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Writing dialogues as a way of practicing | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4489 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes  Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 9 of 44 01 November 2013 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I write extensively in dialogue and monologue form in my target language(s). I use them as a "written fluency" excercise as I try to think as fast as I can write. I don't have them corrected usually (unless I am brand new in the language) but I do go back and revise them, re-read them and sometimes re-write them. I find that this not only helps my writing, but also has an impact on my spoken fluency as it encourages me to "speed up" my thinking process as far as output.
Oftentimes, the dialogues mirror conversations I had in English that day with friends or co-workers. This keeps my vocabulary up to par in the topics I discuss on a daily basis. I probably spend close to an hour a day writing like this. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4647 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 10 of 44 02 November 2013 at 4:45am | IP Logged | ||
Well, Tamil presents quite an obstacle for this challenge, then! Wow... never knew that about Tamil. Kind of makes me want to study it. But some languages have ways of expressing spoken language in written form. I remember seeing "Tô bem" somewhere for "Estou bem" in Portuguese. We can do that in English, too: BOB: Hey, man, waz goin' on? RICK: Ah, nuttin' much, dude, you? BOB: Jus' chillin' a' home, watchin' da game. Yo wife still shoppin' a' da mall? RICK: Yup. She's gonna be dere all day. I wonder if, when writing a dialog and sending it to a native speaker, one could include a note that says "colloquial dialog - please correct accordingly" or something like that. Edited by kujichagulia on 02 November 2013 at 4:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4647 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 11 of 44 02 November 2013 at 4:48am | IP Logged | ||
This. The biggest problem I have is committing time to this. Like BaronBill, it would take me an hour a day to do this regularly. But most days, I have only an hour total for each of my two languages, so I feel a need to do some input like reading, listening or studying a textbook. But I'm at a level - particularly in Japanese - where I need to focus more energy on output, so probably making writing like this a priority is the way to go. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4647 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 12 of 44 02 November 2013 at 4:50am | IP Logged | ||
I hear from a lot of people that writing helps your speaking. Obviously it's not going to help with things like pronunciation, etc., but it seems to make the process of "getting words out of your brain" faster. It trains the same mental output mechanisms. And if you do it fast like BaronBill mentioned, it helps automaticity. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4966 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 13 of 44 04 November 2013 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think "diglossia" is overrated for some languages. There are a few important grammar
features in spoken and colloquial Portuguese and French that account for big differences, but once you become aware of them you can easily talk naturally. As a matter of fact, the difference between written and spoken language is most of the times more significant in terms of what is NOT said. Written language lacks some particles and expressions that aren't slang nor diglossy nor whatever, and they account more for a colloquial flavor than how you conjugate verbs. You might conjugate verbs informally and yet lack the expressions that give color and topicalization to the spoken language. Take this dialogue I wrote in Norwegian (already mostly corrected, I can't write that well): Hun skal på universitetet - Hallo! - Hei! Hvordan har du det? - Bra, takk. Hvordan går det med familien din? - Helt fint. Per er på skolen igjen og Lisa vil studere økonomi på Universitetet i Stavanger. - Dette var virkelig gode nyheter! Er du ikke bekymret? Du kommer til å savne dattera di en masse! - Ja, sant, men jeg håper hun utmerker seg med studiene. - Det skal sannsynligvis hende. Hun er ei veldig flittig jente. - Å, tusen takk. Du, nå skal jeg til slakterbuttiken. Hils Arnold for meg. - Takk, det skal jeg. Ha det! - Ha det! I'd say it this way in colloquial Brazilian Portuguese: Ela vai (deve ir) para a universidade - Ei! - Ei, como vai? - Bem, brigada. E a família, como [é que] tá? - Tudo tranqüilo. Pedro voltou pra escola, e Lisa vai estudar economia na UESB. - Mas que notícia boa! Você não tá preocupada, não? Cê vai morrer de saudade da sua filha, com certeza! - É verdade, mas eu tô torcendo pra ela se sair bem nos estudos. - Ah, mas com certeza. Ela é uma menina muito dedicada. - Brigada. Deixa eu te falar, eu tenho que ir no açougue. Dê lembranças a Arnaldo pra mim. - Pode deixar, brigada. Até mais! - Até! The most remarkable aspects of colloquial language are the 'tá' shortening forms, the 'brigada' and 'cê' elipsis, "Deixa eu te falar" and "no" instead of "ao" and the contraction 'pra'. Other than that, the language is the same. Other than that, it is the use of some colloquial expressions that make the language sound like as if it is spoken, and those aren't exactly condemned by prescriptivists, they are just expressions, interjections, belonging to the factual communicative function. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4966 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 14 of 44 04 November 2013 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Now, the challenge. I am going to write down my own plans, and whoever feels like joining may write down what
they want. My goal isn't that ambitious, as I still devote a lot of time to initial textbook learning. My idea is to write a total of 100 dialogues among the several languages I'm learning, and then check how much I've learned after 120 days (so that I can more or less skip the weekends and not feel guilty about that). Starting date: November 11th 2013 Completion date: March 04 2014 List of participants in the Dialogues Writing Challenge and their goals Expugnator Write a total of 100 dialogues/short stories distributed through the following languages: 30 Georgian dialogues 30 Norwegian dialogues 30 French dialogues 10 Chinese dialogues 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4647 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 15 of 44 05 November 2013 at 5:13am | IP Logged | ||
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OK, now for my plans, which admittedly are not as ambitious as Expugnator's, but I'm aiming for attainable goals here:
kujichagulia Write a total of 30 Japanese dialogs/short stories/islands* by March 4th, 2014 Write a total of 15 Portuguese dialogs/short stories/islands* by March 4th, 2014 * An "island" is a speech or a collection of statements a person can use when having a conversation in a foreign language. The concept comes from Boris Shekhtman's excellent book, How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4489 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 16 of 44 05 November 2013 at 5:56am | IP Logged | ||
I am a HUGE fan of this book. I used the concept of islands to get my German over the "fluency" bump. It made me a believer. My personal dialogue challenge goals: * 50 dialogues/monologues/islands in Spanish * 50 dialogues/monologues/islands in German I'm shooting for 2/1/13 Edited by BaronBill on 05 November 2013 at 6:00am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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