Then don’t speak aloud, speak the language internally, in your own mind. After reading a book about how to speak a language, can you speak the language internally?
Young children are very curious, and they do want to learn, but on their own terms according to what attracts their attention at any given moment. You can’t force them to learn something that does not interest them. I suspect you are teaching older children. Apologies if your comment was just intended as humour.
I teach children ranging from 8~18 years old. And it was intented as humour (well, german humour, at least) and many of them do want to get better and learn something. Although there are definetely things they want to do more.
Active and passive knowledge are very different.
I’ve just accidentally noticed something that has flown over my head for years and which illustrates the difference between reading a book, and thinking you understand something, and actually understanding something.
In English we say He was on television. This doesn’t mean he is on top of a television receiver, but is said to derive from analogy with on stage. In German they say Er ist im Fernsehen, literally he is in the television. Here das Fernsehen refers to TV broadcasts, so he is in, or part of, the broadcast. I had never noticed that das Fernsehen is the television (i.e. the act of broadcasting images and sound) whereas der Fernseher is the television receiver or set. In English we rarely distinguish the two. I assume German children automatically hear the difference between the two words and do not need correcting. This shows that the arrangement of words is not just grammar, it encapsulates how we conceptualise the world and the relationship between objects. It also illustrates how interference with our L1 can hinder acquisition of an L2.
This also suggests that apps such as Duolingo, which get us to rote learn phrases, are not teaching underlying meaning. LingQ also tends to encourage translation. Perhaps we should encourage analysing phrases by explaining how the L2 speaker sees the relationship between the words rather than translating.
I also suspect that children are more likely to notice such things because they interact with others, and involve themselves in a range of situations that highlight semantic difference between words including prepositions. And that includes being corrected.
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@jadrian123 There are some ideas in the video.
Here’s what’s relevant to the topic of our discussion.
Between 17:40 and 24:00, the video explores why our brains process connected text and stories much more effectively than isolated lists or grammar exercises.
- The power of narrative: Research by Gordon Bower (17:40 - 20:30) demonstrates that when people learn vocabulary by connecting words into a meaningful story, their retention and ability to recall the sequence of information are significantly higher compared to simple rote memorization.
- Mnemonics and context: The speaker explains that mnemonics and storytelling provide essential “hooks” for the brain, making it easier to encode and retrieve new, unfamiliar words (20:31 - 21:30).
- Contextual learning: A 2022 study (21:34 - 23:56) showed that students remembered words nearly four times better when they were encountered within a coherent story rather than just a static list.
- Critique of standard textbooks: The video highlights that most traditional textbooks lack these engaging, natural narratives, often presenting disconnected sentences that make it difficult for the brain to latch onto the language effectively.
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To add to my post, I’ve learnt a bit more about how Germans view the world, which I would never have picked up from using input alone. The German preposition in implies containment, that something is inside a container. Thus Ich bin in einem Haus. In English in means enclosed within or surrounded by hence it has a wider usage than in German. Thus when we are outdoors, we are in the fresh air. That doesn’t cut the mustard in German, the fresh air does not form a container, thus one must say Wir sind an der frischen Luft which kind of means we are alongside the fresh air. And thus it is not a surprise that The star is in the sky becomes Der Stern ist am Himmel.
It seems to me that such explanations are extremely helpful for learners.
I wonder if Germans consciously understand why using in would be wrong in the last two examples, or is it intuitive?
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You’re making valuable contributions with your lengthy comments on a wide range of topics.
I was wondering if you’d consider creating a detailed post explaining your own process and the method you use? As far as I understand, French and German are the languages you’ve learnt. What level were you at when you started learning these languages, and what methods did you use to make progress?
What would you do if you were to start from scratch now, and so on. Your approach to language learning could be particularly helpful not only to those considering learning French and German, but also to others looking to apply your methods to other languages. Of course, your comments on the various topics are very valuable, but creating a single thread that serves as a comprehensive guide could be a great idea. A YouTube video would also be an option, of course.
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I would assume we learn them the same way as English speakers do, or any other speakers of languages using prepositions, mainly by getting a feel for what they mean via usage. I can’t remember that we’ve been told explicitely, but I may be wrong as some years have passed since I finished elementary school.
That beeing said I applied the same approach to English. So I use prepositions mainly by feel, not based on an explanation. I assume this is what most L2 English speakers do, and as far as I am aware of it is one of the most common mistakes. I am pretty sure I misuse prepositions, too. So I am with you that an explanation can be of use.
The preposition in is a rather simple one, though, and to be honest, I always assumed that English speakers have the same understanding of the word as we do. However, a while ago I posted some ChatGPT response regarding seperable verbs, as they are a combination of verbs and prepositions, like in English, but used differently and written together. This contained descriptions of what some of the prepositions mean, and to be honest, I would have some trouble describing all of them. They have developed over time, and thus I am not sure whether all of them follow a strict logic that is easy to explain. But for those words where this is the case, such an explanation is surely of help.
One of the first things I did when starting learning the languages I am currently learning was reading up on especially those aspects of those languages, that differs from German and English. I did the same before even attemting to learn chinese characters. And it is really helpful. But I am generally no big fan of aimlessly approaching something. I always tend to create a strategy before starting, even when mowing the lawn.
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Comprehensible Input is compelling (very interesting) and is not boring. What he’s saying is that that content is hard to find and too often it’s a choice between interesting and comprehensible texts. He opts for the interesting but hard texts that aren’t Comprehensible Input.
“LingQ also tends to encourage translation.” I don’t agree. Lingq can be used entirely in the target language. That’s too hard for me and I use translations in sentence mode. I can choose mentally to try to keep in the target language. I could delay English translations (this could be built in @zoran ). So you may be using translations but Lingq lets you choose how and when you use them. In Duolingo, translations are required.
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I’d second this. Personally …
- I only look up translations of unknown words if I don’t have any idea what they mean, either by clicking on them or using Yomitan.
- I sometimes mark phrases to check the ai translation or open up google translator if the text becomes completely obscure to me, or if I have the impression I am seeing an idiomatic expression and want to check whether my interpretation is correct.
- I rarely translate whole sentences or sets of those. It can happen when reading novels and I got lost, but I avoid that usually.
On the other hand I’ve done translation practices using ChatGPT regularly.
I may add though that due to the languages I am learning (Japanese and Korean) having a completely different sentence structure, besides other aspects, translating sentences or abstracts into proper German isn’t something that works well on the fly. I can do it to some extent, but it slows me down and doesn’t help me a lot with understanding. So I don’t see a use in doing so.
I see a contradiction in the above. Anyway, let’s not pursue that.
I can’t recall precisely what I had in mind when I wrote that. Doh!
There are some second language acquisition (SLA) methods that enforce teaching only in the target language. Some people also consider that translating in your head is bad. My personal view is that translation into English is fine. It’s like riding a bike with stabilisers. Once you know a word, you stop translating it. But, when outputting, you should try to think in the target language, translating just does not work.
I don’t know whether it is bad, actually. But I have the impression that once I started to actively trying to avoid thinking in my mother tongue too much, I mad more progress. This is especially true in regards to syntax and grammar.
The gain might differ depending on how far a language is from those you would translate to. So for Spanish thinking in Spanish only instead of translating into German is probably less useful than in Japanese. Would be interesting to hear the opinion from people who have studied different languages with varying degrees of difference from their mother tongue.
Children are naive, having undeveloped ego’s, it is excepted of them to make mistakes. While as adults we have developed ego’s, we don’t want to make mistakes… If, when we were children, we would have had an ego, we would probably remember a lot of the mistakes we have made, and more of the learning process.
Our adult ego’s are possibly in the way of learning intuitively..
When learning a language as an adult, I find it fascinating that words can have different meanings in different contexts, and I find it interesting to get to the most abstract essence of the word (or phrase).
The essence of the word, the essence of the meaning is what makes it possible to apply it with more or less different meanings in different contexts.
For instance: physical experience lead to words which signify that something is before, behind, or on the side, under, on top, of another thing (depending on the perspective). Such words are consequently in time also used in many contexts which do not refer to a physical situation. Likewise there are many words which signify processes which can be abstracted to their essence (including derivations), and so, instead of just habitually learning words ‘because’ they are used in a certain language like that, I also try to get their essence so to understand why they are applied, often curiously applied compared to ones habitual language. Or rather said, why they are idiomatically applied, the sense behind the idiomatic application.
This could also be done in ones own language, but because the language has become habitual, understanding is direct (conditioning), an ‘alien’ language stimulates to think things over anew.
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I agree and I do the same. What you describe is the use of metaphor which is extremely powerful in language. As you say, there is a concrete meaning. For example to get on top of, or to surmount means to get physically on top of something such as a table. We use metaphor when we say I got on top of the problem, or I squashed his hopes.
And as you say, I arrived after him is also using metaphor as we take a relative physical position and apply it to time, with the assumption that after corresponds to later than.
If you think of it, all of our words which do not (seem) to point to something concretely physical are metaphors originally derived from physical experience, describing some physical state, process, interaction, relation, place, time (sequence of change), etc. Even words like ‘consciousness’ and ‘will’, originally belonging to metaphysics, are always other than ‘as the thing in itself’ connected metaphorically to some physical state, be they (seemingly) static or dynamic.
This is what I meant when I critized language based popular description of quantum physics earlier on (description in ordinary language, not math, if math is a language too). Since quantum physics appears to ‘explode’ our ordinary collective conception, experience, of matter, or in as far as it explodes our experience, there can be no way to describe the findings of science in ordinary language.
One could even wonder whether it is possible to ‘experience’ something which is not in accordance with any collective collective experience of matter.
Cognitive linguistics assumes that language is embodied hence derived from physical experience. Declarative Procedural Theory, and perhaps other theories of language, postulates that language originated by re-using existing brain functions which of course are used for interacting with the physical world.
As an ex research scientist in the field of physics, I both agree and disagree. Einstein formulated special and general relatively from thought experiments and basic principles. Quantum physics was created from some fundamental assumptions. Some ideas, such as quantum tunnelling, and the bending of light by gravity, can be explained in simple terms and in a way that is faithful to the physics. Other ideas, such as the precession of Mercury around the sun, or the collapse of the wave function probably can’t be. In the first case the result drops out from complex maths, in the second case even physicists do not understand what is happening, even though it can be measured experimentally. Unfortunately much science popularisation is done by people who do not understand the underlying principles and so they come out with half baked analogies. It takes knowledge and considerable intelligence to explain complex ideas in a way that is both simple and accurate.
Mind you that the British philosopher Herbert Spencer described relativity in ordinary terms, as a thought experiment, already somewhere around the middle of the nineteenth century. In essence it is something which a child could think of, but society is always blinded by collective consensus trance.
His ideas had nothing to do with relativity as conceived by Einstein.