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Assimil (Luca’ Method) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5464 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 9 of 41 15 April 2011 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Are you sure about that? When I don't grasp every word I am listening to or reading I am only ever sure I am getting the "gist" of what is being said, and quite often can get away with it, but not always. The same is true with production: a great many times I make mistakes when talking and writing, to the point that sometimes I am only really getting across the gist of what I really want to say, sometimes it seems to be sufficient and other times is not. So, both input and output seem to have tolerance for inaccuracy, yet also are often intolerant to it. Edited by Splog on 15 April 2011 at 6:22pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5093 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 10 of 41 15 April 2011 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, we foreigners must writing inaccurate always and still understand, you do? Course you do .. 4 persons have 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 11 of 41 15 April 2011 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
OK, you're right. What I really mean is that comprehension of a sentence doesn't require 100% accurate perception of language points in it. This means that it is impossible for a teacher to check that the student has full perception of the language. Production does not require 100% accuracy to be understood, but the teacher can measure accuracy of the actual language points. And that's especially true of the self-teacher. Active production can be checked against an answer key, and because you have to produce all the elements, you prove you know they're there. But if I read "I gave the bone to the dog", I don't need to percieve the word "to" in order to understand the full sentence. So how do I know whether I did or not? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5176 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 12 of 41 15 April 2011 at 10:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
I am instantly reminded of Japanese students who hear and understand a sentence, and then proceed to repeat the sentence word for word, omitting every article in it. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6744 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 13 of 41 16 April 2011 at 5:45am | IP Logged | |||||
And I of myself, who might listen to the same German with Ease lesson twenty times and think I know it like the back of my hand, but when it comes time to recite a line out loud, will realize I can't produce the correct prepositions or adjective endings, and have left out every reflexive pronoun! I've learned the hard way through Assimil that no amount of passive listening/reading in the world (after the two or three goes it takes for me to understand what's being said) will make me produce a given text accurately, but focusing on accurate production, on the other hand, will enable me to comprehend every word and syllable clearly. That's why I favor active recall of parts of the text (in my case, with the cloze deletion feature in Anki rather than full-on L1->L2 translation) over L2->L1 translation, which doesn't strike me as being a very efficient use of time (with all due respect to Luca, who has obviously gotten fantastic results). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sin_Nombre Newbie United States Joined 4930 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 14 of 41 16 April 2011 at 7:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think Luca's approach isn't just L2->L1, but rather L2->L1->L2.
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| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5093 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 15 of 41 16 April 2011 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
Just to say what is obvious: L2 <-> L1 <-> L2 <-> L1 ... is an excellent method, of course. Just do it. (Exception: You don't understand at all what is going on. But then you cannot translate anyways.) Translating from L2 to L1 is good, of course, and will in most cases be the necessary base for any further improvement, so do it! It does not mean you will never translate from L1 to L2, of course. (And it does not have to be your main focus, if you are afraid that it "hurts your neuronal network for further native fluency". But it increases your awareness of the finer difficulties and differences just in a similar way as translating from L1 to L2 forces you to use them in an active way.) Edited by lingoleng on 16 April 2011 at 12:47pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5360 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 16 of 41 17 April 2011 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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So what does this all say about monologue/dialogue based courses with limited exercises included in the system (which are by their nature more passive than active) - e.g. Assimil, Linguaphone, Living Language, Cortina? Not as useful as we all proclaim?
I have always used the Exercises in Assimil in a Michel Thomas type fashion and translated them from the start from L1 to L2. But even then, that is only 1 sentence of a type. I also write out functional structures on each 7 day from the words used in the preceeding weeks' lessons (e.g. My [son/wife/brother/sister] is [ill/away/at home] to give a simple example)- a trick used in Assimil Dutch and the 70-90s Linguaphones. Edited by Elexi on 17 April 2011 at 9:10pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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