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A new language in 2 weeks?

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
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Solfrid Cristin
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 Message 25 of 58
03 May 2010 at 6:55am | IP Logged 
newyorkeric wrote:
Smart wrote:
Erm. Nuns teaching languages?

Anyone else find that one strange?


I don't. It's not unusual for nuns to also be teachers.


The actual nuns are not teaching anymore anyway, but as newyorkeric says, it is not uncommon for nuns to teach.

On a totally different note, my only 10 classes of Dutch were with a Dutch monk. A Dutch friend of mine was very sceptical, and said "Beware of Dutch monks". He had a point. There is a reason why I only took 10 classes...

Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 03 May 2010 at 6:56am

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Spanky
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 Message 26 of 58
03 May 2010 at 6:56am | IP Logged 
MegatronFilm wrote:

On a side note: There's a guy in Cambridge who teaches multiple languages simultaneously to his students. He
claims to speak over 70 languages fluently. I can't see how that is possible. Here's the link:

Interncontinential Foreign Language Program


I also have a hard time seeing how speaking seventy languages fluently could be possible.   Does Riethmiller actually claim that anywhere?   The reference in your link is to the following:

"In part, the answer lies in the way its founder, director, and principal instructor, Lee K. Riethmiller, honed his fluency in the twenty-six languages he currently speaks."
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unityandoutside
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 Message 27 of 58
03 May 2010 at 8:28am | IP Logged 
Spanky wrote:
MegatronFilm wrote:

On a side note: There's a guy in Cambridge who teaches multiple languages simultaneously to his students. He
claims to speak over 70 languages fluently. I can't see how that is possible. Here's the link:

Interncontinential Foreign Language Program


I also have a hard time seeing how speaking seventy languages fluently could be possible.   Does Riethmiller actually claim that anywhere?   The reference in your link is to the following:

"In part, the answer lies in the way its founder, director, and principal instructor, Lee K. Riethmiller, honed his fluency in the twenty-six languages he currently speaks."

It's still wacky. He's offering group classes to produce ventaglots?!?!

But I don't think that guys seems as wacky as this guy. For more eye-rolls, check out his website, polyglotcenter.org, the source of the "testing" he talks about in his video. The links on the sidebar are particularly pleasing.
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vb
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 Message 28 of 58
03 May 2010 at 10:15am | IP Logged 
Someone talking about the Intercontinental Foreign Language Program:

http://use.perl.org/~johnseq/journal/

We were taking lessons from a Harvard Square linguist named Lee Riethmiller, at the Intercontinental Foreign Language Program. Lee has a very unique approach to foreign language instruction in several respects. He believes that you learn languages faster and with better recall if you study multiple languages concurrently. He never really said why, but my oversimplified explanation is that this is similar to the better recall/comprehension claims of speed reading. There are other reasons why this makes sense from a mnemonics perspective, and it has the added benefit of being very appealing from a student perspective (learn more in less time).

In addition to encouraging you to take multiple languages simultaneously (you can choose from about 20 that Lee teaches), he also eschews the standard grammar-based approach. Instead, he writes interactive question and answer type scripts that resemble beat poetry -- quite absurb. You don't do 'going to the movies' or 'in the kitchen' vocabulary fests. Instead, you converse with mushrooms, cheese-boys, Italian bees and strawberry girls, and each verb tense you memorize is associated with a flavor of ice cream. Occasionally the scripts will overlap with some 60s pop song, and Lee will break into song.

The lessons are quite entertaining, and while you can't necessarily recall how to say arbitrary sentences, the ones you know come quite easily. You are encouraged to study the scripts, but Lee is a realist about how much time working folks hav to devote to language study so you never get discouraged.

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vb
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 Message 29 of 58
03 May 2010 at 10:40am | IP Logged 
As for the benefits of studying languages simultaneously, I would imagine that having the opportunity to compare them would make arbitrary features more memorable.
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TheBiscuit
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 Message 30 of 58
03 May 2010 at 4:39pm | IP Logged 
vb wrote:
As for the benefits of studying languages simultaneously, I would imagine that having the opportunity to compare them would make arbitrary features more memorable.

I imagine it does too. As soon as you force people to look at 2 or 3 languages simultaneously, it stimulates the multiple language acquisition part of the brain as oppose to dragging it through grammar books and taking about 5 years to learn one language, badly.
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MegatronFilm
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 Message 31 of 58
03 May 2010 at 5:05pm | IP Logged 
Spanky wrote:
MegatronFilm wrote:

On a side note: There's a guy in Cambridge who teaches multiple languages simultaneously to his students. He
claims to speak over 70 languages fluently. I can't see how that is possible. Here's the link:

Interncontinential Foreign Language Program


I also have a hard time seeing how speaking seventy languages fluently could be possible.   Does Riethmiller
actually claim that anywhere?   The reference in your link is to the following:

"In part, the answer lies in the way its founder, director, and principal instructor, Lee K. Riethmiller, honed his
fluency in the twenty-six languages he currently speaks."


I forgot to mention that I went to his office one time some years ago because I was curious. He did say then that
he speaks over 70 fluently. I took a sample class and it was strange. The format might work for some people,
but I was confused. We were practicing Arabic, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian at the same time. I don't
know how well he speaks those languages, but he was really good at switching with no problem.
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Teango
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 Message 32 of 58
03 May 2010 at 6:21pm | IP Logged 
An old mate from Boston reliably informs me that this bizarre character is a local eccentric beat poet and musician living in the city. I had a quick look on the Internet and found this interview as well as a somewhat dodgy and dated newspaper article on the guy. In this he only claims to teach 9 languages, although he could well have learned several more in the last 27 years, and suggests that his students could gain up to a "working knowledge" of 6 languages with his weekly multilingual sessions in 3 years.

Quote:
"You don't do 'going to the movies' or 'in the kitchen' vocabulary fests. Instead, you converse with mushrooms, cheese-boys, Italian bees and strawberry girls, and each verb tense you memorize is associated with a flavor of ice cream. Occasionally the scripts will overlap with some 60s pop song, and Lee will break into song."

Hilarious, albeit a little scary, and so very 60/70s! First nuns, then Dutch monks, and now hippies, this thread is certainly unwinding in a bizarre fashion...I'm looking forward to what comes next... :)




Edited by Teango on 03 May 2010 at 6:27pm



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