s_allard wrote:Since I’m so late to the party, I will admit that I’ve had great difficulty wrapping my head around some of the arguments couched here in rather weighty prose. To me much of this arguing is rather futile; what counts is results. If a method works for you, then it is good and you should keep using it. If it doesn’t work for you, discard it and move on.
I have my own opinion about the specific difficulties of adults learning a language outside of an immersion setting and notably the problem of interference with the learner's native language. But I can’t be bothered arguing with Pablo, Steve Kaufman or anybody else about the whole thing ; I prefer to watch the excellent Dreaming Spanish or Easy German videos on Youtube.
Frankly, I don’t think I even have a specific method. I use a bunch of tools and techniques that I have cobbled together over the years. It’s a hodgepodge of some formal grammar study, some SRS with bits of paper and ANKI, lots of enjoyable input, extensive use of dictionaries and lots of interaction and correction with tutors. I’m totally happy with the results.
I’ve said it many times in this forum ; we are living in a golden age of foreign language learning where with just a few clicks we can hear and see content in countless languages. Plus we can actually speak to people in all these languages. The only thing lacking is the ability to be teleported to various countries for some real immersion.
I think if we spent less time arguing over methods and more time studying our target languages, in whatever manner that we like, we would make real progress.
I think every poster but one in this thread is saying something very close to what you're saying. Unfortunately, Pablo from Dreaming Spanish, and ALG before him, would say that every one of your activities, other than input and crosstalk, are not only useless, but actually harmful to your learning progress. If you talk with a tutor before you can understand the language well, you'll have bad pronunciation. If you use Anki instead of input to learn vocabulary, you'll have a less intuitive and less accurate knowledge of words. Etc.
I personally think people should do whatever they want and whatever works for them. That's not what the topic of this thread is though. The topic of this thread is about someone who believes what you're doing is foolish and objectively wrong. Just like in politics and religion, it's hard to come in and say we should respect all beliefs when the discussion includes someone whose true belief is that everyone else is going to hell because they don't believe exactly what he does.