Why I stopped studying grammar (and what I do instead) - Steve Kaufmann

Open Forum
21

No, I’d rather say it’s alive and kicking:
https://www.reddit.com/r/flask/comments/17uiq7d/lute_v3_installed_software_for_learning_foreign/

ReadLang not a substitute for LingQ:
Yes, I agree: I’d use the free version of ReadLang to get a feeling for the AudioReader-CI-approach and then switch to LingQ -
If folks don’t want to start with LingQ right away.

They have, if I’m not wrong, a program for schools as well,
Yes, I think LingQ used to offer something liked that. But I’ve no idea about the details…

Be that as it may:
Do folks want to a have a more comfortable (Audio)Reader that costs a few bucks per month or do they want to have a less comfortable free version?

Usually you can’t have both: high comfort and no money / no energy / no time involved.
That’s not how the (open source) game is played on the Internet…

2 Likes
22

@PeterBormann I agree, but money wise, it is different when you “push” that to students.
I’m thinking here about shifting the school system, especially high school but even before that.
Possibly, the only way to shift mentality on how we generally approach language learning at school, it is also to suggest a reliable alternative that is also “measurable” for teachers and the system.

I’m for grammar studies, but not done in the way we do them. A big problem is probably the difficult to measure some progress for students, stubbornness of the system, lack of knowledge, and a reliable alternative proposition, amongst others.

If we stay in line with the “input based approached”, Lingq would be the perfect tool to propose to entire classes of students, because progresses are somehow measurable.
At some point along the years, teachers can add grammar, but at this stage, students would have already thousands of words in their vocabulary. The entire high school experience would be different, plus many students would be motivated to see their words going up, and at certain levels it will be much easier for them to understand grammar and complexed content which will motivate them even further.

The input system is somehow measurable, and it can even be improved and more refined.

But if a teacher would like to propose a system like this to schools, and I think it is possible, he can’t ask students to extra pay for just one software, and for years. It won’t be so easy to ask to parents extra costs, and same things by asking to schools. Plus many parents won’t have the money, so the schools, not everyone has the same income and possibilities.

This is why, I think, if LingQ would be more attentive to this subject, they could just calculate possible server maintenance and usage, and offer the minimum possible price to handle entire schools, but at the same time gaining a massive popularity.

Just speculating, obviously.

EDIT: about Lute, I had read the info here: https://www.libhunt.com/compare-HugoFara–lwt-vs-lute
I guess this v3 is another fork, but it is so complicated sometimes to understand open source, and especially rely on them for a long-term project. Imho.

1 Like
23

All languages existed long before anyone wrote down the grammar. -Steve

This is the reason why I don’t heavily focus on grammar. I consider grammar as merely theories about the language, whose rules are often wrong, unless you add a huge amounts of exceptions to these rules. All these exceptions to the rules make it overly complex and complicated and thus quite overwhelming, especially when you aren’t very familiar with the language. As you get more advanced, it is useful to draw your attention to various patterns, but as Steve mentioned, you have to think about opportunity costs. Ten hours going through a grammar book (or using Anki or whatever) means ten hours less of reading/listening.

Every time you look at the same information, the same example or the same rule, the brain is working less and less hard… You’re far better off encountering examples of usage patterns in a variety of different contexts, in different books, in different audiobooks, in different podcasts, in different texts. You’ve gotta spread that around. You can’t just focus on a limited number of rules and examples and expect that that is going to create the necessary language competence. -Steve

You need to get used to the word being used in all the different grammatical contexts, as, at the end of the day, I consider language learning to be mainly a rote learning activity on a large scale, if your goal is to be native-like fluent. Thousands upon thousands of sentences and collocations need to be rote learnt to be able to hear, read, and speak and convert to/from meaning at native-level speed. No amount of (semi-wrong without a kajillion exceptions) theories can truly prepare you to subconsciously understand and speak meaning at such a speed.

(Furthermore, a variety of contexts is a great way to ‘naturally’ learn vocabulary in order of frequency, as you end up encountering the most frequent words first, and thus learning them in such an order.)

The only issue with studying a variety of content on LingQ is that encountering New Words on LingQ takes significantly more time than repeating the same content, because of all the clicks required to get a good translation of the word (a minimum of two clicks, but often more).

you could definitely increase your wpm if you reprocess the same material a second time with LingQ. Because in this scenario, you don’t have to stop looking up blue words, and you can focus only on converting yellow words. @davideroccato
Is extensive or intensive reading faster for vocabulary acquisition? - #75 by davideroccato

Depending on the amount of New Words in a text and a few other factors, but you are looking at probably 1.5x to 4x more words per minute re-studying content than studying new content with New Words.

So you are really juggling the importance of a variety of content with trying to reduce the amount of time-waste LingQ adds to studying new context.

3 Likes