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How do you master a course? | ||
Tags: Poll | Learning Technique/Method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5177 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 9 of 19 10 March 2015 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I found that following the actual instructions on the course is always good... pimsleur's daily rule w/ 80%, etc. Assimil 20 minutes every day, etc. I figure the people that produce the courses have a pretty good idea of how to use them most effectively.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4811 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 10 of 19 10 March 2015 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I don't "master" a course, my goal is to "master" the language.
So, I get through several sources at once, sometimes I take large pauses and come back to the course or not, sometimes I do all the exercises, sometimes I skip a part of the lesson that is not needed at the moment. While the instructions on the course have some merit, I follow what has worked in past. I fall in neither of the two options. I do not repeat courses but I do not dwell on the same lesson to perfection or ad nauseam, whichever would come first. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5009 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 19 11 March 2015 at 10:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I've previously fallen into the trap of wanting to "master" courses and trying to learn every last word, expression, and grammar point in Assimil. My logic was that if I had a good knowledge of everything in the book, I'd have a very solid base and be able to speak quite well.
That may be right, but I don't think it's an effective or enjoyable way of doing things. Moreover, course authors aren't perfect - some words in Assimil aren't that important, and some important words aren't in Assimil - and which words are important also depends on your own goals and interests. Now I think it's much better to make a good effort with the course and learn most of it, maybe revise the difficult parts again, but then move on and not worry about getting 100%. Any important gaps will soon fill themselves in anyway as you continue to learn the language with other courses, native materials, and interaction with people. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4811 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 12 of 19 12 March 2015 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Smallwhite, what is in general the difference between all the TY courses? Is it useful to
take the shorter ones as well? Is it more like additional dialogues or are there things that really add to the full TY? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4968 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 13 of 19 13 March 2015 at 12:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I try to get hold of as many beginner's courses as possible and hope one will help reinforce the other. When it comes to popular languages, it's a given that you will have a neverending source. But then with minor languages I made the mistake of being too obsessed with book completion and I kept proceeding when I had less than 50% of the content of each lesson learned even passively.
With Georgian: I ran out of textbooks but I didn't have enough vocabulary for reading native materials even with a translation. After 2 years of struggle, I decided to go back to review some textbooks and now I take a two-lane approach (if I may, mr. iguanamon) with the parallel reading of native materials reinforcing what I review through the course. The problem is most textbooks teach you so many details of grammar that you won't be able to keep enough stuff in your RAM memory to actually analize a sentence and understand it. Another problem is they want you to learn everything that is in a kitchen, for example, instead of allowing you to get around with for, knife, plate and napkin before moving on to the living room, for example. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5110 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 14 of 19 13 March 2015 at 1:47pm | IP Logged | ||
Hi, I highly recommend doing all 3, in that order - Instant, Beginners, Complete. Both Beginners and Complete have about 60 minutes of L2 audio, and Instant about 45 (ie. English removed). 3. "Complete L2" is your typical/stereotype TY course with dialogues and (shallow) grammar explanations, covering past and future tenses, maybe not covering the subjunctive and the passive voice, I'm not sure. 2. "Beginners L2" is a cross between a language textbook and a traveller's phrasebook. A good one. The contents are varied and engaging. Covers hotel booking in the present tense, car rental in the present tense, and other stuff like that in the present tense. This is a very good book. 1. "Instant L2" looks like a language course, but is actually a "L2 is easy! Look, you're speaking it already!" hypnosis session on CD. If you remove the English hypnotist's voice from the audio, the L2 audio shows you how to say all sorts of different things with just 100-ish (?) words. So book 1 teachings very few things, repeats them in all different directions, and gets you acquainted with the essentials. Book 2 is narrow but deep. Book 3 is wide but shallow. They complement each other. I found it very productive to study all 3 books, in that order. But then I get my books from the library, so I don't know how much they cost and can't say whether they're worth buying. PS. I also use "Instant L2" to get myself to start speaking, or to brush up my rusty speaking. Edited by smallwhite on 13 March 2015 at 1:51pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4811 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 15 of 19 16 March 2015 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks a lot for the explanation!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kees Nonaglot Newbie Canada learn-to-read-foreig Joined 4986 days ago 37 posts - 59 votes Speaks: Dutch*, Swedish, French, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Hungarian | Message 16 of 19 27 March 2015 at 4:10am | IP Logged | ||
Totally agree. I "mastered" the Teach Yourself Urdu course by zipping through it, then repeating and repeating until I kind of knew it by head. But mastering the course gets you only so far. I could communicate a bit with a Pakistani Taxi driver, or in an Indian restaurant. Then I started to read dual language childrens books and eventually Harry Potter in Urdu (which was the only Urdu book back then I could find on Amazon). However that went extremely slow, and I used a big dictionary which slowed down reading. I tried BBC (switching from Urdu to English to get translations) or use google or bing pop-up translation, but often those translations are wrong, or not in context, or offer some kind of multiple choice. I'm working on some pop-up translated texts on my website for Urdu. I checked around a bit but there's not much yet, readlang hasn't got any texts in Urdu yet. In other words, it's difficult to get from "mastering a course" to mastering the language, and I would only consider myself to have mastered Urdu when I'm able to read a book fluently. But so yes I zipped through and then repeated the course a few times (back when I still had more free time). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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