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Listening-Reading Assimil and Novels | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6242 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 2 of 5 17 February 2008 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would also like to know what Dr. Arguelles think of this method. Here are some comparisions I had made earlier and posted.
I found what I think is interesting. I don't think what I've quoted is taken out of context either.
ProfArguelles was talking about Assimil and why he thought it was so good. But I think that possibly his method of using Assimil was the Listening and Reading method or a variation on it. Except that instead of listening to and reading hours of literature, he was listening and reading hours of conversation (as in questions, answers, of many different topics, et cetera.) Any ideas on this? I think L-R may just be a cheaper version of ProfArguelles method in a way. Since you can use public domain texts for L-R, and also that the Professor's method uses Conversational audio, and the L-R method utilizes Audiobooks with good translations, which you can find on different public domain sites. Edited by vanityx3 on 19 February 2008 at 8:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7037 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 3 of 5 24 February 2008 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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The “LR technique” and the “Assimil method” as you have presented them here are very clearly two slightly different variations or individual interpretations of one and the same strategy of learning foreign languages through the use of bilingual texts. Indeed, the main difference I see is that the LR technique for a novel is proposed here for initial language learning, whereas I would reserve it for a more intermediate polishing stage. I do not know how to direct you more exactly, but I believe I wrote much about using bilingual texts to begin reading Russian literature in a thread with some such name for this forum long ago. At any rate, if you peruse my writings at all, you should very soon discover that developing the ability to read high quality “literature” in the original is one of my strongest motivations in pursuing the path of the polyglot. However, in my personal experience, it is more profitable to learn via a good (Assimil-like) method than it is to throw oneself right into the literature without prior preparation. I suppose it is a question of learning styles, and if you have neither need nor patience for textbooks, then why bother with them? Still, to actually learn a language via the LR technique, it would seem to me that you would have to be particularly gifted in intuiting grammatical rules—that or get them from supplementary grammatical study. I myself do profit from an initial systematic exposition of the facets of a language, and I find it far less tedious to repeatedly review sample didactic dialogues that have no particular inherent interest than I do to read the same story over and over again.
When initially learning to use something like the LR technique or my own Assimil method, it is probably a very good idea to follow the prescribed stages faithfully until you are sure that you are doing them correctly, i.e., in the case of the latter, just as I myself do it. Why? Because I have already done a great deal of experimentation and I have found the way I do it to be more effective than other ways of doing it. If you can learn to do it like I do it, then you will know that you are doing something in a way that has been “proven” effective, and, after that point, you can then use that procedure as a basis for comparison for your own experimentation to determine if you cannot find an even better way of using the method, more suited to your individual learning style; if you do not learn how to do it correctly in the first place, however, you may not ever profit from it as much as you could. Turning to your specific questions: 1) I believe my variation on the technique is better for textbooks, while the other technique is certainly better for works of reading and enjoying works of literature. 2) Yes, I would consider listening to L1 while reading L2 a waste of time. 3) ??? 4) I do not believe utilizing the news would be just as effective as performing an LR method with a long novel. News lacks both the length and the literary value of a novel, both things that were insisted upon in the presentation of the LR method; as I wrote above, you should learn to do it just as she does it before your begin to experiment with it. 5) My technique is certainly more applicable to Assimil or to other high quality textbooks than it is to a novel or news. I do not understand why one would not want to use a textbook for a language that has one. Trying to learn straight from a literary text instead seems less systematic and consequently more difficult to me. 6) As both techniques are only variations on the same theme, I do not believe either one can be judged to be objectively better for achieving fluid speech. It would be a question of learning styles. I personally can see no benefit in refraining from speaking aloud at first, but if your mind works in such a fashion that you can truly absorb the rhythm of the new tongue in this fashion, then by all means, do so. I myself would find the LR technique described utterly unworkable—if I did not shadow, I would race ahead in L1 and get bored and lost with L2. In point of fact, I think language learning should really always be done aloud—being silent is easier, less demanding, and less intrusive, but also less efficient. (7) The only way I can imagine that you could speak with a brief time lag would be to repeatedly pause the recording. In this case, you would not be shadowing at all, so yes, it is critical to speak in synchronicity with the audio. Once again, I strongly encourage you to experiment with changes in the technique, but only after you have first learned the correct procedure as presented. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7037 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 5 of 5 02 March 2008 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Regarding listening to L1 while reading L2—I do not even know how this would be possible or why you would want to try it. Would you get a recorded book in English with a Spanish transcript when you do not know Spanish well or at all and English is your native tongue? Then both the sound of the recording and your ability to process it would so far outpace your ability to stay focused on the Spanish that I would not understand the purpose of the exercise. Certainly, a good way to use bilingual texts is to alternate reading aloud a sentence in each language yourself, but you certainly do not need audio in your native language to do this.
Regarding news versus novels for learning: presuming that you have chosen a good book, every single line in it has been chosen and edited for specific effect. A newspaper article, however, is generally written the night before for the intent of conveying information. The cumulative effect of learning from carefully chosen language is obviously preferable to that of learning from more casual, though no less natural, language. As for synchronicity, you need it to perceive whether or not you are pronouncing correctly, and also to avoid saying one line aloud from recall while trying to listen to the next. I have never tried to shadow a video, but I imagine it would be difficult. The dialogue would be too scattered and there would be too much distracting sensory input. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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