Kaufmann about learning methods: "I realized that most things work

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ASEAN
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Re: Kaufmann about learning methods: "I realized that most things work

Postby ASEAN » Thu Aug 15, 2019 1:26 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Thinking now about taking up Japanese (though Mandarin is not yet completely out of the picture, but not both at once!), the few books that I have looked at talk about the need to learn grammar. But the thought of plodding through a grammar book shivers my timbers. I would rather walk across a lake of burning fire than trudge through yet another grammar book. Though I do find Kaufmann's idea of using a brief grammar acceptable, assuming no other way exists.


A few people have reported learning Japanese without studying grammar.

https://www.quora.com/In-a-nutshell-wha ... e-learning

Edit: I just remembered that Steve Kaufmann did an interview with Matt who learned Japanese with the All Japanese All The Time method and Mass Immersion. https://youtu.be/sgjPByUamFQ
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Re: Kaufmann about learning methods: "I realized that most things work

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Thu Aug 15, 2019 11:59 pm

ASEAN wrote:
MorkTheFiddle wrote:Thinking now about taking up Japanese (though Mandarin is not yet completely out of the picture, but not both at once!), the few books that I have looked at talk about the need to learn grammar. But the thought of plodding through a grammar book shivers my timbers. I would rather walk across a lake of burning fire than trudge through yet another grammar book. Though I do find Kaufmann's idea of using a brief grammar acceptable, assuming no other way exists.


A few people have reported learning Japanese without studying grammar.

https://www.quora.com/In-a-nutshell-wha ... e-learning

Edit: I just remembered that Steve Kaufmann did an interview with Matt who learned Japanese with the All Japanese All The Time method and Mass Immersion. https://youtu.be/sgjPByUamFQ

Thanks for the useful references. Matt is full of boundless energy, some of which I wish I could borrow. :)
And I am familiar with AJATT and the methods espoused there. I did not know or had forgotten about the enjoinder to use Remembering the Kana.
As for me, for now, what interests me about Japanese are the elegance of the written symbols, the haiku, and the works of Haruki Murakami. And I am going to use Kató Lomb's method of reading the dictionary to familize myself with the script as well as adopt the AJATT method of listening only to real, normally spoken Japanese (even if I don't understand it at first). And sooner rather than later I will start putting some haiku into LWT for study.
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Re: Kaufmann about learning methods: "I realized that most things work

Postby Saim » Fri Aug 16, 2019 10:44 am

ASEAN wrote:Edit: I just remembered that Steve Kaufmann did an interview with Matt who learned Japanese with the All Japanese All The Time method and Mass Immersion. https://youtu.be/sgjPByUamFQ


Keep in mind that Matt already had notions of Japanese before he started applying AJATT and actually does recommend skimming through a grammar book in the early stages of study, and even memorising isolated vocabulary from a beginner’s textbooks as a way for absolute beginners to break into the language.
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Re: Kaufmann about learning methods: "I realized that most things work

Postby Cainntear » Sun Aug 18, 2019 12:12 am

Iversen wrote:I have just read this thread through once more, and I have tried to think of a way to summarize the difference between the stance of Cainntear and mine, and now I think I have found it: for me illustrating a grammatical construction can definitely be reason enough to construct and use a sentence,

In principle, I'm OK with that, and it's not necessarily a difference between us.
It is not important whether the sentences correspond to the reality or not,

Sentences don't have to correspond completely to reality for me. The "I am English", "I am American" thing bugs me not simply because it's not true, but because there's a whole lot of identity issues involved in it for me. As a Scottish person, I'm often referred to as English, and there's a whole mess of imposed identity behind it, so I don't want to say it as an isolated sentence.

I can say it in the context of a role-play (theoretically), because then it's clear they're not my words.

I just don't want a teacher to tell me what to do,

...and yet you'd presumably be happy for a teacher to tell you to construct a use a sentence to illustrate a grammatical construction, so I'd argue that it comes back to the point I made above:
and I particularly loath being ORDERED to cooperate with others in such uncertain situations where I still struggle to understand and internalize something.

There is no clear point to the exercise.
I like role-play in theory, but I normally find myself hating it in practice.

At early stages, you simply don't have the range of language to make a genuine choice of what to say -- generally either comes down to parrot-a-phrase-and-pick-a-noun or mumble-some-Tarzan-speak.

It's not the lack of choice per se that bugs me, but it's the fact that I'm essentially expected to do more or less a particular thing without being explicitly told what's expected of me. It's justified on the grounds that if we were told what to do, it's not spontaneous speech, and this only bugs me more, because there's nothing particularly spontaneous about picking from the set menu of the current unit's phrases.

This sort of false role-play is a horrible head-twister because I have to think about multiple things simultaneously:
  • What I could try to say in this situation.
  • What I know how to say in this situation.
  • What the teacher's expecting me to say.
  • What we're supposed to be practising.
  • What the other person/people in the role-play will understand.
That's a lot of cognitive load, and it's hugely frustrating. But crucially, that last one for me is the real killer -- the role-play often actively militates against me using what I know in the language, because it's intrinsic to the activity that I have to be understood by people who don't understand the language. Which makes the whole exercise pretty pointless.

But doing experiments for the sole sake of training mechanisms doesn't seem to be acceptable at all to Cainntear.

As I said above, that's not my view. But now that you've said that, surely role-plays as used in classrooms are "experiments for the sole sake of training mechanisms"...? Everything in teaching is, at its core.
And then it doesn't matter whether there are others around him or not, or whether there is supposed to be some abstract goal or not.

It doesn't matter whether there is an abstract goal -- it needs a concrete goal, and it needs to fulfill that goal, even if only partially.
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Re: Kaufmann about learning methods: "I realized that most things work

Postby Kraut » Sun Aug 18, 2019 12:24 am

Kaufmann in a recent interview
--------
How polyglots learn languages (with Steve Kaufmann)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YpvlPbzgnM

In this interview I speak to Steve Kaufmann, a well-known polyglot who at the age of 73 has learnt 20 different languages. We talk about language learning, making mistakes, and why you should do the hard work to learn Englis


full interview

https://soundcloud.com/canguroenglish/h ... e-kaufmann
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Re: Kaufmann about learning methods: "I realized that most things work

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Aug 19, 2019 5:47 am

OR ....

Most things don't nothing works.

Any method used in isolation is basically useless to teach the language in depth. Duolingo, Anki, Goldlists, Pimsleur, classes, each alone will not teach you the mastery of a language.

What effective language learners do, more or less well, is identify weaknesses and adjust to address those weaknesses. And, like Kaufmann says, they have fun with it. They move on, they mix things up... they add resources and interactions...

And that's the battle - having a sense of accomplishment while dealing with the emotional load of "I'm not good at this".

(and once again, my goals aren't necessarily the same as Caintear's or Serpent's or Iversen's or any one specific person.

I actually like to engage with my boulanger and ask for 3 croissants (he gives out an extra one free) and then we talk about travel, the car I've rented and when he's going back to Germany, and how his cousin is...)
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