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How Do I Start A New Language? | ||
Tags: Beginner | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5254 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 8 19 June 2010 at 9:11am | IP Logged |
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After all my contemplation, I'm still in a quandary: how do I start a new language? Let me give you some
background: I haven't started a new language since 2003, when I bought a Lonely Planet German phrase book in Dublin (I have been learning German ever since). I started learning Irish in the early 90s when I was very young. Fast forward to summer 2010, and I want to start studying French again (which I started in 1997, but I have forgotten virtually everything) in earnest. I would love to live in Paris when I'm older, falling in love with it when I was there in July 2008. So how do I start? Teach Yourself? Assimil? Not Rosetta Stone? A grammar guide? Would you learn the two tousand most common words first? I have been listening to French radio to get used to the sound of French. How would you approach a brand new language? I am also interested in learning Spanish this summer. Thanks in advance, Brian 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5218 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 2 of 8 19 June 2010 at 10:01am | IP Logged |
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Well .. not Rosetta Stone is a good start ...
A lot of folks will say go with Assimil although I think it might be a bit too tough at the beginning and I'm glad I had a bit of a foothold in Japanese before I started there in earnest. Personally I prefer Pimsleur at the very beginning, you're introduced to the language as it's correctly pronounced, and you'll get an ear for the grammar. I'd augment it with an introductory textbook, specifically that has a lot of audio content. To begin with I think you want to largely keep to materials with audio content. Once you get a feel for how the language is spoken and some of the basic grammar elements then you can start drinking from the firehous in various ways (some will recommend Michel Thomas although I haven't tried his methods yet, so no opinion there. Definitely something to explore though). Without audio content, you'll spend a lot of time later on fixing bad habits, so whatever you do I'd say make sure you're at least HEARING the language as it's correctly spoken rather than just sucking down vocab or grammar from a textbook. So my advice in a nutshell: A good introductory textbook with a hefty amount of audio (for some languages these may not exist) and Pimsleur, and once you feel comfortable hop onto Assimil. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5263 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 3 of 8 19 June 2010 at 10:23am | IP Logged |
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As you've already studied some French, I'd suggest you skip Pimsleur and instead start with something else, like
Assimil, Linguaphone or Michel Thomas, or if you have money to waste: RS. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5615 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 8 19 June 2010 at 4:46pm | IP Logged |
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I started with Pimsleur because it was available at the library and I could listen 2
hours a day commuting to work. I just bought Assimil's French with Ease. It is very good. I just finished lesson 14. It gives you listening and reading with explenations in short chapters. Most lessons build slowly. Chapter 10 seemed to be the exception so far as it used a lot of new vocabulary like birth certificate that probably are not that common. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| josht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6256 days ago 635 posts - 857 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 5 of 8 19 June 2010 at 5:38pm | IP Logged |
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While it may seem like you've forgotten it all since studying it before, I've found that such forgetting is only partial. Once you start doing things with French again, I imagine you'll find that a lot of what you learned before will come back quickly.
As for getting started, all of the above advice is solid: get a course that has audio, and just start working on it. I personally started learning French with Assimil's New French with Ease course, but Michel Thomas's French course isn't too bad, assuming you can tolerate his accent. After starting a number of languages, I've found that one of my biggest problems is just getting down to it. You can research all of the available courses, dictionaries, podcasts, websites, etc. for days, and you still won't be learning French. Pick something and get to it. Just make sure it's not Rosetta Stone. :) Edited by josht on 19 June 2010 at 5:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dolly Senior Member United States Joined 5600 days ago 191 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 6 of 8 19 June 2010 at 6:08pm | IP Logged |
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Anyone else think this was a conlang thread?
When I started French I got a lot out of Michel Thomas, Schaum's Outline of French Grammar, and Mastering French Vocabulary (Wolfgang Fischer and Anne-Marie Plouhinec). In hindsight I'd substitute Pimsleur for Thomas--instruction and practice in pronunciation is surely much better. With the vocabulary text, the basic and advanced vocabulary are printed differently and you can go through it in layers. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| RedBeard Senior Member United States atariage.com Joined 5912 days ago 126 posts - 182 votes Speaks: Ancient Greek* Studies: French, German | Message 7 of 8 19 June 2010 at 10:35pm | IP Logged |
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Start at your local library. It is free -- and it is very likely they have courses with audio.
For example my library has a ton of Pimsleur courses. Heck, even a Generic-Traveler's-Phrase-Book-With-Two-Audio-Tapes can get you started with pronunciation and vocabulary. Also, you can check out wikibooks for free beginners information, though obviously not audio intensive. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5796 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 8 of 8 20 June 2010 at 4:42pm | IP Logged |
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Language study for me is mostly a problem of sustaining my motivation. For this reason, I normally suggest that people start by finding a variety of resources. If you stick to only one thing, then you risk losing motivation. I usually like to find a bunch of books and look through them all a little bit, to get a feel for the new language. Look in the front, middle, and back of the books, nobody's going to stop you. Just find anything that's interesting.
The other thing that I think really needs to be done is to get used to the sounds. In the first stage of your learning, you should listen to absolutely anything you can, especially if it's real native speech. Don't constrain yourself to only newbie audio, because it doesn't necessarily give you an accurate feel for the language. Yes, it's important to have lots of stuff that you can understand easily, but I think there are still lots of opportunities to just have some audio playing in the background to help you get used to the sound of the language. Over the course of learning the language, you are going to encounter plenty of things that you only half-understand, so don't run away at the start if you want to investigate some harder materials. Right now I favour these principles at the start: 1) find out what exists (like what kinds of sentences are possible), but don't worry about memorizing any of those patterns...just be aware of them 2) listen to anything, everything, as much as possible 3) give yourself lots of choices, and do whatever seems interesting. If you get bored with one, then switch. (native materials are hard, but have a higher chance of being interesting) I actually like starting with Pimsleur or similar things for principle #1 (seeing what's out there), which also helps with #2 because it's audio...but I'm very quick to skip ahead to harder lessons because I get bored with the repetition of the early ones (#3). Committing to something like "I'll do all the Pimsleurs from 1 to 90" is a path to certain failure (for me anyway). 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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