Vocabulary, Vocabulary, Vocabulary
It seems fair to say that an important part of progressing in a language is comprehensible input. The hard part is that you already have to know some of the language, or there won't be much input that's comprehensible. This leads to the question of how you get there. With Breton, I've found that the more I learn, the more I can figure out. Not only within the confines of Assimil, but also when looking at song lyrics, poetry and the lessons I've found online, I keep finding little bits of the language that are familiar enough for the idea of learning this language to seem not quite so preposterous.
I notice now that Steve has put "Learn words, lots of words," at the top of his list for things to do to learn language efficiently.
The one issue I run into is, which words? I've noticed that when you look at things like the 100 most frequent words in English or Chinese, there's a lot of grammar woven in. Whether you're talking "a," "the" and "is" in English or "hao," "shi" and "de" in Mandarin, there's the problem that the words that top the frequency tables 1) do not line up with vocabulary items in other languages and 2) require a certain degree of savvy in the language. In the past, the grammar translation method tried to deal with this by giving you the rules for constructing, but with the material offered by grammar point. The direct method tries to walk you through using the language authentically. It would be nice to find a middle ground where you were taught, for example:
1) greetings, used authentically
2) simple sentences - this is nice, this is big, this is expensive...
3) buying things - please, thank you and I'll take...
4) simple sentences with comparative and adjectives - I'll take a smaller one, I'll take a red one...
The basic idea would be to alternate real language and simplified structures that let you say a little more, functionally if less than elegantly. In this way, you could expand the range of comprehensible input more quickly. Some of the Teach Yourself books follow this track, too many don't. The closest I've seen as far as the grammatical part of this goes would be the See It and Say It In... series by Margarita Madrigal. Wish they made 'em for Mandarin and Breton...
I notice now that Steve has put "Learn words, lots of words," at the top of his list for things to do to learn language efficiently.
The one issue I run into is, which words? I've noticed that when you look at things like the 100 most frequent words in English or Chinese, there's a lot of grammar woven in. Whether you're talking "a," "the" and "is" in English or "hao," "shi" and "de" in Mandarin, there's the problem that the words that top the frequency tables 1) do not line up with vocabulary items in other languages and 2) require a certain degree of savvy in the language. In the past, the grammar translation method tried to deal with this by giving you the rules for constructing, but with the material offered by grammar point. The direct method tries to walk you through using the language authentically. It would be nice to find a middle ground where you were taught, for example:
1) greetings, used authentically
2) simple sentences - this is nice, this is big, this is expensive...
3) buying things - please, thank you and I'll take...
4) simple sentences with comparative and adjectives - I'll take a smaller one, I'll take a red one...
The basic idea would be to alternate real language and simplified structures that let you say a little more, functionally if less than elegantly. In this way, you could expand the range of comprehensible input more quickly. Some of the Teach Yourself books follow this track, too many don't. The closest I've seen as far as the grammatical part of this goes would be the See It and Say It In... series by Margarita Madrigal. Wish they made 'em for Mandarin and Breton...
Labels: learning
1 Comments:
To me you when I start a language I focus on words, useful words. Greetings are low on my priority list. I know I will learn them eventually and I am in no hurry to speak to people. I prefer to read and listen to content of interest and build up my vocabulary. Obviously rating the content in terms of the frequency of the words used is helpful as is rating them with reference to the words known by the learner as we do at LingQ. We are refining this.
But picking up useful phrases early is perhaps fun, but not, to me at least, very helpful in the long run. You just need to learn a lot of words to be able to defend yourself in even the most common situations in the new language.
My approach to language learning is "content based". I would like to talk to you about this some time on Skype if you have the time.
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