255 messages over 32 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 6 ... 31 32 Next >>
Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6448 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese
| Message 41 of 255 13 March 2007 at 6:24am | IP Logged |
jeff_lindqvist wrote:
The link seems to be broken (or doesn't work right now?). I had a look at your website which has at least one broken link (the contact info on the introduction page). You may want to fix that, as well as the short German course (which I very much would like to see). |
|
|
Sorry, had a capital G in the link where it expected a small G. I hate Apache servers. It's fixed now. You can find the course here and I also fixed the link on the introduction page. Thanks for noticing. I've recently moved the site to a new server and a new layout and I'm still not quite done re-working it. The old site, which still has links to free online courses, grammars and the like for 50+ languages, can be seen at http://snow.prohosting.com/sprach. It used to be known as www.LearnALanguage.tk .
1 person has voted this message useful
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7183 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 42 of 255 13 March 2007 at 6:37am | IP Logged |
Sprachprofi wrote:
Sorry, had a capital G in the link where it expected a small G. |
|
|
Actually, I think the forum software always capitalizes languages and it doesn't understand that's not a good idea inside of a url tag.
By the way, your site looks very interesting.
Edited by luke on 13 March 2007 at 6:39am
1 person has voted this message useful
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6448 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese
| Message 43 of 255 13 March 2007 at 6:41am | IP Logged |
luke wrote:
Sprachprofi wrote:
Sorry, had a capital G in the link where it expected a small G. |
|
|
Actually, I think the forum software always capitalizes languages and it doesn't understand that's not a good idea inside of a url tag.
By the way, your site looks very interesting. |
|
|
WOW, you're right, it did it again! Isn't there any way to correctly post my URL then?
And thanks.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6887 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 44 of 255 13 March 2007 at 10:08am | IP Logged |
This link should work:
http://www.learnlangs.com/German/GermanBites/index.htm
(despite the capital G, you're directed via Tinyurl and finally get to the right page)
Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 13 March 2007 at 10:09am
1 person has voted this message useful
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6921 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German
| Message 45 of 255 13 March 2007 at 10:35am | IP Logged |
Iversen wrote:
Without those languages nagging me I might have been more positive towards 'learning by doing', but as it is I prefer using a large amount of structured learning.
|
|
|
At lot of the arguments seem to be merely about how to sequence various activities anyway. You "do" plenty of things with languages and thereby inevitably "learn by doing", Linguamor likely has a nice collection of grammars and dictionaries, etc.
You yourself said earlier that if you've put in some time to perfect your passive knowledge of a language, it cuts down on the amount of formal study later - in that sense, this is also a form of prelearning.
Linguamor wrote:
If the language learner learns words in the ways that are being discussed here, - word X in the target language equals word Y in the language learner's native language - then he or she has not learned how to use the words in the target language. ... The results are not pretty. |
|
|
I probably learned the first 5,000, if not more, words in English that way, and the results were quite pretty, except for the accent, which is a separate issue anyway.
While learning languages, people have kept some sort of personal glossaries, i.e., notebooks with words and their translations, for eons, and it's not like the last 20 years is the only time in history anyone has learned a foreign language successfully.
For the results to be as bad as you describe, one has to take an old-style dictionary, without sample phrases, and never do anything with the language except make up and memorize wordlists. Barring such pathological situations, your remark can't possibly apply to most language learners in this forum, even those that use flashcards or notebooks to write down the words they meet, and even if they do so in copious quantities for a period of time. I personally prefer (and in a number of ways practice) your languge-learning style, or should I say sequence, to Iversen's, but it's a choice, not a necessity.
I think special note also needs to be taken of how much better dictionaries have become over the last 30 years. With computerized corpuses (or corpi?) of sample sentences, dictionary makers can now produce entries which, if you take the time to read one slowly, letting things sink in, can almost fix the word in your mind contextually.
Edited by frenkeld on 13 March 2007 at 11:00am
1 person has voted this message useful
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6575 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 46 of 255 13 March 2007 at 11:33am | IP Logged |
Sprachprofi,
I did your German course today and it's really great! I've been learning German for almost 4 years at school, but still some points were new to me. Now it makes me frustrated to remember the beginning of my German studies, we did a lot more stuff at school but I can't say I learnt more than I now refreshed with your course.
I missed an important point when writing about my vocabulary learning: luckily there are almost no Finnish dictionaries for flashcard software, so I create mine myself and learn quite a number of the words while making the dictionary. Also, I use Finnish-German flashcards to reinforce totally the most basic Finnish words and to use them without mother tongue links.
2 persons have voted this message useful
|
Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6681 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 47 of 255 13 March 2007 at 11:59am | IP Logged |
I have now tried out the idea of using the 5-7 word rule plus the postponed-writing rule on the thematic word lists that I wrote about earlier today. The reason that it had to be the thematic word lists is that these in any case will be based on your native language or another well-known language, and then you can just as well use them in a more efficient way. I have made them before (or nicked them somewhere), but never done anything but writing them down and then used them as source for my three-column wordlists (foreign - native - foreign word). Because of the things I have read in this thread I decided to formalize this kind of lists.
So what I now have tried to do is to make a long list in one column in Danish with all kinds of colors (including haircolors and words like dark, light). Because I want to make a multilingual list I have made three columns: one for Greek, one for Rumanian and one for Russian. However I fill out one column at a time in order not to mix the languages. Others may want just to have one extra column, but I would like to end up with a kind of lists that can be useful for cross-reference purposes later.
The idea is now to use the two rules above: consider 5-7 native words or short expressions at one time and don't write anything in an empty column before all 5-7 foreign words or expressions can be written in one go. With Greek and Romanian I knew most of the words beforehand because I have made three-column word lists with color names in them, but Russian is a new language for me so I have had to use a dictionary. Now if I look up 5-7 words in Russian I will probably forget them as fast as I can look them up. The solution is a separate sheet of paper where I write down the foreign words WITHOUT translations. The act of writing the words is already a hint to memory that these words should be remembered, and if I need to look at this sheet before I can fill out the empty column on my word list then the translation is not necessary, - between max. 5-7 words that I have just looked up in a dictionary it should be humanly possible to pick out the right one without having the translations written out (it was in fact Meshgearfox who brought me on this idea). So I work my way through the colours, and because I have used the native word as a hint to remember the foreign word there is no need to have an extra column for the foreign language.
So now I have one more item in my language-learning toolbox. As usual the elements are wellknown, it is just a matter of finding a practical way to combine them.
Edited by Iversen on 13 March 2007 at 12:30pm
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6681 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 48 of 255 13 March 2007 at 12:18pm | IP Logged |
frenkeld wrote:
You yourself said earlier that if you've put in some time to perfect your passive knowledge of a language, it cuts down on the amount of formal study later - in that sense, this is also a form of prelearning.
|
|
|
Yes, and I don't mean to say that the time I have spent on passively acquiring a number of languages has been totally wasted. It is always a positive thing to be able to read and understand a foreign language, even if it is just a passively learnt language. However to get from passive to active fluency is not just a matter of listening or reading a bit more, you have to get back to the fundamentals and so to say rebuild your knowledge of the language on a more solid foundation (at least that's the way I feel about it). It is however true that this is much easier if you already have a solid passive background in the language.
Edited by Iversen on 13 March 2007 at 12:30pm
1 person has voted this message useful
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum
This page was generated in 0.6250 seconds.
DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
|