@dooo “a kind of eccentricity is required which does not mesh with the social fabric”
errr, whatcha talkin bout willis?.. you have to stop reading “babel no mooooo”
Robert,with regard to the potential economics of such a school, do you think that most language schools, and universities that teach languages, pay out insane bonuses to managers? I doubt it.
Most language schools, cost at least $1,000 per month, based on ten or more people in a classroom, and 15 to 25 hours a week of instruction. Do you think that the polyglot professors at this institue will offer their services for significantly less than teachers at schools, or professors at universities? If not, then the question is really how to pay for all of this without charging each student a lot of money,
Now, if funding is available from governments, in other words if the unsuspecting tax-payer can be tapped to fund this activity for aspiring polyglots, that is a different situation. However, I think the chances are slim, even though left to their own devices, government departments love to hand out other people’s money for more or less noble sounding initiatives, and this certainly is a noble initiative, at least for people wanting to hone their polyglot skills.
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Lmy… Google is your friend
A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position
tmp… very funny
Dooo, that wasn’t a strawman from me…it was a strawjoke!
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Lmy… your further info is appreciated… but you fallatiously framed it as if to show that I failed to think my statement through,… what do you expect?
Jay… a scream as always
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Lmy… You agreed with your misconstrual of my statement. The statement I made did not limit anything to traditional language classes.
This would be an awesome experience. I bet he has the ability to pull some strings to get grants and investors for the project.
@dooo: “…Jay… a scream as always”
Oh no, you can’t scream - that might blow the joke down (what with it being a strawjoke 'n all…)
BTW
Apropos classrooms: I think I read somewhere or other (it may have been on HTLAL several years ago) that Prof Arguelles is thinking more in terms of creating a monastic environment with lots of cloisters or other arcaded walkways where folks can spend hours marching around and shadowing.
I swear I’m not making that up!
(I have a great respect for Prof Arguelles’ own achievements - but there does seem to be a certain whiff of fruit-loopery about some of his ideas!)
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@Imy: “…As a huge fan of shadowing (yes it works best while walking), I loved the idea…”
Maybe so. But I see that Prof Arguelles is now endorsing a new website where you can do shadowing while seated right at your computer:
(Start watching at 4:28)
If shadowing is such an indispensable part of learning a language well according to prof. Arguelles, I’m afraid I can’t do it right. I tried it with my Turkish and I felt somewhat uncomfortable when I tried to talk at the same time as the speaker, because I couldn’t hear whether I sounded right or not. And it was very difficult for me to keep the right pace with the speaker. But maybe that’s the whole point of the exercise ? Imy, what do you think about it? Do you do this kind of exercise regularly and if yes, does it help you in any way?
I discovered I might prefer the following approach:
- listen to a recording (preferably with a transcription - if not, it’s useful to have it transcribed or transcribe it yourself and have it proofread) - a few times, if needed
- listen to it sentence by sentence, pausing after each of them and repeating aloud, trying to mimic the speaker; it’s useful to repeat the same sentence a few times until you get it right, then you can move on to the next sentence
- as you go through each sentence, make sure you understand everything - why is the word in accusative, what’s that suffix doing there - well, okay, this point is only for grammar freaks like me, but you need at least to understand what you’re saying!
- repeat and repeat and repeat - as long as you wish to, then move on to another text
After a few repetitions of a 2 minute dialogue in Turkish, I needed only a few glances at the text when repeating, whereas I started to know most of the sentences by heart; I can’t swear by this method yet, but I think my intonation of these sentences has visibly (or maybe rather “hearably”) improved and I believe I internalised each and every word from the text. As far as grammar structures are concerned, there weren’t many new ones for me, but I’ll try this method with something more difficult and if I suddenly start to build sentences in passive voice without hesitation, it’ll mean it works 
Try it yourself.
P.S. Now I know the whole dialogue by heart, without really having intended to learn it - I just wanted to practice pronunciation. But that’s great, since now I can practice it indefinitely, even when I cannot listen to the recording 
To each his own. I tried shadowing and just couldn’t keep it up. I prefer to cover a lot of content, and only in the first few months do I listen repeatedly to the same content.
I have starting trying to mentally picture text as I listen to dialogs I already know well but at level that I still feel like I can’t produce naturally. In Japanese.
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A while ago I tried shadowing while swiftly walking up and down in my backyard. I achieved two things:
1.) I provided the guy who lives nextdoor with his final (and perhaps little needed) piece of proof that I am actually insane.
2.) I established that, for me personally, shadowing simply does not work - period.
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