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Most efficient way to spend 120 hours | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| parasitius Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5801 days ago 220 posts - 323 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, Polish, Spanish, French | Message 25 of 59 13 June 2010 at 11:49pm | IP Logged | ||
Question about the definition of gist: Does this mean the "gist" in the sense of knowing the general topic, or the "gist" in the sense that you can understand the story enough that it is enjoyable to listen to in the same way most people flop on the couch and enjoy movies in their native language? (As in -- not a masochistic intellectual struggle type of joy :)) If the latter, I'd be curious why you wouldn't go on to listen to a whole ton of other Polish audio books, even without L-R, just to enjoy listening to them outright. If someone had the time on their hands to do some extensive L-R, but likely would not have time to study hard in the future, would it be reasonable to expect that they could continue to listen to the books they LR'ed, over and over, but only in the target language, to maintain whatever abilities they had gained? (Presuming it was a book they really enjoyed and would like to hear over and over.) I clearly remember that back in college there were certain classes which I put no effort into whatsoever. Though they presented an assortment of intimidating topics over the course of the semester, in spite of the fact that I didn't put forth the expected effort to understand these topics, by the semester's end many of them felt so familiar simply from their constant presence (and possibly they were being ground about in my subconscious?) that they magically became easy to understand and no longer intimidating in the least. So I'm just speculating -- if just repeated listening over a protracted time could make the very temporary (if I've read other comments you've authored correctly) L-R gains become long-lasting gains that would facilitate even very slow future progress on the language. You get SO many questions on L-R, Volte, I hope you don't mind! I really appreciate it if you happen to have the time to answer this one. Edited by parasitius on 13 June 2010 at 11:51pm 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 5359 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 26 of 59 14 June 2010 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Listening and reading with parallel or interlinear texts is probably the most efficient approach I've ever used. From my limited experience, the main features seem to be i) repeated exposure to lots of contextualised words and structures in the shortest possible time, ii) using comprehensible input to swiftly and lightly guide further learning, iii) putting in many many hours (initially intensively), and iv) really loving your resources, so much so that the language learning process becomes a simple by-product of something you enjoy doing anyway. If you can do this in 120 hours, you'll make a lot of efficient progress indeed. Edited by Teango on 14 June 2010 at 10:29am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6506 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 27 of 59 14 June 2010 at 11:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't count hours when I learn a language. Sometimes I know when I started, but in between there will be short sessions of activity and periods where I just spend a few minutes here and there, maybe while eating or watching TV at the same time. What I do know is that 120 hours is slightly more than three weeks at work, and if I had to learn a language within that time frame I would have to work in a more concentrated manner than I usually do.
My optimal learning situation would be a combination of dealing with comprehensible texts AND doing bulk learning of words and some formal grammar study. Dealing with comprehensible texts is in my case for practical reasons mostly dealing with written sources. It would certainly be nice to have scientific podcasts lasting around half an hour to an hour with transcripts and literal translation, as foreseen in the LR method. But most long texts with such backup materials are literary, and I get nauseated after just a few minutes of listening to an actor reading a piece of literature. And podcasts in the internet with transcripts or translations are generally woefully short. So instead I have to make texts comprehensible by learning all the words and all the grammar I might encounter. The GLOSS site (which has been down for some time now) is in my opinion close to the ideal layout, my quibbles lie with the content. Even the easiest texts examples are too difficult for beginners, and the recordings are not always crisp and clear. Ideally I would like to see the transcript and the translation side by side while listening, and I wouldn't mind seeing the active sentence at any given moment light up, maybe in a different color. Listening to something like that for just an hour or so would really make my head spin in the foreign language, and that's the kind of experience I miss most in my current study scheme. I can't see how I could improve much on my methods for learning words and grammar, - word lists and 'green sheets' cover the ground fairly efficiently, and copying out slightly too difficult texts by hand, looking up words and checking constructions forces me to understand at least a number of short texts in new languages effectively. So even in a concentrated 3 week study I would still be doing those things. Maybe I would step up my active use of the language, doing more thinking and more writing at an early stage, but I would certainly not waste my time dealing with clueless class mates - it has to be native (or at least near-native) speakers. And one thing more: even in the ideal world I would only start communicating with the outside world after I had learnt the language well enough to read and write it. Edited by Iversen on 16 June 2010 at 11:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6273 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 28 of 59 14 June 2010 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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One more question to add to the bunch: if you have previous knowledge of the language,
would you still read the translation while listening or would you read the target text while glancing over at the translation? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5789 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 29 of 59 16 June 2010 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I strongly advocate that if you have some previous knowledge of the language then you should go straight to L2 text with L2 audio. This might be different with a language far from your own, but I think for learning a moderately related language with some basic previous knowledge, then just jump right in.
When I started reading Harry Potter in German, I had previous German knowledge to a basic degree, but I understood almost nothing of what I was reading. I don't know how many hours I did, but I went through the first 5 Harry Potters with German audio and German text, and at the same time I watched about 140 hours of German-dubbed Star Trek with no subtitles. That was sufficient for me to understand everything I read and heard to a high degree. When you first start, and it's mostly incomprehensible, it's vital that you continue reading and don't stop to use the dictionary. You need no interruptions, and you need to continue for as long as you can. 2 hours per day is a good number, or more if possible. I really did "get into a groove" after half an hour or so, and it increased as I went along. If I did around 2 hours, then for the rest of the day my mind would be constantly wandering around German phrases, which would just pop into my head (even if I had no clue what they meant). I really think that if you can get to this "mental chatter" phase every day, then tremendous progress would be possible. The other thing I found helpful was to keep a highlighter beside me, and if I'd seen a new word at least 5 or more times and still couldn't figure it out, then I'd highlight it in the book. Then later in the day I could go back through and look up a bunch of the highlighted words in a dictionary and maybe make some SRS cards for them using their sentences for context. I'll repeat that it will seem really hard to understand at the start, but that's ok. Just keep reading, keep listening, as much as you can. Try to enjoy the story at whatever level you can, just keep going. It will work. I used the goal of reading 1 million words (estimated), but I had very good comprehension after I had read a few hundred thousand. Obviously the more you do, the better you get. If I were starting a language from scratch (like I did with Swedish), I would browse through one of those "complete grammar" books that has lots of example sentences, and just try to understand what sorts of things are possible. I didn't try to memorize anything from the grammar book, just browsed what existed in Swedish. Next I read about the details of the phonetics. Then I went straight into native content ("The Hobbit", in Swedish), although I did a lot of dictionary lookups at first to get myself bootstrapped a bit. I also did as much random listening as I could...anything that was Swedish was fine, I didn't have to understand. After maybe 30 hours of "bootstrapping" work to get started, I just did L-R after that, and read about 200000 words. I don't have great comprehension yet, but it's enough that a story is entertaining. This past week here in Germany I bought a German/Swedish book about the 1000 most-used words in Swedish, and I found that I know a very high percentage of them already from the L-R work I did....so the book is kind of useless to me. The best way for me to continue advancing is still more L-R :) In summary, if I had 120 hours to get into a language, I would first listen extensively to anything at all, while bootstrapping basic knowledge and vocabulary through textbook study and dictionary lookups (or whatever else seems interesting). Then I would do as much L-R as I could (L2 audio / L2 text), aiming at at least an hour at a time, but preferably 2 hours or more in a day. As some people have suggested, the bootstrapping may include some amount of Pimsleur or Michel Thomas if you have it available, but I think there's a lot of wasted time in there. Don't be afraid to skip ahead a bunch. The bootstrapping phase is mostly about getting an overview, getting a general taste of the language, and getting the basic words down. No need to be perfect, because you'll get lots of repetition later from the L-R. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LangOfChildren Tetraglot Groupie Germany Joined 5230 days ago 82 posts - 141 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Swedish Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai, Russian | Message 30 of 59 16 June 2010 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm a bit surprised that you recommend reading the L2 text while listening to L2.
I've done that once, and it seems much less rewarding than "true" L-R. Browsing through a grammar book at the beginning may be a very good idea, indeed. It should save you from quite a bit of guessing later on during L-R, especially for unrelated languages. I believe that for closely related languages, it's totally fine to do L-R right from the start, and probably the best thing one could do, period. What about Chinese, or a language like Japanese or Turkish (or Finnish)? (i.e. if you're a native English or German speaker) I wonder if L-R right away is always a good thing to do in terms of time efficiency. Edited by LangOfChildren on 16 June 2010 at 7:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5326 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 31 of 59 16 June 2010 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm doing my listening to the target language while matching it up to the reading in English (oddly enough I could only find an audiobook, not the actual translated hard copy)... is this going to do anything for me at all, as long as I keep processing the language? With Finnish, it's pretty hard to find audiobooks/translations if you don't live in the country...
Also, as to "blind" L-R; if that really works, just "diving" in there without full comprehension, then I will definitely try that (with German, which has many more findable materials). Sounds really interesting. After I get my German to a really nice level, I will try doing L-R from the beginning with Dutch, maybe make a log of that. Edited by GREGORG4000 on 16 June 2010 at 7:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5388 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 32 of 59 16 June 2010 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | ||
I've just started L-R with Harry Potter, I've probably put in two hours total but I'm already noticing improvements! I don't have very many sources to do L-R (I don't have time to sit at the computer ALL DAY) so I figure if I go through Harry Potter a couple times I should really be seeing major improvements. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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