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| How to go about Learning a Foreign Language the LB Way | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 15 2013, 04:18 PM (42 Views) | |
| Cat's Pyjamas | May 15 2013, 04:18 PM Post #1 |
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Let us say that I decide to learn German this is how I would go about doing that: (1) I would get as much audio recordings of native speakers as possible. It doesn't matter what the subject matter is, if it is aimed at children, teens, men, women etc. You are listening at this point just to familiarise yourself with the sounds of German. At first those speakers will seem to be talking way too fast and very often you won't be able to tell when one word ends and another begins. Listen over and over again,it doesn't matter if you are listening to something for the 37th time. Soon you will notice that those native speakers aren't speaking as fast as they did and that you can to a large extent hear every word spoken. Congratulations your ear and brain have become familiar with the intonations and pronunciations of the German language.* (2) Start looking for more German audio remembering our one condition, which is, that the speakers MUST be native speakers. Continue to listen to your old audio but you can start looking at content that suits your interests. (3) Buy a German-English dictionary and start looking up those words that you like the sound of and those words that seem to come up often in your audio material. You can search for a word by breaking it down into syllables. (4) DO NOT get bogged down studying grammar. It is a very common mistake for beginners to wade into the gramar swamp up to their necks. DO NOT DO THIS! You only need to know in the beginning the verbs for to have, to be, to want, to feel, to do/make, to read, to write, to understand, to speak and to buy and only in the present tense. (5) Start looking up the German online newspapers and reading the section that interest you. You'll soon realise that you don't need to understand every single word in a sentence or paragraph to be able to understand it; it is fun trying to guess the meaning of a word and making it a game makes the words stick in your head. Your comprehension will grow in leaps and bounds if you read an English newspaper daily, because newspapers get their stories from press agencies notably The Press Association and Reuters. This means that the articles in an English and German newspaper are likely to have been written by the same PA,Reuters journalist and if you have read the English article(s) then you'll have a good idea of what the German article(s) are saying. (6) Start watching television in German. Soap operas are particularly useful as they often have simple and repetitive story-lines using the same actors. This means that you get a lot exposure to spoken German as spoken by native speakers, who speak at a normal speaking speed. The big advantage about television is that you can often put a word or phrase to and action because you can see and hear what is going on. (7) Reading in German is particularly good. You should look out for graded readers and parallel texts. Parallel texts are stories in which one page is in English and the opposite page is in German. Slowly but surely you'll start to associate the German words with English. Don't be embarrassed to buy PTs aimed at children even small children. These will give you an excellent and very thorough understanding of the basics of the language. (8) I know that many people say 'Oh I would love to learn another language but I am just not good at languages.' This is nonsense. The truth is people are put-off languages at school because the schools spend way too much time with grammar. I know more French now than I did after two whole years at Secondary school, where we studied French 3 hours a week. (9) For German, Spanish and French you can't beat Margarita Madrigal's Magic Key series. These are available online. You can get the French and German books free if you know where to look. * Hearing should always come first. You don't need to sit and listen intently all the time,just have the audio recordings on all the time and wander about the house. You'll play these recordings so often that what you miss one listen you'll hear the next. There is NO substitute to hearing and listening to native speakers, not unless you want to take 10 years to speak German indifferently, with poor pronunciation and intonation. People who excessively study grammar soon find that while they can conjugate many verbs they can't say anything more than a 3 year old. "I want water, bed, food". Short staccato clumsy infantile sentences are all you will be capable of saying if you wander too far into the Grammar Swamp. Edited by Cat's Pyjamas, May 15 2013, 06:01 PM.
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| Cat's Pyjamas | May 15 2013, 06:14 PM Post #2 |
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(10) Don't say a word for 3 months if you are learning Spanish, French or Italian. I would give it 4 months for German and 6 months for Russian. Russian is NOT suitable for beginners! I would choose French if I were a complete beginner as a lot of English words are actually French(around 35%) and many other words change from English to French with a simple addition. E.g every word in English that ends in -ist ends in -e in French. Dentist Dentiste Journalist Journaliste ==> 'zhoor-nah-leest' Communist Communiste Words in English that end in -ic and -ical end in -ique in French. la Maision becomes les maisions. This is better than the Italian La casa ==> le case in my opinion. German: Der(dare), Die(dee), Er(air), Sie/sie(zee). Edited by Cat's Pyjamas, May 15 2013, 06:17 PM.
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"If you want to travel the Way of Buddhas and Zen masters, then expect nothing, seek nothing, and grasp nothing." Dogen "I am the vine,ye are the branches: He that abideth in me and I in him,the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing." John 15:5 “Here is the test of truth: anything that makes you weak, physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject it as poison, there is no life in it – it cannot be true.” - Swami Vivekananda "God plus mind is you. You minus mind is God." Swami Satchitananda "Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things." Dogen | |
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| Cat's Pyjamas | May 15 2013, 06:16 PM Post #3 |
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Blu did you edit my signature picture? |
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"If you want to travel the Way of Buddhas and Zen masters, then expect nothing, seek nothing, and grasp nothing." Dogen "I am the vine,ye are the branches: He that abideth in me and I in him,the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing." John 15:5 “Here is the test of truth: anything that makes you weak, physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject it as poison, there is no life in it – it cannot be true.” - Swami Vivekananda "God plus mind is you. You minus mind is God." Swami Satchitananda "Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things." Dogen | |
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| Cat's Pyjamas | May 15 2013, 06:28 PM Post #4 |
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Jemma could be speaking really good Spanish in six months if she followed my advice above. |
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"If you want to travel the Way of Buddhas and Zen masters, then expect nothing, seek nothing, and grasp nothing." Dogen "I am the vine,ye are the branches: He that abideth in me and I in him,the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing." John 15:5 “Here is the test of truth: anything that makes you weak, physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject it as poison, there is no life in it – it cannot be true.” - Swami Vivekananda "God plus mind is you. You minus mind is God." Swami Satchitananda "Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things." Dogen | |
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| Guest | May 15 2013, 07:00 PM Post #5 |
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Unregistered
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Not everyone is as clever as LB or has all that free time. |
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| BlueWolf | May 15 2013, 07:44 PM Post #6 |
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Don't Call Me Peanut
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I sure didn't |
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Below, where is your boat? You are slow, you are slow From where I stand I can see the curvature of the Earth And I want to make it flat I will play, the sky is black | |
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2:18 PM Jul 11
