A Polyglot's Daily Linguistic Workout

[Scoobyqueen]

Just came a cross a recent posting

Edited April 15, 2013 at 08:10 PM by Scoobyqueen

[wushijiao]

It is impressive, but I think a lot of his other videos are actually better/helpful (in which he talks quite in depth about languages, techniques, or learning series). In any case, I’ve somewhat modeled my plan around a lot of his theories and methods- for example, I’ve recently added an Excel spreadsheet chart to record what I’m doing.

For studying Hindi, I’ve also written out many pages of script for my lessons- which has so far been really helpful at learning Devanagari.

But, it would be hard to cram all of that studying while having a life. I think finding a career/job that is compatible with those ambitions (as Arguelles did) is really helpful.

[Scoobyqueen]

Wushijiao - Do you know anything about his revision approach?

[wushijiao]

I think Arguelles does quite a bit of work through grammar books in roughly 20 minute segments, and then he'll switch to "scriptorium" as he calls it, which I think is writing out the words of the things that he has been "shadowing" (the listening technique he invented in which you speak with the tape in order to improve your pronunciation and accent). After doing that, I think he typically moves on to more difficult readings (novels).

Strictly speaking, I think only the writing (scriptorium) would count as revision. The grammar should be seen as a type of review (if it is something previously learned).

I think as far as doing "revision", and how much of it, it really depends on what type of revision you are talking about, and your own interests.

From my point of view, I think a small amount of revision of written materials or flashcards is necessary, but I would estimate that I only spent 1-3% of my time total time learning Chinese on revision. I made probably 50 or so Pleco flashcard piles over the years, but only I only reviewed them every now and again. While that review was helpful, I don't find it particularly interesting, and it's hard for me to do more than 5-10 minutes of revision without losing focus. (For this same reason, Arguelles separates his grammar work into roughly 20 minute blocks because, according to him, his mind can stay fresh and focused on one language for about that long. He then switches to another activity, and his mind can re-concentrate on that activity. I guess every person needs to find out what works for him/herself). Personally, I've always been much more of a fan of reading newspapers, books, and magazines, and I think over time, you'll find the same words again and again, especially if you are reading a book or are reading about a specific topic or genre. With that said, I think that revision is important for people who are just starting a language. In every language, there is a group of core vocabulary that comprises a very large percentage of most texts. In this post, I mentioned research that showed that learning 3,000 word families is what is needed to understand a text at bare minimum, and so that core base of a language should be learned really solidly, and lots of revision of that core material may be needed. But, as one moves out of the core vocabulary into words that are much rarer, it becomes less and less useful to do systematic review of those types of words, in my opinion. That’s where extensive reading and listening become important. the extensive reading work also solidifies the "core" vocab (and probably more effectively so than most review).

As far as revision through audio, I think it's good as an beginner all the way to an to intermediate/semi-advanced learner, to listen to audio materials again and again. I used to listen to a particular tape of many dozens and dozens of times until I had memorized it (and this is what I’m doing now for Cantonese and Hindi). I think this is important not only for memorizing the actual materials, but also because it sears into your brain how words are pronounced and what the intonation is like. However, as time goes on, I think it’s useful to lower the percentage of audio texts that you listen to repeatedly, and to raise the percentage of extensive audio listenings that you do (whether through podcasts, TV, or radio).

But, in any case, Scoobyqueen, if you find revision to be useful, by all means stick with it!

Also, in addition to Arguelles’s ideas, I recommend getting familiar with some of Steve Kaufman's ideas, and also Stephen Krashen's idea (Krashen is one of the world's most famous L2 Acquisition experts. You can take a look at this post for a quick summary of his ideas.). I think my learning strategy is closer to their theories.

But then again, even though every successful learning strategy has to have the same components, each person needs to develop a plan that works for themselves. Some people really find grammar to be particularly useful. I think for Arguelles, or for someone who is learning a few different languages within the same family, he may find grammar particularly useful since one can do a sort of philological comparison to see how the languages differ and how they are the same. In a sense, this might be seen as a short cut to understanding a new branch of a language family.

Other people, like Krashen, are much less enthusiastic about the concept of teaching grammar. My experience, as an independent language learner of Chinese who followed a Krashen-like method, and a teacher of ESL for seven years, basically confirms Krashen’s idea that teaching grammar is generally a waste of time (although not entirely a waste of time. I think it largely depends on how much grammar is taught and when it is introduced and how.). So many times, as a teacher, I’d teach my Chinese students a certain aspect of grammar from our textbook, and they’d all do extremely well in the book’s exercises. But, in their writings, the same students would wantonly make the same mistake regarding the grammatical points that we had just covered. This can cause many teachers to go crazy and to blame the students' "stupidity". I’ve taught whole semesters of grammar review, and it seemed to make almost no negligible impact on the students’ use of the grammar in practical use. But, once we started to do more content based stuff (ie reading essays), students’ production seemed to get better, and the teacher could see how they were appropriating some of the words and grammatical patterns found in the text. Grammar, at that point, was simply used as a way to teach them how to make their points more clear and to review things that they’ve hopefully developed an intuitive sense about. I also had a comedy club, in which I taught English through Seinfeld episodes, and those students also got better in terms of production (and listening comprehension). This is why I’ve always thought that when students in China are challenged to learn something through books reading, lectures, and audio, their language skills almost invariably improve. But, when grammar is taught devoid of the content’s meaning, it’s a huge waste of time. (Sorry for the rant!)

Another point to make is, the more work one puts in per day, the easier it will be to see over time which particular aspects of one’s learning strategy are working, and which could use some modification.

As far as hard workouts and audio, I agree that I can lose focus on the materials. I find walking or light running to be good for audio work. I have to admit that I haven’t really tried shadowing, so I can’t really give a good review of that.

[Scoobyqueen]

Wushijiao - Thank you for your extensive and useful response.

[wushijiao]

Thanks for the recommendations Kaufmann/Krashen. Just out of interest, I thought the learning strategy would be different if you had already learnt a couple of languages L3 and even L4.

Actually, I don’t think that one person’s overall strategy to achieve fluency will really be all that different from one language to the next. The main thing that will be different, it seems to me, is how fast and efficiently a person can acquire a 3rd, 4th…etc. language after gaining experience learning one’s first second language, or third language (and here I’m talking about self-studying). If you look at Arguelles or Kaufmann or people like that, they tend to have formulas and strategies that work for them, it seems. I actually wrote out a post laying out how I learned Chinese, and I think could avoid many of the blunders of the first 1-3 years if I end up being able to learn other languages over a long period of time (as I hope I will be able to do).

I think you mentioned on another thread that you used to practice the same 30 sec audio again and again (as also mentioned below).

I can’t say that I’ve done too much with short 30 second audio (although I’ve done a little).

These days, for Hindi, I’m mainly doing audio from a book (Teach Yourself Hindi).

And for Cantonese, I’m mainly doing: 1) listening to VOA Cantonese (usually only around 10-20 minutes per day, although I listened to the full two hours on Sunday) 2) Creating my own materials based on 蘋果日報 stories (similar to “Slow Chinese”, but in Cantonese, with vocab sections, collocations, example sentences, place names…etc. All of this is designed by me and recorded by my teacher). 3) Reading the 蘋果日報 stories using Cantofish and then watching the videos (to practice Cantonese). 4) Occasionally reviewing previous materials. As far as Cantonese, I feel like I’m about a few months away from being able to basically understand the news (and more formal registers) fairly easily (hopefully). However, I’m probably years from being able to understand movies fluently, because they’re rich with non-Mandarin-based slang. I’ve tried to do a sort of “First Episode” sort of thing to solve that problem, but no real breakthroughs yet.

[atitarev]

नमस्ते! (namastē!)

Hindi is a nice language and not too hard but I don't know if I'll find time for it. It would mean a 4th language to deal with. I can definitely find people to practice it with.

I also have "Teach Yourself Hindi" with audio. Devanagari script makes perfect sense but I am not practicing it, so not sure how long it will take to learn it passively.

Exercises in languages in the languages other than your main focus do help with the linguistic skills and broaden your horizons. Using a few phrases in Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and Hindi to native speakers makes them smile, even if I don't learn these languages actively. Wiktionary is one good place to be exposed to many languages and pick up a few interesting things.

Edited January 22, 2010 at 05:46 AM by atitarev