of learning a language…
Memorising whole paragraphs of text, maybe whole pages, or even a whole chapter of a novel? Would this be of any real benefit? I tried it with a few lines of Harry Potter, which I’m currently reading, and I think it could help both understand the structure of the language as well as the production of it.
Thoughts?
“It is not merely a coincidence that Dickens never writes about agriculture and writes endlessly about food. He was a Cockney, and London is the centre of the earth in rather the same sense that the belly is the centre of the body. It is a city of consumers, of people who are deeply civilized but not primarily useful. A thing that strikes one when one looks below the surface of Dickens’s book is that, as nineteenth-century novelists go, he is rather ignorant. He knows very little about the way things really happen. At first sight this statement looks flatly untrue and it needs some qualification.”
A while ago I memorized the above paragraph. I thought I was able to feel Orwell’s style.
Improve English writing Skills Applying Benjamin Franklin’s Principles
http://hyderabad-india-online.com/social/2010/07/improve-english-writing-skills/
Franklin’s method is famous.
日本では、フランクリンの方法を参考にした原文復元法(the re-translation method)というのがあります。自分で翻訳したものをもとにして原文を復元したり、翻訳書を利用しながら原文を復元するという方法です。
First, you read an original text and translate it into your language. Second, you reconstruct the original text from your translation.
An original-text reconstruction method for composition practice
Years ago, I took an acting class and in order to memorize the monologues and scenes that were required, I developed a method of recording them and then playing them back on a loop while repeating along. So, when I turned to language learning, I used the same listen-and-repeat method with my Assimil lessons. I later found out this shadowing / repetition approach is nothing new for language learners, and has been advocated by some polyglots long before I “invented it” for myself. My goal with the Assimil lessons was not to memorize them though, it was simply a method of learning, but a byproduct of that is that I can still remember, and probably recite entire lessons from my very first studies.
Anyway, this is a long way of saying, yes, if memorizing long passages is the way you want to approach language learning, it can certainly help you, simply because the process itself will necessitate you going over the same complex text over and over again. What you’re trying to do here is create the byproduct, memorization, by applying the method of repetition – which in turn has the intended actual product of language proficiency.
I do this with movie quotes, but in my native language. I make it fun.