflubalub bakerio dub fulabub bub! B) Dub ba ding wob wob woo banky woo ping. c) Hotelio wai wai woo nabod. In this example there are 33 words, and only 6 of them are required to complete the task. No understanding of the grammar is required. In other cases, you can get by on a knowledge of the grammar without any understanding of the specific vocabulary. For me, the most useful task is something that makes you produce a full utterance. Listening exercises can be quite useful if the prompts make you listen, rather than again letting you away with simply finding a word. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5649 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 26 of 51 02 December 2009 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I meant exercises like
John and Gill went ____ the hill. Later they _____ back with a basket full ____ blueberries. Blah blah ____ blah. Basically you fill in the missing words and then check the... erm [facit?] correct answers to see if you got it right. I agree that multiple choice is useless. The student should not choose between various existing options but think them up himself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aquila Triglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5292 days ago 104 posts - 128 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German Studies: French | Message 27 of 51 02 December 2009 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
For me, these exercises are helpfull. For example if you want to learn German grammar: Aus welch__ Grund hat er sich geweigert zu unterschreiben? (welchem) Dies__ Artikel exportieren wir ach in d__ Schweiz. (Dieser, der) I think it just depends on wich learning style you like. Edited by Aquila on 02 December 2009 at 9:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5649 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 28 of 51 02 December 2009 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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No I am also saying that I think they are helpful. It was somebody else who didn't think that they were.
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| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5292 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 29 of 51 02 December 2009 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think I make mistakes in learning languages with switching languages to often. I still do it, and it's a bad habit. It's because I become discourage (mostly for the reason of resources), but I am working HARD not to do that now and I've realized that just because I lost the excitement of the language itself doesn't mean I should just stop learning it, it just means I'm in a funk and that absolute love will come flooding back one day. Cordelia: I also buy many language books with the intent of using them, and I never do. It's a habit that is expensive and I'm trying to stop this the most as it's cutting into my budget for things I actually need. I tend to get too into grammar and I just do some note taking and memorizing for grammatical structures. It helps but it doesn't really stick. I need to be able to use it in a real situation. It's good to have a Czech friend to try things out on :D.
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| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5720 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 30 of 51 02 December 2009 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's exactly right, and believe me it is SO worth it when you stick to a language consistently enough to get to a level where you feel like you've made serious progress and where your working toward genuinely owning the language on various levels. I used to dabble in a long series of languages, often studying several at the same time, which was fun for a while but I never really took any of them (at least the ones I'd chosen myself) beyond an intermediate and frankly mediocre level - then I realized that it sucks to just carry on like that, it was taking me nowhere and essentially giving me nothing in return. If you find resources that you can enjoy in the language regardless of whether they form part of your study or not - music, for example (I don't know where I'd be without mine) - then you can use those to drag you out of the pits and restore joy of learning when you hit a rough spot. Imo it's much more interesting to stick with one language (or a few) long enough to get to the really fun stages of language learning, when you're far enough beyond the basic-to-intermediate type stuff and can get into the more elegant layers of the language. That's where the real rewards are. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| namsskogan Newbie Norway Joined 5406 days ago 18 posts - 53 votes Speaks: Norwegian* Studies: German | Message 32 of 51 02 December 2009 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A respons to cordelia0507 and Warp3:
I might seem too categorical when I dismiss use of mnemonics and grammatical excercises in language learning (see above). But this was not what I meant to do. I only wished to give two examples of things that didn't work for me when I tried to learned German. A thread like this has to be very subjective, but I will try to be more nuanced for those of you who wish to read further: 1.I also use mnemonics in vocabulary learning. But I have wasted so much time in the past using the sort of mnemonics as I described earlier in this thread. These kind of mnemonics are proposed by 'memory gurus' like Tony Buzan and Dominic O'Brien, but I don't find them very useful. The reason is that I don't like to fill my head with scattered cartoon-like images. I tried to learn German this way earlier, but ended up with silly images of Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse in various circumstances. The German words never got automated in my brain, in spite of endless repetitions, only the irritating images remained. I could never have a normal fluent conversation in German by this memory technique. However, as I said above, I also use mnemonics. But I use similarities between languages as 'hooks' to make me remember vocabulary in L 2. A few examples: 'even' (english) reminds me of 'eben' (german), 'løpe' (norwegian) reminds me of 'laufen' (german), 'fönster' (swedish) reminds me of 'Fenster' (german), and so on. But these mnemonics are embeded in the vocabulary/language itself, and I don't have to use cartoon-images to remember words in L 2. 2.When it comes to exercises in language books, is it partly my memories from the school days that block me from doing them. I remember how we could sit in classroom and do exercises in English and German day in and day out, and get our marks from such tests. But did those tests make us confident in English and German? Nope. I got good marks in English and German, but could neither read or speak these languages after finishing school. Only during my university studies later on did I learn to read English by extensive reading (most of our books were in English). My ability to speak the language followed afterwards. But back to the point: Exercises in language learning is for me something artificial because they have little connection with real use of the language. I prefer to read long texts in L 2 and gradually discover the grammar there, without being tested if I have understood the grammar points by doing exercises afterwards. But I like grammar. I like to read grammars and explore authentic texts in L 2 to recognize grammatical structures and idioms. This is fun and satisfying. But I will never do grammar exercises again because I see them as time consuming and useless. To those of you who find the kind of mnemonics that I dislike useful, and to those of you who like doing grammatical exercises: I am sure that you will progress when you really like doing these activities. There are many different roads that will lead us to Rome, and perhaps will your ways of language learning take you there long before me. But for me is it two roads that I don't want to travel on again. Good luck with your language learning. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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