telophase | Language people

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Language people

Those of you who've successfully learned other languages - what sort of study strategies did you use? One of my problems is that I've been able to retain just enough information for just long enough to regurgitate it into tests, and maintain a B or B+ average, so throughout highschool and undergrad, I never actually learned to study. It was less of a problem in grad schoo, because the fields I went into were a bit more focused on analysis than on internalizing data (when you're a librarian, it's all about leanring how to look it up, natch :D), so study skills were not actually required.*

And thus I throw myself on the mercy of the internet again for help in this. I also need some sort of language-neepery related icon, but I'm fresh out of ideas.

And if I manage to get four pages toned quickly, I'll toss up some of the pictures from this Italian book, just to prove to everyone that "Mark" (un altro americano) is gay and to show everyone the six-legged dog.

* My first stint in undergrad, the MA in anthropology, required more learning of that nature than did library school**, and my mother didn't let fall the gem of information that she was a kinesthetic learner, and thus typed all her notes throughout school because the action of typing fixed it in her brain, until the very last two weeks of the very last semester of my MA. I tried that, typing in the answers from our study guide, and by God it worked. Am I bitter that she didn't tell me that, say, back my freshman year of undergrad? GOSH NO WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT.

** Which requires approximately zero. The only test I had that wasn't open-book was a one-question essay test where the exact question had appeared on our qualifying exams the week before. The professor kept our blue books - she was pretty upfront that the primary reason for giving the exam like that was to have the results for her records so she could show people what the students were learning.

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Sitting down and forcing myself to write out the patterns for congugation, for instance, has always helped me. I suspect I'm also a fairly knesthetic learner--the classes I take the most notes in stick the best in my mind, heh. Anyway, I've found that forcing oneself to just use the language all the time helps. If you can say it in Italian, say it in Italain inside your head. When you look at something and know the word, use the word. Write random sentences. Using it in context just helps it stick.

Hey, there,

celticdragonfly sent me your way. I think we've met at Fencon. :)

I had a lot to say on the subject of language fluency a few months back, so here's (http://joyeuse13.livejournal.com/96626.html) the entry. What it boils down to is that no amount of studying will attain fluency without some immersion. NOt sure if that's helpful.

Finally getting around to starting to reply to people on this post. :D Yeah, my ultimate goal isn't true fluency - this bout of language-learning started when TCU's extended-education catalog landed on my doorstep, and I debated taking French, because when Mom and I were in Paris, I had to get someone to help my buy batteries for my camera (I was flummoxed enough that it didn't occur to me to just pop the batteries out of my camera and show the clerk). When I phoned her to talk about it, she said that she thought our next trip to Europe should be to finish up Paris and start on Florence, and the thought of remembering and building on my college Italian appealed to me. :)

So my ultimate goal is more on the order of being able to waltz into a store and buy batteries without panicking, ask a hotel clerk for extra towels, ask a waiter if there's something I'm allergic to in a dish, tell a taxi driver where to go, to ask directions, to buy train tickets, and to read some signs. And to exercise my brain in a new manner. :D

I asked about study skills becauseI don't actually have any study skills - until that last semester of grad school I mentioned, studying consisted simply of reading the material a few times. I got through my school years with a B average mostly because I could see connections between things and could logically work out answers from that, and by not taking subjects that required a great deal of memorization (hello anthropology, goodbye organic chemistry). Anyway, I'm not under the impression that I'll achieve fluency from books and language tapes, but being able to learn the things they're teaching in a more effective manner would be a Good Thing.

THanks!

Well, since you wanted to know specifically about study techniques, here's one I'm fond of: flash cards. With pictures. A dangerous logical fallacy in foreign language learning is that a word in the target language "means" a word in your native language. This implies that your native language is somehow the "real" one.

Words mean things or concepts, and it's better to create a link in your brain from the word to the concept, rather than from the word to another word, which then only has to be applied to a concept anyway. Think of it as saving a step. :)

It may be just a weird thing that I do, but when I'm learning a new language, in my head I try to repeat everything I say or write with the other language's version. (ex: "good morning" <--out loud "ohayogozaimasu!" <---in my head) At first, it can be fairly disappointing as you'll mostly only be able to say courtesies, but it's a good way to find out what you would need to learn in order to be conversationally fluent and what's useful in day to day interactions.

You should look for or ask around for a book containing Mnemonic Devices. When we are learning English, we put a lot of little words together. But when we get to high school, we are taught some Mnemonic Devices; Such as: Ingratiate (In Grey She Ate- to please her boyfriend).

I also remember way too much automatically, and thus have no study skills at all, but one thing I've tried with languages is to keep a notebook, just for the language. Organize it however you want- by lesson, or with nouns in one place and verbs in another, or by content (all food words go here, all people words go here, etc)- but make it something complicated that you'll have to think about. The effort of organizining all the information and copying it neatly into the notebook seems to really help.

Hooray, something I can actually discourse with some knowledge on!

I'm a super-enthusiastic language person, so I might not be the best person to ask, because I'm not average. However, here are some things I do.

1) Flashcards
They work wonders for random noun/verb vocabulary. And remember, if you're stuck in a foreign country and you can get out the noun and the verb, someone will figure out what you're talking about. Go over your flashcards every day, becuase it's very easy to lose a language you don't use all the time.

2) Self-quiz
At random times of day, try to remember that random new word you learned today.

3) Write it out
Write out your vocabulary, and just keep drilling it into your head.

4) Think in the language
This can be really frustrating, but no one will be there to laugh at you. Allot ten or fifteen minutes a day when you're only allowed to think in the particular language you're learning, even if it's just "I have a cat. The cat is brown."

5) Talk to yourself
The only way you're going to get the accent is to talk out loud and mimic. You might feel weird doing this in public, but talking to yourself in the language makes you feel like a superstar.

6) Listen to it
It doesn't matter if you don't understand anything. Rent movies in the language, listen to music in it, and try to catch snippets of conversations on the train/bus. Just hearing the rhythm and tone of the language will work wonders. And if you're watching a movie with subtitles, read the subtitle fast, and then try to work out the original language sentence.

7) Talk to native speakers who don't speak much English
You'll have nothing to fall back on. Sometimes they're hard to find, but they'll probably be willing to help. Just memorize how to say "I want to learn _______, will you correct me if I make a mistake?" and of course "thank you very much!"

It really depends on your style of learning. I find I have to write out vocabulary-- but not just write it out, organize it into thematic lists, and then preferably reorganize it into other thematic lists. Grammar I'm pretty good at, but vocabulary kicks my ass, and remembering gender is nigh impossible for me. Basically yeah. Lotta writing, but more importantly reorganizing into new lists, because this causes (in theory) more neural associative connections which makes the memory more easily available to access. Kinda like linkspamming to get a better rank on Google searches.... can you tell computer metaphors are the modus operandi of cognitive science?

Do label things in your apartment-- and not just the obvious labels such as 'pencil', 'pen', 'cat'. When my housemate Thrud was studying Italian, we had little cards taped to everything: on the fridge was 'Where is the olive oil?'; a cupboard said 'We need more pasta'; the outside of the bathroom door said 'Where is the bathroom?' and the inside said 'It's right here!'. As a result, I can use the construction beginning 'Dove il' although I have never studied Italian and although there was no English on the little cards. Put things on your calendar in the language. Leave the labels up for months. Tell your guests what they mean. Go wild making labels that both use significant grammatical constructions and are things you'd like to say ('How many metres till the next picture of Sanzo?' 'Should this bookcase contain more manga?'). This is the best way I've seen to approximate some degree of immersion, especially if you repeat the phrase aloud every time you see the card. In addition, if you're a kinesthetic learner, writing out the cards should be helpful in itself.

Oh, that's a good one! Plus, it's fun! (I had my middle school French students label everything in the classroom--they insisted on labeling me as well, so I went around for a month with a sign around my neck saying, "Le professeur.")

I bought file-folder stickers to label things with - the Italian class that starts next week has us using a book that comes with stickers, but they're not as entertaining as they could be.

I've also taken to talking to the cat in what little Italian I have. I shall have to figure out how to say "Please do not barf on the carpet" in Italian.

(I do know how to say "Come si dice 'Please do not barf on the carpet?'in italiano?" however as the cat does not speak Italian, it has so far not been much good.)

Humor always helped me. If I needed to remember a sentence construction, I would make up a silly sentence using it (even though it often meant learning unnecessary vocabulary words) and it generally helped me remember. So even now, 14 years after I took my last Russian class, I can still remember how to say "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?" - which happens to have an important sentence construction for conversation.

I took one semester of Italian for fun with one of my best friends, and we would either make up parody versions of stuff we needed to know (an example would be substituting "Scramuzza," the last name of a mutual acquaintance, for "scusi") or making up joke sentences.

The other thing is, as far as accents are concerned - it sounds lame, but I found that if I tried for a completely fake and cliche accent, it actually sounded pretty good when speaking the actual language. It worked for me in French, Russian, and Italian - I ALWAYS got high marks for accent and pronunciation, when I was just channeling bad movie accents. It didn't work so well for Chinese, though, and Japanese accent was more a matter of speaking with the right parts of the mouth. (The only one of these languages I'm even marginally fluent in now is Japanese, mind you.)

Joke phrases, yes, I've used those! I still remember that giessen is German for "pour," bc of all the jokes we made about pourable geese (you know, they come in that carton in the dairy aisle, next to the artificial egg stuff).

And when words are very similar, I would make up a phrase that included both; frex, "La grenouille est dans le grenier," "the frog is in the attic," reminded me which one was which.

I used to know how to say "The bathroom is behind the Planet of the Apes" in Spanish, thanks to roommates who worked at the wax museum in downtown San Antonio. :D

ROFL, I guess in that specific situation, that one's actually potentially useful!

I can tell someone they're beautiful and that I love them in Bulgarian...and admire someone's ass and propose marriage in Polish. Don't ask.

I'm a kinesthetic learner too, I think -- funnily enough, earlier I was studying for my anthropology final by typing up the answers from the study guide! And truly, that's how I study -- I rarely look over those typed answers. I also highlight the hell out of every book I can. :)

Hee - I stopped highlighting things in books after I realized that I was either highlighting nothing, or highlighting everything, thus rendering the act of highlighting useless. Typing it into a document of some sort helped, though. :)

Yeah, it works best when a document has very little that seems important; but I try to make myself pay attention to what's important anyway.

I had to stop doing it for literature, though. Because EVERYTHING seems pertinent sometimes!

Um... I think I'm a kinesthetic learner, like you, so I'd always copy out all the vocab and meanings before tests. That was usually short-term memory, though. What really helped was using the language every day in class and trying to speak it outside of class. It was helpful that I was learning Japanese with a whole bunch of anime-lovers, so there was a great deal of incentive. We also made up lots of silly sentences using the grammar and poked each other a lot whenever we heard anime using grammar or vocab that we knew.

I always do best with flash cards for the vocabulary. It doesn't work for me just to see it or hear it; if I want to learn the words, I have to say it, over and over, along with the meaning & sometimes its form of conjugation. That way, I have the memory of the words in my throat & mouth. (I'm probably awesome to sit next to in tests, since I do end up muttering throughout them. :D) And writing it on flashcards also allows me to write every word out, obviously, and to see it over and over again, not necessarily in the same order or all English first or foreign language first.

It puts it in your short-term memory, but you can keep it longer if you do it enough.

This might not be the most helpful thing if you typically have no trouble with vocab, though. It's just my method of coping, given that I pick up the grammar with very little trouble but my vocabulary is usually shit unless I work very hard at it.

The cat thinks I'm crazy, since I now read things out to her form my Italian books. :D

Three things that helped me to learn English a lot.

1) Watch TV in English (Italian in your case). Particularly, shows that demand good diction. I never missed Peter Jennings for example.

2) Read in Italian. Read books with a dictionary at your side. It helps you to "build" inside your head the language structure.

3) Listen to music in Italian, with the lyrics in your hands, and try to sing them. It helped me a lot in pronunciation. (Hail to Barbara Streisand and Supertramp in my case with English).

No less a person than Charles Berlitz recommended the talk to yourself in the language method.

I used to write out conjugations (which did get the weirder versions of Japanese verbs into my head) and review vocab lists, but in the end it's exposure that does it for me- using the word myself, seeing it written (the post-it notes all over the house is a good one if you can't start reading immediately), especially hearing it in songs where it has a context.

And FWIW I didn't discover until I started taking gingko biloba last year that my ability to retain anything but rhyming verse is really bad. That's why the kanji cards and the vocab lists never really worked and the song lyrics did. Being able to look up a kanji, note its components, and remember it the next time it appears- priceless.

http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/73/sanzo14qw.gif
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/7527/sanzo23rt.gif

There just made those... XD

And I don\'t really have any ways, since I have been in french sine grade 4...

Actually! I did make up this little song thing to keep track of the ending for verbs. (er, is, re)

♪E-ES-E!
IS-IS-IT
blank-blank-S♪

*snerk* Thanks! XD

Your welcome ^_^

I don't have a good tip for the rote work at teh start but as soon as you get any grasp watch TV or listen to radio and especially read the kind of books /magazines /comics that you generally like in the target language.

But I'm sure you thought of that anyway. Making friends on internet boards in the target languages is good, too. Mmorpging and stuff like that keeps my English somewhat in shape.

The other day I found a website where you could look for an email/conversation partner in whatever language you were learning. I think that maybe this fall, after I figure out how to string a sentence together properly, I'll use it. XD

98% visual learner here (I don't know how that is even possible but that was what the test said); I've never had a problem picking other languages for reading/writing but speaking? I have problems with english let alone other languages! ;p

I echo the lovely folk above who recc'd listening to the language as much as possible to pick up the cadence and I'm a great advocate of trying to find kid's books in the language you are learning.

I was thinking that if I got decent enough in reading in the tenuous future, I'd pick up a copy of the first Harry Potter in Italian and try to read that.

I may hace to see if I cna find easy-reader stuff first, though. :D

I have the first Harry Potter in Latin? That's pretty close? XDDD
(And Charlotte's Web! But that one was a prize for Latin class.)

:D A friend who had a Catholic-school education told me that on their senior trip to Rome they managed to get by by speaking Latin and adding "-a" to the ends of all the words. :D

This sucks, but it's the only way I could learn a new language, and sad to say, it worked: Study. Every effin' night. For two hours. If you keep doing this, eventually you do end up internalizing it; it's like listening to a song in the background over and over, and the lyrics gradually seep into your brain. The hard part is actually doing it. In my case, I was taking a course that met five days a week, so I HAD to do all of that studying every night just in order to keep up for the next day's lab. This was a Japanese class, and even with all of that, I still couldn't manage to get my brain around kanji; when I went in for the kanji final, it all blended together in my head into one giant squiggle. But it did work for everything else. :P

If you find that typing helps, you might also try writing things out.

When I took Spanish in high school, our teacher used to hand out dittoed vocabulary lists. I'd sit in class and trace over the letters. I usually picked a letter and went through the sheet, tracing over every instance of that letter, (I tried tracing everything over from beginning to end, but I tended to get bored and lose focus. Adding in the searching for letters kept me paying attention) and then went back, picked another letter and repeated the process. That not only gave me a kinestetic way of learning but also forced me to read the words over and over again.

I'd also suggest trying to write sentences in the language. If you can get as far as paragraphs, it'll help you work at the grammar. It's extra work, but it can be *very* helpful.

Depending on the language, you may also be able to find certain English language children's books translated into it. I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Are All the Giants Dead? in Spanish and found that knowing the story made working out the verb tenses and conjugations and vocabulary easier. (I also picked up The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Wizard of Oz in French and could work out quite a bit more than I expected by combining my knowledge of Spanish with my knowledge of the stories.)

This is the only way I've had any luck, and it's fairly diametrically opposed to what most people recommend (I have an ally in S.D.Krashen (http://sdkrashen.com/main.php3)).

I read stuff.

Lots of stuff.

I listen to lots of stuff, especially if I can get my hands on the written version to listen to while I'm listening to the audio (audiobooks are good for this, but pop music is good too).

I don't concern myself overly much with grammar, although in a classroom context that's pretty much a necessity; what I focus on is building up my own internal subconscious model of how the language works, which requires exposing myself to a whole lot of content. Sometimes I have to look up almost every word, and that's okay, because after a while I'm not looking up almost every word any more. Obviously it's better to start with children's stories than Dante's Inferno, but for sufficiently simple texts it's usually possible to muddle through with just a dictionary.

To successfully learn a language, most people need waaaaay more input than the average class provides, which is why almost everybody is skating by, learning just enough to regurgitate for the test.

Mnemonics and the like have never worked for me; I have to learn things in context, and that context is way more helpful than coming up with some arbitrary association for vocabulary words.

:D I've discovered that pure audio learning doesn't work very well for me - in the audio tape I've got right now, a vocabulary word doesn't make it into the metnal database until I can see how it's spelled in my mind - "il ventilatore" for "fan" was incomprehensible until I lookied it up and made the "ventilator" connection.

I got a reader for beginning Italian students, and have managed to bull my way through the first four selections, which feels good. :D I didn't even need the dictionary for the first section (not so for the next three, though).

Flashcards (vocabulary). Talk to yourself (grammar). Watch films without subtitles (pronunciation). Just plain study (all of the above). That's my main body of learning pretty much covered, apart from the factor that brought it all together: meeting with native speakers as often as possible, those with a good enough grasp of English to be able to point out key grammar and vocab mistakes, explain the problem, make alternative suggestions and still be hold up a decent conversation. The Japanese people with whom I can truly say I'm close friends now started this year as my language conversation partners. There's no greater way to drum something into your head than to have it corrected in conversation with a native speaker. I think the mild embarrassment connects with memory somehow, though I have precisely no science with which to back that up.

To be honest, at a beginner's level, it probably doesn't even matter if that person is a native speaker or not; even meeting a more advanced classmate and getting out twelve words of Italian per cup would be helpful. The important thing is to speak, make mistakes and remember the corrections, take a little notebook with you and write them down if you think it'll help you remember. Even now, with people I've been chatting to for months, we still always keep paper and pens around us just in case one of us learns something new, and I can truly say that it's thanks to these people and their honesty/patience combo approach that my Japanese improved to the extent it did over three months in England.

Music is also a great one--there's a wonderful set of French tapes I used called "Sing, Dance, Laugh, and Eat Quiche." They've got songs with all of the forms of être worked in, for example. If you can get a CD of folk songs, that's fun too, and you can play them on your morning commute if you want.

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