Just another datapoint for: tones / how-to-start

[Guest realmayo]

Came across this:
 

Quote

I studied Vietnamese from "zero to hero" in 46 weeks of full-time study at the Australian Government language school. ... The tones are so important that during my course, we Vietnamese students (and our colleagues learning Thai and Chinese) spent the first 6 weeks in the language labs. We could barely speak a word of our new language - just babble out isolated sounds! However, this method reached so far down into our 'soul' that the tone system becomes an integral part of you. Just like your first language, it is impossible to forget!

 

https://www.proz.com/forum/teaching_and_learning_languages/92644-vietnamese_and_chinese_how_close_are_they_really.html?float=true

 

I wish that's how I'd started Chinese.....

[stapler]

Me too, but unfortunately I'd have neither the patience nor discipline to handle that kind of training.

 

I think the post touches on something that only now I'm becoming very cognisant of. That's the fact that intense drilling is perhaps not only beneficial but almost necessarily to make substantive progress learning a language.

 

Somewhat related to the conversation above, last week I happened to read the introduction to the 1967 FSI Vietnamese course. The main point it made was that students need to learn to produce parts of speech spontaneously and that this requires extensive drilling. Such a method reminds me of the famous Tamu post on independent learning. While I don't know much about the latest trends or research in pedagogy, in my experience this kind of painful approach to language learning does appear to have a very successful track record for those who can commit to it. And it appeals to my intuitive belief that lots of language learning approaches now appeal to our laziness.

 

Accordingly, over the last few weeks I've substantially changed the way I study Chinese when on my own. Before I had become lazy, merely moving on from a recorded sentence if I could understand it or, at most, repeat it in my head. This was a form of laziness that wasn't very helpful for developing an automaticity when using the language.

 

Now when I do something like sentence flashcards I not only listen, but record every single sentence multiple times until I am satisfied I can produce it aloud with sufficient speed, accurate tones, and reasonable intonation. The one unexpected benefit I have found from this exercise is that the words and structures become deeply ingrained, even though I am focusing on the sounds rather than content of what I'm saying.

 

[imron]

7 hours ago, stapler said:

That's the fact that intense drilling is perhaps not only beneficial but almost necessarily to make substantive progress learning a language.

I also came to a similar conclusion in my studies and have been saying the same thing for years.

 

The laziness thing is also important to be aware of, especially if you are relying predominantly on SRS because often the standard people hold themselves to for 'knowing' a word in a revision is not the standard required for using that word in real life.  The example I often provide is for reading.  To read well you need instant recognition for more or less every word.  If you are not treating anything less than instant recognition as a fail, then you don't 'know' the words well enough to be used for reading, leading to many 'known' words not actually being known well enough to use.

 

7 hours ago, stapler said:

The one unexpected benefit I have found from this exercise is that the words and structures become deeply ingrained,

I think this is one of the major losses caused by the move towards 'smarter' learning rather than rote learning.  Rote learning and drilling have their drawbacks, but as you've noticed, it ingrains the language in such a way that you can use it without thinking.  Smarter learning definitely has its place, but you need to supplement it with drilling and repetition in order to build muscle memory and automatic reflexes for the language.

[TheBigZaboon]

@stapler I don't think you would've had to worry about discipline. Remember, these are military schools. Many years ago, on another planet in a different galaxy, I studied a non tonal language in a similar school. The people studying Chinese not only got the drilling in class, but every school night, they had mandatory study hall for two hours, starting at 8:00pm.

 

Being assigned to this school was considered a very good duty assignment, and exceptionally qualified people were allowed to come back and study as many as three languages (related or unrelated).

 

I remember a sign on the wall in the Navy liaison office admonishing students, "You fail, you sail...". In other words, continued  attendance at the school depended on a student's academic performance.

 

As to the drilling of sentence patterns, what we referred to as "drill and kill", unfortunately, it seems to often follow the vagaries of academic trends. My teachers were ordinary people (apothecaries, minor diplomats, Muslim religious scholars, and the wives or husbands of other teachers) who followed a  pre-prepared curriculum. Now, there seems to be a good many academics eager to try out their theories on a captive audience. I'd like to think the quality of instruction hasn't suffered.

 

In my case, I haven't used my 'target' language for business in thirty or more years, but I can still walk into a room and sit down and participate in a meaningful way. Three months of practice and review, and I would feel as confident as I am in the language of the country I've lived in now for half my life. So, obviously, I try to use the lessons I learned at that school in my study of Chinese. 

 

(Sorry, just a rant brought on by a serious case of nostalgia...)

 

TBZ

[Guest realmayo]

I've started Vietnamese but as a long-term, no-hurry fun project, probably can give it maximum an hour a day, most of that in a train. I want to do a few months mainly listening to and reading example sentences and dialogues from a textbook, but after a few months I might go to Vietnam for a week or two and hopefully find a patient tutor who will teach me pronunciation.

 

But I'll be back home after that at which point I'd really like to set myself some pronunciation drills (for when I'm not on the train!), with perhaps only a skype class at the weekend to get feedback on what my pronunciation is sounding like.

 

With that in mind, does anyone have any suggestions or explanations or links about how I might set up that kind of DIY language lab equivalent, for drilling pronunciation? I would happily spend six months or so trying to produce, I don't know, perhaps 50 sentences very well.

 

Also any thoughts or experience about telling a tutor how to teach me pronunciation, intensively, for two or three hours a day if I do go to Vietnam?

 

For listening practice at the moment, before starting on full sentences, I first mined the pronunciation practice part of my textbook to extract minimal pairs. This gave me a few hundred cards and I think it has made distinguishing sounds as they appear in sentence much easier.

 

I'm also rather influenced by this fascinating post https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/8213-near-native-foreign-accents/?do=findComment&comment=65323 and the surrounding discussion.

 

 

[Flickserve]

10 minutes ago, realmayo said:

With that in mind, does anyone have any suggestions or explanations or links about how I might set up that kind of DIY language lab equivalent, for drilling pronunciation? I would happily spend six months or so trying to produce, I don't know, perhaps 50 sentences very well.

 

You can use audacity. There is a function within it to select a sentence and repeat it for a specified number of times. Listen and shadow 200 times or more and away you go.