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Where to start? Advice for a newbie | ||
Tags: Tagalog | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4711 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 9 of 20 01 April 2015 at 2:12am | IP Logged | ||
I think it's never too soon, because you have to train your ear. If you've completed a textbook, you have a good foundation of grammar and vocabulary. It should be enough to grasp what's going on, and get you started. Just make sure you enjoy what you're doing! Enjoyment means you'll keep on learning. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| CindytheKana Newbie Philippines NoneRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3332 days ago 22 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 10 of 20 01 April 2015 at 3:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry, I cannot figure out how to quote previous text in order to refer to it in my reply.
GOALS - 1. to be conversational. 2. To speak Tagalog with natives in order to develop relationships better. Many people speak English but I can see when they are just sitting around together they are more comfortable using Tagalog. I want to be able to follow a conversation in a leisure setting and be able to contribute to it without the people feeling the need to switch to English for me. 3. To speak with our live-in helper, to be able to give commands and ask for help and also be able to talk to her more to get to know her and develope a relationship 4. To be able to handle household items in order to free my husband up. I realize I rely on him because he is fluent in Tagalog. But if I was comfortable calling the handy man and having him come over and give instructions, or be able to call the phone company and inquire about our bill that would be helpful. A very modest goal since English is widely understood. NEEDS 1. To converse with our live in helper 2. A lot of my needs are not urgent because English is widely spoken and understood TIME TO STUDY 1. Undistracted about 1-2 hours a day while my kids nap. 2. Distracted time, in short spurts throughout my day. Thus, a learning method that I can incorporate into being a stay at home mom, where I get interupted to change a diaper or fill a juice cup or stop siblings from fighting. :) 3. Something that is not entirely dependent on the internet, because our internet connection is weak at certain times of day and not full reliable 100% of the time. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5064 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 11 of 20 02 April 2015 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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A log is where you can chart your progress, and share your frustrations and doubts with the larger community. The more you flesh it out beyond a dry recitation of what you did/are doing to learn a language, the more interest you will generate and the more readers you will have. The more readers you get, the more opportunity for help you will have.
We all have, regardless of the target language, frustrations in learning. There are many common struggles we all must face, especially when one is a beginner. Beginners have common questions about language-learning. Airing those frustrations and asking those questions can benefit you by giving you nearly real-time help and advice from others who are going through or who have passed through the same thing, even in another language. So, you can look at your log as your own personal progress chart, a way to keep you honest in language-learning, and, you can look at it as sharing your journey with others and as a way to get help when you need it. Good luck! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4711 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 12 of 20 05 April 2015 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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User Ericounet maintains a site of FSI and DLI resources, and today he added DLI's Tagalog course. Here's the link:
http://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/tagalog.html The Foreign Service Institute and Defense Language Institute are two US agencies which produces language lessons for foreign service/defense workers. Some people think the teaching approach is dated, but on the other hand they are very thorough and have loads of audio exercises. And they're free, because they are in the public domain. The audio comes from cassettes, so it's not always great (depending on the course). Some people find the loads of audio exercises boring, but I compare them to physical exercise. It's a bit dull at first, but once you get into the groove it's quite stimulating. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3946 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 13 of 20 05 April 2015 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Kumusta ka na, Cindy!
Nieng Zhonghan listed some very good resources - I like Elementary Tagalog quite a lot, and Teach Yourself is decent (although one of the voice actors is really grating and I found myself having to take regular breaks from the resource). I really like KalyeSpeak, although sometimes the podcasters feel the need to change their voices and speak very unnaturally. I get that they're trying to be funny, but it makes the audio much more difficult to understand as a learner, and it tries my patience. The dialogues where they speak in regular voices (rather than obnoxious "girl" or whiny voices) are very good. I'm actually thinking about going quickly through all of the dialogues and making a list of all of the episodes with "real" voices. I'm going to be completely honest - I burnt out a bit on Tagalog last fall. Right now I'm on a long semi-break, working my way through Rosetta Stone. It's not a resource that I would necessarily recommend, but its more passive approach to learning kept me from giving up on Tagalog, so it's the right thing for me, right now. I'm pretty sure most of HTLAL is screaming at their screens right now. Ha! I plan on going back to deeper, faster study in the summer, when I have more time to breathe and more mental energy to focus on language learning. Your goals are a lot like mine, except that I'm not living in-country and you are, so my goals are a lot less urgent. My main goal is to be able to understand everything that people say in group conversations. It doesn't matter if I speak or respond in English, Tagalog or Taglish, since my in-laws understand all three perfectly. But I want to be a full part of all conversations, and that means that I need to be able to understand Tagalog, otherwise they're constantly switching to English to repeat what they just said in Tagalog. My in-laws are some of the kindest people in the world, and they always switch to English to include me - I just don't want them to have to. I think that native media is key for rapid progress in language learning. That is definitely going to be my focus over the next year - finding compelling native media that I actually want to watch. I haven't found anything that grabs me yet, and my Filipino family can't really recommend anything, since they only consume English-language media (books, TV shows, movies). We don't even have The Filipino Channel at home (or at my in-laws'). A log is useful for keeping track of your progress, and connecting with other language learners. It's a great place to ask questions, flesh out new ideas, and share success. I also find it motivating to do weekly-ish updates. I would be very interested in following your log, if you start one! There aren't very many Tagalog-learners on HTLAL, so I'd love to exchange ideas and resources. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3946 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 14 of 20 05 April 2015 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | ||
I really wouldn't recommend FSI for Tagalog. Tagalog is a rapidly-changing language, and - according to my husband - the FSI stuff is so dated that it teaches unnatural language. I really like FSI for Spanish, though! Edited by Stelle on 05 April 2015 at 4:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CindytheKana Newbie Philippines NoneRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3332 days ago 22 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 15 of 20 06 April 2015 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you everyone. These suggestions and tips are very helpful! I really like the massive
input idea. I think that will help me stay motivated and it keeps it interesting. Stelle - one media that was interesting to me is the show iWitness. If I remember I found full episodes on youtube. It is like a news magazine show and because you have the host who narrates throughout it is the same voice to listen to. And he or was it a she? speaks not too fast. And the topics are interesting enough for me. Now to get started. How do you measure your success and improvement? I am constantly wondering if I am not studying enough. And if I am spending time studying am I too passive and not active enough in trying to learn? My life right now doesn't have a predictable schedule. Probably since I am mom of preschoolers and babies. So it is hard to find blocks of time. Thus my study is sporadic and constantly interupted. Makes me wonder if what I am doing is helping at all? Or if I should limit study times to times when I am undistracted and able to focus? Would that be more productive? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4711 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 16 of 20 06 April 2015 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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The first thing is to give yourself time. Everything will take longer than you expect.
That's why it's important to enjoy the journey. Make your language study a habit, and you'll just keep doing it. This works particularly well with media; even when you are too tired to "study", you will still listen to some music or watch the next episode of your favourite series. The second is not to be too obsessed with measuring progress. It's difficult to decide what constitutes progress anyway, and it often results in language learners focusing mainly on the measurable rather than the useful. I remember spending most of my time on vocabulary cards because I could easily measure progress by seeing the number of cards I had learnt. Real progress is your ability to function in the language, and the better you get the more critical you will be of yourself. So the irony is that as you make progress you will feel your goals moving farther away. One quick comment about the massive input method: don't fall into the trap of thinking it works by magic. I read people saying things like "Once I listen to 200 hours..." as though it's some sort of formula. While taking on input you also need to do things to improve your understanding in some way. Watching shows of course gives you the visual element to understand. Another thing that helps you to gain understanding is to use similar media regularly. For example, HTLAL member Serpent watches football in her target language. Since there is a limited stock of language which regularly comes up in a football match, and since she knows what is going on by watching, she is able to understand the language quite well. While reading/watching/listening, when you hear or read some word that keeps coming up, make sure you look it up. And I would advise to continue using courses or other formal study methods. The study and media will complement each other, and each method will be more effective for it's combination with the other. Like you, I can't always predict how much study I will be able to do. The only real goal I have is to do something in French each day, and I have done this every day (or nearly so) for three years. Now I'm focusing more on Hindi, but I still can't kick the daily French habit because it's just a part of what I do. One more thing I'd like to ask. I don't know how much people use Tagalog and how much people use English when they're around you. Do you ever have the opportunity to sit somewhere in public and just pay attention? Is there a place you could have a cup of tea or something, where you could just listen to the interactions between the customers and the staff? When I lived in India I spent to much time trying to "do" Hindi, and now I wish I had spent some time just paying attention and listening to people going about their daily lives. EDIT: after writing all this, it occurred to me that the fact that I've done this with French meant that it was much easier to understand media than it will be for you and Tagalog. French shares a lot of vocab with English, so it's just easier to understand. However, I also use this method with Hindi, and a lot of people have used massive input methods for learning more distant languages, such as Japanese. It's harder, but actually you need more natural input for that reason. Is sentence structure totally different from English? Then you need to hear lots of real examples to get a handle on it, rather than just learning the rules. Also, have you seen this page? http://www.fluentin3months.com/tagalog/ Benny's methods are very different from what I use, but the best way to learn is to borrow and mix ideas from different effective methods. I don't know if Benny's Tagalog advice will help you, but it should be an interesting read anyway! He mentions a textbook that looks pretty good, Basic Tagalog for Foreigners Edited by Jeffers on 06 April 2015 at 2:29pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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