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Writing dialogues as a way of practicing | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4947 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 1 of 44 30 October 2013 at 5:39pm | IP Logged |
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1) As a learner of Georgian, I suffer from the lack of opportunities to get in contact with authentic spoken language. I watch good TV series, but with no subtitles. I
have run out of textbooks before I actually mastered the spoken language. 2) I know there are several people who like to talk to themselves in the target language. I don't have this habit, and even for those who do, why not write down those conversations and let them get corrected at sites such as italki, lang-8 and Parleremo? 3) Sometimes it can be too boring to write just something like a diary in such sites, while writing long essays on topics such as culture, technology and economics isn't exactly what I need for my target languages. 4) Can we make this a challenge? So, my idea is to start pushing ourselves to write short dialogues on regularly in the target languages and let them be corrected at those communities. We should bear in mind that some speakers give deep corrections, to the extent of making sure the text does sound authentic, which is one more advantage if we plan on writing dialogues. Now, if we make this a challenge - like 100 dialogues a year, not much, we'll assure ourselves the necessary self- and mutual motivation. It is recommended to add an Englis version just to make sure you get your point through even in languages at which your skills aren't so good yet. My first attempt at italki: Going to the city hall As you can see, it's short, not very complex, but the idea is to improve day after day. What I have in mind is to come up with actual stuff I'd actually say in mine and in the target language. I may, for example, think of something I know I can't express properly, and try to write it down with the help of dictionaries so that it gets corrected. At my current stage, this is one of the few ways I can improve my skills. It is not the same as just chatting - there are obvious answers and obvious questions which I can already more or less say in Georgian. Like I said above, had I got subtitles for the series I'm watching, i'd probably work on studying and translating them, but I think trying to write dialogues will push my active skills still a bit further. 14 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4628 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 2 of 44 31 October 2013 at 4:34am | IP Logged |
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Awesome. This is something I've done a few times on Lang-8, but not enough to consider it "regular."
I think doing this regularly would benefit me as well. Obviously being in Japan I don't suffer from lack of opportunities to speak Japanese, but having some kind of controlled practice with custom-made dialogs that apply to me personally would give me the confidence and preparation necessary to hold good conversations "in the wild." I'm beginning to find that, for me, while dialogs in textbooks, movies and the like are great for speaking, listening, and overall conversation, words and phrases "stick" more when I am involved in creating the dialogs, or when I feel that they apply to me personally. I remember more when I write words than if I just read them somewhere. So this is a direction that I'm moving towards anyway, and a challenge would be superb. Of course, the challenge for me would be to do it regularly. But count me in. Edited by kujichagulia on 31 October 2013 at 4:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| KevinHsu Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 3951 days ago 9 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, Korean Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 3 of 44 31 October 2013 at 10:03am | IP Logged |
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This sounds like it can be very helpful. I will definitely try it out. Thanks!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3925 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 4 of 44 31 October 2013 at 10:05am | IP Logged |
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I'm not there yet - but this is my plan for when I learn Tagalog next spring. I told my partner a few weeks ago that
I'll be expecting him to read the dialogues with me so that I can record them and share them. So count me in - a little bit later! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4947 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 5 of 44 31 October 2013 at 6:53pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the support! So, how do we work it out? How is it possible to create a
challenge here, the way mentioned above? Should I ask the mods? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6484 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 44 01 November 2013 at 10:36am | IP Logged |
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We can't say you shouldn't create a new kind of challenge, but frankly - aren't there challenges enough?
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4449 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 7 of 44 01 November 2013 at 4:22pm | IP Logged |
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If I were to write dialogs from Brazilian soap operas and send them to native speakers dealing with grammar, what I would receive from them would be something very strange no native speaker uses in the spoken language in daily life.
I did this once, a long time ago, and all those CHEGAR EM, ME DIZ!, VI ELE came back crossed and corrected to CHEGAR A, DIZE-ME, VI-O etc etc. So, better not to take this path. There's a reason why some languages (Finnish, Czech, Brazilian Portuguese, Swiss German, Tamil, Arabic) like to keep the written and the spoken form apart. So, writing down a dialog is something that would not look nice to many native speakers, since dialogs are never supposed to be written in the 1st place! In the case of Tamil, you can't even write colloquial Tamil in the Tamil alphabet, you have to use the Latin script for it. Edited by Medulin on 01 November 2013 at 4:27pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 3954 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese | Message 8 of 44 01 November 2013 at 6:03pm | IP Logged |
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My instinct is that this would have to also involve a certain amount of memorising and performing the dialogue to be useful. Because otherwise it's a bit like you're writing to improve your speaking.
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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