I’m interested in getting some feedback from fellow users of Lingq. Recently I’ve been reading aloud lessons and new words. I listen to the computer say the word or sentence and I read it out loud. I’ve found this surprisingly effective in my ability to comprehend the lesson, as it somehow seems to internalize the language better than passively listening.
I’m open to all kinds of approaches to learning languages and know there are many ways to skin a cat. I’m living with an English teacher than “never” uses translations and I found this hard to believe. He says he starts with TPR and then goes on to other teaching methods and according to him his students have had great results and have excellent grammar. He himself is from Iran and speaks excellent English, almost with no accent.
Just curious as to what other learning aids an independent user might be able to use. And of course I know eventually I need to find a Native tutor to speak with and help me learn German.
Oh, and by the way, he also claims to have “never” had an English speaking tutor to speak with and primarily used American media to learn English. I wonder what you guys think of that.
I have seen other claims by people who say they learned English from watching media. I have no reason to doubt your friend’s sincerity, but after watching lots of Russian movies over the past several months I’m very impressed if not incredulous. The exercise has improved my listening comprehension considerably, but there’s still a long way to go. Maybe it’s a matter of years vs. months. :-\
I saw a video on Youtube once by a French girl saying that she learned a lot of English by watching English movies with English subtitles. That seems reasonable. It’s hard/impossible find Russian subtitles for Russian movies. It’s relatively easier to find Russian subtitles for movies in other languages that are also dubbed into Russian, but unfortunately, the translations are usually not identical. There still might be some value there, however. I recently did watch a feature-length German movie dubbed into Russian with matching subtitles. I enjoyed it and was able to follow it much better than with just the dubbing. Learned a bit, too.
To your first question, yes, I sometimes read lessons aloud (quietly), and I think it does help. Whatever you find works for you, of course.
Whenever I am in a Lingq lesson, I always read aloud if possible. I find it useful because it makes it easier to identify words that I have difficulty pronouncing.
I read out loud a lot as well. I find after listening to the lessons a lot, I can speak with more ease because the only struggle is to move my mouth muscles and I already know what sounds to try and replicate.
I usually listen to the word on Forvo but I’ve been using the text to speech function on LingQ. It’s surprisingly accurate figuring verb stress is unpredictable in Russian.
My brother learnt English with video-games ! He used to play quite a lot of games during his childhood and he never skipped those parts when you just listen to the game and do not actually play it. He watched the games with out subtitles and now he is the one in the family with the least accent while speaking English.
As a non-native English-speaker, I can easily say that if one wants to learn a language with media it DOES take years. I learned English mostly via media (although the English-classes in school surely helped a lot) but it took some years but it does work. Once you get the hang of the language it’s a lot quicker though! I remember when I was around 13 years old and streamed american tv-shows without subtitles… I didn’t quite understand everything but I still watched it. I’m certain it helped me a lot!
I totally agree. There are umpteen number of language learning, vocabulary building as well as reading games available today, both offline and online. And they’re surprisingly effective, yielding good results too! Leave alone English; nowadays there are websites like these for instance - http://www.schoolofdragons.com/ - which have a plethora of science games based on kids’ favorite animation movies! Same is the case with math games too. Online video games are the ‘in-thing’ these days.
Yes, reading aloud is essential in the beginning in my opinion.
As for learning aids, I highly recommend Assimil – it’s actually built around you reading, listening, and repeating (well written) text of slowly increasing complexity. You can combine Assimil with Lingq – importing the lesson texts etc.
You can absolutely learn a language without a native tutor. The tutor can help in the beginning, but if you actually slog through past the intermediate level, a tutor becomes less and less useful, I think.
“Using Media” is a very general statement. Books and audiobooks, and podcasts are “media” and using those effectively can skyrocket you vocabulary and comprehension. But I’m guessing you mean movies and television and the answer there would be, it depends.
My experience: once you’re at a solid B2 level in a language, using media, movies, TV, whatever, basically means “fun exposure at a native level.” And really, I think after B2, a massive level of exposure like that can and will build your language skills because you have the right grammar and vocab base to get a good start. It just comes down to more vs. less effective exposure, but if you have the time, you can Netflix your way to fluency if that’s what you wanna do. I think reading books is faster at building vocab, but to each his own.
Reading alound can help a lot, as long as you enjoy it enough to keep it going. You can even consider recording yourself or have Google translator try to understand what you’re saying. Again, if you find those exercises enjoyable.
It’s not however essential. I remember that S. Kaufmann said in one of his videos that he doesn’t like it and doesn’t do it.
I myself do read aloud at times but not very often.
