Errors in learning a foreign language, 2 years in
withteeth.fun
withteeth.fun
Consume as much of the language as possible, as fast as possible, while still roughly understanding what you're reading. Don't do it so quickly that you have no idea what you're reading, but don't spend time trying to memorize each and every word and concept.
There are textbooks that sit somewhere between "Baby's First Italian Reader" and "A First Course in Italian Grammar". A high school or college freshman text can be worked through pretty quickly by a motivated individual and are often more practical than the sort of textbook a pedantic grammarian might seek out, but faster than (only) trying to infer the rules from a participatory experience that isn't always easy to get.
It's not like I'm thinking up all the terms that a sentence could possibly consist of, and then finding them in the text. Reading left-to-right you know what kind of word to expect next. It also helps you fill in unknown words based on their context.
Something else people should keep in mind (i don't mean for this to apply to you, i just don't want to make a separate post) is that people will give you language learning advice and claim to speak a language when they can't watch tv, listen to podcasts, or read books in it. If you aspire to this kind of level (no judgement if you don't) do not listen to anyone who hasn't reached it.
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.
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.
People that aren’t classically trained in either are usually easy to identify by those that are.
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.
BTW I think most native speakers would write 'non-native' instead of 'non native'.
However I don't agree with what you say about textbooks. Being able to read the rules of the language stated explicitly is definitely useful (once you have some familiarity with the language).
The more words I know, the more likely I can recognize them as they flow by....
By flow I mean listening to the whole sentence, paragraph, and not trying to hang on every phoneme: Between context and the human tendency to repeat, chances are you'll get the gist, especially if there are key words you can pick out.
I find the most important things to learn are "how do say", "what is the word for", "can you please repeat, but more slowly, please", and "sorry for mangling your language".
Learn the lilt of the language, how speakers hold their mouths, and how people use their bodies: The more you sound like you know the language, a) the less likely they are to switch to English, and b) the more pleased they will be with the effort you are making.
People are remarkably forgiving of poor grammar when its seems you are making a genuine and respectful effort.
(Native English, near-native and fluent French, joual, and a few other regionalisms, conversational Spanish that would likely come back pretty quickly, porto-conversational Turkish that might come back, market Arabic that might come back, really bad Greek, enough Polish and German once upon a time to at least order beer and food and get from A to B.)
I agree with many of TFA's points > To learn a lot from reading, you need to read a lot, and for that you have to understand at least the gist of what you are looking at.
Reading was huge for me. After "speaking" the language for 5 years I finally read a full novel. I immediately noticed improvements in my writing and understanding. A few weeks later I finished reading a second novel and am now on to the third.
(I really recommend The Martian by the way, it seems like it's been translated a ton, and it's written in a mostly first person diary style so the tenses are fairly simple while being more engaging than kid's books)
The "one weird trick" to it was to spend literally hundreds of hours one on one with tutors online. It's not an option for everybody, of course, but if you can do it - do it. Studying with flash cards and apps helps too, but your brain more importantly needs to practice understanding strings of words and putting them together yourself in real-time.
Either way, you will have to try different partners/tutors out until you find a few that really click with you personally & also teaching style-wise.
Now that I speak several languages is easier and easier to learn a new one. I am native Spanish speaker.
You don't learn by reading and understanding anything, you learn by practicing every day until it becomes automatic.
For learning Spanish or French you can use Michel Thomas audio lessons and using Anki for learning it. Someone told me there are torrents out there.
While I’d always be interested in learning the native language of any country I may reside in, Spanish is the only language I’m interested in learning regardless of where I live. I studied it in college and the written form is just so regular that it’s really the gold standard for languages. I love how knowing the formal rules that I can accurately spell words I’ve only heard, and do it consistently correctly. It’s under appreciated.
My goal now is just to get to a Russian speaking country and learn naturally. I have decent pattern recognition so this is the easiest way for me to learn, so it's a pity that there seems to be so few resources that take advantage of this. Chatting with strangers in my target language has been the most beneficial for me so far.
There's an example of a very different approach: Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, all in the language to be taught, starting from simple language, using pictures, etc. The most like that that I've seen for Spanish or French was this basic French dictionary: https://www.amazon.com/Mon-premier-dictionnaire-Roger-Pillet...
Anyone know of other books in that spirit?
https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia...
I have a friend who was born here, looks local, but spent her formative years in Canada. She has been back in Hong Kong for more than 15 years now, but still isn't happy with her Cantonese conversational skills because she speaks with a bit of a Canadian accent and people usually force her to speak English after hearing her speak a couple sentences of Cantonese.
It's fair enough; my friend isn't paying these people to be speaking partners, and is trying to extract a bit of a knowledge tax from them.
On the other hand, when I run into people whose English isn't particularly good, they are very willing to stumble through a very rough mixture of Mandarin and Cantonese with me when it's the most efficient way for us to communicate. In these cases, it's not uncommon for people to continue to speak Mandarin at my wife, after I've told them in Mandarin "She's Thai overseas Chinese; she can only speak Thai and English". My wife has learned to break eye contact to discourage them from continuing to talk at her, and to avoid giving the impression she secretly understands Mandarin. I don't think the people even realize they're speaking at my wife and getting responses from me; some people just seem to find it more awkward to speak Mandarin with a white person than to speak Mandarin at a Chinese-looking person who's clearly not paying attention.
Percentage of people I knew in Taiwan who could speak English: 40% Percentage of people I knew in Taiwan who could speak Italian : 0%
If you consider acting or putting up a front as akin to lying then we're probably all liars.
Japanese - Fluent (3 years study)
This was a resounding success, but actually set me up to fail my next 3 languages.
Successes were
1) finding Anki and the AJATT method, and just totally embracing it.
2) Choosing early on to locate high quality materials on grammar and Anki 3 to 4 sentences per grammar point and front load virtually all Japanese grammar in around 4 months.
3) after grammar study was done dropping sentences and instead inputting only single words into Anki
4) Finding regular conversation partners, and language exchange clubs with the many Japanese people in my area
5) being somewhat unfairly ruthless in pretty much only speaking Japanese
Korean - I can understand bits and pieces, after 2 separate and serious attempts each lasting 3 to 6 months
Successes were
1) repeating all of the input/grammar stuff and consuming native media I had done with Japanese as understanding was coming along well
Errors were
1) not having much utility for the language outside simply just enjoying it for its own sake, while this was true with Japanese also in a way, Japanese gave my life a purpose and direction at a time I had none thus the utility from that standpoint while abstract was huge. Same just didn't apply to Korean.
2) Not finding any speaking partners. Right at the end of my second attempt I did start to remedy this, but then I started a family and settled down and because Korean had no actual utility in my life it was dropped.
Mandarin - still some limited level of understanding and can speak some basic phrases. 2 serious attempts each lasting 3 months
Successes were
1) first attempt I did all the same things with Anki and native media
2) first attempt was actually taking it a semester of it in university which gave a structure I had previously dismissed as inferior but actually found had its merits, most of which was actually practicing output in a controlled manner
3) second attempt was 3 months in China on a business trip, and I managed to get access to Chinese equivalents of Spotify/Netflix and this massively boosted my native media game
3) second attempt being in China meant the language had massive utility so I studied very hard and can still remember how to order Carl's Junior haha.
Errors were
1) When learning it at University I never found suitable conversation partners outside the classroom as everyone also speaks fluent English
2) When studying it in China I never found suitable conversation partners because all the people I worked with had better English than my Mandarin and I tried somewhat to go out and meet people but I was just too painfully shy and my Mandarin too low level.
3) After 2nd attempt upon returning home Mandarin lost all it's utility and given I had no functional speaking ability, though I could understand a lot and passed HSK3, I couldn't converse with any of my Chinese co-workers back home, so I dropped it almost instantly
French/Spanish/Italian/German - I understand words and phrases here and there from listening to music in these languages, but never actually intended on properly learning them
Successes were
1) Again with native media, only music for these languages as that was the drawcard, just finding cool new songs and learning to sing along
Errors were
Well, no errors really, I was just having fun
Portuguese - currently 3 months into this! Understanding is getting decent, and speaking ability is starting to develop
This time around I'm putting all the lessons from my successes and errors into practice as follows.
1) Anki/Grammar, and native media! This has always been stunningly effective at increasing understand very fast
2) hiring a tutor! I realised this was the mistake I made after 2nd attempt at Mandarin. My speaking ability is really starting to pick up now
3) making sure the language has utility! I'm learning BJJ and my coach is Brazilian and doesn't speak much English.
If you have either a pre-made Anki deck with sentences for all the grammar, or a web page you can copy paste them from, or heaven forbid a Kindle or book that you can type them into Anki then blasting through grammar quick as you can as early as you can is _significantly_ faster than not doing so.
If you only did sentence mining then you would eventually learn all the grammar, you'll just do it slower, so the lead time on being able to parse the language will increase.
If you study grammar this way you don't have to sit and read dry explanations, but you can still more or less deduce how the grammar works.
If you also want to read the dry explanations too there's also nothing wrong with that.
In the case of Japanese there was a fantastic Anki deck called KO2001 which was 2000 sentences that covered lots of vocab and grammar with the idea that along the way it taught you how to read all of (jouyou) Kanji.
There was also an amazing deck called "A dictionary of Japanese grammar" which had 8000 sentences covering all of Japanese grammar.
I decided to take JLPT2 at the end of my first year of study. I spent the first 6 months doing RTK (remembering the kanji) all while doing immersion etc, so really I didn't know a heck of a lot after the first 6 months, but now reading and writing had become accessible to me. It was actually at this point I decided to take the JLPT2 and it was at the time I think only 4 months away.
That's a relatively insane goal and somewhat nonsensical thing to do, but I first blasted through KO2001 so I knew I'd be able to read everything on the test (more or less). Then I just absolutely hauled ass and took a list of grammar points needed for JLPT4, JLPT3, and JLPT2 and I had suspended all cards on the dictionary of Japanese grammar deck and simply unsuspended 3 or 4 sentences per grammar point.
I didn't pass the exam but I got 50%. I think you needed 60% to pass. I was stoked with that. I passed it 6 months later. 6 months after that took JLPT1 and failed getting again 50% where I needed 55% and passed it 6 months later with a decent score.
End of first year of study I could barely muddle my way through a basic "hello my name is..." type conversation. But I knew the entire grammar of the language and had around 2000 vocab.
2nd year of study I now switched to just vocab and tried to do 35 a day. All mined from immersing myself in native media. I learnt 10k vocab that year. I also started going to regular conversation clubs that year and moved to the city and brought in a Japanese flatmate. End of the second year I could speak very fluidly one on one for hours, but noisy group settings still gave me a little trouble.
End of 3rd year I was fluent. Noisy group settings, reading novels etc.
It was a wild ride actually. After I moved to the city I would just randomly approach people I could tell were Japanese and just started talking to them in Japanese. Half would freak out in a positive way, half would freak out like why is this guy talking to me. The uncomfortable ones I just disengaged soon as I could tell, but the positive reactions often ended in either me inviting them to a party I was having or them inviting me to a party they were having. Made a lot of friends. Best time of my life tbh.
I tend to use a mixture of pre-made and handmade decks. A good pre-made deck is a godsend, but I always have a handmade one in addition for stuff that I find.
Looking at the shared Anki decks, "Chinese Grammar Wiki Study Deck" looks pretty good. It's perhaps a little large, but I target 35 new cards a day, for a pace of 1000 new cards a month assuming 80% of the time I'll hit that the goal is 10k in one year. So 5k cards puts that at 5 months for me. "Chinese Grammar Wiki A1-B2" is potentially a better starting point if want a smaller, more manageable deck. That one only has 500 or so cards, which is easy to knock off in a couple of weeks.
"Listening Deck for Chinese 4th Year" looks like a very good deck. It seems to have everything I would want; reading cards + listening cards - both of these are absolutely essential with Mandarin, it also goes from HSK1 to HSK6 and has a lot of cards. It probably has too many for me, so I would look at how to approach it but the quality of the resource seems great from what I can see, so would be very interested in this one. Sentences possibly come from a site called SpoonFed from what I can tell.
How I use a particular deck depends on my goals. I modify them to suit my needs where I can. For example the Portuguese deck I'm using at the moment I think had 2 card types, maybe PT -> En and En -> PT, or perhaps it was listening and reading etc, but I know the only skill I need to train with Portuguese is listening, so I changed the deck to remove the card types I didn't need.
The other thing that has worked well is suspending all cards on decks that are far too large to do all the cards, and using a list of grammar points or vocab and using the search feature to selectively unsuspend a few cards per thing that you're searching for. "20000 chinese - english sentences with proper pinyin" looks like a deck you could do that with. Inputting stuff into Anki takes time, so I try to minimise that time. Not eliminate it, because there's very much a large amount of utility in handmaking decks. But for example a good online dictionary where you can copy / paste sentences is a benefit.
Generally when it comes to decks I'm looking for 2 kinds. Either a starter deck, or a complete reference deck.
The perfect starter deck is around 2k sentences with audio (if no audio I just use TTS and this is good enough!) and covers from A1 grammar up to at least B2, but if it covers more then that's a bonus. B2 is like upper intermediate, and that range is all the common day to day stuff you hear and use all the time. I think like HSK1 to HSK4 in the case of Mandarin.
Complete reference decks are usually between 5k to 10k sentences and are often from some corpus or dictionary. These are the type I like to suspend all and selectively unsuspend if I have a need for that.
With decks I take what I can get, but I generally have a standard I'm looking for and if nothing pre-made meets the standard I'll find good reference materials and handmake it instead.
Hope that helps.