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A new language in 2 weeks? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| vexx Groupie Australia Joined 5019 days ago 81 posts - 82 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 49 of 58 03 September 2010 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I've seen these not by nuns though, I was looking for Italian for something very intensive for a short period of time.
Example of one i saw: http://www.davidschool.com/italian-language-courses.html I would do it for 2 weeks at 6hrs/day, with a total of 60 hours over the 2 weeks. The courses are all taught apparently in Italian for full immersion.I would also be most likely staying at a host family and so i would be exposed to Italian for my entire stay. Would i really advance that much during this time? is this a good idea? How much roughly would a beginner or intermediate person improve? Specifically to me if i've had 30-50hrs of study a couple of months before leaving? Edited by vexx on 03 September 2010 at 2:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5231 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 50 of 58 03 September 2010 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Let's be serious here. Does anybody really believe that a beginner is going to go from zero to let's say CEFR B1 in two weeks? No. And I don't think these schools claim to produce these results. What they can do is pack a hell of a lot of material into two weeks. If all the conditions are right, I imagine a student could come out with a good sense of how the language works and something like an A1-A2 level. That would be pretty good in two weeks.
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| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5357 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 51 of 58 03 September 2010 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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A fortnight to hit major milestones in a new language - sounds crazy, doesn't it...?! In fact, that's what I thought in the beginning too. It takes a real leap of faith, to be honest, and this initial uncertainty is what hampered me for so long. However I now full-heartedly believe people like atamagaii that it's possible to reach "natural listening" (and from my own personal experience, "natural reading") in just around 2 weeks. But it's important to understand a few disclaimers first...
1. Keep in mind that this would require the almost superhuman 10-12 hours a day of listening and reading with parallel texts that atamagaii initially suggested (which, trust me, is really tough to keep going, and virtually impossible if you're holding down a job and supporting a family or are unwell). So anyone who can do this receives my utmost respect. 2. I'd also expect to have to put in much more preparation and study time into unfamiliar languages such as Japanese or Arabic (particularly any languages with very [edit] different writing systems, phonetic libraries, or word order). 3. You need to get plenty of sleep and take regular breaks in order to keep up motivation and energy levels and successfully beat that "forgetting curve". This is where I probably failed (as I generally need a lot more sleep and rest due to health reasons), so I opted instead to take some days really easy and go full throttle on others, in order not to burn out. 4. "Natural listening" or "natural reading" doesn't mean "fluent" or "proficient", by any means, but is simply the point where you can start reading or listening to native materials on your own without additional help (i.e. naturally) and comfortably grasp the gist of what's going on (as well as quite a few details too). These are major milestones for me. 5. Speaking and writing are not included in my definition here and would of course require lots and lots of ongoing practice afterwards (e.g. conversations and written work being marked). 6. You really need to keep maintaining and practicing a target language after an intense period of learning, otherwise you risk forgetting much of what you've learned just as quickly. It generally takes a good while for a new language to settle properly and take root in the mind, and this comes I believe through long-term review and exposure. 7. I'd just like to repeat that massive daily exposure to native materials, passion for the language and what you listen to and read, and let me add here absolute self-belief...these are all key ingredients in this winning formula. From my own experience, and starting from different levels, I found I could achieve a lot in just 2 weeks. These are my simple log percentages for reading comprehension over the last year, for example... Starting as a complete beginner: from 70s to consistent 90s in Spanish after 2 weeks [Fighting Windmills]; Starting as an advanced beginner: from 50s to consistent 80s in Russian after 1 week [Rushing Russian]; Starting at lower intermediate: from 80s to consistent 90s in German after 2 weeks [Teango TAC 2010]. And if you think about the basic maths here too, 14 days x 12 hours = 168 hours in total, which amounts to a little under half a year of studying an hour each day. That's quite a lot of study really, all packed tightly into 2 weeks. With a good methodology and routine, and lots of real passion and commitment, I think you can achieve a hell of a lot in 168 enjoyable focused hours. And remember, this picture of 168 hours' study isn't quite representative either, as I find that the more you commit to a breadth-learning approach such as LR or L&R a day, the greater the foundation for ongoing decontextualisation, which simply leads to more and more new words/phrases learnt, guessed, or reviewed in each successive study period. And the relationship between the amount of time you put in a day and ongoing language acquisition, based on my own humble experiments, seems to point strongly to an exponential rather than linear learning function too. Edited by Teango on 04 September 2010 at 5:18am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5182 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 52 of 58 03 September 2010 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Are you saying it's impossible for most languages?
A lot of people agree that 1 hour a day for 12 days gives better results than 12 hours in one day. The brain needs time to assimilate it all. In any case, I'd soooo like to see this in practice, perhaps with a nice little youtube video documenting it all... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5357 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 53 of 58 03 September 2010 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Not at all. I can only really go on what I've tried and experimented with so far, which is just German, Spanish and Russian this year. When it comes to other languages, I'm pretty much in the dark, but excited to find out one day. I found that I made surprisingly swift progress with Spanish in just 2 weeks (as a lot of the words share similar roots with English and French), but have no idea how I'd fare with something more exotic like Korean or Arabic. I'd be really interested to hear, for example, how long it took atamagaii and others to reach "natural listening" or "natural reading" in Japanese and other non-European languages. It could very well take much longer?
Once again, I'm just going on my own experience here and am being totally upfront and honest about it all, but I find that massive exposure to native literature isn't quite the same as intensely studying a language book or going through exercise drills for the same amount of time. What I do know is that the more listening and reading with parallel texts I did a day, the more context I picked up, and hence the more words and grammar I learnt per hour from native resources. Of course, doing 12 hours one day and doing nothing the remaining 11 days would be of limited use, as the "forgetting curve" would predict a loss of up to 80% within 24 hours, and so on. But with massive exposure over 2 weeks, you are automatically reviewing core vocabulary in the light of varying surrounding contexts, as well as learning new words and phrases too. So for me the secret seems to be to bootstrap the language acquisition process to reach a point as quickly as possible where you can listen to or read native resources unaided and more naturally maintain this exposure. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5231 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 54 of 58 03 September 2010 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
There is a group called Fluency Fast http://www.fluencyfast.com/ who teach a new language in 4 days. And there's even a Youtube to show it. But, again, let's be realistic. No, no, it's not CEFR B1. It's not native-like fluency. So what? Who promised that? So the accent is terrible. The vocabulary and the grammar are limited. But it's 4 days. I am really impressed with what can be accomplished in 4 days. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6240 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 55 of 58 03 September 2010 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It took atamagaii under two weeks for Japanese. I seem to recall it taking 10 days.
Exactly. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5231 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 56 of 58 04 September 2010 at 6:58am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
This summer program looks similar to what Middlebury college in Vermont does every summer. Actually, in my opinion, I think the results are not bad. Any discussion of these claims to teach a language in a very short period inevitably flounders because it is impossible to agree on what we mean by "fluency" and "speaking" a language. I've resolved to use the CEFR rating system so that we have some objective standard. I don't even bother with this notion that a language can be taught in 4 days or 2 weeks or even 6 weeks. It's like that other endless debate about how many words are needed to speak a language. In my mind, the fundamental issue is how can one get the most out of a very limited time. In other words, how much can I learn in 4 days or 2 weeks or 6 weeks, etc.? I personally believe that under the right circumstances, you can learn a hell of a lot. For example, 2 weeks in immersion (in the country), 6-10 hours daily of language learning activities, one on one tutoring and good materials, I do believe one can develop a very good idea of how the language works and achieve a proficiency level of A2. Not bad. What can you do in 4 days? Again, it depends on the learning environment. But actually I think one could reach an A1 under the right circumstances. All in all, I think those are good results. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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