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Learning completely offline/analog | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4435 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 9 of 34 21 October 2014 at 5:40pm | IP Logged |
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People have been learning languages for centuries, while the phonograph was invented in the 1870s, but I guess it is difficult today to find many people who learn without any kind of electronic device. Still, when I first started learning languges on my own back in the 1980s, there was no internet, no e-books and no mp3, so basically the only device I had apart from paper-based course books and dictionaires was a series of cassette tapes.
When I learn a new language today, I still prefer to start off with the old-fashioned course book, paper-based dictionaries and grammars, but of course I also use the internet a lot, I listen to the Assimil recordings and podcasts on my smartphone, I get newsfeeds in various languages via Facebook and for my more advanced languages I prefer reading books in e-format. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4805 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 10 of 34 22 October 2014 at 5:14pm | IP Logged |
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I remember those dark ages of none or only dial up internet connection. My language learning experience back then (influenced by the fact we are talking about my life up to fourteen years of age or so):
-a traditional textbook of French gave me a good founding and I soon got classes added to it. The classes were good, considering they were still classes, so I did progress. But it shows one characteristic of the dark ages: not only children, everyone was much more dependent on teachers since there was no way to get lots of listening and other material on your own. -paper coursebooks, cds and class of English: horrible. I knew quite nothing and hated the language until the moment internet+English opened a whole new world to me. I learnt 95% of my English in an online textbased rpg, and most of the rest from movies, forums, books etc. Without such an opportunity, I would be just as useless at English as people who do not use these things despite the internet being widely available these days. While I still consider some "analog" things to be awesome, nothing beats a high quality course in paper with cds for a beginner in my opinion, some things were horrible before the internet age. Paper flashcards are quite unpractical, traditional vocab notebooks are more useful as something to get graded (for prettiness mostly) than as a real tool. The selection of dvds in another language than yours + English and foreign books is pitoyable in most stores. Really, everything changed with the technology. Without it, most people could go to a physical store and buy enough resources (courses, cds, dvds, books) to learn English and one or two large languages, choice dependent on the country where the learner would be located. With internet, including eshops, both pirated and nonpirated sources of tv series and movies, books, with all the forums and other means of getting to know people from abroad, we have much wider options. Without the internet, you could say goodbye to learning a non mainstream language and get dependent on classes again just to hear the language and perhaps get some material from the teacher. But there is the other side. Not only you need to seek a good course in a shelf full of "learn miraculously Chinese in ten minutes a day for a week" in your local bookstore. You need to choose as well good material online from tons of stupid apps made with more marketing than real use on mind. What is the same, in my opinion, is the need to realize YOU are what matters the most. No resources by themselves, analogue, digital, alive, can teach you unless you actively learn. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Arnaud25 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 3638 days ago 129 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Russian | Message 11 of 34 22 October 2014 at 6:05pm | IP Logged |
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I have also started to learn languages before the internet era: public libraries, bookshops, books and tapes, then CDs, paper notebooks and pens.
I still continue like that, but instead of tapes or Cds, I use a bunch of mp3 players. Internet is just a source (a miraculous source, of course), so now I download a lot of material, but I use that material off-line, in an old-school way: I don't use SRS programs or smartphone's applet or kindle or ipad (I don't even have one, anyway) and when I've downloaded a book or a program that I like, I buy it and study it the old way. The only thing that has really change is the access to Tv chanels and to Internet radios in the TL. I'm not a Tv guy, but I've always loved to listen to the radio, and now with internet, there are literally millions of radio stations in all the languages possible: it's a fantastic possibility to listen to all kind of languages (I remember when I was listening to the BBC world service in middle wave in the 80's with a bad sound full of statics, it's a different world now) Edited by Arnaud25 on 22 October 2014 at 6:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4805 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 12 of 34 22 October 2014 at 6:23pm | IP Logged |
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Hehe, had you been listening to BBC in the 80's here, you could have had huge troubles, including in the end getting fired and/or imprisoned. Trully, the world has changed and I am thankful for it.
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| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4855 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 13 of 34 23 October 2014 at 6:20am | IP Logged |
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I would guess that the majority of new language learning technology has little influence on the actual
effectiveness of language learning: those who rely on traditional books tend to do about as well on average. Most of the benefit has instead been in making more languages accessible to more people. In the past, you could only get so far unless you had an inexhaustible source of input, and before radio that would've been extremely limiting. The Internet is a communication technology first, and we're only just starting to explore how to use it as a learning technology. There are some hints of progress like pop-up dictionaries and auto-SRS, but the effect is still small. I do think it's easier now than ever before to learn 10+ languages, because of communications technology. I don't think it's significantly easier to learn a second language, since most people in the world have lots of easy access to at least one foreign language, where the Internet didn't really give them anything that was lacking. What about the other side of this coin? Are there any language learning technologies that could conceivably be created in the next 50 years (so it doesn't get out of hand, assume no humanlike artificial intelligence/technological singularity/knowledge pills) that would make a big difference? I'll brainstorm a few: - Drugs that could modulate learning and memory, so you could temporarily increase brain plasticity to learn a new phonological system, or enhance retention in memorization sessions. Primitive versions of these kinds of things are being studied, but we're far from being able to use them extensively and preventing side effects. -A program that would scan your writing samples for errors, then generate grammar explanations and exercises that practice exactly the things you need to fix, at the right difficulty level. -Really good speech synthesizers that would make a written text an adequate source for learning the pronunciation of the target language. -Adaptive graded readers, where you could slide the level of "difficulty" you want to work with, and you'd get appropriate texts to read. -Dictionaries that give you the appropriate definition in context. -If machine translation got a lot better, it might make language learning significantly easier. It would also remove some, but not all, of the reasons for wanting to learn a foreign language. -Massive open online courses are becoming big. If we figure out how to make them effective for language (even if self-study is more effective, most language learners aren't self-studiers), that could make a big difference. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6378 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 14 of 34 23 October 2014 at 8:49am | IP Logged |
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I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I tend to learn languages with nothing but digital
aids. No paper books, certainly no paper dictionaries or paper flashcards. My Anki deck of over 12,000 cards would be quite unweildy in an analog world. Only Assimil is sometimes hard to get in a digital version, but at least I can get the audio files into my phone. Technology certainly doesn't make it automatic, but I'm pretty convinced it makes it easier, as long as you can avoid the cat videos. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6499 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 15 of 34 23 October 2014 at 11:14am | IP Logged |
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Let me mention one thing that has become worse (at least in my country): education in foreign languages except English. The last wawe of interference from the ministry of un-education may mean that a whole host of 'small' languages will disappear from the Danish universities (where they already have become relegated to a corner of some big blurry metainstitutes), and the consequence of this will be that people who want to learn such languages will have to do so on their own or by going to language schools abroad. One sub-consequence of this slow strangling of language institutes is that few people will ever have on-site access to specialized libraries with printed study materials and literature and magazines as I had during my study years in the 70s. And then digital gadgets with access to the internet will have to take over - or people will just not access such hardcore resources, but rely on Youtube and Wikipedia instead. I don't say it will be less efficient, but it will definitely be different ... and more electronic. Edited by Iversen on 23 October 2014 at 11:22am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4805 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 16 of 34 23 October 2014 at 5:14pm | IP Logged |
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I totally agree with Iversen that the accent on English is damaging the other languages in the education systems. It is a stupid direction the governments are taking (or clever, meant to keep people from leaving to Germany and other better paying countries) because it is always better to learn directly the languages of your most important and numerous business partners, customers in the shops, collegues in international enterprises and so on than to use a third language together. Considering the relevance of Germany and France in Europe (+ the fact those languages are official in several smaller countries each), the three should be supported. Really, a shopkeeper in a minor tourist center near the Czech-German border doesn't need English much.
Really, time and money in the mainstream education is being spent on English while many people need German, Russian, and other large languages more, depending on their job and region. And the small languages are being beaten up totally, even though it is sad to hear Danemark allows them to disappear even from the universities! How are they going to keep contact with the culture and train new specialists who will learn about the different cultures and markets through the intermediate of English only? I agree we might get more advanced text correctors, speech synthetisers, some dictionaries already give more context and so on. But machine translation will never remove the need for real knowledge of other languages, in my opinion. Firstly, it will be totally useless for many smaller languages in the next fifty years, in my opinion. It would be needed for them the most, because people in general are less likely to learn them, but less efforts go to the development and it is more difficult for exemple to adapt a machine translation developped for French-English to Czech-English and I cannot even imagine how difficult it may be for a totally different languages. Secondly, I can imagine a reasonable quality machine translation for writing. But not for speech. No babbel fish is, in my opinion, possible to happen. Considering how difficult is written text for the machine (vocab in context + grammar + context a human knows but it isn't in the text and affects the translation + eventual stylistic alternatives) and add to it the voice recognitions, speech impediments, dialects and accents (which are always more present in speech than writing), grammar differences between spoken and written language (I am not speaking of diglossia, even though that would be another thing to spice it up). Really, fifty years is not enough. I even dare to guess the humankind will earlier directly read thoughts than have the babbel fish Massive online courses may be a nice improvement. Or at least real digital courses, not just scanned ebooks or low quality-heavy marketing apps. Things that would intertwine the qualities of traditional materials with all kinds of resources now available on the internet. Edited by Cavesa on 23 October 2014 at 5:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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