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What level of proficiency have you achieved? As a B2 in English, I cannot fully agree with you. The method you pick depends on your goals of learning the langu
by AndriyKunitsyn 6y ago
What level of proficiency have you achieved? As a B2 in English, I cannot fully agree with you.
The method you pick depends on your goals of learning the language. If you want to simply read and listen - sure, your method might do.
If you want to actually communicate in a language with native speakers, especially in a business environment where every mistake can cost you good impression, then you'll need some information which can be really hard to take from something else than textbooks. For example, conjugation tables, which can be quite lengthy for languages such as Russian or Arabic. Textbook creators have put some effort to make these tables, and I don't see any benefit to discard this effort.
- StavrosK 6y ago> What level of proficiency have you achieved? In English, well, you've read my post, I'm conversational in Spanish and I've forgotten most of my German. Sure, conjugation tables feel useful, but I've never actually noticed myself using the information. Instead, I use the information I've learned from speaking with native speakers and reading texts, and never from a rote recital of the rules.
- BuckRogers 6y agoI always thought that foreign languages are like programming languages- you don’t really know what you don’t know until you do formal study. People that aren’t classically trained in either are usually easy to identify by those that are.
- cehrlich 6y agoI'm a non native speaker who has reached native-level fluency in English, and I have never looked at a conjugation table in my life. The only experience I have is thousands of hours of reading/listening, and maybe a couple hundred hours of speaking.
- Jabbles 6y agoEnglish does not have many different conjugations or verb inflections. Russian has lots.
- cambalache 6y agoYet Russian people learn the language just as OP did. Those tables serve at best as references to be consulted rarely, not as an organic learning material, that would be insanity.
- AndriyKunitsyn 6y agoThey do, they start as toddlers, they practice the language 24/7, and they have a decade to master it. Adult people simply don't have this luxury. Kids are not really a model for learning as an adult. Learning is an effort that needs to be put. Preferably, in a time frame narrow enough you don't forget why you even started learning. And when optimizing the language learning process, grammar tables are useful.
- watwut 6y agoA lot of time in school is spent learning grammar. And one (small) part of it is conjugation - you actually learn the rules. For situations where feel guides you wrong. Or for arguing - if there is disagreement you solve it y rules.
- rahimnathwani 6y agoRight, but you started as a child, spent a lot of time in an English-speaking environment and (presumably) had teachers who would identify language mistakes in your homework. BTW I think most native speakers would write 'non-native' instead of 'non native'.
- ajfjrbfbf 6y agoAlso English has the easiest verb conjugation of nearly all languages but Esperanto.