How to properly do L-R method, any help for my attempt appreciated.

[Biofacticity]

Hi everyone, I want to properly test the L-R method, Ive watched Dearman's video presentation on it, read most of the thread here, and back on the old forums. I have some questions though in terms of how I prepare myself to get better results.

Some background, I have been trying to learn German last year for a couple of weeks until I got into a job where speaking German wasn't a prerequisite (before I had to obtain a B1 certificate in order to get the job where I wanted to work, but all that was not necessary after I started my current job). And I stopped learning German for most of this year, until last month, I was mostly doing SRS with ANKI, and a little bit of basic grammar ( I have covered everything for A1).

https://www.jonkenpo.net/method-listening-reading/ I think this guy's article summarizes the method really well.

The problem is I don't understand what is the purpose of parallel text if the steps never mention anything about parallel texts. Are they necessary and how to use the parallel texts if the original instructions rely on not having parallel bilingual pages of long books.

In my case I want to try and do it with Game of Thrones. The book is 650 pages (first part) and the the audio is 19hours long. It might be the wrong book to attempt something like this, but you can make some suggestions (though Ill probably have to do step 1 first, since I haven't read that many novels, let alone reread.)

I have free days on 9,10,11,12th of December, by that point I want to have Step 2 finished, and be read for Step 3. As far as I understand it, in Step 2 it's not necessary to devote huge amount of time in one session, though I can still attempt, 3-4 hours per day.

Any suggestions and ideas are welcome.

[orlandohill]

I was similarly enthusiastic about L-R. These days, I think there are even more effective methods, though I still like the general idea of using translations to make listening more comprehensible.

To my mind there is L-R the technique (listening to L2 while reading in L1), and L-R the learning system as a whole. L-R the learning system was poorly described by the original author. If you read the description of how they learned Japanese, the learning system becomes a little more clear.

http://www.jonkenpo.net/method-listenin ... -japanese/

Some tips:

Parallel texts. For some languages they aren't necessary, just a nice to have. I think the original author sometimes looks at written L2 words during stage 3 as a memory aid, and uses a mouse-over dictionary to look up the occasional word definition.

Ear training. Make sure you understand the phonology of L2, and can distinguish each of the phonemes, including how they differ from your other languages.

Graded input. Start with the easiest texts you can enjoy rereading. I'm sure you'll have plenty of options for German.

Bootstrap comprehension with extensive beginner material. Have a look at how Ryan Smallwood uses audio from the FSI courses.

Intensive/Extensive. Shift the ratio of intensive and extensive listening as your comprehension increases. The end goal is to be able to understand the entire spoken text, not to get through a certain number of hours of audio.

[Iversen]

I was on HTLAL when Siomotteikiru published the original article about the L-R method in June 2007, and there was a lot of discussion about it back then. I have not found the original article, but somewhere on my computer I think I have a copy of it and maybe even a link, but I have not had time to dig through my archives yet. There was also a page somewhere that summarized Sio's collected works, and maybe it could still be found. As I remember it, the most original idea was that you should listen for hours while following along in a transcription, but I also remember that doing the same thing with a reasonably loyal and complete translation was part of the game (ie. more than just looking a few words up). However since then others, including rDearman, have tried to explain how it functions, and they may have understood the concept differently.

I remember that I actually tried L-R on a few incomprehensible sources to which I could find a transcription, and yes - intonation and a few loanwards made it possible to tag along, but I didn't do it for hours, and I really didn't learn anything much. The problems involved in finding a spoken version, a transcription AND a translation into something less incomprehensible seemed to me to be insurmountable - especially since I prefer non-fiction - so I didn't follow up on the experiments.

That being said: I have been an ardent supporter of the use of bilingual texts (even before the L-R method was published), but I use it on shorter texts which I study intensively - and then I add longer texts for extensive consumption when I already more or less can read the language in question (which is squarely against Sio's ideas where you should do it from zero). As for listening while reading a transcription or translation: in principle subtitling should represent the solution to that need, but those on TV are mostly shortened and mangled. Instead it has become easier to produce or find subtitles to sources on the internet, but I have not really got that thing going for myself. I do however believe that it would be beneficial.

So my main grievance against LR is that it's hard to find all three versions of anything interesting (and long enough), and I would prefer to use the listening exercises at a point where I already have learnt the basics of the target language.

EDIT: found it - why walk when you can crawl?

Quote:
The order ought to be EXACTLY as follows:
What you do:
1. you read the translation
because you only remember well what you understand and what you feel is "yours" psychologically

2. you listen to the recording and look at the written text at the same time,
because the flow of speech has no boundaries between words and the written text does, you will be able to separate each word in the speech flow
and you will get used to the speed of talking of native speakers - at first it seems incredibly fast

3. you look at the translation and listen to the text at the same time, from the beginning to the end of a story, usually three times is enough to understand almost everything
This is the most important thing in the method, it is right AT THIS POINT that proper learning takes place.
If you’re in a position to do it right from the start, you can skip 1. and 2.

4. now you can concentrate on SPEAKING: you repeat after the recording, you do it as many times as necessary to become fluent
Of course, first you have to know how to pronounce the sounds of the language you’re learning. How to teach yourself the correct pronunciation is a different matter, here I will only mention the importance of it.

5. you translate the text from your own language into the language you’re learning
you can do the translation both orally and in writing, that’s why the written texts should be placed in vertical columns side by side: you can cover one side and check using the other one.

And last but not least: conversing is not learning, it is USING a language, you will NEVER be able to say more than you already know.

[Cainntear]

I'm always very wary of the term "method". When I was first studying to become a teacher, there was discussion in one of my sources[*] about the term "method" vs "approach". [* Not sure which, I'm afraid.] It was emphasised that "method" was very different from "methodology", in as much as it added very, very specific stuff to it. The problem is that a lot of people on the internet want to promote their own ideas to an absolute truth, and therefore attempt to present a "method" as opposed to discussing a learning approach or even a single technique. Thankfully, the modern internet has pulled that tendency away from forums by inviting them to become "social media influencers"!!

I was on HTLAL when Siomotteikiru published the original article about the L-R method in June 2007, and there was a lot of discussion about it back then.

Can't remember anything about Siomotteikiru, but the name looks familiar. I don't know what I was saying at the time, but I imagine I must have been pretty wound up by the absolutism of the use of the term "method" and the rigidity of the presentation, and probably got very snippy about it[/quote]

The order ought to be EXACTLY as follows:

Absolutism.

What you do:
1. you read the translation
because you only remember well what you understand and what you feel is "yours" psychologically

Do you "understand" some when you know what it means before you hear it?

2. you listen to the recording and look at the written text at the same time,
because the flow of speech has no boundaries between words and the written text does, you will be able to separate each word in the speech flow
and you will get used to the speed of talking of native speakers - at first it seems incredibly fast

Note the absolute change of focus here. Now we're not talking about understanding, but about segmentation. Clearly that's a very important thing, but surely it's something that's worthy of an independent focus?

3. you look at the translation and listen to the text at the same time, from the beginning to the end of a story, usually three times is enough to understand almost everything
This is the most important thing in the method, it is right AT THIS POINT that proper learning takes place.
If you’re in a position to do it right from the start, you can skip 1. and 2.

If stage 2 isn't learning, does that mean that he doesn't think that doing simultaneous reading and listening doesn't develop a skill/habit for segmentation of spoken sentences; or is he saying that that skill/habit itself isn't a genuine part of language, hence learning the skill isn't part of learning language...?

Secondly, how do you read a translation while listening? There is only one "channel" in the brain for processing language, and if you push one thing into it, you block out other input. I mean, can anyone here say that they can fully process two people speaking at once? Can you hold down a conversation while reading a newspaper?

For me, it's a conscious fight for me to listen to the audio dialogue while reading subtitles (irrespective of any differences between them) as I always hone into the written form and zone out of the spoken. Even if I could successfully put in the effort to read English while also listening to my target language, there would still be situations where word order would mess with my head.

Here's some Google Translate sentences to show my point:
I want to fly a helicopter to the big lake by the mountain
Ich möchte mit dem Helikopter zum großen See am Berg fliegen
Quiero volar en helicóptero al gran lago junto a la montaña.
main pahaad ke paas sthit badee jheel tak heleekoptar se jaana chaahata hoon

Then we've got the difference in idiom. We "fly" helicopters in English and "fliegen" or "volar" in German or Spanish, but GT is translating it as "go by helicopter". It's all well and good to translate the Hindi to English as "go by helicopter" as that's pretty natural. But what about "mit dem Helikopter"? Do we translate the "mit" as "with" so that we're presenting the nature of the idiom through hypertranslation or do we simply avoid drawing attention to the fact that there's an idiomatic phrase there at all?

Then the vagueness gets deeper:

4. now you can concentrate on SPEAKING: you repeat after the recording, you do it as many times as necessary to become fluent
Of course, first you have to know how to pronounce the sounds of the language you’re learning. How to teach yourself the correct pronunciation is a different matter, here I will only mention the importance of it.

What is "fluent" here? I mean, he can't be using it the same as me, because I don't consider successful parroting to be "fluent" at all.

Q: How many times do you do it?
A: As many times as is necessary to achieve something that I have not described (probably because I am incapable of doing so)

5. you translate the text from your own language into the language you’re learning
you can do the translation both orally and in writing, that’s why the written texts should be placed in vertical columns side by side: you can cover one side and check using the other one.

How can you translate a text that you have both heard and read in its original language back into its original language from a translation into your own language?
I mean, I think this answers my question about whether the translation should be hyperliteral with a clear "no!" because a hyperliteral translation is pretty trivial to translate.

And last but not least: conversing is not learning, it is USING a language, you will NEVER be able to say more than you already know.

Which superficially seems fair enough, but when it comes down to it, it only holds up under a very pedantic definition of learning.

Merrill Swain's response to Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis was essentially to say that speech is the only way you have to test your own hypothesis about the rules of a language: you believe (whether consciously or otherwise) that a particular combination of sounds presents a particular idea; you make that particular combination of sounds; the person you are speaking to either (a) acts in a way that suggests understanding or (b) acts in a way that demonstrates they have misunderstood or (c) acts in a way that shows total failure to understand. i.e. (a) you've said what you intended; (b) you've said something you didn't intend or (c) you haven't really said anything.

On top of that, learners at least an intermediate level will also often find ourselves unaware that we don't know how to say something. We catch ourselves out by opening our mouths with the intention of expressing an idea, only to be struck dumb by not actually knowing how to express it.

So going back to the pedantic definition of learning, there's an argument that speaking isn't learning per se, but merely a matter of identifying what we need to learn; but even if that's not learning, it's still an integral part of the learning process, so really: who cares whether it's learning or not?


So this goes back to my biggest concern about "methods" presented by ployglots "speaking from experience": yes, that's what they do now, and they might genuinely believe it when they say "I wish I'd known this when I started", but I simply cannot believe they would have succeeded, because they haven't actually described what they really do while practicing the technique.

A successful polyglot has already learned load of languages, and has an intuitive understanding of the sort of mental processes they need to engage in to be successful, and they will do all these things naturally... so naturally that they don't appreciate that it's a conditioned, learned response gained over years of practice.

They genuinely believe that if another person does the same superficial activity as them, they will automatically engage the same mental processes as them.

This is not the case.

So I *think* that when I tried to discuss particular details, I would always get shot down with people saying that what I was talking about was different and not "the L-R method" at all, because that was whatever the person who defined it arbitrarily said it was.


Anyway... enough of a rant.

Hi everyone, I want to properly test the L-R method, Ive watched Dearman's video presentation on it, read most of the thread here, and back on the old forums. I have some questions though in terms of how I prepare myself to get better results.
...
Any suggestions and ideas are welcome.

I guess what I'm saying is that "the L-R method" isn't something that's been investigated by statistical trial and error. It is one thing that is defined in a very woolly way and trying to decipher what the original author meant specifically when the author isn't using public forums anymore is a fools errand and a waste of time. Perhaps better to just talk about what helps when using books and audiobooks together to learn...

[orlandohill]

One more tip. Look after your hearing. Use over-ear headphones or computer speakers, not in-ear headphones. Use good quality recordings so you don't need to have the volume too loud.

Ultimately, if you can spare those four days, then I'd say go for it. You'll learn from the experience, and know whether you want to continue using the techniques.

Twelve years ago, I did four days of stage 3 L-R of the Harry Potter series, 6.5-7.5 hours per day. That experience was enough to prove to myself that the basic technique works.

I did two hours of stage 2 before that. For the first two hours of stage 3, I went paragraph by paragraph. That was enough that, if I lost my place in the text, I could normally listen to the audio and find where the narrator was up to in the text, without needing to stop.

Looking up the Lexile score of A Game of Thrones, I see that it's lower than the first couple of Harry Potter books, so it's probably not such a bad choice.

[Iversen]

I'm not terribly bothered by using the word "method" about L-R. After all the L-R thing covers more than one technique, and that's my main criterion. And Siomotteikiru may be somewhat pushy (the article starts out declaring that he or she doesn't understand why even clever people can't learn languages properly , and here comes the one and only way to do it. I'm relatively immune to that because I know that I can learn languages, and I never follow instructions to the letter - especially not if they seem hyped. But there are some interesting ideas behind L-R, including listening to things whose meaning you only just have learnt - and made yours! - from a translation. I don't know whether they work, but they are interesting - and can potentially be tested.

Secondly, how do you read a translation while listening? There is only one "channel" in the brain for processing language, and if you push one thing into it, you block out other input. I mean, can anyone here say that they can fully process two people speaking at once? Can you hold down a conversation while reading a newspaper?

No! and (to some extent) yes.

I can't stand listening to two voices speaking at the same time (which is why I avoid watching Anglophone documentaries on German TV stations - they dub them in German without blotting out the original speakers ). Films may fare better because the Germans kill the original voices completely there - but I don't watch films. On the other hand it doesn't bother me to read subtitles while I listen to the corresponding sound from the TV or work on my computer (that's exactly what I'm doing now). The key is the length of the time slices and one's ability to read fast. I just switched on the sound on my TV to test this, and I may lose one or two random words every time a new subtitle pops up, but I can still hang on to the speech. And I have just watched silent Norwegian rescue people with subtitles while speaking to my sister on phone. That was not a problem.

now you can concentrate on SPEAKING: you repeat after the recording, you do it as many times as necessary to become fluent.Of course, first you have to know how to pronounce the sounds of the language you’re learning. How to teach yourself the correct pronunciation is a different matter, here I will only mention the importance of it.

This IS parroting, but at least we now get the first hint that L-R shouldn't be the first thing you do in a language - I would also propose learning the basic vocabulary and pronunciation and some grammar first. Those who want to learn a language from ground zero should start with "please" and "where is the toilet" rather than a whole novel. But maybe an hourlong bombardment will function at a later stage.. maybe. And I agree with Cainntear that fluency doesn't come from parroting, and maybe even translating back to the original isn't enough - but at least Siomotteikio didn't expect the real learning to occur before the translation phase. I would however say that hyperliteral translations are good precisely because they are easy to translate back to the original.

And last but not least: conversing is not learning, it is USING a language, you will NEVER be able to say more than you already know.

Merrill Swain's response to Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis was essentially to say that speech is the only way you have to test your own hypothesis about the rules of a language: (...)
On top of that, learners at least an intermediate level will also often find ourselves unaware that we don't know how to say something.

So true .. and you have to try to express yourself to discover the shallowness of your skills. I have often repeated that extensive production (in speech or writing) isn't learning - it's training things you already have learned. But I have to admit that there is one thing you can learn, namely that your skills still aren't at the level you have hoped. But whether the empty gaze from a native interlocutor is precise enough to tell you what exactly to correct is another question. Quite generally I would accept that conversations can (or should) be an integral part of the learning process, but at least for my own part it's not where I get the bulk of my knowledge about a language. - I get that from my studies. And that's also how I interpret the last sentence in the quote.

[kundalini]

I was similarly enthusiastic about L-R. These days, I think there are even more effective methods, though I still like the general idea of using translations to make listening more comprehensible.

What are the more effective methods?

[Le Baron]

I'm still baffled how this was hailed as a 'method' or even new. Audio with corresponding transcriptions (or rather texts with corresponding audio) is old.

[orlandohill]

What are the more effective methods?

Learning a language from scratch, mostly through free-flowing stage 3 L-R, comes with certain trade-offs. The original descriptions of L-R prioritize enjoyment of content over things like order of acquisition, optimally spaced repetition, and explicit knowledge of grammar.

I'm still working on creating a more efficient language learning system for myself. I'm incorporating ideas from L-R (the core technique and system), second language acquisition research, and language learning software. I don't want to go into details at the moment since it's something that I'm still developing.

[Greasaias]

I always read Cainntear's post with great interest. In fact, they were instrumental in the development of my personal language-learning framework - my conversion, so to speak, to what I like to call Professor Paul Nation's Fourstrandism - and abandoning the follies of youth (Input-Onlyism). Four Strands or Death!
Thank you, Cainntear! I mean it.

This time, however, what you say goes directly against my lived experience.

how do you read a translation while listening?

I don't know, I just did. (Perhaps I didn't know it can't be done at that time. *smirks Shawly*)

I tried L-R with three languages: Russian, French, and Japanese.

I had done some lazy listening using the old Assimil course, and lazy reading of a reader I found online beforehand, so I wasn't starting it cold. (Note that this does not contradict L-R-man's advice. He - or maybe it was another member of that notorious L-R Cabal - did write somewhere that, yes, he started L-Ring German with Kafka, but he studied German phonology and learned the most frequent ~900 German words first.)

L-R of Russian was really an unclinical trial.
I went over the first chapter of Crime and Punishment once or twice. The next day I listened to the recording without referring back to the text. I understood everything. Even upon hearing words such as 'button', 'vest' - the moment they entered my ear, their meanings popped into my head. It felt like magic.

L-R of French I attempted during a vacation. I didn't manage to do 12 hours, but 6, perhaps 8, a day I did. Compared to Russian, I did more in terms of preparation - lazy listening and reading of old Assimil courses + French classes in school (so, plenty of grammar).
It was in between high school and uni. I was awful at French in school. To say "I barely got by" would be pushing it, but I was definitely not good.
At university - what a change! First lesson - a bundle of nerves. But promtly I improved, my delivery smoothed out, and I was somewhere at the top of the class.

Was it thanks to L-R only? Surely not. Was "orthodox L-R" a factor in my, limited as it might have been, success? I don't know. Perhaps.

Japanese: L-R was a mere mote in a molehill, so it's difficult to assess the degree to which it helped.

Okay, but what was L-R, again?

they haven't actually described what they really do while practicing the technique.

I was listening to a recording while looking at the corresponding translation. That's what was happening externally. As of what was going on in between my ears, I'm not sure. Was I a successful polyglot at that time? No. (Am I know? My humility prevents me from answering.)

Atamagaii's (you could translate this nickname as "smartypants") explanations are notoriously clumsy. You'd think perhaps that it's a (language) skill issue. It isn't. L-R notes in Polish are even worse (trust me, I'm a native Polish speaker and I read them). With one exception - one A4 page summary of what L-R is. This summary, however, which I don't have at hand, draws a very different picture of L-R.

Based on that summary and partial elucidations scattered across myriad threads, I don't think there's anything in the L-R Method, properly understood, that goes again well-established language-learning practices - as far as I know them. And as far as I 'properly' understand L-R - which may or may not coincide with the originalist interpretation.

The way I view it is not as an absolute framework, but a point on an intensity spectrum.
I haven't learned a difficult language in 30 days (yet), but I know someone (online) that did - [url="https://woofla.pl/peterlin-2-studia-przypadku-czyli-powrot-do-przeszlosci"]Peterlin 2 – A Case Study or Back to the Past (article in Polish)[/url].
The gist: you can get from 0 (Hungarian nulla) to hero (Hungarian hős) in 30 days. But it's hard.

L-R ("The L-R Method") would then be doing that - but even more intensively.
Why books? Because they are vocabulary-dense.
Why books you've already read? To harness the power of context.
Why 16 hours a day? To 'prevent your brain from forgetting'. Bend that forgetting curve!

Four-strandingly, I'd analyze it thusly:
Form-focused input: mostly preliminary grammar study. [Could be addressed in a better way. Not as strict necessity when L-Ring a related language because you already kind of know the form - which is why, perhaps, L-R works so well when learning a language related to the ones you already know.] Later on: working with the text intensively e.g. repeating after the recording.
Meaning-focused input: L-R stage 3: listening to L2, reading L1.
Meaning-focused output: using memorized phrases and mixing them up, switching words to - speaking or writing. (This is specifically mentioned in the L-R summary I mentioned.) [Arguably a partially form-focused activity.]
Fluency development: re-reading.

It goes without saying that the L-R as generally interpreted is a mere technique, completely insufficient by itself. But the True L-R - now, that is… something.
Nevertheless, this technique itself I found to work satisfactorily, occasionally splendidly. Integrated into an "Four-Stranded L-R Program" sketched above, and done with the recommended intensity: if somebody could be so kind and rent a cabin in the woods for two weeks, do L-R, and then get back on the forum to share his or her experience - that would be great.

Fine, but what did I really do while practicing the technique? I think it was similar to using pictures to understand a story, checking a definition of an unknown word when unsure about the meaning of a sentence, reading the translation beforehand etc. Context, in the broadest meaning possible. Anything that can elucidate the meaning of the text read.
Jumping over the gap - I like to call it the hermeneutic gap - between "getting it" and "not getting it" - I can't explain. It just happens.

Regarding Stage 1 (should be 0) this is just my personal interpretation, but rather than "reading the original" it should be "having read the original". The point isn't to read something for the purpose of language learning, but use what you already know (and like). (Nothing wrong with reading great literature to learn languages, of course. And it surely will work - and if not, you'll have read some great books. Win-win.)

Would I recommend L-R to anyone? No.
To beginners - no. Do something for 5 minutes a day and see if you like it. Personally, the idea that I just need to spend a week learning my L2 16 hours a day, no need to do anything now stopped me more than once from just doing it™. Dear Beginners - just do it™!
To advanced language learners - you be you™.

Sorry if my rambling ruminations have been too rowdy dowdy.
In short, I found that the technique of L(istening to L2)-(while)R(eading L2) works. The full L-R Method, which "L-R" is just a part of, is a sketch of a super-intensive if impractical learning programme which seems interesting and could be efficacious.