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Colossal Input vs. FSI | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5940 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 11 18 February 2015 at 9:52am | IP Logged | ||
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My passive French is at a reasonable level, and I’m comfortable with B2 level listening and B2\C1 reading comprehension tests. I’ve also done a lot of written grammar exercises, and I’ve realised doing lots of grammar exercises makes you very good at the written language, but it has done little for my spoken ability. It still feels my implicit, and automated, grammar is still around the early B1 stage. This never happened with my Spanish, and I think elision in French is part of the problem. The French sentence, “Je ne les ai pas apprises”, is a lot easier to write then use automatically in conversation.
This leaves me with two alternative choices for improving my implicit grammar. FSI – French Basic Course I’m up to Unit 8 in the course, and I can see how it improves particular aspects of production. I completed all four volumes of the Spanish Basic course, and it really helped my fluency. However, the French course uses a lot of dated spoken structures such as question inversion, which are rarely used in the current language. Colossal Input Instead of working my way through FSI, I could invest the time in colossal input. This would involve extensive reading and listening to a wide variety of French sources. The only catch I see with this is that it’s similar to the approach I’ve been using. I’ve read here that massive input needs to be really massive to see the benefits. Both methods require a serious time investment so I want to choose wisely. Which method would you advise for improving implicit grammar ? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6994 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 11 18 February 2015 at 10:43am | IP Logged | ||
It was going to be "it depends", "what do you feel like?" until you dropped that final bomb. The French example you gave is EXACTLY what units 8 and 9 and 10 will beat you over the head with next. Courage. This is not the point to give up. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5097 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 3 of 11 18 February 2015 at 11:25am | IP Logged | ||
This is one of the things I came up with that saved my oral skills: I used to do grammar exercises by writing them out. Now I do them orally. I glance at the question and answer immediately & fluently. I don't worry about misreading "cat" as "hat", or whether it's "Tuesday" or "Thursday" that "I went to the hairdresser's"; I just say something as quickly as possible. I use Schaum's Outlines or similar, because I know all the vocabulary in there, and because they put exercises right after each grammar explanation, so it's obvious what structure you're expected to use (eg. "If I had gone" or "Had I gone"). In short, minimum thinking needed, I just say something as quickly as possible. Do try it. It takes less time than writing out answers so there's nothing to lose. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6386 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 11 18 February 2015 at 11:38am | IP Logged | ||
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How much input have you already had?
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| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4322 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 11 18 February 2015 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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In mine own experience massive input helps a lot with understanding the language, but is much slower at helping production.
If you already have great vocabulary and just need to fine tune your grammar than I would recommend production (grammar drills; cloze deletion in SRS; writing with corrections). If on the other hand you lack both grammar and vocabulary, then massive input can really help build up the vocabulary and make the grammar you already have much more transparent, but I think you'll still need to do some output (try writing instead of drills) to fine-tune your grammar - but you'll probably have less to fine-tune than if you only did drills. One plus with massive input is that you can do it anywhere (the beach, a cafe etc) and it can be very pleasurable. Something that can't be said for drills. What level are you at? Can you read >98% of a standard novel without difficulty? Do you have +99% understanding of most movies? If not, you'll need to work on your input whatever else you do. Edited by patrickwilken on 18 February 2015 at 12:39pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5051 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 6 of 11 18 February 2015 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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The obvious answer, to me, is to do both. Do FSI at one dedicated time during the day and massive input the rest of the time. For example, when actively studying Portuguese, I dedicated an hour in the morning to DLI study, then on my morning walk I dedicated another hour to listening. At lunch time, I did an hour of tutoring. In the evenings I would watch a novela and read a book after that. This is the essence of how I applied the multi-track approach. Of course, this presupposes working only on French and not studying or dabbling in other languages simultaneously. Dividing attention in such an intense endeavor by studying other languages simultaneously leaves you without enough time to do both massive input and formal study.
Doing both massive input alongside formal study (with drills) provides the power and benefits of synergy. The only problem is time. This requires so much time to be dedicated to one language it can be very difficult to study multiple ones simultaneously and do enough massive input alongside formal study That being said, studying multiple languages simultaneously doesn't preclude a multi-track approach. It just means that the input won't be as massive. Edited by iguanamon on 18 February 2015 at 1:59pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4996 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 11 18 February 2015 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Like smallwhite I also tend to do grammar book exercises aloud rather than written, and I find it helpful.
I love the idea of FSI, but I've always been put off the French one by the outdated language as you described: if I'm going to practice output I'd like to practice output I'll actually use. Whenever I pick up Spanish again I plan to work through FSI alongside the usual input and conversations. Anyway I agree with the other replies, particularly patrickwilken's. For French, I found Grammaire Progressive niveau Perfectionnement very useful for "tuning up" my grammar: clearing up things I wasn't sure about and helping automate some of the tricky parts. I'm not familiar with the other levels, but it could be worth flicking through the tables of contents of the Intermédiare, Avancé and Perfectionnement editions to see if one of them covers the stuff you want to improve. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4798 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 8 of 11 18 February 2015 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Massive input was the most important part of getting me fluent, including the grammar.
However, my occassional grammar mistakes come from not supplementing the input enough with the grammar exercises. So, I'd recommend lots and lots of listening, lots of reading and the book garyb just pointed out, it is awesome. The other pale in comparison. If you've already covered most of the grammar elsehwere, I recommend jumping right into Perectionnement as it sums things up, points out common mistakes and differences between familiar, formal or literary language. If verb form automatisation is the problem, it is for most people struggling to speak that I've ever met, I recommend drilling the conjugations with an srs. One thing I found helpful when it comes to improving my spoken grammar using the grammar books: I do the exercises out loud. It makes a huge difference for me so it might work for you as well. Edited by Cavesa on 18 February 2015 at 5:15pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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