4 ms·

Memorising is such an ineffective way to study language, it's like cutting down a big tree with a pair of scissors. Lots of research has been done on the topic

by gkya 10y ago

Memorising is such an ineffective way to study language, it's like cutting down a big tree with a pair of scissors. Lots of research has been done on the topic, and many methods invented. The key is skipping complex grammar and working on comprehension and production from as early as day one, every day and trying to think in the target language. It seems silly, but does work.

wolfgke 10y ago
> The key is skipping complex grammar I personally tend to think about languages a lot in terms of grammar. The reason might be that in German (my native language) grammar plays a much larger role (four cases and lots of rules for declination and conjugation) than in English (also in Russian grammar plays a very central role, as far as I know). As I have often written on Hacker News when learning German I would strongly recommend to get the grammar by heart (yes, it is complex and ugly), until you don't have to think about it anymore (if necessary by rote memorization) since > trying to think in the target language for German means thinking in the German grammar. Any approach that tries to skip grammar at the beginning will soon confuse learners, because for example verbs are typically associated with some class of object (either based on a case or a preposition) and if you use it wrong often the meaning can change. For example : auf etwas warten (to wait for something) has to be used with an accusative, so "Ich warte auf den Zug" (I'm waiting for the train) is correct If you use a dative instead, this is also yields a correct sentence, but with a completely different meaning "Ich warte auf dem Zug" means you are on the top of the train and waiting, since "auf" followed by dative is a local adverbial. So learn the grammar correctly from the beginning.
- gkya 10y ago
  Grammar is a science, and it's not necessary to speak a language. My mother tongue is Turkish, an agglutinative vocal-harmonising beast with hundreds of suffixes, yet I don't need any grammar while speaking nor while reading or writing. I'll start my archaeology double major in short, and German seems to be quite an important language in the field, so I'll have to learn that. I'll use my way and see if you and the others who agree you are right that German requires heavy grammar. Though I can reasonably guess that I'll start reading research by the six months mark.
haddr 10y ago
I learned that you can grasp English without learnig grammar (this is what they do in UK). But while it works for some people, it might not work for others. And it definitely wouldn't work for some more grammatically complex languages...
ivm 10y ago
It's not silly, that's how people learn to speak in the childhood and how foreign languages were learned before books even existed. There's also a te I'm now learning Spanish and I just can't stand books with grammar exercises or using Memrise for more than 10 days. The problem is that compared to English there's not enough Spanish content I like (Reddit, HN, non-fiction books). So I'm going with news, doubled cartoons, and flashcards for tough words.
- gkya 10y ago
  I did Italian just like that, as a student of Italian philology. Made lots of research before starting the school (about 2 years ago) and devised a self immersion method, and followed it religiously. In about a couple months I was reading news in italian okay, in six months I started reading actual literature, now I'm quite close to a C1. I also learned English a bit in primary school but the bulk of it while actively self teaching programming via tutorials and conference videos, and consuming other media in English too. And my English is near-native, which was the experience that encouraged me to do what I did with Italian.
- wallflower 10y ago
  Paraphrasing the X-Files, the content is out there. It might not be exactly what you are seeking, but it is out there. It's not going to be 'Running Kubernetes in Production on a Roller Coaster' (note: this is obviously made up) - e.g. hip and timely - but maybe some articles that were translated/paraphrased/borrowed from the original English news. The key, as you may already know, is consistency of action day after day. Don't just do it once a week for 2 hours, every day for 10-15 minutes will work much, much better. > I just can't stand books with grammar exercises or using Memrise for more than 10 days... and flashcards for tough words. I too dislike grammar books and I have stopped using Memrise. It was too much work to 'water the plants' and just answering a question required excessive game playing (multiple choice etc.). With flashcards, if it has not already been imparted to you, please write down the entire sentence. Context is so important. > The problem is that compared to English there's not enough Spanish content I like (Reddit, HN, non-fiction books). Yes, it is true that the overwhelming majority of medium and long-form content is posted in English. Because that is what the majority of the target audience can understand. Here are some Spanish speaking websites for you to read: Reddit/Digg like: Meneame - Sort of like Digg, in that it has short article summaries across many topic areas (including technology and general interest news). https://www.meneame.net/ https://www.meneame.net/ Barrapunto - The Slashdot equivalent. Biased towards sysadmin-type articles and knowledge. http://barrapunto.com/ http://barrapunto.com/ Subreddits in Spanish https://www.reddit.com/r/espanol https://www.reddit.com/r/espanol (like Reddit in English (cat pictures LOL etc.) but Spanish sourced Country/region-specific subreddits For example, Chile https://www.reddit.com/r/chile/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chile/ Comics Mafalda - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafalda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafalda Very famous Argentinian comic book. Non-fiction books Gutenberg Press (Spanish). Most are out-of-copyright old. https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/es https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/es Ted talks in Spanish http://tedxtalks.ted.com/browse/talks-by-language/spanish http://tedxtalks.ted.com/browse/talks-by-language/spanish Short-form content (Twitter, Facebook) Register another Twitter account and just follow people/news who tweet in Spanish. It is quite easy to find these accounts - search for keywords like 'noticias' (news), 'ciencia', (science), 'creo que' (I believe), 'la crisis' (the 2006/2007 financial crisis), (your own keywords) Warning, understanding the Spanish used in short tweets can be quite challenging as it is very terse and concise. For the biggest challenge, microcuentos (also on FB, hashtags, instagram, etc.) https://twitter.com/microcuentos https://twitter.com/microcuentos
kahrkunne 10y ago
Yeah that's why they do that in schools all over the world- oh wait... The best way to learn a language is still to memorize grammar and 2000-3000 words, then read.
- gkya 10y ago
  They do so because it's impractical to do one on one lessons with a classroom-ful of people. You can believe what you want but there is a lot of research on the subject that supports me instead of you. See e.g. Krashen.

by gkya 10y ago

wolfgke 10y ago

> The key is skipping complex grammar I personally tend to think about languages a lot in terms of grammar. The reason might be that in German (my native language) grammar plays a much larger role (four cases and lots of rules for declination and conjugation) than in English (also in Russian grammar plays a very central role, as far as I know). As I have often written on Hacker News when learning German I would strongly recommend to get the grammar by heart (yes, it is complex and ugly), until you don't have to think about it anymore (if necessary by rote memorization) since > trying to think in the target language for German means thinking in the German grammar. Any approach that tries to skip grammar at the beginning will soon confuse learners, because for example verbs are typically associated with some class of object (either based on a case or a preposition) and if you use it wrong often the meaning can change. For example : auf etwas warten (to wait for something) has to be used with an accusative, so "Ich warte auf den Zug" (I'm waiting for the train) is correct If you use a dative instead, this is also yields a correct sentence, but with a completely different meaning "Ich warte auf dem Zug" means you are on the top of the train and waiting, since "auf" followed by dative is a local adverbial. So learn the grammar correctly from the beginning.

gkya 10y ago
Grammar is a science, and it's not necessary to speak a language. My mother tongue is Turkish, an agglutinative vocal-harmonising beast with hundreds of suffixes, yet I don't need any grammar while speaking nor while reading or writing. I'll start my archaeology double major in short, and German seems to be quite an important language in the field, so I'll have to learn that. I'll use my way and see if you and the others who agree you are right that German requires heavy grammar. Though I can reasonably guess that I'll start reading research by the six months mark.

haddr 10y ago

I learned that you can grasp English without learnig grammar (this is what they do in UK). But while it works for some people, it might not work for others. And it definitely wouldn't work for some more grammatically complex languages...

ivm 10y ago

It's not silly, that's how people learn to speak in the childhood and how foreign languages were learned before books even existed. There's also a te I'm now learning Spanish and I just can't stand books with grammar exercises or using Memrise for more than 10 days. The problem is that compared to English there's not enough Spanish content I like (Reddit, HN, non-fiction books). So I'm going with news, doubled cartoons, and flashcards for tough words.

gkya 10y ago
I did Italian just like that, as a student of Italian philology. Made lots of research before starting the school (about 2 years ago) and devised a self immersion method, and followed it religiously. In about a couple months I was reading news in italian okay, in six months I started reading actual literature, now I'm quite close to a C1. I also learned English a bit in primary school but the bulk of it while actively self teaching programming via tutorials and conference videos, and consuming other media in English too. And my English is near-native, which was the experience that encouraged me to do what I did with Italian.
wallflower 10y ago
Paraphrasing the X-Files, the content is out there. It might not be exactly what you are seeking, but it is out there. It's not going to be 'Running Kubernetes in Production on a Roller Coaster' (note: this is obviously made up) - e.g. hip and timely - but maybe some articles that were translated/paraphrased/borrowed from the original English news. The key, as you may already know, is consistency of action day after day. Don't just do it once a week for 2 hours, every day for 10-15 minutes will work much, much better. > I just can't stand books with grammar exercises or using Memrise for more than 10 days... and flashcards for tough words. I too dislike grammar books and I have stopped using Memrise. It was too much work to 'water the plants' and just answering a question required excessive game playing (multiple choice etc.). With flashcards, if it has not already been imparted to you, please write down the entire sentence. Context is so important. > The problem is that compared to English there's not enough Spanish content I like (Reddit, HN, non-fiction books). Yes, it is true that the overwhelming majority of medium and long-form content is posted in English. Because that is what the majority of the target audience can understand. Here are some Spanish speaking websites for you to read: Reddit/Digg like: Meneame - Sort of like Digg, in that it has short article summaries across many topic areas (including technology and general interest news). https://www.meneame.net/ https://www.meneame.net/ Barrapunto - The Slashdot equivalent. Biased towards sysadmin-type articles and knowledge. http://barrapunto.com/ http://barrapunto.com/ Subreddits in Spanish https://www.reddit.com/r/espanol https://www.reddit.com/r/espanol (like Reddit in English (cat pictures LOL etc.) but Spanish sourced Country/region-specific subreddits For example, Chile https://www.reddit.com/r/chile/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chile/ Comics Mafalda - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafalda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafalda Very famous Argentinian comic book. Non-fiction books Gutenberg Press (Spanish). Most are out-of-copyright old. https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/es https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/es Ted talks in Spanish http://tedxtalks.ted.com/browse/talks-by-language/spanish http://tedxtalks.ted.com/browse/talks-by-language/spanish Short-form content (Twitter, Facebook) Register another Twitter account and just follow people/news who tweet in Spanish. It is quite easy to find these accounts - search for keywords like 'noticias' (news), 'ciencia', (science), 'creo que' (I believe), 'la crisis' (the 2006/2007 financial crisis), (your own keywords) Warning, understanding the Spanish used in short tweets can be quite challenging as it is very terse and concise. For the biggest challenge, microcuentos (also on FB, hashtags, instagram, etc.) https://twitter.com/microcuentos https://twitter.com/microcuentos

kahrkunne 10y ago

Yeah that's why they do that in schools all over the world- oh wait... The best way to learn a language is still to memorize grammar and 2000-3000 words, then read.

gkya 10y ago
They do so because it's impractical to do one on one lessons with a classroom-ful of people. You can believe what you want but there is a lot of research on the subject that supports me instead of you. See e.g. Krashen.