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My method (A1->C1, 5 months) | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| gwyner Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 5760 days ago 23 posts - 75 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchC1, GermanC1, ItalianB1, Russian Studies: Hungarian | Message 1 of 29 18 March 2012 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Edit: Title edited to be more accurate. I did 45 minutes a day for 3.5 months, placed into level 3 (~B2) at
Middlebury and did 7 weeks of immersion there. I needed to learn to speak 3-4 languages over the past few years for my job, and in the process have landed on a pretty damn good method. It got me to C1 fluency in French in about 5 months (3.5 months to B2, then 1.5 months solidifying that and getting to C1 in immersion), and I'm currently using it with Russian (and plan on reaching C1 equivalent fluency by September). At this point, I go in 4 stages: Stage 1: Learn the correct pronunciation of the language. Doing this does a few things - because I'm first and foremost learning how to hear that language's sounds, my listening comprehension gets an immediate boost before I even start traditional language age learning. Once I start vocabulary training, I retain it better because I'm familiar with how words should sound and how they should be spelled. (Correct spellings in French, for example, are much easier to remember when there's a connection between the spelling and the sound), and once I finally start speaking to native speakers, they don't switch to English for me or dumb down their language, which is awesome sauce. Stage 2: Vocab and grammar acquisition (itself in a few stages), no English allowed I start with a frequency list and mark off any words I can portray with pictures alone (basic nouns and verbs). I put those in an Anki deck and learn them. Once I have some words to play with, I start putting them together. I use Google translate and a grammar book to start making sentences, then get everything doublechecked at lang-8.com. Turning them into fill-in-the-blank flashcards builds the initial grammar and connecting words. As vocab and grammar grow, I eventually move to monolingual dictionaries and writing my own definitions for more abstract words (again doublechecked at lang-8.com). This builds on itself; the more vocab and grammar you get, the more vocab and grammar concepts you can describe in the target language. Eventually you can cover all the words in a 2000 word frequency list and any specific vocab you need for your specific interests. Stage 3: Listening, writing and reading work Once I have a decent vocabulary and familiarity with grammar, I start writing essays, watching TV shows and reading books. Every writing correction gets added to the Anki deck, which continues to build my vocab and grammar. Stage 4: Speech At the point where I can write 'fluently', I find some place to immerse in the language and speak all the time (literally. No English allowed or else you won't learn the skill you're trying to learn, which is adapting to holes in your grammar or vocabulary by going around them rapidly and automatically without having to think about it). I prefer Middlebury college, but a few weeks in the target country will work as well if you're very vigorous with sticking to the target language and not switching to English. If you're extremely strict with yourself, your brain adapts pretty quickly and learns how to put all the info you learned in stages 1-3 together quickly enough to turn into fluent speech. I've written a (not yet available) book on the topic and a (now available) website, Tower of Babelfish - A Language Learning Site Edited by gwyner on 18 March 2012 at 6:22pm 16 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4498 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 2 of 29 18 March 2012 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you speak French at C1 and are studying Russian, it might be time to update your language profile.
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| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4488 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 3 of 29 18 March 2012 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd like to believe it, and hopefully not sound pedantic, but can we see any sort of proof of your level, in French for instance?
Because I'd be realy impressed if A1->C1 could be done in 150h only. Sure it's only French, but still, that sounds quite an achievement! (, if it's real.) 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4498 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 4 of 29 18 March 2012 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, stage 4 is several weeks of immersion. I don't know that I would really call that 1 hour a day. I don't really see
anything in the description that really speaks to the 1 hr/day idea. Ignoring that part of it all, everything else sounds pretty reasonable to me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gwyner Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 5760 days ago 23 posts - 75 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchC1, GermanC1, ItalianB1, Russian Studies: Hungarian | Message 5 of 29 18 March 2012 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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To be fair, you're right; I'll change the title.
I started in the beginning of March 2010 at A1 and worked ~45 mins/day until June 15, so that's 3.5 months at 45 minutes/day. When I arrived at Middlebury, I placed into B2. The last 7 weeks were indeed immersion, so that doesn't in fact bump my average up to only 1 hr/day; it's significantly higher than that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5118 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 6 of 29 18 March 2012 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
Hi, I'm wondering if all these count towards the 45 mins x 3.5 mths? If so, could you please tell me how you could do them so fast? 'Cos my main problem is that information is never in the format or in the location I want, and 90% of my time is wasted on preparing information, such as those you listed above. Eg. Finding, downloading and formatting the frequency list alone would take 45 mins / 1 day; reading a word list, copying down unknown words and entering them into Anki takes me about 3 hours per day doing around 180 words. Thanks. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| gwyner Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 5760 days ago 23 posts - 75 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchC1, GermanC1, ItalianB1, Russian Studies: Hungarian | Message 7 of 29 18 March 2012 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I did French, I used a thematic word list instead of a frequency list, which was easier to use, if slightly less
effective in terms of its effects on reading comprehension and the like. I went through with a pencil and circled every word I wanted in my deck, which took a couple of hours. Entering easy to picture words takes about 12 seconds a word once you get it down; just enter in google images, find your favorite image, and drag and drop it in Anki. Once you get enough vocab to understand a simple monolingual dictionary (Wiktionary in French was pretty good for this), then it was a matter of copy and pasting definitions from Wiktionary, which was also extremely fast. It's bridging the gap between the pictures-only phase and the can-understand-a-monolingual-dictionary phase that is tricky, but coming up with representations for those words is a pretty fast way of learning them in the first place, and you just skip whatever's too hard, since you're picking up new vocab every day via Anki. I didn't do the lang-8 stuff with my French; I wish I had, but I discovered it later. For French, the only writing corrections that landed in my deck happened at Middlebury, and I just took notes in class directly into my Anki deck instead of in a notebook. Still, lang-8.com stuff is another thing that's easy to copy/paste directly into Anki. I'm using it with Russian and it takes very little time to get it in there, since the corrections are right there and you can just hit the Cloze delete button in Anki and you have a new grammar exercise. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4481 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 29 18 March 2012 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are some things I wouldn't like about this method, but I don't doubt that one can learn languages this way. I
do doubt the implied timeline though. If FSI states that it takes 600 classroom hours to learn French, with the implication that it takes significant additional study hours out of the classroom, I would hesitate to believe in the ability to learn it in a fraction of that time. The OP hasn't stated the number of hours to get to C1 from scratch, so maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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