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The Ultimate Accelerated Learning Exp. ! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5243 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 121 of 200 22 April 2011 at 2:09pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I agree totally. This has been a very interesting experiment, and Abazid has to be commended. I look at this as an experiment and nothing more. This is why I would be curious to hear and see the actual results. It's not because I want to poke holes in some outlandish claim of a magical learning system. I'm just curious to see what can be done in three days. This whole debate reminds of the claims that one can read on the covers or boxes of many self-study methods. No boring grammar, no exercises, no memorization, no homework, learn the natural way, speak fluently like a native in three months. I've always felt that many of the proponents of supposedly superior learning techniques are long on the theory and short on the results. I'm tired of people telling me what their system can do. Show me. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5824 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 122 of 200 22 April 2011 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Exactly. That "tired of" is where the animosity is coming from. Every other month there will be someone here telling us how they've done something incredible, and then when called on for a demonstration, shout down everyone else as "haters", "bashers" or just plain "negative". And then we're told not to knock it without trying it -- are we supposed to try every kookie idea that comes along? If so, it's not going to leave us a lot of time. As Volte says, he did an MT course quickly -- there's nothing really special about that. And yet this thread is called The Ultimate Accelerated Learning Exp.! as thought it's something new and totally different. From reading this thread, all I know is that the OP sat through a whole MT course while depriving himself of sleep. He completed it. What I do not know is whether this was more effective than if he had done the course over a five day period. And the OP doesn't know this either, for that matter -- after all, he hasn't tried it himself. And as has been pointed out, a beginner does not have enough knowledge to assess the extent of his own knowledge. Only an external assessor can quantify the success of the experiment. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6252 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 123 of 200 22 April 2011 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Careful. I do fully agree that some things get tiresome. However, I've also seen way too much bashing of people who do show their results. Most feedback that people who aren't already extremely solid polyglots get seems to be resoundingly negative, no matter how modest the level they claim to have obtained in an interesting way. And, frankly, there is a lot of nonsense with people supporting or bashing products or techniques they've never used. No one has to try every kookie idea that comes along - but silence is also an option. A lack of attempts, or a trail of failed attempts, is worth looking at; ramblings by people with second-order ignorance usually are just a waste of everyone's time. 'Obvious' kookery is a special case here - but it's also a call a lot of people get wrong surprisingly often, in both directions. There's a difference between "show me" and "you need to jump through every hoop any random stranger on the internet suggests" - and, honestly, most feedback I've seen to new members of this forum has been in the latter category. If this forum is to be a reasonable place for sharing experience and experiments, there needs to be a balance. No one needs to try out ideas they consider kooky, and no one is obligated to fulfill anyone else's demands or requests. Both could be helpful at times, but raging on about people not going above and beyond in this way is futile and counterproductive. And, as always, not shutting your mind off is a good idea - knee-jerk belief or disbelief in the absence/presence of any particular proof usually doesn't do much good.
The thread is badly-titled. It happens. His original idea for an experiment was a good deal more interesting than what actually happened - but what actually happened is still an interesting data point. If someone cares about whether it's more effective to do experiment X changing parameter Y, they're free to do so, but the person who did X has no reason to be chagrined about not already knowing, and has no obligation to do Y himself. Personally, I consider the OP's experiment more interesting than MT in 5 days. MT over longer periods of time is more mapped terrain; seeing someone compress it further helps map out the edges of what can be done with it.
Depends. I wouldn't trust a beginner with the CEFR or language learning to be able to successfully quantify his acquired knowledge entirely accurately. On the other hand, this forum has plenty of experienced polyglots who know the CEFR well, and who I'd be inclined to consider qualified to quantify the successes of their own experiments. If any of the regular posters here with 6 or more languages under their belts said that they'd hit B2 in a new language, and didn't say anything ridiculously implausible, I'd be inclined to believe them. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| HMS Senior Member England Joined 4920 days ago 143 posts - 256 votes Speaks: English* | Message 124 of 200 22 April 2011 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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With respect Cainntear,
Yes, the OP has essentially just completed a marathon session of MT but - he has stated quite comprehensively his preparation, his aspirations, the theories and basis behind the experiment,and that this is an online log of his progress - NOT an online claim to have demonstrated something as being successful. Regardless of which level he would now score on the CEFR index, do you not think there has been some value in reading (learning) about how it went for somebody else? I think the learning progress is something that should be cherished by the learner - not something that always requires an external assessor to validate. I have not seen any comment where the OP has expected (or demanded) validation for the self-assessed results he posted. I think the bottom line is - He never claimed to have discovered a brand new methodology in the first place. Several people have however constructed a somewhat flimsy 'Strawman' argument against him based on him being unable to satisfy criteria they set for him to answer to. Like he has said - this is not about us or our opinions, it's about him and his experience, which he just happenend to share with us. Whether he has been successful or not when judged against CEFR standards and predicted time to achieve is neither here nor there. The fact he has taken the time to put himself through this and then take the time to offer as detailed explanation and description as he could is something I think should be applauded. I have learned something from this thread. I have learned a few things actually. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| carlonove Senior Member United States Joined 5799 days ago 145 posts - 253 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 125 of 200 22 April 2011 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
He didn't claim he discovered a brand new method, but he did claim he was going to brainwash himself by studying for 61 consecutive hours, completely depriving himself of sleep, because that state of mind is somehow a better condition for acquiring new information. For real. He then backed it up with a lot of pseudoscientific nonsense, which is what I and I think a lot of other people take issue with. Working intensely for extended periods of time is one thing, and a thing I've experimented with myself, brainwashing is another. Apart from being incredibly unhealthy and unproductive, I don't see anything wrong with the experiment Abazid performed, but the "kooky" introduction he provided did not reflect what he actually did. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6252 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 126 of 200 22 April 2011 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Largely agreed; quite a lot of assumptions the poster had going into this are very likely to be entirely ungrounded. I do laud him for actually posting the details of what he did, despite it diverging to far from his original plans, and despite the feedback he received; that kind of follow-up is valuable. His experiment doesn't seem to have been unproductive, though - and I'm glad he posted about it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| carlonove Senior Member United States Joined 5799 days ago 145 posts - 253 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 127 of 200 22 April 2011 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think it's unproductive to study while struggling to keep yourself awake for hours and hours rather than just sleeping for 6-8 hours, for the purpose of compressing 5-6 days of brutally introductory material into 3. Since all of this is material that's going to be repeated over and over again anyway during (assumed) continued study and exposure to the language, I don't think the benefits outweigh the physical cost. It's subjective of course so I'll leave it at that.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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