Aardbei
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Age: 23
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Post by Aardbei on Jan 26, 2018 12:15:48 GMT
For those of you who learn/have learned (a) language(s) in your life, how do/did you go about it? Share your language learning methodology! I'm very interested in different ways of language learning and have spent a lot of time exploring them. I personally have been fascinated with the general idea of using aligned texts and audio for study and practice. One form of this is parallel books + audio. I've been really interested in the ideas associated with a method known as "Listening Reading". The main idea as I understand it and have have applied it is that you develop listening comprehension by listening while reading ahead a translation and/or transcription of what you are about to hear in order to prime your mind to parse what it's about to hear. I've tried it with with a few languages and I've had mostly positive experiences with it! I get the sense that it's most effective with languages for which you have a basic mental schema already in place, such as a language reasonably related to one you are already familiar with, or otherwise a language that you've already developed basic familiarity with. In practice though, I've actually spent most of time with a slowed down, more "intensive" style version of it, where I will listen to selected chunks of audio repeatedly while trying my darndest to comprehend what I'm hearing. One of the things I find fascinating about it is the natural occurence of spaced repetition. Simply by extensive exposure to language words and phrases are presented to you at a rate proportional to their frequency (and therefore importance). Along these lines, another thing I find interesting is that, by the idiolect of the author of the text, certain words and phrases naturally repeat themselves in your specific text, so before long you'll become well aquainted with the language is it's used by that author and/or as it's used in that genre. And in being mentally overwhelmed by the amount of new words and phrases that you are exposed to given a text that is well above your natural comprehension level, your attention will naturally be first allocated to the words that occur most frequently (and therefore which are most important to learn first in order to develop your general ability to understand the language as used by the text, the idiom). Another form of aligned text that I think is *super* convenient is movies and TV with captions and subtitles! It's fairly easy to find subtitles for videos in multiple languages and pair the languages together for a rough multilingual translation matched up with the audio from the video! I've tried using this using programs such as Subs2Srs and Substudy in order to do the pairing, and the well known SRS software Anki for practicing listening to them. Sometimes I'll "mine" vocabulary words from any ol' text I can find and make a list and memorize their meanings and then go back and read the text in order to put the vocabulary back in context. In general, my interest in language learning is focused on listening comprehension. I find it a very thrilling experience being able to understand things through the sounds of other languages. So I find myself spending less time learning to speak and write. Although I do find that given the ability to understand what I hear, that speaking and writing become more natural on their own. I always feel like my writing/speaking ability in German for example gets a nice short-term boost after listening to German I can understand for a while. While it doesn't make all my mistakes go away, it does make it feel more intuitive to do. A long time ago I drew these diagrams demonstrating language learning as I had conceived of it at the time:
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Post by Elizabeth on Jan 26, 2018 12:31:41 GMT
Spanish I started learning in high school. I try to talk with my Spanish friends in it and also try to watch things in Spanish to stay exposed to it. However, been doing it less since my Spanish classes and my knowledge declined in Spanish a bit :(
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Aardbei
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Age: 23
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Post by Aardbei on Jan 26, 2018 12:37:23 GMT
Spanish I started learning in high school. I try to talk with my Spanish friends in it and also try to watch things in Spanish to stay exposed to it. However, been doing it less since my Spanish classes and my knowledge declined in Spanish a bit :( It stinks how much work it can require to keep from forgetting languages you've spent time learning. :(
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Post by Διαμονδ on Jan 26, 2018 13:03:39 GMT
Spanish I started learning in high school. I try to talk with my Spanish friends in it and also try to watch things in Spanish to stay exposed to it. However, been doing it less since my Spanish classes and my knowledge declined in Spanish a bit :( I studied German at school! This was the worst thing in my school-life!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2018 13:39:36 GMT
Spanish I started learning in high school. I try to talk with my Spanish friends in it and also try to watch things in Spanish to stay exposed to it. However, been doing it less since my Spanish classes and my knowledge declined in Spanish a bit :( I studied German at school! This was the worst thing in my school-life! I studied Russian in elementary as first foreign language. I forgot all I learned.
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Post by Διαμονδ on Jan 26, 2018 13:44:21 GMT
I studied German at school! This was the worst thing in my school-life! I studied Russian in elementary as first foreign language. I forgot all I learned. И как? Легко думаю для югослава? I learned German only six months! Then I left that school..
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2018 13:47:51 GMT
I studied Russian in elementary as first foreign language. I forgot all I learned. И как? Легко думаю для югослава? I learned German only six months! Then I left that school.. Words are familiar but there are many false friends. An example, when you say "мой живот пуст" for us it means that your life sucks
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Post by Διαμονδ on Jan 26, 2018 13:49:18 GMT
Almost identical..
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Post by Polaris on Jan 26, 2018 14:57:09 GMT
i learnt English at school. it was fun. the teacher encouraged us to read simplified literature books. he made the class pay for the books he bought for us and had us exchange them.
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Mocha
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Post by Mocha on Jan 29, 2018 14:11:57 GMT
Spanish and French I took at school. Apparently my French teacher was better than my Spanish teacher because I can speak that much, much better than Spanish. (Despite learning it first!)
I studied Esperanto first on Wikibooks, and then when the Duolingo course came out I used that for a while, too. Honestly, I prefer Wikibooks - I can learn what I want, when I want. Nowadays I just use wiktionary or vortaro when I come across a word I don't know.
I accidentally learned quite a bit of Latin studying romance languages, then I decided to fully go at it one day. At least it's not as bad as my Spanish. Sometimes I can even read sentences! :P
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2018 14:48:06 GMT
Duolingo can teach you basics. For more you need something more, preferably native speaker.
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Mocha
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Post by Mocha on Jan 29, 2018 15:02:55 GMT
Duolingo can teach you basics. For more you need something more, preferably native speaker. They have chats and also bots, but I'm too scared to use either! >_<
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Post by pragmaticpossum on Feb 2, 2018 6:03:57 GMT
The immersion method -- what it is you surround yourself with the language in every way possible; television, music, literature, movies just anything in the language you're learning, this should also be supplemented with Anki flashcards with phrases in your selected language, speak to people in this language if you can -- the best sort of immersion would be going to the country, but obviously that's not an option for everyone -- as well, Rosetta Stone is a really good program, far better than Duolingo.
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azimovclegane87
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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
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Post by azimovclegane87 on Feb 2, 2018 6:11:59 GMT
I study English with... board games; from start you see technical text (Example: Ability gives you +2 to Willpower); then here is rulebooks with simple, but boring text; then here is (after all and most difficult) fictional text without non - atmospheric meaning. It's like Easy (Technical), Medium (Textbook and FAQ to game); Hard (Fictional). I learn a lot from games like Twilight Struggle (Cold War era game); Axis and Allies (WWII era game) and Android Netrunner (card game in Cyberpunk setting).
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 2, 2018 6:25:30 GMT
I study French by reading French Wikipedia articles about History, It combines something I hate with something I like. So it allows me to absorb most of the information.
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