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Just read and not understand? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| josht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6244 days ago 635 posts - 857 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 9 of 62 17 March 2011 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree. Often, when you dig a little deeper, you'll find that many people who advocate learning "just by reading" (or some other input focused activity) actually do more than just that. Lingosteve, whom the original poster mentions, advocates just reading and listening (and using his commercial website). But if you read his blog, you will find that he confesses to reading through grammar books and other such materials. He says he doesn't worry about memorizing anything in them, but I think the very act of reading through such a work changes the situation. Even if you don't memorize every little bit, you're going to remember some things that you see, and that is going to have an effect on what you notice when reading real content. It's not fair to read grammar books, read real content, and then say, aha, you see, I learned this language just by reading real content! No, you did more than that, and I find it somewhat annoying to then act (and tell other learners) otherwise. I'm also rather somewhat pessimistic about the whole idea of learning vast numbers of words through context only. That's not to say it can't be done - it can, and I'm not arguing otherwise - just that I'm not sure how efficient or precise it is. For simpler words, it does indeed work - usually. If you're reading about seafaring civilizations in German and see Ozean, your initial guess of ocean is going to be correct. But when you move into the territory of synonyms and words with more distinct meanings, it gets trickier and, perhaps, somewhat dangerous to go with your gut feeling. For example, yesterday I learned the German word "dicklich" while working with some word lists. Upon seeing the word, I obviously recognized the base German word, dick (thick, fat). But had I seen the word dicklich in a sentence, framed around that thing of glory and oft cited importance, context, I would have had no idea that the word meant pudgy or chubby. I would have seen it and thought, well, that word is related to dick (thick, fat) - but that doesn't really tell me what this word means. I would have a *fuzzy* idea of what the word meant - something like fat - but, if I were trying to come up with the German word for pudgy, I would still be at a total loss. And, somewhat similarly, I think I could probably read a German sentence (or a dozen of them) with the word "beleibt" in it, and I doubt I would ever just spontaneously come upon the fact that the word means stout, corpulent, portly. Perhaps I'm just missing something, but I don't really see how anyone could do that without the aid of some magical power. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5179 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 10 of 62 17 March 2011 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | ||
I think you mean "particles". I'm sure Steve knows what particles are (unless he did say "participles"), but his point is that one shouldn't worry too much about grammar. I don't personally agree, but it obviously seems to work for him. Still, you should know that Steve lived in Japan many years (close to 10?) and I'd say this has played a much bigger role in his ability than any reading he's done. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4976 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 11 of 62 17 March 2011 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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俺しない同意。
i don't agree. 俺学ぶ英語そうして俺思うそれ文法あるとて も重要。 I learn English and I think that grammar is very important. Of course reading is also necessarily. I believe you must do both! You cannot do with just grammar and vocab, but you cannot do without immersion only (unless you are a child living in the country). Some courses claim that the children learn the fastest of everybody! However, is 1000 words per 3 years fast? being exposed to the language many hours everyday? I would not call it such a great method. My recommendation is : learn in both ways! Watch a lot of TV, and learn from grammar books. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| josht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6244 days ago 635 posts - 857 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 13 of 62 17 March 2011 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||
The book I was using (Using German Vocabulary) gave both as possibilities. So of course, to make things more troublesome, reverso.com's dictionary shows it as meaning 'plump.' 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 5354 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 14 of 62 17 March 2011 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I really get what Rennon's saying here - it IS frustrating when you don't understand what's going on in a text, and it takes a lot of patience and resilience to keep pushing forwards (especially when you get to that soul-crunching intermediate plateau stage a little later on).
Few people take joy in struggling for long through dense jungles of unknown vocabulary and twisting unfamiliar grammatical structures, without at least a sense of progressing towards their destination with each step and some baseline comprehension to keep them focused. It's fatiguing and demotivating otherwise, and can lead to shelving a language altogether. However, reading an engaging story you really enjoy is an excellent way of learning lots of new passive vocabulary in its natural context and quickly. Everyone has their own ideas on this, but from my own personal experience, I like to think that the best way forward is to start with more intensive reading (always whilst listening) and easier texts to build up a good passive foundation in vocabulary and basic grammar, and then move on to extensive listening and reading to i) learn how to process these structures more quickly in real-time, ii) review the words you've learned, and iii) establish a deeper and more intuitive sense for meaning across longer sections to help predict what comes next in a passage. It's very tough at first when you've never touched on the language before, but it does become a lot easier given time and exposure to thousands of lines of new text in context. This is helped along by regularly measuring progress, recording logs, and working on new creative ways every week to increase motivation and stoke passion for the language. At first it's like trying to pick blackberries in an unforgiving winter thicket, all thorns and relatively fruitless. But after a while, spring kicks in, and you can start to grasp at the unripe gist of what's going on most of the time. Before you know it, it's summer, and you've got a basketful of summer fruit under your arm and an overabundance of blackberry jelly that you try to pawn off on the neighbours. And it's at this point you notice that there's now only a small handful of words on each page that you don't know, many of them less frequent and integral to the plot. This marks the time to move on to extensive listening and reading, where you can simply spend your cosy armchair hours enjoying a whole bundle of new stories without the frustration of not understanding every second sentence and keeping a dictionary or translation nearby all the time. I imagine Finnish is no picnic for a beginner and requires double the effort of many other languages, but it does sound like a beautiful language to my ear and well worth the effort (I particularly like Finnish hip-hop and reggae :) ). What I can say is that even the hardest of languages DO get easier, but you need at first to build up that foundation before you can just pick up a good book and dive in for pleasure. Add to this, as I said above, a system of regularly monitoring and recording your progress, whilst being inventive with motivation, and working at the right level with texts you enjoy, and your climb up through this Congo will become far less frustrating and eventually very enjoyable. Good luck! Edit: Oh and I almost forgot...well aligned parallel texts are a real blessing in the early stages and well worth seeking out. The visual afterimage of text and the echo of its accompanying audio tend to last for only the briefest of moments, so having the translation sitting next to a difficult phrase or word and reachable within a fraction of a second is ideal for helping you understand a passage, and will enable you to pick up new vocabulary much more quickly. Edited by Teango on 17 March 2011 at 9:43pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5809 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 15 of 62 17 March 2011 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | ||
I cannot overstate the importance of this. The internet is full of people saying similar things -- telling you to do part of what they do, and ignoring a very significant component of their learning. I've been told stuff in classes that I never really "learned" (in fact, I've completely forgotten it for months on end) but I encounter it and I recognise it. I've learnt a lot of grammar by reading about or being told about it, then forgetting about it, and finally encountering it. Just encountering alone would never be enough, and it really riles me to have people telling everyone that they "learn by reading" when they've got a bookshelf stacked with grammar books.... 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6501 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 16 of 62 17 March 2011 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | ||
I doubt that you can learn any language just by letting an incomprehensible stream of words pass through your head. And the further away from your other languages the less likelihood of success with this strategy. However it does make sense to listen to things you don't understand yet, provided that you see it as a study of the sound system or of your ability to parse the stream into syllables, words and sentences. This won't give you the necessary vocabulary, but there are other techniques for learning vocabulary. And once you have got that vocabulary and some grammar the meanings of the things you hear will pop up in your mind. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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