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Systematic study to reach higher levels | ||
Tags: Advanced Level | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5578 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 41 of 52 28 April 2013 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Coaching a Surgeon I think this has been shared on this forum before; to me it was a real eye-opener. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6409 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 42 of 52 28 April 2013 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm talking mainly about the style, about the point when you can get your message across but it won't sound natural. It may or may not be grammatically correct. Of course for simply getting used to writing you need to write. But for improving your style reading is more important. At the very least, your own writing should be a small portion of what you read, otherwise you'll keep reinforcing your mistakes. What you learn from reading is so much more than any specific expressions. Corrections have very limited usefulness, imo: your tutor (etc) can mostly teach you to express specific things more eloquently. A good book will show you countless little things that can't even be pinpointed or summed up as rules. You'll find yourself using them even without consciously making notice of them. Basically, I'm entirely with the AJATT and antimoon guys on this. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Mountolive Pro Member United States Joined 4271 days ago 10 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 43 of 52 29 April 2013 at 7:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
To me, this post pretty much hits the nail on the head. Limiting the subject to native writers in English, all of the really good writers I have known have been voracious readers. I have always considered it to be something of a truism that the best way to learn graceful, fluid, expressive writing is to expose oneself as much as possible to the masters of the craft. Why should this be any different in a second language? That is, once you have mastered a certain amount of basic grammar and usage, why wouldn't reading extensively be sufficient to develop your command of the language to the point where you can also write well? This isn't just a rhetorical question, because there may well be a reason that I'm not aware of. For me, personally, I have been coming around to the conclusion that the best way for me to learn even basic grammar is through reading. My Spanish study program became heavily focused on reading after I learned more Spanish grammar in a few months of working through some elementary Spanish readers and looking up the occasional grammar point that struck me than I had in a much longer period of studying formal grammar. For example, I had trouble memorizing by rote the conjugations of common irregular verbs; however, after seeing them used time and time again in the stories I was reading (and perhaps looking them up the first few times I encountered them) I managed to assimilate them practically by osmosis. Something about seeing grammar used in context, again and again, in the service of a story or essay I am actually interested in, makes a big difference in my retention rate. It is also a comparatively painless process; I like to read a lot more than I like to study. I understand that there is a difference between passive recognition and active employment of language skills, but I don't believe that the gap between reading and writing is as great as the gap between listening and speaking. Maybe this is because writing tends to be a slower, more contemplative process than speaking. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4519 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 44 of 52 29 April 2013 at 8:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
No. There's good writing and bad writing. Style is also something you need to practice. No one who reads a lot will automatically be good at writing. They will at most have a larger vocab reserve capacity to copy from, which is good; and they'll be able to apply register context a bit more accurately; but there are plenty people who read a lot and still cannot rite 4 tofee.
How do you know you are able to use what you read when you've written? You can't until you've written And what you're reading needs to be relevant for what you're writing. Reading is a source of input, but input doesn't turn into output through magical fairy pixie dust. To learn to write you need to put in the legwork.
Then the question isn't "are corrections useful" but "does the teacher know how to correct me". Corrections are always useful. A teacher who can't explain what you should be doing to write properly is a bad teacher, the corrections are all useful (because they all show how you could be expressing things better in your native tongue) and things you take on board when writing a foreign language. And make no mistake here; I have done lots of essaywriting and it's taken me lots of practice to get it right, and the language I've worked most in is English (which is a foreign language for me). This sounds like "I want to learn how to write, but criticism is forbidden because I will get upset if there is criticism". No. To learn how to do something, you must do it 100 times over. Related tricks can enhance that skill (in this case reading) but you can't escape doing the legwork. I'm basically with anyone who's written a lot and learned this from experience. Edited by tarvos on 29 April 2013 at 8:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6409 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 45 of 52 29 April 2013 at 1:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Sorry if I've already posted these here, but here's a couple of great articles from antimoon.
Oh, criticism doesn't upset me and I like getting corrections. I just know that for me it's like 90% input and 10% corrections, and the corrections can be skipped altogether, but not the input. (because you are at the same time your best and worst teacher) And input does turn into output. Ask anyone who's doing a Super Challenge or Tadoku. If you don't want to wait with your output, fine. But I hope with other things you don't think your way is the only one. Basically, if you've had a lot of input, your very first piece of writing won't be as crappy as if you write it on day one. For now, writing in (for example) Italian is like a test to me. I write something every now and then, see my progress or lack thereof and get back to reading, possibly paying more attention to something specific from now on. Of course if you don't mind starting from crap and watching your writing get less crappy, that's a faster way to reach a mediocre level. But in the long run learning by reading isn't slower. Just a random example of how my learning works, of how different we all are: the first time I look up a word is usually when I'm about to use it. That is, I've learned the word naturally but I need to make sure I can use it in this specific sentence. @Mountolive I'm glad you liked my post! The thing is, in my opinion there's no huge gap between listening and speaking either. Most learners just don't do enough listening. Another specific example: when I decided to focus on the passive skills, I expected to do a lot of shadowing later on, in order to activate them. I've found it unnecessary (other than for practising the pronunciation). The words I've heard enough times (rather than just seen in writing) are already in my active vocabulary. Edited by Serpent on 29 April 2013 at 1:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4519 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 46 of 52 29 April 2013 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I do those challenges and I read a lot too. But I don't pretend that is what making me write better, what is making me write better is focusing on how to express particular things you need when writing essays or letters and focusing on those grammar/linguistic points (such as how to phrase sentences, paragraph layout with key sentence in 1st position, etc). I think the proliferation of reading and listening in the proportions you advocate is the wrong one because it will make you a good reader but not a good writer. It will give you input, but it's not a magical pixie fairy dust way. You need to put in the writing legwork. What you will do often is shortcut a lot of vocabulary gaps that you might miss out on (i.e. you will have a better feel for where words go in a sentence). That does help. For example I read three full Swedish novels in about three months, and that combined with regular output allowed me to speak Swedish almost freely nowadays. I've noticed that those words I learned in class that I did not later repeat actively never stuck. I think active repetition is very important to produce good output. I don't buy Krashen 100% on this and my view is that it isn't 0-100% (only writing), but more a good 50-50 or 60-40. 90-10 sounds like you're missing out on a whole lot of necessary exercise. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6409 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 47 of 52 29 April 2013 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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You misread it. I don't advocate 90% reading and 10% writing, but I'm simply saying that I find corrections less essential than input.
And no need to accuse me of pretending and whatever. I accept that your way of learning is also legitimate, especially for those who want to speak and write from the beginning. Yes, in the short term 80-20 (=what I really do) is not as effective for writing as 50-50 or 60-40. But it's more effective for reading and in the long run it's just as effective for writing. That's about the priorities for me: in many cases I see no need to be able to write before I can read almost anything I want to read. And by the time I can read and listen, I can also write and speak better than I expected to. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4640 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 48 of 52 29 April 2013 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is interesting, and seems to agree with what Huliganov claims (whether or not you use his Goldlist method of vocabulary learning). In response to people who tell him GL will only give people a passive vocabulary, he says [simplifying greatly] it doesn't matter. Once someone with a large passive vocabulary has been in a native speaking environment for a few days, his/her vocabulary will naturally become activated. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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