I failed out of Latin because I thought all I had to was be able to recite all the declensions and conjugations from memory–easy enough to accomplish, but not very helpful.
What happens is you learn the table as a sequential blob, you know this follows that, and you have to go through the whole table until you find what you’re looking for. Not very efficient and extremely distracting.
What you REALLY want to do is be able to pick the form you need from it’s USE, not from it’s position out of the table.
The way to do that is to drill on picking out the exact form you need. Your magic tool for this is: flash cards (anki or physical), or a website like Conjuguemos or Linguno.
My experiment this week is to learn portuguese conjugations just from drilling the individual forms, without ever learning the table. Being able to recite the table should be the result of learning the conjugation.
Sorry if this is all horribly obvious to you, but it took me fucking forever to figure this out.
Any little tips you’ve learned?
I’ve actually learned a lot from books, exercises, and raw memorization.
I’m pretty bad at raw memorization compared to my peers (it always took me more time than my classmates or other people I knew). But it’s a good crowbar, a way to convert raw effort into plausible results.
No, raw / rote memorization will never lead to ultimate learning. But I use it as a stepping stone before the real learning happens. With more stuff in my rote memory banks, I’m able to more quickly look up or get a rough idea of what a paragraph or page says when reading.
I do think my overall speaking skills are weak for my level, but I’ve also been told that I’m learning at a rate faster than many others and to be kinder to my self-expectations.
Obviously it’s not the way of learning for everyone. I played a lot of fighting games like this. I sat down and memorized all the frame data and then played games with the frame data memorized. Then I could use my memory of frame data to learn which moves had priority (and how) over other moves.
Did anyone else learn like this? Yeah, one or two. But most just learn from the video game directly. And that’s also fine. We all learn differently and knowing that we are all different is part of the process.
In any case, I am a book learner. So that’s how I’ll stay learning.
Oh, don’t misread me. There’s a huge role for memorization. That’s the biggest part of my formal “learning”–going through Anki decks every day.
What I’m saying is that rote memorization of tables is a bad way to memorize tables specifically; because the tendency is to just remember is a blob that you speed read. Secondly, the time you spend reciting a table is mostly wasted because the real challenge a lot of the time is recalling an irregular form. Once you recall one, you’ve done the most significant recall task for that conjugation and the reciting the rest of the forms is just wasting time. Better to stack single-form recalls of different verbs on top of each other so you practice recalling the form and the construction. Instead of knowing we wanted is the fourth record in the list quise quisiste quiso quisimos quisieron, you drill building the recall to the preterite form quis- and the building the recall to the “we” form -imos, and I find that a much practical exercise.
Not completely against it, though, it has its uses. There’s a few irregular forms that are not completely irregular and I keep forgetting which are which–probably should just memorize them as a table to keep it straight!
And, yeah, the thing that drives me nuts about language learning is when people think there is one BEST way, especially when they spend more time thinking about how to learn a language than learning a language! But the key is knowing yourself. For instance, there might be ways that are “faster” but would completely kill your motivation; and there may be ways that are slower but keep you engaged over a period of years. Just gotta find that magic sauce.
My speaking skills are trash, largely because I’m asocial. Its a wonder I learned to speak even this language.
Another way, if you can hold some minimal conversation, is to talk to people that also talk the language.
Dunno anyone who speaks Latin, but for Portuguese, maybe you could train here, at !portugues@lemmy.pt, at !batepapo@lemmy.eco.br, and so on?
One little stumbling block with input-first is starting to talk. You do kind of need to talk to nobody regularly to get up to speed, or you have to be very inconsiderate of your language partner. But I guess writing things out on a lemmy would be a good start. Thanks for the links.
Language Transfer is great for this. Best language learning system I’ve ever used! Explicit emphasis on NOT memorizing.
Completely free, too.
Yeah. Massive amounts of individual words and out-of-context grammatical rules are not worth the paper they’d need to be printed on. This is why Duolingo is garbage, and why a lot of formal language education produces people who can’t speak it for shit.
Grammatical texts are still useful for one thing. Self-assessment when a native speaker or some other teacher is not available.
A rational comprehension of a target language’s grammar can accelerate production acquisition. What improves language proficiency is not raw mindless consumption or practice alone. But focused practice with a well structured intentionality. I’ve met my fair share of fellow language learners who can, for example, watch a whole anime episode without subs. But still can’t produce a single word of original Japanese expression.
Can full on immersion produce language proficiency? Of course, eventually. Raw memorization is still not the answer. But eventually is not enough for most people. Study of grammar and guided exercises will reduce the time required to acquire language skills.
People who mix study modes still fare the best compared to those who rely on a single source of methodology. Yes, memorize words (in context is best, with example sentences). Yes, study grammar books (with a focus on practicing the concepts, not just memorizing tables). Yes, consume content (written and spoken) in the target language. Yes, find a learning partner. It can be the difference between being stuck in A2 for a decade and actually progressing over a couple of years.
it still fucking baffles me that the world hasn’t realized people learn languages by… hearing and speaking the language…
literally just watching movies in the target language --without subtitles-- is a great easy way to learn the basics of a language.
are you using voyager btw?
yeah, formal education is bad for anything skill-based. easier to give students busy work you can instruct and grade them on than to patiently wait for them to develop skills.
Voyager? No, why?
Oh, it seemed like you might have been responding more to one of my comments, but as a reply to the post–something I find myself doing on Voyager because of the way its laid out.
great insight, practicality is key.
A couple of tips I mentioned recently: "I find learning all the food first really helps me,. I learn a lot about the phonemes and rhythms of the language and after I’m comfortable with those, it’s just a repetition game for the words and grammar.
My 100% speed trick if you can stand it is watching the same episode of TV or movie once per day for a couple of weeks in that language and paying absolute attention to the show for that span of time each day."
There is a HILARIOUS French song about a picnic trip to the country that is basically a packing list of French foods. I think if you were ever to learn French, that song would be your lodestone.
I tried your exercise with Bojack Horseman in French. That is to say, I didn’t need to translate or understand, because I knew what was happening, and that knowledge too easily guided my translation. Then I’d go to the next episode that I was NOT familiar with and largely be completely lost. It gave me a false sense of confidence…
haha nice, what’s the french song?
I can see how something really engaging or familiar like bojack would make it difficult to focus on the language aspect of a show. I was in China at the time I developed the same-movie/tv thing and after two weeks of watching Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon once a day, all the teaching assistants at the school suddenly started asking me “when did you learn chinese”?
A lot of them tried it with english shows after I explained my method and it went pretty well, two of them made it the whole two weeks and had the same radical boost.
Another problem with Bojack are the plethora of puns which are often punted on by translators.
Ha, yeah there are a billion puns and so much muttered wordplay in that show.
Thanks for the song!
I agree you need to change the cue. Memorizing tables is fine, but it’s pretty far abstracted from actual usage. Moving to a more specific question in Anki like “give me the preterite form” is better, but still out of context. Sentence or cloze cards would be even better. Ideally tho, you would be listening/reading every day, and the natural probabilties of the languages and its common words and forms would act as kind of a natural spaced repetition system.
In practice that’s really hard to do, so you have to find the right balance. You need to memorize just enough that you can start using the language (at least for input). I like how Sakubi’s guide approaches it:
Basically, this guide is a primer. This guide takes a very specific stance: The only way to acquire language features and become fluent is to consume them in a real context. This guide doesn’t try to drill you, and that’s a good thing.
When you read this guide, don’t try to memorize it. It won’t work.
You shouldn’t spend a week on each lesson. In fact, I think one new lesson a day is far too slow, even if you’re also reviewing old lessons.
Every single main lesson in this guide covers basic grammar. You should read the entire thing as quickly as possible. It’s important to get stuff in your head sooner rather than later. It gives it time to grow, subconsciously, and even if you didn’t feel like you learned it the first time, it makes it easier to remember it for good next time. Just don’t get stuck reviewing it forever.
It’s kind of specific to that particular guide, and maybe to Japanese, but I think the worthwhile takeaway is: quickly gloss over the forms and constructions so you’re aware of them. It’s enough just to recognize them. And then when you see them repeatedly, you’ll be ready to build intuition.
Not to knock memorizing conjugations and tables too much. I did it a lot in school and enjoyed it. People should still do it if they think it’s fun imo.
Grammar should be learned late - most grammar rules should be result in the “lightbulb moment”: Oh, so that is why they say [whatever]. If you don’t already know of a place where that grammar is used it is too early, while if you already understand it is too late. Learn grammar at the right time and it helps learn faster.
In the early days focus on useful phrases “How do I get to the bathroom” (your ability to find a bathroom depends on gestures and pointing). Ordering in a restaurant…
I’m a fan of getting to “Listening-Reading” fast (google it). Once you understand a few things add grammar to understand why things are like that.
Well stated!
It’s a tired analogy, but I think it’s good to compare with learning a first language: you learn the language, then you learn the grammar. You’re learning the details of mechanics you already used intuitively/by imitation.
On the flip side, learning grammar is fun, and gives a good feel of progression. I don’t think it’s ever bad to learn it. Just don’t fall into the trap of trying to learn all the syntax and math out translations by pure logic all the time.
How do you define grammar?
Overall, i agree. Grammar is too abstract to learn unless you have examples embedded in your mind already.
Focus on vocabulary and you can largely guess on the grammar until you catch up.
Your method sounds like input-first, which seems to be dominating learning theories since the internet made finding content trivially easy.
Edit: I think one principle is learn the least amount you need to understand what you are reading. That is to say, let your reading guide your learning. Don’t go in learning a bunch of abstract stuff because it’s the next lesson. This way you are immediately rewarded for everything you learn and you create a virtuous feedback loop.
