Learn a language faster (article)

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Learn a language faster (article)

Postby rdearman » Tue May 30, 2023 5:40 pm

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Re: Learn a language faster (article)

Postby Le Baron » Tue May 30, 2023 6:32 pm

Best bits:

What children might have, which adults lack, is less fear. They tend to care only if they are right and push forward with their learning, unbothered.
Adults tend to mull over every mistake (So if you learn anything from this story, it should be this: being courageous with your learning can yield better results).
In other words, relinquishing fear is how to learn a language faster.

I agree. Perfectionism is death to the language learner.
In what context do you hope to use this language? Is it for travel and day-to-day conversations, or are you looking to develop a more business or technical vocabulary?

This is useful for those who might match the wrong type of resources to their goals.
“A circumstantial-bilingual speaker is someone who, for example, immigrates to a new country and doesn’t speak the language, and for whom learning that language becomes a sink-or-swim issue...”

“Circumstantial learners tend to pick up the language faster because they have to.”

Even though some still won't learn it, this is broadly true. And it can be extended to anyone motivated enough who isn't in the country. If e.g. you are in a group which reads Japanese comics and watches TV and everyone is learning, you also need to learn to take part, so you tend to put your all into it and learn a lot of things by shared usage and examples. Need can be converted into motivation.

The list of 'reasons why you should learn a language...' at the start can be disregarded though. Many of them are dubious.
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Re: Learn a language faster (article)

Postby fromaalborg1 » Tue May 30, 2023 6:46 pm

"3. Diglot Weave method
The Diglot Weave method is a great way to help you with your vocabulary.

It involves inserting words from a foreign language into a sentence in a language you already know. "

Does anyone use this method?
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Re: Learn a language faster (article)

Postby Le Baron » Tue May 30, 2023 6:47 pm

fromaalborg1 wrote:"3. Diglot Weave method
[...]
Does anyone use this method?

No. Well I don't anyway.
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Re: Learn a language faster (article)

Postby rdearman » Tue May 30, 2023 7:07 pm

fromaalborg1 wrote:"3. Diglot Weave method
The Diglot Weave method is a great way to help you with your vocabulary.

It involves inserting words from a foreign language into a sentence in a language you already know. "

Does anyone use this method?

That bit interested me too.
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Re: Learn a language faster (article)

Postby jimmy » Tue May 30, 2023 7:27 pm

I did not read the article but I do not believe ... :)
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Re: Learn a language faster (article)

Postby tastyonions » Tue May 30, 2023 7:34 pm

I remember there being a thread or two about that "diglot weave" idea on HTLAL years ago but I don't remember anyone saying they actually used it.

Isn't there a book or book series that starts out in English and gradually transitions into Spanish?
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Re: Learn a language faster (article)

Postby DaveAgain » Tue May 30, 2023 7:37 pm

fromaalborg1 wrote:"3. Diglot Weave method
The Diglot Weave method is a great way to help you with your vocabulary.

It involves inserting words from a foreign language into a sentence in a language you already know. "

Does anyone use this method?
I think someone mentioned doing this with diary entries, using English when they couldn't immediately come up with the L2 word.
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Re: Learn a language faster (article)

Postby AndyMeg » Tue May 30, 2023 8:01 pm

The book "My Fisrt 500 Korean Words" from "Talk To Me In Korean" seems to try to do something along the lines of the Diglot Weave method:

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Re: Learn a language faster (article)

Postby Cainntear » Tue May 30, 2023 8:57 pm

My first impression of the article was that it was fluff so generic that it was probably written by ChatGPT... but then I saw a bunch of links, which suggested it wasn't ChatGPT. Or rather, that it wasn't all ChatGPT. There's a massive problem of time-sink articles being churned out with the aid of AIs and minimal thought. This doesn't show more than minimal thought.

One of the links is to a study, but it's surrounded by quotes that have been ripped from the New York Times without attribution (Do Children Soak Up Language Like Sponges?, Lindsay Paterson, April 2020) The section that is largely made up of ripped quotes ends with totally made up stuff that doesn't appear in either the NYT article or the linked research:
lazy hack author wrote:What children might have, which adults lack, is less fear. They tend to care only if they are right and push forward with their learning, unbothered.

Adults tend to mull over every mistake (So if you learn anything from this story, it should be this: being courageous with your learning can yield better results).

In other words, relinquishing fear is how to learn a language faster.

The paper is not about that at all -- it instead challenges the received wisdom that primary kids don't benefit from explicit L2 instruction, which is a totally different point.

Hell, the study found that adults learned faster than kids anyway, so I have really got no idea where all the stuff about kids having less fear appeared from.

The article also appears to have ripped this article... or possibly this article... or possibly this article... or [cont. ad nauseam]...
Notice that they all have the same weird thing of making the same paraphrase: “Spaced repetition…[is] extraordinarily efficient,” and that when I say the same paraphrase, that includes the lack of a space between the elipsis and the open brace before [is]. Stylistically, that's an error, so it's noteworthy that lots of places have done it. The author of the article this thread is about has gone further and tried to hide her plagiarism by turning what is quoted as being one paragraph into two paragraphs. At it's best, it's a failure to quote; at it's worst it's a deliberate attempt to hide plagiarism that was bloody stupid in that it actually ended up highlighting the plagiarism.


Did I spend far too much time on this article? Perhaps... but I did so in order to be able to give the following advice with some level of credibility (and in order to do my whole plagiarism detector schtick in order to practice a useful professional skill):

Do not waste your time reading this article: it is by-the-numbers garbage and doesn't offer anything of any value whatsoever.
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