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Language Learning With No Internet | ||
Tags: Internet | Learning Technique/Method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3686 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 9 of 18 16 July 2015 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm already pretty off-the-grid when it comes to learning. I mainly use the internet for inspiration, insight and verification of what I'm learning.
If I were to go somewhere without computers/internet for 2 months, I'd bring along MT, Pimsleur, a basic grammar book (The Everything Learning X Book or something similar), a dictionary and maybe Hugo X in 3 Months. Maybe a very basic reader too. I'd probably still be working on those things after I got back; 2 months isn't a lot of time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4838 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 10 of 18 16 July 2015 at 6:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I would have to rely much more heavily on course books and radio instead of reading articles on the Internet and
listening to podcasts. I think it would be fine, though. At advanced level it wouldn't be much different; reading books is reading books. It would be sad to have limited or expensive access to TV and movies, but assuming books and international radio broadcasts are available, not a huge deal for the big popular languages.
I know you meant pre-1990s-technology methods, but most of what you mentioned is less than 200 years old. I always have a hard time imagining what people did in the more distant past, but I guess it mostly involved either full immersion while traveling or a kind of "monastic" scholarly study that would be foreign to our current cognitive world. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4986 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 18 16 July 2015 at 11:21am | IP Logged | ||
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The main advantage of the Internet for me is just convenient access to native materials and courses, either online themselves (articles, video, audio, downloads) or sold online (books, DVDs, and courses that are hard to find in shops). Finding an Assimil course, a modern Italian fiction novel, or a French movie any less well known than "Amélie" would be harder without the Net. In fact, it would be harder to even find about about these things. I'd have to either stick to the easily available classic literature, mainstream films, and widely available courses like Teach Yourself; trawl charity shops and second-hand bookstores; or stock up while on trips to target-language-speaking countries or to places like Oxford and London that have more specialised shops.
That said, without this convenience, there would be more of a sense of adventure about finding materials, and I'd take them less for granted and learn to make do with what I have. All the convenience can lead to a sort of perfectionism, always looking for more and better materials and methods rather than just getting your head down and working with what you've got. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6562 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 12 of 18 16 July 2015 at 12:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Since the general sentiment of this thread so far seems to be "I can cope no problem
without the internet", I will take the opposite view. Unlike Iversen and others I never had a really successful pre-internet learning age. I studied languages in school and mostly enjoyed the experience, but it wasn't very effective. I never had the initiative (apart from English, which was heavily internet driven) to go beyond that and study on my own. It was in the late 1990s that I discovered that I really want to learn more languages, but I didn't know about things like Assimil and so the only option at the time was buying course books similar to the textbooks we used at school. Which wasn't all that much fun. I would buy these on a couple of occasions with great resolve, then end up leafing through them once or twice and then putting them on the shelf and forgetting about them. I mostly have HTLAL to thank for my renaissance. In the late 2000s this forum was my entry point to a whole new world of language study techniques and materials. I discovered AJATT which had a big impact on me (that site has been through several redesigns, but there used to be a section called "mental tools" that was the bread and butter of my ability to motivate myself). I read people's logs here and it was truly eye opening not only how much effort people were putting into it, but also the results they were getting. I discovered the "youtube polyglots" who made videos in different languages on a regular basis, and that was hugely inspiring (and intimidating). I eventually discovered my own learning method, which is basically starting with Assimil and then moving to native materials as soon as possible (more or less under-study and over- expose, later come back to study gaps in knowledge that are important enough). In theory, the internet isn't needed to do that, yet the internet is a huge part of my reason for wanting to study languages. It's invariably the place where I get exposed to new languages for the first time, and where I develop that curiosity and hunger. As I'm studying it's where I find native materials (and I couldn't survive without wordreference.com), where I find the stories of other learners, where I find the fuel to keep the fire burning. In a word, it's where I feel connected to the language. I guess you could just as well stock up on books and movies, but without the internet there's no lang8, there's no youtube, there are no forums or other learners (assuming you're not active in real world language learning groups, which I'm not). 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4418 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 13 of 18 16 July 2015 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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numerodix makes some very valid points. In my answer to the OP, I focused very much on the question how I would start learning a new language without internet, so I would like to clarify that I use internet a lot, and like numerodix this forum contributed to my renewed interest in languages. Without internet, I also doubt I would have decided to take up again Romansh, because I would not have had access to Romansh radio, TV and books without it. And my Russian studies would be so much poorer than they are if I could not access Russian online media, watch Russian clips on Youtube and buy Russian e-books and music for my Kindle and iPad. So yes, internet place a huge role in my language learning in many different ways, and I would find it hard to suddenly be without it.
Robarb, I guess that two or three centuries ago, the privileged few learnt languages with private tutors (e.g. Russian aristocrats would speak French amongst themselves in the 18th century), but most working class people and peasants probably never learnt another language, at least in the European context. I mean, back then most people did not know how to read and write. As regards full immersion while travelling, it is an interesting topic, but I guess it would mostly be in the cases where people went to spend considerable time in another country, like Lord Byron, who probably learnt both Italian and Greek pretty well. We do know that he also learnt Armenian, and he contributed to an "Armenian Grammar and English", published in 1819. Unfortunatly, no recordings exist to tell us how well he spoke these languages. Edited by Ogrim on 16 July 2015 at 3:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5041 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 14 of 18 16 July 2015 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Pre-internet, Spanish was the only language I learned. Immigration in my state was negligible. There were no local Spanish-speaking radio stations or cable television. I had Charles Berlitz "Spanish Step by Step" and high school Spanish class.
I did have a book of parallel texts, a copy of "El sombrero de tres picos" by Pedro Alarcón, the University of Chicago Spanish dictionary and a good grammar book. I also had some other important native materials even without the internet. In the late 1980's and early 1990's, shortwave radio was still a popular medium for governments to spread their message to the world. I had a shortwave radio and regularly listened and learned from the Voice of America Spanish Service, Radio Nacional de España. Radio Habana, Radio Camilo Cienfuegos (an anti-Castro clandestine station with broadcasts of "La tremenda corte"), Radio Educación (México) and HCJB Ecuador. I even got sent the Granma newspaper once a week in the mail for free from Radio Habana. At night I could listen to more Spanish broadcasts on AM radio. Listening through static, lightning and fading signals really helped train my listening ear. When I finally encountered native speakers I was ready to activate all that I knew and it happened relatively quickly to reach basic fluency. My big leap came when our local cable TV system started carrying the Univisión network and I could watch telenovelas with closed captions. Immigration became more widespread and with it came access to native speakers outside of major metropolitan areas. If I were to be without the internet today, and all I had was my course and associated audio, it would be necessary for me to find people with whom to speak. Here on the island, we ask around. I'd ask all my friends if they knew someone who spoke "X". I'd dig out my shortwave radio again and search for hard copy native materials at my library or through an inter-library loan. It's possible to learn a language without internet access, it's just not as easy or efficient. As robarb says, all of this is relatively modern. People learned languages before the modern electronic age, but to speak them well and understand them well they needed access to native speakers and native materials (books) the same as we do today. Web technology has democratized language-learning to where all one needs today is a computer or tablet connected to the internet. The world is at a learner's fingertips if they will only just decide to take it. It has never been easier to learn languages than it is today, in my opinion. Edited by iguanamon on 16 July 2015 at 8:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6688 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 18 16 July 2015 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | ||
I dare not think of that scenario... This being said, I could be busy for years even if I just spent time on my personal and physical collection of language learning material. If electricity all of a sudden was cut off, I'd still be able to read and write (and talk and think). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4838 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 16 of 18 16 July 2015 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I should add on to my previous post to say that while I think my success in learning big popular languages would
have been similar, I would certainly not have tried to learn so many less popular languages in a pre-Internet world. Access to those materials would have required more effort than I can put into a side hobby. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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