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The New R-L-R Method! | ||
Tags: Listening-Reading (L-R) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5462 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 9 of 47 01 July 2009 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Having done lots of "original" L-R over the past couple of months (and, to be honest, having gained a lot from it), I decided to spend four hours today trying out Reverse-L-R.
After about ten minutes of effort, I was dismayed to find myself drifting out of the foreign text and just listening to the English audio. I put deliberate effort into re-synchronising and using both media again. And pretty quickly, I had the same drifting problem. Each time it often took me a good few seconds to realise this, and then I was scrambling to find my place in the text again. Progressively, my brain started to give up on trying to keep sync with the foreign text, until by the end of four hours it became a real chore to find the enthusiasm to keep going, and I was mostly just listening to the English audio. It reminded me a little of when I watch English movies with foreign subtitles. After a few minutes of effort with the subtitles, my attention fades and I find myself listening only to the English. Knowing that I should be reading the subtitles, though, makes the whole experience less enjoyable, and often I have found myself checking my watch to see how many more minutes I must endure the effort rather than enjoy the movie. I found this "watching the clock" habit even greater with R-L-R since the reading was more effort than with movies. In particular, it struck me that one advantage of movie subtitles is that when you catch yourself ignoring them, it is really easy to "find your place" again, by simply moving your eyes to them: since in movies subtitles never get out of sync with the spoken word. This, of course, is not the case with audio and books - where you have to put real effort into keeping them in-sync. I don't know why it is, but with "original" L-R this drifting effect does not occur for me. I find that I can keep going for several hours without becoming frustrated. My attention remains on the foreign recording as I continue to read the (familiar) English text. My current thought on the difference between my L-R and R-L-R experiences is that my ears cannot block out audio as easily as my eyes can divert from text. Therefore, with original L-R I am forced to keep listening to the audio, and the need to understand it forces my eyes to keep ploughing through the text. Whereas with R-L-R I can (of course) understand everything just from the audio - and it becomes effort (rather than necessity) to keep reading along too. Of course, it could be that I simply need more experience with R-L-R. After four hours though, I was disappointed. Either with the method, or with myself. I am not sure which. Edited by Splog on 01 July 2009 at 5:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5804 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 10 of 47 01 July 2009 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Den da madoridy ob peepul weel bi had toe ungerstang. There's a difference between having a non-native accent and being incapable of pronouncing anything approaching understandable TL. People who "don't care" really don't mean that they're happy pronouncing Polish "C" like an English "C", for example -- they would not be understood if they did. But if your main learning activity is reading without ever hearing or speaking it, you will make exactly this sort of mistake. And yes, there are people who will only ever want to read a language and never speak it, but learning the written language first, in isolation, makes it much more difficult to learn the spoken form later because the brain has already mangled the pronunciation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Hashimi Senior Member Oman Joined 6052 days ago 362 posts - 529 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)* Studies: English, Japanese | Message 11 of 47 01 July 2009 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Nice line turaisiawase, where did you read that? I'm always fascinated by your choices.
That's why I said try it first with movies/subtitles before applying this method to long novels.
Four hours? Is that enough? You should try it with 7-10 movies/show and repeat each movie/show 3 times at least.
Sometimes there is no need to learn the spoken language at all! Today we know many things about the ancient Egyptians, their battles, culture, and life, but no one on this earth know how they spoke their language. We can read the hieroglyphs, but no one know how they are pronounced exactly (even if we know how to pronounce isloated sounds, we stil don't know other phonological aspects of the ancient Egyptian language). This is not restricted to dead languages, for example, I'm interested in learning how to read Chinese, but I don't need to communicate with Chinese in their language, nor listening to Chinese. So there is no problem if can't produce the correct sounds or tones. For me, this applies to many languages which I want to understand reading in them but not listening to them (e.g. French, German, and Russian). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 5941 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 12 of 47 01 July 2009 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hashimi, using this method have you actually reached a point where you can read a novel or even a short article in a language you are studying without any supporting audio?
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| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6870 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 13 of 47 01 July 2009 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If I watch a movie I quite often put the subtitles on in another language. I watched a lot of English and French TV/movies in Korea with Korean subtitles.. but I don't see this as a study method per se.
Yes, I have learnt phrases and improved reading fluency this way, but as an actual study method I think it's not really worth the effort involved. I do continue to do this because I do learn a few things, but not enough to actually call it value for money ...The typical L-R method makes more sense since you are capable of reading your L1 much faster than L2 and therefore able to keep up with the audio and get better value from the activity. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| sprachefin Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5539 days ago 300 posts - 317 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish Studies: French, Turkish, Mandarin, Bulgarian, Persian, Dutch | Message 14 of 47 01 July 2009 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Doing stuff such as watching movies in the TL with subtitles of your native language is good for recognizing words and improving your listening comprehension. If you are doing this for your main method of learning, then that is what works for you, but I don't think I could do this for any language, I am more of a learner who does exercises to improve grammatical concepts rather than practicing listening comprehension. THAT comes naturally to me for some reason. But learning a language is all about seeing what is right for you so you can improve, and finally obtain fluency. I admire anyone who can stick to a method such as mentioned in the original post or throughout.
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| Hashimi Senior Member Oman Joined 6052 days ago 362 posts - 529 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)* Studies: English, Japanese | Message 15 of 47 01 July 2009 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I, myself, learned English by reading only without any supporting audio. I said earlier that "3 years ago I could read an English book in history or linguistics but I could NOT understand news on TV or even the dialogue in cartoons! But I was satisfied with my level, because in that time, there was no need to understand spoken English." Now, I can read almost anything written in English, although I can't order a pizza by phone! (I know how to write the order, but I'm not good at speaking because I don't listen to English, whether it's news on TV or radio, or even music.) Currently, I'm using this method to learn Russian. My current goal is to understand literary works like Tolstoy's novels, I'm not interested in the spoken language. The results is very satisfying.
We are not talking about listening to target language with subitles in native language. R-L-R is the reverse. You listen to your native language and read subtitles in TL. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5804 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 16 of 47 01 July 2009 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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OK, Hashimi, but you didn't say in your original post that this was a method for learning to read and nothing else.
If you had done, that would have been fine, but you didn't. You seemed to imply that this was an all-round learning method, and I quote:
"Other skills" I would naturally assume to mean speaking, writing and reading, not just reading and nothing else. This makes your advice misleading. And I'll say it again, yes, there may be some people who are happy reading/writing only, but the majority are not. Your method is therefore harmful to the majority, but you didn't say that at the beginning. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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