I know the most basic form and what the whole site revolved around is the reading and listening method. A very good and effective method but I am curious if anyone has a specific method for how they study the dialogues with the listening. Obviously repetition is key in language learning so lots of reading and listening. Do you believe it is more effective to study over a broad range of courses and lessons or stick to a few? I’m not a fan of going through learning programs and perfecting one and not moving on till that one is done. I do believe it is important to have a lot of information coming in but not so much to where you head feels crammed.
Right now my method is picking out a few lessons I have interest in. Once I’ve found the ones I want to study I print the dialogue in German (my target language) and then print a dialogue in English. Then I will listen to the audio while reading the German dialogue. Then read the English so I can get the full grasp of the story and then I take verbs, and adjectives, or anything I want to cherry pick out of the dialogue that I don’t know very well to study individually and then repeat listening and reading. I like to do this with a few lessons at a time but not too much to where I can’t keep it organized.
Up until now honestly my language learning method has been quite scrambled just doing a whole lot of everything but I’m trying to adapt more structure but at the same time remaining flexible. I do believe this balance is good for me, but I would really like to hear your thoughts and experience with this. People learn differently though, so I’m sure this method isn’t as effect for others but I’d like to hear what you all think about this. Do you have a system for your LingQ studies?
For my German, I’ve picked more than one beginner course and switched between them. For Russian though, I’ve been sticking to only to Evgueny40’s Russian from Zero series.
But the printing the script out bit and the other stuff I haven’t done. If that works for you, then you’ve found what will help you learn better. My opinion on using LingQ is only that certain METHODS/ Techniques work for certain people. Anyways that my opinion! Happy learning my friend!
@TheJenksMeister Thanks for the comment, I haven’t heard of Quizlet but I’m going to check it out now
@OzzyHellBack
Yes I agree with you there with specific learning techniques. Each person is different in learning but I do like to hear others experience and nit pick the methods I like or at the very least try it. Thanks your your comment though! Happy Learning to you as well!
“I’m not a fan of going through learning programs and perfecting one and not moving on till that one is done”
Methinks that you don´t have to do that anyway. I´m a fan of skimming through a lot of content and cherry-picking the easy stuff. Ignore the long sentences, ignore sentences where you´d have to look up almost every single word. Look for short sentences, particularly those where you only have to look up one or maybe two words.
“Mein Kieferorthopäde hat mit Stolz verkündet, dass seine Praxis seit mittlerweile einem Quartal unfallfrei ist.” <----ignore
“Ich bin Taxifahrer” <----Look up “Taxifahrer”, write the sentence on a flashcard or copy´n paste into Anki (optional)
There are many good reasons to use this “method”, but I think the coolest thing about it is that you can learn quite a lot without getting a headache. Translating five easy sentences will teach you the same amount of vocabulary as a difficult sentence with five unknown words. It´s the language learning equivalent to cutting an apple into slices instead of trying to swallow the whole thing in one bite.
“I take verbs, and adjectives, or anything I want to cherry pick out of the dialogue that I don’t know very well to study individually and then repeat listening and reading”
How do you study words “individually”?
“Up until now honestly my language learning method has been quite scrambled just doing a whole lot of everything but I’m trying to adapt more structure but at the same time remaining flexible.”
Again, I don´t see the problem. It probably makes sense to study/practice things like programming or sports in a structured, organized way. Language learning seems to be different. I haven´t met anyone who became a great soccer player because he watched a ton of soccer games on TV, but I´ve met quite a few people who became really good at a language because they watched movies, played videogames, read stuff on the internet…you know, “unorganized” activities who don´t look or feel like studying.
@Paule89
Thank your for your comment, it is very helpful.
You say pick only simple sentences. I was doing this in a way but instead of ignoring an entire sentence I try to at least understand what it is trying to communicate. I feel like its important for me, to follow along in the story to some degree so i won’t have a chopped up mess. I don’t translate or even try to learn everything from the transcript, I usually don’t pay much attention to prepositions and adjectives, I’m more interested in the subjects and the verbs.
What I ment by cherry picking words and studying individually is basically taking the vocabulary and nouns I want to learn better and put it either into a flash card system or just to look over them on a piece of paper. Sometimes I will also try to take these words and create pneumonic devices with them but I try not to spend too much time on a small amount of material as well.
I think what would be better for me now though is reading and listening to more material, spending less time on a single lesson or course(even if it annoys me a bit) and to focus a lot more on vocabulary because that is something I’ve been struggling with. I know when my vocabulary gets better I’ll understand a lot more because it communicates a lot if not most of the informortation from the sentence.
Get exposure to lots of simple natural dialogues for the first few hundred hours. Listen and read, over and over. Jump into native level content as soon as you can. Mix up content as much as possible, dip down to lower levels now and again. Favour quality content that is interesting to you. Outside of lingq - switch everything you do over to your target language - as far as possible - including tv, radio, online forums (example - write the first two sentences of this question in both German and English), newspapers, general conversations, even your own thinking and self talk - but best to use input that you can also get transcripts for etc.
@iaing
Thanks your for the tips. This is very much how I like to learn as far as getting into native level material and then brushing up on basics.
Right now I would probably say my german level is Beginner 2 or A2 but most of the material in this level isn’t very interesting. I can understand it better but there just a lot more interesting material in the Intermediate levels so most of my studying are in this level.
I agree with you completely on this immersion technique. I am constantly talking to myself in German or looking at something that I dont know in German and then looking it up. I will have a conversation with someone in english and try to translate what someone saying to me in German. I’ve integrated this into my mind to the point where I sometimes don’t even make a conscious effort to do this, it will happen almost automatically at times.
I’m really looking forward to the point where I can speak and think in German and not have to think about the English translation, sometimes now I can do this but with the majority I have to translate. Its an amazing experience honestly, I’m just so eager to understand the language better which is why I’m trying to hear other learner’s experiences.
I plan to learn many languages so I feel that since this is the first foreign language I’m learning now would be the time to explore different methods for learning and find the best way for me.
“How do you study words “individually”?”
“What I ment by cherry picking words and studying individually is basically taking the vocabulary and nouns I want to learn better and put it either into a flash card system or just to look over them on a piece of paper.”
I imagine his point was more along the lines of “words will always have context”. Pretty much the only time you see individual words without context is on vocabulary tests, which is the practical equivalent of a German jumping out at you on the street and just screaming “BADEWANNE!!!” at you. (With keiner Badewanne in the Nähe, natürlich.)
I always anki-ize full sentences now. That way, doing flashcard reps is not only less painful, but also more practical, because it teaches you about the usage of the word, not simply what it means. It’s also a good way to learn set constructs or grammar.
P.S. if you have weird taste in games like me, check Daedalic Entertainment unbedingt out. They’re amazing and half the reason I can speak the language now, I swear^^
I’m not sure if someone said this already, and for many this is obvious. I put dialogues in my mp3-player and over a period of time I may listen to the same dialogue or interview or children story (from bookbox.com) or whatever dozens of times. Usually not the same dialogue very many times during the same day, unless I really love the sound of the speaker or something. Like when women speak Russian for example.
After listening to the dialogues multiple times, they often become like music and they may become like ear worms. I guess this is useful especially at the beginning, to get used to the melody of the language. Perhaps not the best for building up lots of vocabulary if the collection is not big.
Listening them from the mp3 is also a kind of a test. If I don’t understand enough of it, I may go back to reading them and checking up words. So that I understand enough of it and they become comprehensible input and not just bar-bar background noise.
I think having a large listening library is great if you lose enthusiasm in a language for a while (for example when other languages are seducing me) that you really want to know well or if life is really busy with lots of surprises. Usually you have at least some opportunities to listen. Even if you don’t have much enthusiasm at the moment, it’s pretty easy at least to listen in the bus or somewhere.
What Paule89 said about cherry picking n+1 sentences… that’s exactly what I’m doing right now. Also I’m reading the news and copy-pasting suitable sentences to a text file. Excel file could be even better. Unlike I believed a long time ago, usually the world doesn’t end if you don’t understand all the sentences or all the words in a text.
@lynkusu
“I always anki-ize full sentences now. That way, doing flashcard reps not only less painful, but also more practical, because it teaches you about the usage of the word, not simply what it means. It’s also a good way to learn set constructs or grammar.”
You make a very good point. This does make more sense. I find for some words though it can still be effective to study individually from the sentence but I do agree with keeping that context. Especially in German because there’s lot of words that can mean something completely different based on the context so I’ll definitely keep that in mind.
“P.S. if you have weird taste in games like me, check Daedalic Entertainment unbedingt out. They’re amazing and half the reason I can speak the language now, I swear^^”
I do like this game-style learning method because language learning should be fun and that’s exactly what these Language learning games attempt. I say “attempt,” because I have gone through some I’ve found not so effective, well effective being in keeping my attention like DuoLingo for instance. I used this app for a while but it just got so boring so I stopped using.
I’m not sure if you have an iPhone or not but I have this app on my phone for German learning called “Himmelsscheibe by Goethe Institut.” It is so fun. Your character is like a detective trying to figure out crimes looking around for clues and everything is in German. I just looked it up to and they do have a version you can use simply on a Computer so no need for an iPhone.
@b4kemono
Thanks for your comment, Very good advice. I do like reading children’s books in German and comparing the Dialogue to English. I think this helps a lot because when you see the script in your native language you know what’s being said so when you go back to your target language you can sort of guess which goes where and how it all fits in.
