Berichten: 8
Taal: English
Alkanadi (Profiel tonen) 20 januari 2015 08:06:51
What do you think is the best of the 4 for learning a language and why?
Bemused (Profiel tonen) 20 januari 2015 11:22:22
Alkanadi:I think that language learners have a preference for 1 of the 4 methods of communication when learning a language.Sorry this is not a direct answer to your question.
What do you think is the best of the 4 for learning a language and why?
I believe the most efficient way to learn a language is to work on all four aspects simultaneously.
This was reinforced by an experience I had just today while attempting to help someone to learn English as their third language. (L1 Arabic, L2 French).
This person has good written understanding of the language, we could communicate by writing to one another. However this person has had little exposure to spoken English, and had great difficulty understanding anything I said, or verbally expressing themselves in even the simplest of sentences.
sudanglo (Profiel tonen) 20 januari 2015 12:00:29
oreso (Profiel tonen) 20 januari 2015 13:11:43
It's usually easiest to be exposed to vocab and grammar from reading than just from listening, since you have more time to process the information, go back to it as you like, and so on. But reading and listening together is better again; we learn best through multiple exposures in multiple contexts.
Speaking and writing, even in Esperanto where spelling and pronunciation are regular, are quite different. In writing you are practising how to be accurate and clear when you don't necessarily share the same space or context as your reader, and you tend to have a lot more time. Whereas in speaking, accuracy is less important compared to being able to communicate ideas RIGHT NOW even when you might not be able to think of the right word. These involve different strategies.
And of course, any vocab or grammar you've been exposed to, I don't think you can say you've learnt it without actually using it, either in speaking or writing. And this can be pretty vital for long-term memorisation.
In terms of what I enjoy though; I'd go with reading and speaking. Reading is relaxing, and speaking is tense and thrilling.
Christa627 (Profiel tonen) 20 januari 2015 19:54:35
Reading: The forum here, literature, poetry, blogs, etc.
Writing: Poems, my journal, my blog about essential oils, the forum here, email and PM correspondence, etc.
Speaking: Practicing prononciation by talking to myself, the cat, and mostly disinterested people, and by reading aloud; practicing real-time communication on the Tujmesaĝilo here and on IRC; still looking forward to the day when I will have the opportunity to do both aspects at once in face-to-face conversation (can't Skype; no webcam).
Listening: Songs, stories, speeches, interviews, and an audiobook of Alicio en Mirlando, as well as assorted whatever I find on YouTube.
flootzavut (Profiel tonen) 27 januari 2015 22:22:08
Tempodivalse (Profiel tonen) 28 januari 2015 00:58:40
Alas, speaking is the most difficult, not least when you have nobody to talk to! Actually, I sometimes carry on conversations with myself in Esperanto, usually holding a cellphone to my ear so that people don't think I'm totally strange! But it's not the same as having a real interlocutor. Someday I will look into Skype.
Ultimately though, for a language like EO, I think you can get pretty far just with reading and writing. Thanks to the complete phonetic regularity of the language, transitioning is not hard. I remember the very first time I heard a full-on EO conversation (at a convention, recorded and uploaded to YouTube), I was able to understand 95% of it. By that time I was already fairly proficient at the written side.
1Guy1 (Profiel tonen) 31 januari 2015 11:59:30
Christa627: (can't Skype; no webcam)..You can do voice only skype calls (unless it has changed recently) so all you would need is a microphone or, ideally, a cheap headset