This is just a quick excerpt from "Polyglot: How I Learn Languages" by Kato Lomb. I saw this link on AJATT earlier today and the book just stole a few hours of my life. I can barely read through that guy's posts (good info, crazy writing style), but he always posts the best links.

Anyways, this was a really great read. Towards the end (p. 159), there was a list of 10 things to do and 10 things not to do concerning language learning. Thought it was really interesting, so posting it here.

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Quote:The thoughts distilled in the course of my linguistic excursions are organized into the little compendium below. Heaven forbid that we should call them Ten Commandments—let us perhaps call them Ten Requests.

I.
Spend time tinkering with the language every day—if there is no more time available, then at least to the extent of a 10-minute monologue. Morning hours are especially valuable in this respect: the early bird catches the word!

II.
If your enthusiasm for studying flags too quickly, don’t force the issue but don’t stop altogether either. Move to some other form of studying, e.g., instead of reading, listen to the radio; instead of assignment writing, poke about in the dictionary, etc.

III.
Never learn isolated units of speech, but rather learn words and grammatical elements in context.

IV.
Write phrases in the margins of your text and use them as “prefabricated elements” in your conversations.

V.
Even a tired brain finds rest and relaxation in quick, impromptu translations of billboard advertisements flashing by, of numbers over doorways, of snippets of overheard conversations, etc., just for its own amusement.

VI.
Memorize only that which has been corrected by a teacher. Do not keep reading texts you have written that have not been proofread and corrected so as to keep mistakes from taking root in your mind. If you study on your own, each segment to be memorized should be kept to a size that precludes the possibility of errors.

VII.
Always memorize idiomatic expressions in the first person singular. For example, “I am only pulling your leg.” Or else: Il m’a posé un lapin—He stood me up.

VIII.
A foreign language is a castle. It is advisable to besiege it from all directions: newspapers, radio, movies that are not dubbed, technical or scientific papers, textbooks, and the visitor at your neighbor’s.

IX.
Do not let the fear of making mistakes keep you from speaking, but do ask your conversation partner to correct you. Most importantly, don’t get peeved if he or she actually obliges you—a remote possibility, anyway.

X.
Be firmly convinced that you are a linguistic genius. If the facts demonstrate otherwise, heap blame on the pesky language you aim to master, on the dictionaries, or on this book, not on yourself.

* * *

As seven of the biblical Ten Commandments are in the negative, let me now list what not to do if you aim to achieve an acceptable level of linguistic mastery within an acceptable time frame.

1.
Do not postpone embarking on learning a new language—or restarting such a study—until the time of a prospective trip abroad. Rather, try to gain access to native speakers of your target language who are on a visit to your country and who do not speak your language. They could be relatives or friends. If you accompany them and show them around, they will help you solidify your knowledge of their language out of gratitude; they will enrich your vocabulary and overlook the mistakes you make.

2.
Do not expect the same behavior from your compatriots. Do not practice on them because they will be prone to giving prime time to your errors—or at the very least, they will be inclined to employ meaningful facial gestures—to demonstrate how much better they are at it.

3.
Do not believe that instruction by a teacher of a course, however intense and in-depth that might be, gives you an excuse not to delve into the language on your own. For this reason you should, from the outset, get into browsing through illustrated magazines and into listening to radio programs and/or prerecorded cassettes.

4.
In your browsing, do not get obsessed with words you don’t know or structures you don’t understand. Build comprehension on what you already know. Do not automatically reach for the dictionary if you encounter a word or two that you don’t understand. If the expression is important, it will reappear and explain itself; if it is not so important, it is no big loss to gloss over it.

5.
Do not miss noting down your impressions in your own words, with familiar expressions. Write in simple sentences; words you can’t think of at the time can be replaced by words from your own language.

6.
Do not be deterred from speaking by the fear of making mistakes. The flow of speech creates a chain reaction: the context will lead you to the right track.

7.
Do not forget a large number of filler expressions and sentence-launching phrases. It is great when you can break the ice with a few formulas that are always on hand and can help you over the initial embarrassment of beginning a conversation, such as “My French is kind of shaky” or “It’s been a while since I spoke Russian,” etc.

8.
Do not memorize any linguistic element (expression) outside of its context, partly because a word may have several different meanings: e.g., the English word comforter may refer to someone who is consoling another, or it can mean a knitted shawl, a quilt or eiderdown, or yet again a baby’s pacifier. In addition, it is good, right off the bat, to get used to the practice of leaving the vortex of meanings around the word in your own language alone and reaching out to its kin word in the new language or to the context you have most frequently encountered it in.

9.
Do not leave newly learned structures or expressions hanging in the air. Fix them in your memory by fitting them into different, new settings: into your sphere of interest, into the reality of your own life.

10.
Do not be shy of learning poems or songs by heart. Good diction plays a more significant role in speech performance than the mere articulation of individual sounds. Verses and melodies impose certain constraints. They set what sounds must be long and which ones must be short. The rhythm inherent in them guides speakers and helps them avoid the intonation traps of their native language.

Ben_Nielson Wrote:4.
In your browsing, do not get obsessed with words you don’t know or structures you don’t understand. Build comprehension on what you already know. Do not automatically reach for the dictionary if you encounter a word or two that you don’t understand. If the expression is important, it will reappear and explain itself; if it is not so important, it is no big loss to gloss over it.

Well, this is an advice you hear pretty often, but I think it depends on your level at the language. I'll try to give some examples of my personal experience.

Japanese
Currently, I know japanese elementary grammar, poor vocabulary and a few sentences that you come across with a hundred times while watching anime. In this case, every word that jumps out and I can catch creates an opportunity for me to learn something new. "Build comprehension on what you already know", but if you don't know anything...Then just look up at the dictionary!

English
Mine is said to be advanced (by people who can't speak, probably), but I still have to improve a lot, and I want to achieve native level. I've always followed this recommendation, and never bothered about checking words I don't know. These days I've been trying to proceed in a different way though. Maybe it's too early, and I surely need to read more, but it's been really productive.

Portuguese
Well, this is my first language. And when it comes to it, I think we all tend to be a little arrogant about it. I mean, we can guess the meaning by the context, and it feels a bit frustrating to depend on a dictionary. But I've been thinking, maybe it would be no bad idea to go for a change, like in the former situation.

Rule number IX is very important: Irish students of German I knew were very good at writing, but afraid of speaking, afraid of making mistakes. They had learn in a mostly written environment. I was asked by my teachers if I had studied with Berlitz, because of my confident speaking. I said no, I had lived in Germany and all my classmates were long term residents, none shy to talk either, and with amazing vocabularies.

Someone once told me that correcting others when they spoke is actually harmful, which I find odd, because my German girlfriend ( from which I took no advantage of to learn German, perils of being in love ) learnt Spanish with my relentless correcting, in record time. Maybe she could take criticism better than others...

As for living in Germany, I think it can be simulated with German Satellite TV and SW (or Internet ) radio, German flatmates, German girlfriend and German lessons. Here in Dublin there's plenty of all these to recreate the real experience. I don't know how well it'd work with Japanese. The ubiquitous written ads and signs would be a big loss, for sure.

J

Jeromin Wrote:Someone once told me that correcting others when they spoke is actually harmful, which I find odd, because my German girlfriend ( from which I took no advantage of to learn German, perils of being in love ) learnt Spanish with my relentless correcting, in record time. Maybe she could take criticism better than others...

At the really beginning stages, if you correct every mistake you will be stopping a person after every word they say. This of course makes them hate talking. Usually people make the same kind of mistake many times in a row, so perhaps choose the biggest mistakes to correct and leave the smaller ones. For example, tense use is usually very important, whereas using the wrong singular or plural isn't so much of a problem.

At the intermediate level it is perhaps okay to correct everything, and a good way to do it is to have the other person say the sentence back to you without explaining anything, just modelling. It takes quite a knack to do this so unless you have a long term language partner, such as your girlfriend, then it's not worth the bother trying to teach someone to do it. Anyway, here's an example.

Bad way to correct someone:

A - I goed to the park yesterday.
B - No, you shouldn't say that. The past tense of go isn't goed, it is went. Go has five forms in English, go, goes, going, went, gone.
A - Oh, sorry, sorry, I'm stupid. (*Goes and kills themselves*)

Good way to correct someone:

A - I goed to the park yesterday.
B - You went to the park yesterday? (Stressing the word 'went')
A - Yes, I went to the park yesterday and I saw a big, black dog....(etc.)

Why something is wrong is kind of irrelevant in the middle of the conversation. You can have long grammar analysis after you've finished your conversation. The idea is to correct someone without ruining the flow of the conversation with tangents and unrelated things. Also the second method is faster and shorter, not as much an interruption.

phauna Wrote:Good way to correct someone:

A - I goed to the park yesterday.
B - You went to the park yesterday? (Stressing the word 'went')
A - Yes, I went to the park yesterday and I saw a big, black dog....(etc.)

This is very true. At my school, our TAs are all studying long term for either linguistics or language acquisition (they're PhD students, so they're in it for the long haul) and this is how we are corrected these days.
Of course, at this stage, we are the "3rd Year" students, so we can already have full-on conversations with them, and often do (we have a conversation table every friday).

It fits in very naturally into the conversation, almost as if the teacher is listening and confirming they understand the story right. Not only that, but I always realize that what I said was wrong, and either subconsciously or consciously correct it from then on.
Very effective.

Yup, the key is to make it not even seem like you're correcting them.

I absolutely love it when people I'm talking to in Japanese do this. It doesn't make you feel stupid and is crazy beneficial. More often than not, the person knows the rule already just didn't think about it quickly enough in the flow of conversation.

Again, as the author noted, being corrected is pretty unlikely. Which sucks, but you basically do need a longterm language partner or a teacher for someone to correct you.