Rdearman 2016-24 You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too.

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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Mon Apr 24, 2017 3:57 pm

reineke wrote:
rdearman wrote:I also noticed that Reineke only seems to watch films and post to this forum. Either that or doesn't sleep...

Not much to report. I should complete the 10k flashcard challenge in the next month or so assuming I keep doing it regularly, which is a big if.


Neither activity requires much mental effort. Reineke also does not waste time on piles of flashcards. Good luck with your Ianguage learning!

I like the fact you refer to yourself in the 3rd person. We are amused.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby Carmody » Mon Apr 24, 2017 8:32 pm

Apparently Carmody is the only one that finds language learning requires
mental effort
Oh my :D
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Sun Apr 30, 2017 1:40 pm

Not much of an update. I've been binge watching Star Trek in Italian for what seems like ages. After I discovered how to watch with Italian subs as well as audio I've been doing nothing but. I confess however on some really sticky difficult dialogue I rewind and switch to english subtitles to make sure I've understood. The good thing is these little digressions into English show that I've almost always understood correctly what was going on, although in a more vague way. I hesitate to use percentages, but I might have understood 70% before my little English digression.

So, after two months or so of watching all Italian Star Trek, I flipped over to watch Carabinieri which is a TV show I've no sub-titles for but have watched before. I remember watching all 7 seasons for the first super challenge and I started out not understanding anything! I watched a couple of episodes and I feel that I understand it all. Of course this isn't like English where I understand every word and every nuance of the expressions used. But I understand the plot and could easily explain it to someone else.

This shows me watching native content even 7 seasons of it without any real understanding is a waste. What I mean is that like when you read a book in another language you need to understand more than 90% of the words on a page before you're going to be able to flow along with reading. Like reading you need to gain some understanding (i+1 sort of thing) before watching will really be comprehensible.

A lot of Italian has passed under the bridge since I started that first SC, and I figure I wasn't much better than A2 then so difficult native content was mostly passing me by. I think watching a dubbed series which I've seen before (Star Trek), with audio and sub-titles has solidified the language in my brain enough to allow fast flowing native Italian to be processed and understood. So while watching Carabinieri I was able to pick out some words and think; Oh, I don't know that word I need to look it up. Whereas before it was all just a blur of sounds which didn't appear to have breaks between words! Before I was thinking; Oh, I think I know that word.

What a difference it makes the change from "I think I can identify a word I recognise" to "Oh, I need to look that word up because I don't know it". It means there was a ton of words which I did understand. Another interesting little thing for me was the fact that the words I didn't know, I had a good idea how to spell when I looked them up, and I could pronounce it well enough that Google translate understood what I was saying.

For my talk in Bratislava I'm giving a talk on using TV to help learn a language. (physician heal thyself?) I've more or less come to the conclusion that for someone who is in the A1-A2 range it is probably a waste of time to binge watch TV. But from B1+ it is better than anything else you could probably do. I've also decided that for someone A1-A2 TV with Anki is probably one of the better ways to get to B1+ in the first place.

I've looked at emk's experiment with Spanish and seriously considered doing something similar myself. I did start doing this with Finnish, but failed to do the supplementary exercises like studying grammar, etc. Mostly though being too lazy quickly shot that idea down. But I did think I'd like to experiment on others... bwahhahahhaha! :twisted:

I was thinking if I could get 5-11 people (I must point out I did a hour long diversion in looking at numbers required for statistical significance) and a corresponding set of people for a control group. I could do a program where I teach French to people only using Anki & TV, followed by binge watching TV against the control group who do night classes or something. Then test them at the end.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby NoManches » Sun Apr 30, 2017 1:56 pm

rdearman wrote:I've more or less come to the conclusion that for someone who is in the A1-A2 range it is probably a waste of time to binge watch TV. But from B1+ it is better than anything else you could probably do. I've also decided that for someone A1-A2 TV with Anki is probably one of the better ways to get to B1+ in the first place.



I've come to the same conclusion, especially since you started that thread on extensive use of television. I remember being in the A2+ range and watching a ~70 episode tv series and getting very little from it. In the last 6 months (as a B2+) I've been watching a lot of television and can really see a difference, especially with my retention of some vocabulary and improvements in listening comprehension.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby Brun Ugle » Sun Apr 30, 2017 2:11 pm

I'll be a guinea pig, assuming I can combine that with being an owl and a tortoise. When do we start? Not till after the Gathering, I hope. I've kind of wanted to try emk's subtitles and Anki thing, but it sounded a bit complicated for me as I'm not very technically inclined. However, if someone else were making the Anki deck, I could do it. I'd also be OK being in the control group, in which case, I'd probably use FSI and Assimil. Are you going to have some rules about how many hours per day we should do on average? Otherwise, you'd get widely different results with some people able to study for several hours every day and others barely managing thirty minutes.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Sun Apr 30, 2017 5:11 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:I'll be a guinea pig, assuming I can combine that with being an owl and a tortoise. When do we start? Not till after the Gathering, I hope. I've kind of wanted to try emk's subtitles and Anki thing, but it sounded a bit complicated for me as I'm not very technically inclined. However, if someone else were making the Anki deck, I could do it. I'd also be OK being in the control group, in which case, I'd probably use FSI and Assimil. Are you going to have some rules about how many hours per day we should do on average? Otherwise, you'd get widely different results with some people able to study for several hours every day and others barely managing thirty minutes.

(( I appear to have inadvertently given myself more work ))

I can do all the technical work, if I did one language, but I'd need at least three films which are "Public Domain". I think if I were to do French, then I could find some old movies which are public domain, and generate an anki deck. But the real problem would be assessment of the subjects. So for example everyone would need to get an assessment like a DELF B1 examination after X months. That would be the only way to do a study properly. The cost in the UK for a DELF B1 is £90. The only way around this is to have each participant given an uncertified evaluation perhaps by a French native.

I'm using French here only to carry on with the example, but it could be any language really. So I'll just speculate how my non-existent course would run.

With careful selection (from the air) of the time scale, lets call it 3 months.

Month One:
  1. 1st anki deck with ~500 cards, 15 new cards per day.
  2. Watch the film which the deck is based once per week.
  3. Listen to the ripped dialogue on mp3 player at every opportunity.
  4. L-R (L1 audio, L2 text) Week 1 & 2 (Jules Verne, Around the world in 80 days)
  5. L-R (L2 audio & text) Week 2 & 4 (Jules Verne, Around the world in 80 days)
  6. User created vocabulary deck based on words they've looked up.
  7. Watch the second months film on the last day of this month.

Month Two:
  1. 2nd anki deck with ~500 cards, 15 new cards per day. Reviews 1st deck.
  2. Watch the film which the 2nd deck is based once per week. Watch 1st month film one more time.
  3. Listen to the ripped dialogue on mp3 player at every opportunity.
  4. L-R (L2 audio & text) Week 2 & 4 (Jules Verne, 20,000 leagues under the sea)
  5. TV series of choice, 45-90 minutes per day (L2 audio & subtitles)
  6. User created vocabulary deck based on words they've looked up.
  7. Watch the third months film on the last day of this month.

Month Three:
  1. 3rd anki deck with ~500 cards, 15 new cards per day. Reviews 1st & 2nd deck.
  2. Watch the film which the 2nd deck is based once per week. Watch 1st & 2nd month film one more time.
  3. L-R (L2 audio & text) Week 2 & 4 (Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth)
  4. TV series of choice, 90-180 minutes per day (L2 audio & subtitles)
  5. User created vocabulary deck based on words they've looked up.

I decided on Jules Verne because they are all available on Librivox with text and audio.

Having reviewed the above, I'm now thinking 6 months is better, with the remaining 3 months being dedicated to binge watching and extensive book reading. Something like a target of 180 minutes TV every day, and 200 pages per month (250 words per page). Should you add a grammar book to this? Probably.

The real questions in my mind are:
  • Could you start this at A0?
  • What level would you get to in only 6 months time? B1 seems reasonable.
  • This is probably about 4-6 hours per day in the latter stages, would you get burned out?
  • Should a course or some kind of pronunciation drills be included?

The track ripping facility of emk's substudy would let you pull out tracks and create pronunciation or shadowing drills.

I could probably come up with another 5 people who'd be willing to participate if I made the offer at the gathering, but of course I'd have to have all the content by then! Possibly and interesting experiment for 2018.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby Snow » Sun Apr 30, 2017 5:54 pm

If everything technical will be provided beforehand, sign me up! French or Italian. I'm probably back to A1 in French, and back to A0 in Italian.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby Ani » Sun Apr 30, 2017 5:57 pm

rdearman wrote:I've more or less come to the conclusion that for someone who is in the A1-A2 range it is probably a waste of time to binge watch TV. But from B1+ it is better than anything else you could probably do. I've also decided that for someone A1-A2 TV with Anki is probably one of the better ways to get to B1+ in the first place.


You seem not to be considering TV designed for young children, and using different shows in the manner of graded readers. You can undoubtedly learn vocabulary and grammar structures from TroTro at A1 level. Though maybe not everyone can handle 100 hours of cartoons for 2 year olds before moving to 100 hours of cartoons for 4 year olds, then 6 year olds....
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby Brun Ugle » Sun Apr 30, 2017 6:26 pm

I think 4-6 hours per day is going to be tough. Most of us are already studying other languages and a lot of people waste a lot of time on silly stuff like work, school, family and other nonsense. So I think you might have trouble finding people who will be able to keep up that level of time commitment for 6 months. As for pronunciation, I always include it, but this is your experiment. You could have various groups using various techniques and test them all. If you made the experiment last one year and got people from the Gathering, you could test them again at the next Gathering. One of the French teachers attending might be willing to help. There are lots of possibilities.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Sun Apr 30, 2017 7:45 pm

Ani wrote:
rdearman wrote:I've more or less come to the conclusion that for someone who is in the A1-A2 range it is probably a waste of time to binge watch TV. But from B1+ it is better than anything else you could probably do. I've also decided that for someone A1-A2 TV with Anki is probably one of the better ways to get to B1+ in the first place.


You seem not to be considering TV designed for young children, and using different shows in the manner of graded readers. You can undoubtedly learn vocabulary and grammar structures from TroTro at A1 level. Though maybe not everyone can handle 100 hours of cartoons for 2 year olds before moving to 100 hours of cartoons for 4 year olds, then 6 year olds....

I did about 5 hours of TroTro and I was almost suicidal. :lol: Besides, start as you mean to go on right?

Snow wrote:If everything technical will be provided beforehand, sign me up! French or Italian. I'm probably back to A1 in French, and back to A0 in Italian.

Well that would be the idea. The problem is the initial content has to be Public Domain, because I don't want to violate copyright laws. Or I'd have to find someway to let the user generate the content. With emk's substudy program I probably could create a website that would allow the user to upload a mkv video, generate the appropriate files for the user and then delete everything. That would mean the user would be responsible for ensuring copyright.

Brun Ugle wrote:I think 4-6 hours per day is going to be tough. Most of us are already studying other languages and a lot of people waste a lot of time on silly stuff like work, school, family and other nonsense. So I think you might have trouble finding people who will be able to keep up that level of time commitment for 6 months. As for pronunciation, I always include it, but this is your experiment. You could have various groups using various techniques and test them all. If you made the experiment last one year and got people from the Gathering, you could test them again at the next Gathering. One of the French teachers attending might be willing to help. There are lots of possibilities.


That is a great idea. If I found volunteers this year who would be willing to do it, then it would probably be more like 10 months and a couple of hours per day instead of 4. Or perhaps a better way is to still have the TV hours the same, but given as a week. So for example; 180 minutes per day = 1260 minutes. So perhaps the goal is 1000 minutes per week, which would mean you could watch one show a night and binge watch at the weekend the remainder.

But I would also need a "control group" and with my luck the control group would turn out to be, Iversen, Serpent, Tarvos, Richard Simcott, and Judith Meyer. :lol:

I did find a lot of films listed as public domain on the Internet Archive, and they have subtitles for lots of languages, but not French. Although this could be overcome with a quick pass of the English srt file through google translate and the assistance of a French speaker to tidy them up. The Italians weren't as prolific with films, so that might be more difficult.

hummm....
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