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The Cheating & Consolidating Method

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
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s_allard
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5180 days ago

2704 posts - 5425 votes 
Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
Studies: Polish

 
 Message 81 of 136
05 August 2014 at 4:14am | IP Logged 
Elenia wrote:
to s_allard - I once read a review of a book where the reviewer said they read the book
in the original language through sheer brute force because they did not believe in
dictionaries. I don't know how true this is, or how well the reviewer understood the
book, but they also said they did not speak the language before. So some people will
try!
...

I don't want to doubt this poster's memory but how many people here at HTLAL believe that a person could write a
review of a book they "read" without a dictionary and written in a language they didn't know? There's a missing link
somewhere. This is impossible.
2 persons have voted this message useful



s_allard
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5180 days ago

2704 posts - 5425 votes 
Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
Studies: Polish

 
 Message 82 of 136
05 August 2014 at 4:41am | IP Logged 
kanewai wrote:
warning: long post ahead! This one got out of hand ...

s_allard wrote:
From what I understand here, hard core cheating is the use of a good
guide to reading the Iliad in Ancient Greek. What would be the non-cheating
alternative?


I'm using the word cheating semi-ironically (as I assume EMK is), but I'll use Clyde
Pharr's book to illustrate what I see are the differences between the 'proper' way and
the 'cheating' way.

-------------------------------------------

The proper way (according to Pharr):

1. Translate the following sentences Greek > English

θεὰ ἀείδει μῆνιν οὐλομένην Ἀχιλῆος, ἣ ἔθηκεν μυρί' ἄλγε' Ἀχαιοῖσιν.
(The goddess sings the deadly rage of Achilles, that caused countless troubles for the
Achaeans)

...

2. Translate the following from English > Greek

The valiant Achaeans are singing the accursed wrath of Achilles.   
(Ἴφθιμοι Ἀχαιοὶ ἀείδουσι μῆνιν οὐλομένην Ἀχιλῆος)

...

-------------------------------------------

Cheating:

I started doing the actual exercises, but after a few months it got overwhelming. Now I
just read through the exercises and answers until I understand them without actually
doing the work of translating, then move on to untangling the actual poem. I miss a
lot of the nuances this way; for some sections I'll spend the time to understand the
shifts in tense and mood. Usually not.

Then I'll use Pamela Draper's annotated guide to Book 1 & read the next 10-line
section.

Occasionally I'll compare the good parts to other classic translations that I can find
online. :

...
-------------------------------------------

I'm letting everyone else do the heavy work and I'm just following along. I'm "reading"
the Iliad in the same way that my younger nephew's "read" along with me to Ferdinand
the Bull.

It's still a cool way to approach the book. But also, any college professor would fail
me without mercy if I tried this in a class.

I think I've got the difference between not cheating and hard-core cheating.

1. Not cheating does not mean reading the Ancient Greet without any help, as I originally thought. It means a)
reading with a guide book in English that provides translation and b) using a grammar book (Clyde Pharr's
Homeric Greek - A Book for Beginners) with a series of
exercises aimed at helping the student better understand the original Greek.

2. Cheating means just skipping through the exercises of the grammar book and reading the original
Greek with the help of the guide book and additional translations. This is more fun than slogging through the
exercises.

I'll be the first to admit that this kind of cheating is not such a big deal. Who has not skipped some
exercises in a grammar book? I doubt that anyone has ever written out every single exercise in Assimil.

If this sort of thing is cheating, then I'm guilty as any and I've been cheating all along.

Edited by s_allard on 05 August 2014 at 4:49am

1 person has voted this message useful



Bao
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
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Joined 5516 days ago

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Speaks: German*, English
Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin

 
 Message 83 of 136
05 August 2014 at 9:27am | IP Logged 
s_allard wrote:
then I'm guilty as any and I've been cheating all along.

Read: "clever enough to know when it'll give the desired effect"
1 person has voted this message useful



luke
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6955 days ago

3133 posts - 4351 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Esperanto, French

 
 Message 84 of 136
05 August 2014 at 11:39am | IP Logged 
Bao wrote:
s_allard wrote:
then I'm guilty as any and I've been cheating all along.

Read: "clever enough to know when it'll give the desired effect"


My question was, "does your wife know?"
2 persons have voted this message useful



s_allard
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5180 days ago

2704 posts - 5425 votes 
Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
Studies: Polish

 
 Message 85 of 136
05 August 2014 at 2:18pm | IP Logged 
Since I plan to attend the 2014 Pojyglot Conference in Novi Sad, Serbia, later this year, I figured I'd spend a few
days in Romania, a country whose culture has always intrigued me. So, I thought I should learn some rudiments
of the language which is related to French. For next to nothing I picked up an old audio-cassette edition of
Assimil's Le roumain sans peine.

We have two Romanian families living in our building. I even have some recordings of songs in Romanian. With
all that and the vast resources of the Internet, I think that I could get some basics of the language to help make
my trip enjoyable.

But wait a minute. With all this talk about cheating as a way to make language learning faster and more effective,
I was intrigued by the following advice on how to cheat from someone in a similar situation:

tarvos wrote:
...

I will give an example of an easy way to cheat in this case: cognate languages. Now,
let's say you are me a few years ago and you want to learn some Icelandic for a trip to
Iceland.

Now you can look at an Icelandic text (preferably some old saga) and say: "Well, that
doesn't look at all like anything I know!"

And then you stop for a second and think. "This is Iceland. What is Iceland known for?
Vikings. Ah. Vikings. Must be some form of Germanic... wait, I'm Dutch. I studied
English and German. Maybe there are some things in this text that I can use already!
Are they maybe tiny bits I can decipher?"

And then you realize that the basic words in both languages are cognates. And you cheat
your first words - you've got "good day" for free already!

And you then come to a problem with lots of endings or pronunciation. So then you can
tackle those endings or pronunciation problem, all at a time. Preferably also using
lots of input and easy texts (where you understand the words. Otherwise, go back to
learning some more words). Step by step you lay the puzzle.


If I can find an old saga in Romanian, maybe I'll give this a go.
1 person has voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6347 days ago

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 Message 86 of 136
05 August 2014 at 5:48pm | IP Logged 
I think s_allard is keen on preserving the difference between "legitimate" learning and "cheating", which still exists in class and haunts many learners long afterwards, while most others here are trying to destroy it.
1 person has voted this message useful



Bao
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5
Joined 5516 days ago

2256 posts - 4046 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin

 
 Message 87 of 136
05 August 2014 at 6:36pm | IP Logged 
I think others are talking about what we in German call a 'wall in the head', eine Mauer im Kopf, a thought habit which keeps people from doing something because they don't realize that the physical barrier that initially kept them from doing it isn't there anymore.
kanewai mentioning that his method would lead him to fail a college class is one of these walls. I've had teachers who told us it was totally legitimate to read guides before tackling the full text, especially if the text was difficult for us. (I would think that is something you do in preparation for class, though.) Just as I had teachers who insisted that their teaching was 'better' than any guide could possibly be. Uh-huh.

I understand the point about 'cheating' being a word with a negative connotation for activities which should get a positive connotation, but when I think about my own experience - maybe I could learn better with transcripts and bilingual texts, but when I try to use them I get anxious and feel like I am cheating. (It gets even worse when there's an omission or a mistake in the supplemental material, and I think 'who am I to think this is a mistake with my low level of the language etc')
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4457 days ago

5310 posts - 9399 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 88 of 136
05 August 2014 at 7:06pm | IP Logged 
s_allard wrote:
Since I plan to attend the 2014 Pojyglot Conference in Novi Sad,
Serbia, later this year, I figured I'd spend a few
days in Romania, a country whose culture has always intrigued me. So, I thought I
should learn some rudiments
of the language which is related to French. For next to nothing I picked up an old
audio-cassette edition of
Assimil's Le roumain sans peine.

We have two Romanian families living in our building. I even have some recordings of
songs in Romanian. With
all that and the vast resources of the Internet, I think that I could get some basics
of the language to help make
my trip enjoyable.

But wait a minute. With all this talk about cheating as a way to make language learning
faster and more effective,
I was intrigued by the following advice on how to cheat from someone in a similar
situation:

tarvos wrote:
...

I will give an example of an easy way to cheat in this case: cognate languages. Now,
let's say you are me a few years ago and you want to learn some Icelandic for a trip to
Iceland.

Now you can look at an Icelandic text (preferably some old saga) and say: "Well, that
doesn't look at all like anything I know!"

And then you stop for a second and think. "This is Iceland. What is Iceland known for?
Vikings. Ah. Vikings. Must be some form of Germanic... wait, I'm Dutch. I studied
English and German. Maybe there are some things in this text that I can use already!
Are they maybe tiny bits I can decipher?"

And then you realize that the basic words in both languages are cognates. And you cheat
your first words - you've got "good day" for free already!

And you then come to a problem with lots of endings or pronunciation. So then you can
tackle those endings or pronunciation problem, all at a time. Preferably also using
lots of input and easy texts (where you understand the words. Otherwise, go back to
learning some more words). Step by step you lay the puzzle.


If I can find an old saga in Romanian, maybe I'll give this a go.


The old saga was chosen on purpose. It's supposed to be random and difficult. They are
among the most impenetrable texts. But my point was that if you take small puzzle
pieces, in the end you can read sagas. I don't think I would necessarily use it as the
first piece of the puzzle, but for many people this is the reason (i.e. I want to read
Tolstoy/Proust/insert classical author here in the original).

If you want fun old stories about the inhabitants of Transylvania, there are some funny
legends, though. I used to take a bilingual reader to school to teach the children. The
children at the orphanage loved it.

But if you want something modern yet difficult, I suggest Caragiale :) I remember my
teacher made me read him 4 months into studying Romanian.



Edited by tarvos on 05 August 2014 at 7:08pm



1 person has voted this message useful



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