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Text memorization and imitation | ||
Tags: Memory | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6470 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 1 of 95 22 September 2010 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have found this article and it seems very interesting for us.
Text memorization and imitation: The practices of successful Chinese learners of English Yanren Ding Good language learner studies show that attending to form is associated with successful learning. This paper reports interviews with three university English majors who had won prizes in nationwide English speaking competitions and debate tournaments in China. The interviewees regarded text memorization and imitation as the most effective methods of learning English. They had been initially forced to use these methods but gradually came to appreciate them. http://elechina.super-red.es/ding.pdf 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5266 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 2 of 95 22 September 2010 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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One seldom hears of this method but I have found it very useful. It seems like too much work for some people but
good actors learn to memorize words quite quickly. For me it is not a complete method of learning a language but just an exercise to help promote words, phrases and grammatical forms from my passive to active vocabulary. If like me, there are some words or phrases that you always recognize and understand when you hear them but never think to use when you speak (until later when it is too late), then this method can help. It forces you to learn someone else's way of expressing a thought rather than reusing again and again the ways you already know. This can be better than a conversation (with natives or students) because in that situation the pressure to produce output quickly can lead you to just overuse simple word patterns. I memorize just short texts of less than 10 sentences and remember them for a couple days. Long after the whole is forgotten there always seems to be some word, phrase or grammatical pattern that stays with me forever and I begin to use it when speaking. Thanks for posting the document, I will read it with interest.. Edited by microsnout on 22 September 2010 at 6:32pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6470 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 3 of 95 22 September 2010 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have read in this forum that some people learn by heart the Assimil course. Maybe it's worth it. I don't know. What I found again and again that old methods seem to work very well. Technology is our advantage.
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| justberta Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5380 days ago 140 posts - 170 votes Speaks: English, Norwegian* Studies: Indonesian, German, Spanish, Russian | Message 4 of 95 22 September 2010 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm not a university student so.. Imitation works though, in regards to prosody etc.
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| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6898 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 5 of 95 22 September 2010 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's something I'm attempting to do at the moment with Assimil Italian without Toil and German without Toil. Time will tell whether it's worth it. I found the article you posted when I was researching techniques for memorising texts, so it was interesting to note some anecdotal evidence for its usefulness. Edit: One immediate benefit to the memorisation is that Shadowing is much easier. Edited by Andy E on 22 September 2010 at 10:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6470 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 6 of 95 22 September 2010 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Do you use any specific technique to memorize by heart every Assimil chapter? Edited by slucido on 22 September 2010 at 11:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5806 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 95 23 September 2010 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Or to put it more simply: people who try to speak properly are more likely to speak properly than those who don't try.
3 people isn't a statistically significant sample size, so we have to be careful about drawing any conclusions from them.
General thought is that learners' survey responses are about 50% accurate. The report abstract says "<i>The practice enabled them to attend to and learn collocations and sequences, to borrow these sequences for productive use, to improve pronunciation, and to develop the habit of attending to details of language in the context of language input.</i>" Not necessarily. There is no evidence of cause-and-effect given in the paper. It is possible that things are the other way round -- that they were only successful in this approach because they had a natural or predeveloped habit of attending to the details of the language. And again "The paper concludes that such practice enhances noticing and rehearsal and hence facilitates second language acquisition." Not necessarily. The conclusion must be that learning-by-memorisation is only possible through noticing and rehearsal -- there is nothing in the study to show that the practice encourages noticing. In fact, not only are survey results unreliable, but it has been commonly noted that asking what the most useful part of a learning regimen is is less than 50% accurate. Certain techniques produce a sense of progression without actually achieving much. Many students will claim they learn a lot from substitution drills and the like, because they see that they get the answers right. However, if you look at it more closely, these drills are proven ineffective. They talk about tasks being too easy and not developing skills. Memorising isn't easy, but again, you can start to see results in the skill tested (memorisation) and convince yourself that you're learning language. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6470 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 8 of 95 23 September 2010 at 12:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Cainntear, do you mean that text memorization and imitation are useless?
Do you think the article is bullshit? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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