Different learning approaches

[sparrow]

You don't need simplified news articles. Read the difficult ones, but more slowly. You will learn quickly. Look up Kató Lomb for more information on this method.

 

Admin note - topic was split from the one linked above. 

[Ania]

Well, this method might work for people at an intermediate level, but for me (someone who just barely got out of HSK2), it would be impossible to learn that way. I would much prefer reading material somewhat suited to my level, which is why I'm such a fan of graded readers. 

[querido]

I just read with pleasure the pdf of Kató Lomb's Polyglot: How I Learn Languages, and I agree with Ania.
 
I experienced reading far above my level in Spanish and Russian, but a block of unknown Chinese leads to a completely different experience. It leads to tools and processes and for most people an excessive density of unknowns.
 
To approximate Kató Lomb's method one would hope for a reading experience that is closer to an almost-solvable puzzle, where a manageable number of words are left hanging, partly understood, because for now we're enjoying the story! Hopefully, graded readers confront one with this manageable number.

[sparrow]

@querido: Kato Lomb supposedly used this method to learn Mandarin as well. I think it applies, but it's slower going at the beginning.

 

@Ania: Look up a woman named Kato Lomb. She encouraged even beginners to tackle books or news, but slowly.

 

I spent time in Brazil and Costa Rica and I just grabbed a newspaper and read through slowly. My dad learned Spanish that way, and my grandfather learned English that way. I think we sell ourselves short by spending too much time looking for "appropriate" material, when it's actually readily available.

 

https://news.google.com/?edchanged=1&ned=cn&authuser=0

 

Pick an article and spend 10 minutes with it. Print it out and try to translate the first two or three sentences. It will add up over time.

[roddy]

Any kind of study will add up over time. Where's the evidence this is more efficient, other than anecdotes from an outlier?

[sparrow]

Regardless of the study method, most of the time the only supporting evidence will be anecdotal.

[roddy]

Ah yes, Krashen's input anecdote and all that. Seriously, there are applied linguistics departments and journals of language acquisition and a multi-billion dollar market. Regardless of what's "best", there's a hell of a lot more to it than chucking stories about a nice old Hungarian linguistics demon back and forth. 

 

Anyway, any more simple news sites? 

[Ania]

The thing with learning languages is that it's about finding out what works best for you. I'm sure that for many people reading far above their level can be a great method to learn, but it just doesn't work for me. I need something challenging, but something that I can make sense of with only looking stuff up once in a while and not 90% of words in a sentence. For me that's just too much input that I can't process, especially when we talk about Chinese characters. 

 

I do, however, translate Chinese songs, which of course are above my level as well, but it's something that works great for me. There are a lot of words that occur in multiplet songs and that way I can learn them easier and faster.

[realmayo]

Yes. I think lots of the "guy's I've got the perfect method to learn all the rest are useless" ideas are methods that people have arrived at after trying out lots of other things first, and even though they thought those earlier methods were useless they did actually result in some improvements. Someone encouraged to adopt this "new method" as a complete beginner would be doing so without the accrued benefits of those earlier, supposedly inadequate methods. 

 

There must be a small fraction of people with excellent memories, either listening (so they're amazing mimics) or reading (massive vocabularies), and those lucky few will pick languages up really quickly and they'll look around at the others plodding more slowly and criticise. There's a reason extremely gifted footballers, say, supposedly struggle to coach "normal" world class players. 

[roddy]

closer to an almost-solvable puzzle, where a manageable number of words are left hanging, partly understood, because for now we're enjoying the story!

I need something challenging, but something that I can make sense of with only looking stuff up once in a while and not 90% of words in a sentence.

The input hypothesis. This states that learners progress in their knowledge of the language when they comprehend language input that is slightly more advanced than their current level. Krashen called this level of input "i+1", where "i" is the language input and "+1" is the next stage of language acquisition.

Coincidence?

[renzhe]

I've learned the hard way that my way of learning languages does not work for other people. I'm terrible at teaching.

[Ruben von Zwack]

Have any of you seen the film "The 13th Warrior", where Antonio Banderas plays an Arab knight wo falls captive into the hands of Vikings?

 

It's a great movie anyway (if you enjoy history, drama and lots of gore). But that's not why I am mentioning it, but because in that film, Banderas learns the language of his captivators by simply patiently listening to them hours and hours. The movie illustrates how he begins to see patterns and recognise individual words.

It's nowhere realistic, of course, but fun and well-made