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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6399 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 81 of 255 16 March 2007 at 11:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It wasn't meant as a counterpoint to "prelearning" vocabulary. It was meant to illustrate that without extensive exposure to words in use, you will often not be able to say what you want to say. These are not idioms. They are simply the words being used in the ways that the speakers of these languages have learned to use these words to express these meanings. If you are going to speak the language the way it is spoken by native speakers of the language, you have to learn to use the words the way native speakers use them. You may think this is a minor learning issue, but I can assure you that it is the major learning task when learning a language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6724 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 82 of 255 16 March 2007 at 11:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Certainly, but Iversen emphasized already that he completely agrees with you that extensive exposure to words in use is an absolutely essential ingredient of learning a language. The question is whether "heavy-handed" vocabulary memorization techniques, of which Iversen's prelearning is one (extreme) example, actually harm one's chance to learn to speak idiomatically in the long run. If they do, they are to be avoided, if they don't, this becomes a matter of personal preference. That's what I've been asking - is it known to do harm?
I don't think it's a minor learning issue, I think it is the whole point of the enterprise to learn to write and speak idiomatically, or at least to learn to understand in a nuanced way the languages one only wants to know passively. What I don't know is whether not getting one's first 2000 words in a language in a "natural" fashion harms that prospect in the long run, or at least slows it down a lot. If I were shown reasonable evidence that it does, that would be the end of the story - I am not "challenging" you just for the sake of arguing. The main reason I am so keen on this question is because while I like learning from context at the intermediate stage, I found courses based on "comprehensible input" anything but congenial in the early stages of learning a new language. So, before giving up on what comes naturally to me when starting a new language, I want to see some evidence that I should, and since you know research literature on the subject, I was hoping you'd know the state of relevant current research. Edited by frenkeld on 16 March 2007 at 5:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6399 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 83 of 255 16 March 2007 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I see no reason why it should do harm.
Again, I see no reason why it should do harm. I do know that most people can learn to understand 2000 words from comprehensible input a lot faster than they can memorize 2000 words from a wordlist.
How did you go about using courses "based on comprehensible input"? Edited by Linguamor on 16 March 2007 at 3:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jerrod Senior Member United States Joined 6284 days ago 168 posts - 176 votes Studies: Russian, Spanish | Message 84 of 255 16 March 2007 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
frenkeld, well actually there are only 3 letters that do not appear at the beginning of a word, while that may help, the fact that certain letters like о с р п have a large number of words and most of them sound the same can be a big problem. Even he remarked about this dealing with вы. I did make a mistake about the 2 or 3 year comment. That was in reference to most students (where a textbook may cover 2,500 words in a 2 year course). I do agree that if you actually know these words, you could read a great deal or any of the graded readers, GLOSS (his next target), etc.. I understand he has a great deal of language experiance (and you too) and that a normal approach is not one that you probably want to take. I think a few problems could pop up, especially with the verbs of motion. A quick look in my dictionary (Oxford) ПОЛЗАТЬ and ПОЛЗТИ both say to crawl. If you only have a basic dictionary how will you know one is to crawl slowly vs. to crawl on ones belly or something crawling with short legs. Moreover, with the verbs of motion all 24 of them and there 15 prefixes, are complicated in the way they are used. Others, like the 3 "to try" verbs, or "to use" may be confusing. I can only speak for Russian, but I would say in general, some caution must be taken with this approach. (I thought at first he was just opening the dictionary and memorizing every word) Maybe, as he stated getting down the first 500 most common words, then choosing root words, and words you find interesting might work. I am interested in your experiment and this conversation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6331 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 85 of 255 16 March 2007 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Could you please elaborate? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| MeshGearFox Senior Member United States Joined 6476 days ago 316 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 86 of 255 16 March 2007 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Just curious, and maybe this isn't the right thread, but what's the minimum percentage of a text you need to be able to understand to actually be able to understand it? I'm trying to remember what Ardaschir wrote -- something like 75% not being enough, but 80% being enough to at least infer the meaning of unknown words?
Anyway, for the diciontary approach with Russian, I'm wondering if this would cause any confusion with aspectual pairs. Obviously they'd be marked as perfective or imperfective, but I still imagine that this would be relatively tricky. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6399 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 87 of 255 16 March 2007 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Research has shown that you need to know 95% of the words in a text to be able to infer the meaning of unknown words. Of course, this doesn't mean that you can never infer the meaning of a word without knowing 95% of the words, but to do so consistently, you do need that many. Edited by Linguamor on 16 March 2007 at 3:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6399 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 88 of 255 16 March 2007 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I have used language learning materials as resources for comprehensible input. This means that I have read and listened to the dialogues and reading texts in these materials until I could understand them without having to look at a translation or look up the words in a vocabulary list to understand the dialogues or reading texts. I continued to listen to many of the dialogues until they became so familiar that I could use the grammar and vocabulary to speak. The reason for using language learning materials for comprehensible input is that language learning materials normally contain high-frequency words - the words you need most to be able to speak and begin to read. I have used many different language learning materials because several resources will contain more words than any one resource, and because encountering words in a variety of contexts makes them easier to remember, and provides more information about how they are used. This is not the only way to begin acquiring a language through comprehensible input. I teach languages by providing comprehensible input, and the way I do it is faster and more effective than the way I have described here, but this was the way most suited to my situation in most of my languages. Edited by Linguamor on 16 March 2007 at 4:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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