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Getting Grammar and Vocabulary Down | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4704 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 9 of 12 23 January 2014 at 6:41am | IP Logged | ||
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I checked the FSI site I use, and the don't have the fully detailed course for Russian (if that even existed). They do have the FAST Russian course, which is a quicker introduction designed to teach the speaker enough to get by at a pretty good level. It is detailed enough to have 8 tapes of audio.
http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Russian 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4642 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 10 of 12 23 January 2014 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
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You shouldn't want to get grammar and vocabulary down. You should want to get them up.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fieryterminator Newbie United States how-to-learn-any-lan Joined 3754 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* | Message 11 of 12 24 January 2014 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4239 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 12 of 12 25 January 2014 at 12:48am | IP Logged | ||
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From personal experiences I took French at the elementary and high school levels. In elementary school I was
taught simple words & phrases and a of boring subject-verb conjugations. In elementary I've been getting high grades but the transition to high school was awkward. All of a sudden the teacher started requiring us to read a French novel and several short stories. People in our class had never read a children's book before and in no time many people started getting lower marks. A year ago I started brushing up my Mandarin in a different way. I've been doing research on 2 polyglots: Moses McCormick & Luca on YouTube. Instead of relying on phrase books alone first I look for common words that different languages share (what polyglots call cognates). In French we have "le docteur" for doctor, "photographe" for photographer and use as a starting point to build your vocabulary. To get yourself up in your conversation you would be learning things that you can start a conversation with natives such as: "Where you're from / what region of the country you're from", "what makes you interested learning his/her language", "you are attending class", etc. Your main focus should be on listening. I used to watch a lot of Chinese videos with English subtitles and stopping every few minutes to replay a word or phrase and looking in an online dictionary when necessary. Unlike repetition of the same phrases 100x, I'm watching something interesting so after a stop I look forward to the next part of the video. In 6 months I watched a few 1h Chinese drama series in 20 episodes each (some with English subtitles). In the process compiled over 300 words & phrases including over 50 4-character proverbs. Like Moses I also get into online discussion blogs and submitted my ideas in Chinese and got replies. Yesterday I was talking to a lady in Mandarin. The conversation started with where I was from and ended with whether or not I run a business before switching back to English to accommodate a 3rd person who doesn't speak Mandarin. My Chinese is at a comfortable conversation level but my French hasn't reach the same level. I'm relying all sorts of films with English & French dialog and subtitles in English & French. I can watch the same movies a few times with English & French subtitles and do cross comparison. What about grammar? Moses, Luca, Steve Kaufmann and others would tell you to build enough words and phrases to communicate first. Brush up your grammar on the side but the main focus is on listening and speaking to natives and understand the main ideas what was said. Edited by shk00design on 25 January 2014 at 12:52am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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