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LR method?

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12 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4334 days ago

140 posts - 157 votes 
Studies: English*, German

 
 Message 1 of 12
21 July 2015 at 9:10pm | IP Logged 
Hello everyone,

I'm still plodding along with the Assimil 'German with Ease' and I hope to maintain the pace of two lessons a day, although they are getting increasing longer and more difficult. I am using LingQ
and an SRS system (Genius) and inputting the sentences into the memorisation software. I have read lot's of threads on the L-R method for the past hour and it's something that I would be
interested in trying. I'm currently very motivated and have a lot of free time (I'm a student who has a 6 week summer break) so would want to experiment with the LR method. I have a few
questions though, so I would be grateful if somebody could offer any advice.

From what I understand the method is as follows:
1) Find a novel in German and English and the accompanying German audio. Ideally, a novel with 20-40 hours
of audio.
Side note: I purchased 'Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen' and audio and the English text. Although, I
have found that some people do not like using Harry Potter as they find the translation inadequate.

2) Read the whole chapter/whole book in English before attempting to read and understand the German.
3) After I've done that, read the English text with the German audio.
4) Read the German text with the audio.
5) Repeat this three times with the same book.
6) Input vocabulary and sentences into the SRS.

When choosing a book, what percentage of words should I already know? 20-30%, 50-60%, 80-100%?
I've read that it's recommend that you spend anywhere from 3-10 hours a day for at least a three days in order
for it to be effective. Is there any truth in this claim?
Are there any good books that people recommend when using the LR method for German?
Is it suitable for a beginner or more suited for somebody who has an intermediate level in the target language?
I'm currently a 1/3 of the way through Assimil and have done some extra listening and reading on LingQ, so
my vocabulary is quite limited.

1 person has voted this message useful



luke
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6964 days ago

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

 
 Message 2 of 12
22 July 2015 at 2:22am | IP Logged 
SRS is not part of the method.

The most important element of the method is using a book whose story you love.
7 persons have voted this message useful



YnEoS
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4013 days ago

472 posts - 893 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish

 
 Message 3 of 12
22 July 2015 at 1:05pm | IP Logged 
EnglishEagle wrote:

When choosing a book, what percentage of words should I already know? 20-30%, 50-60%, 80-100%?


It can be helpful at any level, my simple rule of thumb is that if you don't immediately get lost and are able to know which sentence of the text matches up to the audio you're hearing, you'll get some kind of benefit. That's a factor most people miss about L-R when they make statements like "If L-R works why aren't people who watch tons of anime with subtitles fluent in Japanese?". L-R is more active than subtitles because the text isn't synced to the audio for you. Watching TV with subtitles you can ignore the audio and just read along. With L-R if you need to pay attention to the audio actively the whole time to keep it in sync with the text.


EnglishEagle wrote:
I've read that it's recommend that you spend anywhere from 3-10 hours a day for at least a three days in order for it to be effective. Is there any truth in this claim?


The original description of the method, claimed to take you to a very high level in the language in a relatively short amount of time To my knowledge no one else has been able to replicate those kind of results claimed by the original poster, though many people still find it very helpful and more efficient than courses even if they can't commit as much time per day to it.

I can kind of understand how it would work better if you were able to do it for more intensive periods of time. With L-R each new words you hear is reinforced by its place in the story making the memory rooted stronger in you brain.   L-R makes strong use of involuntary memory recall, where even if you've completely forgotten the word, seeing it again in the same story place forces you to remember on subsequent passes.

I can imagine if you had a perfect storm of factors where you were able to stay intensely engaged in a story for 10 hours a day over a week or two, you could probably start recalling many more words than is usually possible. In practice though, I personally have never been able to re-create these kind of circumstances. There are books I like enough to re-read a few times over a few months, but few books I can stay focused on re-reading several times within a week. Even if I force myself to keep re-reading it, its usually difficult for me to keep the same amount of focus on subsequent passes.

Still if you can only do 1 chapter of a book a day there will still be a lot of benefit, especially as a supplement to other learning methods.

Edited by YnEoS on 22 July 2015 at 1:06pm

3 persons have voted this message useful



phonology
Groupie
Peru
Joined 3471 days ago

40 posts - 48 votes
Speaks: Spanish*

 
 Message 4 of 12
22 July 2015 at 7:58pm | IP Logged 
I think this method of reading and listening serve to become familiar with the
pronunciation and intonation, but understanding and reasoning the context of the story
and vocabulary do not know.

Edited by phonology on 22 July 2015 at 8:02pm

1 person has voted this message useful



EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4334 days ago

140 posts - 157 votes 
Studies: English*, German

 
 Message 5 of 12
22 July 2015 at 10:02pm | IP Logged 
luke wrote:
SRS is not part of the method.

The most important element of the method is using a book whose story you love.


Thank-you, some people did mention using SRS with software like Learning With Texts (inspired by LingQ). It
allows you to export the words that you've looked up into Anki.


YnEoS wrote:

The original description of the method, claimed to take you to a very high level in the language in a relatively
short amount of time To my knowledge no one else has been able to replicate those kind of results claimed
by the original poster, though many people still find it very helpful and more efficient than courses even if they
can't commit as much time per day to it.

I can kind of understand how it would work better if you were able to do it for more intensive periods of time.
With L-R each new words you hear is reinforced by its place in the story making the memory rooted stronger
in you brain.   L-R makes strong use of involuntary memory recall, where even if you've completely forgotten
the word, seeing it again in the same story place forces you to remember on subsequent passes.

I can imagine if you had a perfect storm of factors where you were able to stay intensely engaged in a story
for 10 hours a day over a week or two, you could probably start recalling many more words than is usually
possible. In practice though, I personally have never been able to re-create these kind of circumstances.
There are books I like enough to re-read a few times over a few months, but few books I can stay focused on
re-reading several times within a week. Even if I force myself to keep re-reading it, its usually difficult for me
to keep the same amount of focus on subsequent passes.

Still if you can only do 1 chapter of a book a day there will still be a lot of benefit, especially as a supplement
to other learning methods.


phonology wrote:
I think this method of reading and listening serve to become familiar with the
pronunciation and intonation, but understanding and reasoning the context of the story
and vocabulary do not know.


Thank-you for the responses. I was under the impression that was effective if you do it intensively as you will
learn words through repetition in different contexts. It's interesting because I've imported Harry Potter into
Learning with Texts and have very briefly gone through the first chapter in about 10 minutes, marking words I
know the meaning of. The system says I know 15% of the words in the first chapter which is an extremely high
percentage of unknown words. I think I might search for something simpler with less unknown words.
2 persons have voted this message useful



EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4334 days ago

140 posts - 157 votes 
Studies: English*, German

 
 Message 6 of 12
23 July 2015 at 6:27pm | IP Logged 
I've found a simpler text to input into the LWT program, Der Kline Prinz // The Little Prince. The % of unknown
words in the first chapter is about 80% - so only 1/5 of that are known words. I can imagine that percentage
will decrease chapter by chapter. I will follow the instructions that I found on this website.

1) Read English translation of text
2)German audio and German text - listen and read simultaneously
3) Listen to German audio and read English text simultaneously (key phase apparently)
4) Listen to German and repeat it, ensuring you have correct pronunciation.
5) Translate from English to German. Although I can see this step being a problem when the author is very
loose on their translations.
6) Repeat several times with same text, then move on to other texts.

Will it work? I don't know. I have quite a bit of free time, so I might as well try it. If it does work, then great! If it
doesn't, then I won't use this method again.
1 person has voted this message useful



EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4334 days ago

140 posts - 157 votes 
Studies: English*, German

 
 Message 7 of 12
23 July 2015 at 9:58pm | IP Logged 
Der Kleine Prinz // The Little Prince
16,000 words approximately, not sure how often vocabulary is repeated.
Spent 73 minutes and have read 171 words / 16,000 = 1.1% complete. Although, I was interrupted briefly and
forgot to note down the time that was not spent on studying, so that figure is slightly inaccurate.
Unknown words from the first chapter have moved from 84% --> 54%.
Harry Potter Unknown words (1st chapter only) from 85% --> 74%.

I read the English paragraph then read the German with the audio. Although, I find that the German and
English translations are sometimes quite different from each other so I find it hard to listen to the German
audio and read English text. I then compare the German text with the English text, and making a mental note
of word order and how sentences are constructed.

Edit: I can understand the things I've read, but when I listen to the audio it takes a while for it process, and
then once I've figured out the meaning I'm a couple of sentences behind.

Edited by EnglishEagle on 23 July 2015 at 10:13pm

1 person has voted this message useful



EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4334 days ago

140 posts - 157 votes 
Studies: English*, German

 
 Message 8 of 12
23 July 2015 at 11:53pm | IP Logged 
Small update:
I have the English text, German text and I'm making myself a hyper literal translation. I think it might be better
to listen to the German audio whilst reading my hyper literal translation rather than the English text.


1 person has voted this message useful



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