Gaudfroy-isms
“I was literally doing 8-10 hours everyday for 4 or 5 years learning Chinese. I think it really helped me because I was able to read, I wouldn’t say anything, but I think the average person, the average Chinese person, even the average university student, what they can read, I think most of it I can read.
People always ask me; you know how Chinese is so hard to study, what did you do?..I’m trying to study and it is so hard, I spend time and it’s still too hard, and my answer is always –well, spend more time then. There’s no secret. Every single person, that up til now, I mean I cannot think of one person, who told me, you know I am working so hard and I still don’t find a way to study properly to learn a language, not one of those people did an average of even 6-8 hours for 4 to 5 years. You know: 6-8 hours everyday,5 years,non-stop. …do that.”
“I learned most of my Chinese by myself in France, so my work was all about creating a Chinese environment around me, using all means I could think of.”
“Give three intense years of your life to Chinese, and you will be superficially fluent.”
“Some people believe talking a lot is key. Can be true, but don’t forget that talking a lot means repeating your own mistakes all the time! Then it becomes harder and harder to get rid if them. Talking a lot works only if you pay a lot of attention to listening all the time and always assume that you’re still missing something.”
“among all those people who say that it is because I’m gifted I don’t know of one person who has studied as hard as I did during the first 4 years. I was basically 24/7, and tried all possible ways in order to know Chinese as well as my mother language.
Also the biggest aspect about being gifted I think is that I’m able to try all those ways of studying a language, change and combine them when I need too, and most importantly to know very quickly what doesn’t work."
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7171&PN=0&TPN=4
“I used to skip all the grammar explanations systematically at the beginning and I definitely would still do it now, but I always was aware of each tone, should it be from the book or the dictionary.”
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7171&PN=0&TPN=5
“Most of the time people who always ask WHY are bad learners, because there’s not much logic in the grammar or the way people speak in the mother language. Why is it this way? Because it IS this way! I was one of those WHY people, but hard work made me realize I was wrong.”
“Remember, always listen a lot more than you speak or practise, and read and write a lot.”
“Have the courage of imitating everything, especially when you don’t understand. Because at the beginning that will focus you on listening a lot, and also focus you on feeling the words and how they’re used a lot more.”
“language is mostly imitation. I’d say at the beginning, imitating perfectly takes 90% listening and 10% practice. Radio is the best way on this matter, and TV to a lesser extent, but TV is fantastic because with the image you can guess the meaning of everything. Avoiding any translation is the only way to really feel a language and think it naturally. After one year of Chinese I basically refused to use anything else than a 100% Chinese dictionary. It’s just a matter of time, at the beginning you’ll be tired of not knowing the meaning of things, but that will force you to develop hearing abilities and a great feeling for the language. And you’ll think naturally in the language because you have no choice.”
"You develop the ability of understanding only when you don’t understand and have to guess all the time. "
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7171&PN=0&TPN=6
“My philosophy is that language is all about imitation,” he says. "We should learn to say and hear the words first, then understand the meaning later. Sometimes the more you think, the less you learn.
“If I teach you a word and tell you its meaning, say, ‘computer’, the only thing you’ll remember after a few days is that I taught you a word, which means ‘computer’. What was the word? Forgot it.”
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