mezron Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6331 days ago 24 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: French
| Message 185 of 489 26 July 2007 at 6:40pm | IP Logged |
I am learning Russian. At least the reading portion of it.
This seems to me a better alternative than the first step suggested in the very first post, which was to simply read the translation. Why not listen to the translation and following along in the L2?
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FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6317 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 186 of 489 26 July 2007 at 6:47pm | IP Logged |
Part of the fun in any method is tweaking it to suit your needs.
I did not agree with several parts of the original post, and as a result, modified the method until I felt it could give me the most output for my input.
If you feel you are learning more through your method than you would otherwise (through another mode of study), that's a good sign.
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biki2 Diglot Groupie United States vatoweb.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6980 days ago 57 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Arabic (Written), Catalan, Arabic (Egyptian)
| Message 187 of 489 26 July 2007 at 6:52pm | IP Logged |
mezron wrote:
Why not listen to the translation and following along in the L2? |
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I can only speak for myself here, but I would be hesitant to do this because invariably I'd associate the words I'm reading with a sound. And since that sound would be based on English or my idea of what Russian should sound like (rather than the words as spoken by a Russian), it would be wrong and I would just have to unlearn it later.
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FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6317 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 188 of 489 26 July 2007 at 7:03pm | IP Logged |
My post appears to have been cut off. I'll append part of it, and continue.
If you feel you are learning more through your method than you would otherwise (through another mode of study), that's a good sign.
However, I would not recommend listening to the L1 while reading the L2, for a few crucial reasons:
1. You receive zero gain in your aural comprehension of the L2. No matter how many times you listen to the L1, it will not teach you to understand the L2 as it is spoken.
2. You receive zero pronunciation gain in the L2 from listening to the L1. Hearing the L1 will not give you any better sense of the L2's prosody than that which you had before you began listening to the L1 - no matter how many times you listen to the L1.
3. Unless you have already learned to pronounce every word in the L2 text, you will inevitably learn to mispronounce dozens (hundreds?) of them by reading the text without the guide of a native reader in the L2.
4. You will be unable to shadow the L2 aloud - further compounding your efforts to learn to understand it aurally, or to produce it orally. You cannot shadow the L1 if you wish to learn to speak or understand the L2.
For these reasons, I would not recommend trying the listen-read method via listening to an L1 while trying to learn (and read) an L2.
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Zhuangzi Nonaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Canada lingq.com Joined 6986 days ago 646 posts - 688 votes Speaks: English*, French, Japanese, Swedish, Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian
| Message 189 of 489 26 July 2007 at 7:10pm | IP Logged |
FSI
I think there is a place for listening to L1 and reading in L2. It will improve your reading skills in L2. Reading fluency and reading speed are huge factors in language learning. I would imagine that alternating listening to L1 and L2 while reading L2 would be a good thing to do as long as the learner felt that he or she was learning or at least enjoying the experience
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FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6317 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 190 of 489 26 July 2007 at 7:14pm | IP Logged |
In other words, there are many ways to modify the listen-read method. However, I would describe three parts of the method to be essential, if one intends to call whatever they might be doing a variation of the L-R.
1. A literary work in the target language.
2. An audiobook of the literary work, also in the target language.
3. A translation of the literary work, in the teaching language.
In other words, an L2 novel, an L2 audiobook, an L1 translation. The combination of novel and audiobook in the L2 are designed to teach you to read and understand the written and spoken languages at a *minimum*, if studied effectively.
In addition, one can easily learn to speak and write by making greater active use of the method. The L1 text is simply designed to guide you through the L2 text until you can fully comprehend the L2 text without the crutch of the L1.
From there, you learn completely immersed in the L2, whether in the text, or in the audio, which, ideally, you have listened to continuously from the start.
It is impossible (or at least significantly more challenging) to learn to understand the L2 orally if you do not hear it orally. Substituting an audio in L1 instead of in L2 now provides you with two crutches - the text and the audio - and only one method of learning the L2 - the novel. This is the central issue with inverting the method in this fashion.
edit: I did not see Zhuangzi's post above mine while making my post.
Zhuangzi wrote:
FSI
I think there is a place for listening to L1 and reading in L2. It will improve your reading skills in L2. Reading fluency and reading speed are huge factors in language learning. I would imagine that alternating listening to L1 and L2 while reading L2 would be a good thing to do as long as the learner felt that he or she was learning or at least enjoying the experience |
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I agree that it certainly can help reading in the L2 - I just wonder if the disadvantages would balance out with the advantages of L-Ring in this way. However, it's true that if the learner feels s/he is learning from the experience, it is better than not learning at all.
Edited by FSI on 26 July 2007 at 7:18pm
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tpiz Diglot Groupie United States cvillepayne.blogspot Joined 6322 days ago 77 posts - 79 votes Studies: Portuguese, English*, French Studies: Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 191 of 489 26 July 2007 at 7:20pm | IP Logged |
To FSI
What books are you listening to and shadowing? I am definitely interested because I am getting pretty impatient with using FSI Portuguese because: 1. It is boring, 2. It is designed for a someone who hasn't learned a language before, and therefore goes at a slower pace than I would like(They take forever describing the imperfect tense and such) and since I just finished taking 2 years of Spanish and know french, I feel like all I have to do is figure out the conjugations and grammar rules and it's on to vocab. Let me know which audiobook you are listening to, I have been trying to get myself to try this method but I keep pushing it off since I barely have enough time with Japanese and fitting FSI in, which I think I might stop using all together.
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FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6317 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 192 of 489 26 July 2007 at 7:32pm | IP Logged |
tpiz,
In Portuguese, I'm l-r'ing Paulo Coelho's Eleven Minutes. It's a fun read, with plenty of the sort of dialogue, narration, and frequent tense shifts that I feel will make it very useful for learning the in-and-outs of the language.
The reasons you described for FSI Portuguese are why I'm not using it. Before hearing about this method, I was all set to use FSI Pt, thinking it would be a good introduction to the language. But I'm glad I came across this instead.
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