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Daily description of zero-to-fluency | ||
Tags: Learning Experience | Study Plan | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4583 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes  Speaks: Russian | Message 9 of 16 19 August 2013 at 12:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think it may be of value to some learners, but if the student mispronounces a word over and over, it may be detrimental. Probably better to learn pronounciation from a native speaker.
I think I have a high bar when it comes to fluency--conversing intelligibly with native speakers in virtually all subjects without resorting to the learner's native language for any reason, understanding TV shows without subtitles, etc. I would have to be a real egomaniac to think anyone wants a blow-by-blow description of my learning Persian, but I can give you a look backward and hit some of the high points of my first 700 hours of studying it. My daily routine consists of 15 minutes of new vocabulary, 1 hour of grammar review and a 20-minute uninterrupted speech entirely in Persian on any number of subjects. I NEVER consult a dictionary prior to or during my speech, as I want it to be as spontaneous and natural as possible. It took me 2 years in Armenian and 1 year in Russian to attempt a speech of any length. With Persian I have arrived at that point much sooner so I feel that I'm making progress. Alphabet/script I learned the alphabet from "Farsi--the Language of Iran" by Abbas Yamini-Sharif. The author made a difficult task easy by dissecting each letter and re-assembling it like the stem and petals of a flower. Accent I recorded some of my speeches and was embarrassed at how pathetic I sounded--like a naive NGO worker in way over her head. My remedy was to begin each speech with a sentence which a native speaker said I said perfectly without an American accent."Az aashnaai baa shomaa khoshvaqt shodam" (I'm glad to have met you) I find that when I say the sentence it sets the tone for the rest of the speech--dramatically improved. The faster I speak, the more like a native speaker I sound. The Use of the Subjunctive The subjunctive often functions as an infinitive (second verb), a curious feature which I have never encountered before. I am sometimes unsure of when I can use an infinitive. English and Russian have rigid rules about infinitives. But in Eastern Armenian, maybe under Persian influence, many now replace the infinitive with the subjunctive, much to the dismay of teachers of Eastern Armenian. Verb conjugations To master the verbs you must learn the verb stem, the infinitive, and the short-form infinitive. Without knowing the verb stem, which is often quite different from the infinitive, you cannot conjugate in the present tense. Verb--to write (neveshtan) Verb stem--nevis I write--Minevisam Without knowing the infinitive, you cannot conjugate in the past tense. Infinitive--neveshtan I wrote--Neveshtam Without knowing the short-form infinitive, you cannot conjugate in the future tense. Short-form infinitive--nevesht I will write--Khaaham nevesht Stress usually on last syllable. Possibly in the future I will try to find a Persian and Armenian speaker to help me so I can avoid the use of English altogether. I was introduced to Russian by way of Armenian, not English. I plan to buy a bigger dictionary when I have exhausted all the materials I currently have. So far I have spent all of 30 dollars. This is more of a general progress report than a daily diary but I hope it helps--thanks for your indulgence. Edited by tanya b on 19 August 2013 at 12:17am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6630 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 10 of 16 19 August 2013 at 12:43am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for your reply. What I'm talking about attempting is more akin to doing an experiment and then reporting the results. So this project could only be done by a learner. The idea is not that someone would learn the L2 from me, but rather would be able to see firsthand various techniques tried out, reported in detail, and see their effect on language acquisition. Obviously different techniques will work to different degrees for different people, but I'm starting to have little doubt that such a project would prove useful, if not inspirational, to other language lovers. Naturally I expect to be terrible in the L2 at first, but the experiments should demonstrate which techniques have the great positive effect on getting used to the L2. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what is unique about this is 1.) the hypothesis-experiment-result "scientific" learning style, combined with 2.) the detailed level of reporting results (progress videos + activity log), and 3.) by a person starting from absolute scratch. I'm open to being completely wrong about this. Please, people, smack me around as necessary. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4508 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 11 of 16 19 August 2013 at 4:50am | IP Logged | |||||
I think it'd be hard to find someone starting from absolute scratch. Even most Americans are required to take a foreign language in high school and thus aren't blank slates in the strictest sense. As a general comment - it seems like you want to run this experiment to determine, definitively, which language learning methods work the best. (Correct me if I'm getting the wrong vibe here.) The thing is, I'm not sure you need a tightly controlled experiment for that. We know there are a bunch of methods that work, and which ones of those you should go with depends largely on your learning style and personality. In other words, I don't know if you could extrapolate much from this "experiment". Though I'd definitely give it a look. Edited by Hekje on 19 August 2013 at 4:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6630 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 12 of 16 19 August 2013 at 2:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
You are correct about blank slate issue, so I can't be overly strict about it. For me, I've only really studied German and Hebrew, so I can't do those languages or Yiddish for this project. I've lived in California, but I don't know any Spanish. Even though I know a couple Spanish words, I'd consider it fair game for this project. I've visited Italy and know maybe two words (spaghetti, lasagna!), but I still consider my level "zero". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4508 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 13 of 16 20 August 2013 at 3:40am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, if you end up conducting this experiment yourself, I hope you share it on the forum. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6630 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 14 of 16 10 October 2013 at 12:38am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I decided to do it, and I've started a website to track and explain everything I'm doing to learn Spanish from scratch. As a reminder, the idea is to track in detail exactly what it takes to learn a language from scratch. I love guys like Benny, The Professor, Kats, etc., but no one gets into the details of what they do on a daily basis to learn a language. As a scientist, I like details of what people do so that I can repeat what they did if I want to. Many of my past posts will attest to that nerdy fact. :) I hope everyone enjoys it. Please give all the advice, tips, criticism, encouragement you want. ZEROtoFLUENCY.com 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4249 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 15 of 16 11 October 2013 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A few years ago came across a documentary from Hong Kong: a man named Philip from S. Africa presumably
married to a Chinese and moved to Hong Kong. When he first arrived, he knew practically nothing about Cantonese. Singing was the only thing he was good at. Determined to break into the nightclubs as a local singer, he would learn all the old Cantonese songs with the help of a translator by writing all the sounds on paper in phonetics. The first few years wouldn't say his Cantonese was fluent as a native but his singing mostly Cantonese songs and some Mandarin songs got a lot of praise from the locals. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4633 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 16 of 16 11 October 2013 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
Did you never see this one of the Prof's videos? A Polyglot's Daily Linguistic Workout It looks kind of austere to me, but that seems to be how he likes it. In fact ISTR that he's described his academic approach as rather "monkish" at times. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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