I think it’s true that if you wanna pass an exam you need to study with a different methodology. And memorization maybe the right way to go in that case. But passing an entrance exam and speaking a language are two different things. I know college Fench majors who passed all the exams and can’t speak the language.
I couldn’t sustain this kind of learning approaches and ended up hating the language. We were taught in this way at school and I couldn’t learn English. People try to learn finance, math, science etc. through using this kind of methods however they actually can’t understand the basic idea behind the formulas etc. so they hate what they need to learn or find the simpliest concepts too complicated. If they have to face an unknown problem they can’t solve it. Of course language learning is different than these topics however I couldn’t love memorizing words, formulas, names or numbers delibaretly… I can remember them if I use them…
How did the first generation Americans learn English? They read, listened to and spoke the language.
By the way I didn’t post this comment to argue or because I find these methods useless. I just want to explain my thoughts and experiences. (I think that this is the best way to improve myself in English.)
To be sure, this is a tough way to learn!
There is a guy called Paul Jorgensen (he is quite well known on Youtube as “Langfocus” Langfocus - YouTube ) who has recounted how he worked his way through all of the drills from the FSI Course in Modern Hebrew. He was super-motivated to learn because he was going to study at an Ulpan in Israel, and he wanted to get the most out of it. Yet he said that there were times where he sat in his room literally forcing himself to do just another 10 minutes so as to complete the session for the day!
That does strike me as a miserable and soul-destroying way to learn a language! :-0
There’s a flip side to the coin though: when he got to Israel, many people were apparently surprised to find how much functional fluency he already had - compared to the vast majority non-natives having their first immersion in the language…
BTW
In recent years he has been living in Japan, and has learned that language to a very high level. But he is still (as far as I can judge) pretty good in Hebrew! About Hebrew in Hebrew על השפה העברית בעברית - YouTube
@Estela- No comment on the clugstonator from me!
@Prinz_Skjegg- FSI is apparently a mixed bag as well, the FSI Spanish course is usually praised, there are like 50 something lessons and 10’s of hours of audio. I’ll never use it though.
On the other hand, the French course is apparently unfinishable. Well, actually, scrub that, I remember someone on the old HTLAL forums saying that they had finished it and went on to describe the experience as being “like having teeth pulled.” Even worse, he said that it didn’t do much for his language skills when he finished, his listening didn’t really improve at all, for example. Yuck.
Yes, it was sarcasm, “le sarcasme.” He was saying how criticizing that method in a group of people you use it successful isn’t the best way to learn a language.
I have similarly softened, or at least become more sympathetic when I learned more about his circumstances. However, despite this, I just can’t get through a single one of his videos, or even far enough to find out 1) what his methods are; or 2) whether he actually speaks any foreign languages.
I’ve tried to go through the Spanish one a few times, but kept failing, even at my level when I can skip ahead and just scan it. I think it might be more useful for someone who has a good handle on the language and is just using it to drill into the specifics or shore up weaker areas.
Of course, I think my reluctance to finish might have something to do with the fact that I didn’t want to spend all that time and paper printing it out. No doubt it would be more comfortable than going through my PDFs on the computer screen.
A few years ago I stumbled upon one of his videos bashing Steve, he looked a bit disturbed judging from the way he was talking and full of hate. I am just curious what his “circumstances” are?
Yeah, that’s what I kept finding too. Others trashing Benny Lewis and a few others and I thought, “Man this guy hates everyone.” The “anti-Steve” video is probably the one(s) that we all keep seeing because it can come up associated by YouTube with Steve-related videos.