Starker on 20/4/2017 at 03:34
Sure, there are a lot of pitfalls for self-study and writing and speaking are areas that tend to suffer the most. As with most things in life, doing it half-assed only gets you half-ass results. That's why a good study plan should also include frequent conversations with natives and this is where sites like Lang-8 and italki have really made a difference.
demagogue on 20/4/2017 at 04:25
The class just made us stay relentlessly on the ball. By level 6 it was like each day was either a vocabulary/grammar quiz, a speech, or write a small essay. So each week was balanced progress, assuming you did the work.
I think if you had to pick two things for self study over just piddling through a book, and after you've got the basics, watching a tv show in the language and writing something in it every day would do the trick. Then you just look up what you don't recognize or know how to say.
Starker on 20/4/2017 at 04:50
Yeah, just watching stuff is very slow progress. You need to write things down and actually learn them. This is known as sentence mining -- you gather up sentences that have words you don't know and throw them into Anki or something to acquire them for good through spaced repetition.
Also, there's more and more content out there that's specifically aimed at learners and where grammar and/or vocabulary is explained, like for example Satori Reader or this Youtube channel: (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvZULkG2P08&list=PLW9WfMSFd9thS0gVJYkw65JPOuVZZAZW6&index=1)
SubJeff on 20/4/2017 at 06:52
I lived in Taiwan one summer in the late 90s. Mandarin is interesting. I've forgotten most of it (though I use it yesterday to tell some Chinese guys to take their rubbish with them on the train yesterday!) but what i do remember about it was the tones were really hard to learn. Once you got it it clicked though and coming back to the UK was weird - everyone was so... flat! At least a lot of the grammar is really really easy. No verb tenses!
I've tried learning Spanish but I've no time for it. It's not too bad, easier than French was. At the moment I'd like to learn Lithuanian but it's not on Duolingo, which i think is nuts considering it's history and some of the more niche languages on there (Irish? Grokking Klingon!?)
DarkForge on 20/4/2017 at 07:36
Quote Posted by Starker
... with Chinese I have had a very hard time understanding what anyone says. Part of it is being a bit tone deaf, but everyone also speaks too fast for me.
I find myself thinking the same thing with Japanese. I would love to learn that language (and the culture in general has always fascinated me) but whenever I hear it being spoken I know that it's just beyond me. I regularly watch a few Japanese shows (with subtitles) that have helped me to associate a few random words with their English counterparts, but to understand and speak it fluently would be a whole different beast. Japanese people seem to speak really fast and go through like a dozen syllables in the blink of an eye... sometimes I'm genuinely amazed that even
they can understand each other!
demagogue on 20/4/2017 at 11:11
Every language sounds fast until you learn the words, then they sound normal speed. I think it's the difference between listening to individual phonemes vs individual words.
Sadovnik on 20/4/2017 at 21:10
As a Russian native speaker I'm learning English at the time and hoping to speak it more fluently. Unfortunately I can't find any native speaker with whom I can speak and share everyday life stuff in order to improve the language. Most of the time it's just through playing games or watching the movies. Some day I hope to find a foreign friend though. And then not only just speaking will be improved, but I'll also have a good comrade. That would be so awesome.
