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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.
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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).