I saw it - that post where nobody says we should learn like babies? He did however say you don’t use flashcards to learn your first language.
Difference.
There’s a forum section called ‘Ask Steve’
For some reason i think i’m the only person who DIDN’T think you were saying we should learn like babies.
Your original comment could have applied to TPR, TPRS, one-to-one chat with a native who helps you in the conversation, etc.
Memorisation has no place in language learning, i don’t think.
Were you an adult when you learned your first language?
I have to get one thing clear: No matter what people say, there are multiple ways to learn a language. Still, some methods are more efficient than others, and a method that might not work for most people might work for you. Although a lot of people and companies, most famously Rosetta Stone, say that the method you used to learn a language as a baby is the method you should use as an adult. But remember that it took you several years as a kid to become fluent, and even several more years to master it. When you are an adult you can do it differently and faster. To say “this is how you learned it as a baby, therefore, this is the best way to learn a foreign language at any stage in your life” is a fallacy. There are faster methods, and for you that might be context, flashcards, or memory palaces.
+Demolitionator Nice summary! I absolutely agree with you.
Let me add that even after the two years that babies typically need to acquire the language and the, let’s say, 2-4 more they need to master it, they still don’t understand (much less produce) a lot of material and vocabulary that we, as adult learners, absolutely want to be able to talk about: philosophy, economics, politics, sex, … to name a few
“To say “this is how you learned it as a baby, therefore, this is the best way to learn a foreign language at any stage in your life” is a fallacy.”
Nobody even said that - I definitely didn’t.
And all this stuff around ‘efficiency’ is based on scientific studies with sometimes minute differences in results. The real world application is the difference between remembering a word after seeing it twice or remembering a word after seeing it three times. The results will say the method which produces results after three times is ‘inefficient’ but in the real world it makes basically no difference.
I don’t get the obsession with ‘efficiency’. As long as you’re spending time with the language it’s basically irrelevant.
lol
What’s that got to do with the fact that you misunderstood what he said? I’ve not made any statements here - i’ve merely said that he didn’t say what you accused him of saying.
Try harder.
Try harder, not smarter?