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Less repetitive advice for new users

  Tags: Beginner
 Language Learning Forum : Collaborative writing Post Reply
43 messages over 6 pages: 1 24 5 6  Next >>
Γρηγόρη
Tetraglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 4445 days ago

55 posts - 154 votes 
Speaks: English*, Greek, Latin, Ancient Greek
Studies: German, French, Russian

 
 Message 17 of 43
18 June 2013 at 4:00pm | IP Logged 
emk wrote:
If you write up the same answer over and over, please consider posting it to the
wiki, which is awesome but underused.


How are the new members that ask these questions even supposed to know that such a wiki exists? I can't find a
link to it anywhere on the main page, nor in the options once I am logged in. If it's underused, it's probably because
it is more or less invisible.
1 person has voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4999 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 18 of 43
18 June 2013 at 4:30pm | IP Logged 
The wiki should have huge link or at least a sticky page at the top of everysubforum.

But right now, I don't think the wiki is ready. At most it can be linked to with the note "warning:it is still very incomplete."

The new pieces look good! Perhaps, as I added to the French and now the Spanish is developing, perhaps we should strive for some ways to make comparisons easy. Something like those on the htlal website but up to date (some of the data there seem to be like twenty years old) and more detailed.

Tonight, I hope to add much more to the monolingual textbooks and preferably give some base to the supplement part of the courses category.
1 person has voted this message useful



pesahson
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 5718 days ago

448 posts - 840 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian

 
 Message 19 of 43
18 June 2013 at 4:40pm | IP Logged 
I agree that Wikia should be more visible and/or maybe some post for new members should also be available with most important info, as how to use this forum, where to post, etc.

I edited a bit today, mostly in the stations online section. It looks like fun, I hope to do more of it.
1 person has voted this message useful





emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5522 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 20 of 43
18 June 2013 at 6:11pm | IP Logged 
Cavesa wrote:
The wiki should have huge link or at least a sticky page at the top of everysubforum.

Once we fill in the Learner FAQ page, I plan to link to it from the top of the Advice Center forum. We'll check the forum rules and introductory posts to make sure they use the new name for the Advice Center, so people have some chance of finding it!

People have been adding huge amounts of content to the wiki. I can't even begin to summarize all the cool stuff, but you can watch it stream by on the Recent Changes page to get an idea for the sheer scope of it.

We still need some more stuff on the Learner FAQ page before we can go live. Here are the most important missing bits:

* We need a section "How to use FSI courses" on the FSI Course page. This question came up recently, so we can just summarize the discussion in a few lines and link to the threads here on HTLAL.

* We need a page about learning on a deadline, for all those "Help, I'm going to France in 4 weeks!" and "I have an opportunity to take college classes in Germany next year!" questions. If you have some advice, just click on the red "2 weeks / 2 months / 6 months before visiting country X" link on the Learner FAQ page and start typing. :-)

* It would be great to have an Improving Speaking page (just click to edit it!). For starters, we could just link to a few recent threads on the subject, as well as Arekkusu's excellent self-talk exercise. Also useful: Links to things like Verbling, Meetup, and so on.

* I've written drafts for How to Start Learning a Language and Frequently Recommended Courses, but I've love for other people to look them over and make them better. The goal here is summarize what people at HTLAL think, and if there's multiple opinions on an issue, to explain the options in a newbie-friendly way.

I think I'll tackle the Foreign Language TV article later on; I have some good resources.

And please don't hesitate to join in! Even if you can only fill in half a page, that's fine—we can always add more later.
3 persons have voted this message useful



prz_
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Poland
last.fm/user/prz_rul
Joined 4849 days ago

890 posts - 1190 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian
Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish

 
 Message 21 of 43
18 June 2013 at 8:10pm | IP Logged 
Two, maybe a little bit disputable, things:
1) what do you think about dividing the radios into 2 groups: the first one will be for the news only radio stations and the second one for the 50/50 news/music? I think it's quite important since not everyone likes listening to the news for 24h (my case, for example)
2) what do you think of creating an article with advice how to focus while learning languages? [in fact I'd eagerly read it]
1 person has voted this message useful



pesahson
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 5718 days ago

448 posts - 840 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian

 
 Message 22 of 43
18 June 2013 at 8:17pm | IP Logged 
prz_ wrote:
Two, maybe a little bit disputable, things:
1) what do you think about dividing the radios into 2 groups: the first one will be for the news only radio stations and the second one for the 50/50 news/music? I think it's quite important since not everyone likes listening to the news for 24h (my case, for example)


I added some radio stations and I focused on those that had more talk than music (because I only listen to radio for learning purposes, I prefer to choose my own music) but I think it would be enough to just put it into description of the radio channel. Each person will focus on the language first, and with each there will never be tens of station to choose from, most likely a couple only, so a short description would suffice in my opinion.

Edited by pesahson on 18 June 2013 at 8:17pm

4 persons have voted this message useful



Emily96
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 4418 days ago

270 posts - 342 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Spanish, Finnish, Latin

 
 Message 23 of 43
19 June 2013 at 12:21am | IP Logged 
Cavesa wrote:
Perhaps, as I added to the French and now the Spanish is developing, perhaps we should strive
for some ways to make comparisons easy. Something like those on the htlal website but up to date (some of the
data there seem to be like twenty years old) and more detailed.


I agree. It would be great if it was easy to compare different languages. I was also planning to fill in the
spanish/italian pages a bit more but to be honest, i don't really know what to put under
phonology/orthography/grammar =P. I think i'll just have to model it directly off of one of the other pages.

I read over the two drafts emk wrote, they look good to me! I'm not sure if we can find a way to put this in nicely,
but the FSI courses are rather... boring, haha.

Edit: I added a new page about Duo-lingo and added quite a bit to the Spanish page. it would be great if someone
could look those over.

Edited by Emily96 on 19 June 2013 at 1:13am

1 person has voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4999 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 24 of 43
19 June 2013 at 12:56am | IP Logged 
Under grammar: I think the approach Chung set with Czech (and which I tried to mimic in French) is pointing out important things people will encounter in the language. Answers to the questions like Does it have genders? Will I need to learn conjugations? There are really no articles?

About ortograph, I only can tell whether the language is phonetic or not, whether it is regular and you can rely on what you learn in the beginnings or whether it is an irregular beast like English.

Phonology: no idea how to write about it.

I think those are an important part of the profiles. For example, I'd like to learn Mandarin one day. And I have nearly no idea what to expect from the grammar. I only read that there is no conjugation/declination but a lot of fuss around aspect. Well, a bit harder to imagine.

We should have a page explaining the basic terminology which many self-learners encounter for the first time. What is conjugation (in some cases what is a verb)etc.

Why nicely? It is truth. The FSI courses are mostly boring but they do bring good results. Wikia shold be firstly truthful, there are far too many advertisements for everything that are primarily nice but don't tell anything useful.


2 persons have voted this message useful



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