How Much of Your Courses and Textbooks Do You Learn?

[Serpent]

I wish coursebooks included notes for people, who've already got experience with learning other languages-at least the most popular ones. Instead of reading the lengthy explanation for the first time learners, I couldn't just skip to a note: "This structure is equivalent to this English structure, with this and that exception/difference".

Yeah, that's why I almost don't use textbooks anymore, especially English- or Russian-based

Inspired by Iversen, I just treat textbooks as a source of easy content. Nowadays I mostly just read the texts, maybe several times.
I tend to find the content of exercises especially boring, so I theoretically like the idea of making my own exercises, but I don't actually do that often.

As for learning by heart, we had to do that at my former university. It was horrible. We basically never practised spontaneous speech, only rehearsed dialogues and monologues. I found the classes extremely boring and lost my love for English (then got it back years later ).

[sillygoose1]

I hardly learn anything from textbooks. My goal is to get to native materials as quickly as possible. Despite the fact that I've gone through three Russian Assimil courses, I don't try to memorize anything or even do the transcription exercises. Textbooks are just that - course books. You'll get a nice introduction to the language but it won't usually be how natives really speak or what you'll really encounter. Most of my learning comes from the point right after I'm finished with textbooks when I start using parallel texts.

[Stelle]

I'm currently using Assimil to learn Italian. I'm only at lesson 33 after four months, so I'm obviously not doing it as it was meant to be done (ie. a lesson every day), but life gets in the way. I really enjoy the structure of Assimil. That said, it was created for self-learning. It doesn't really compare to a traditional textbook.

Do you memorise all vocabulary? Both L1>L2 and L2>L1, spelling, pinyin and whatnot?
No. But because I already speak Spanish and French, a lot of the vocabulary is already pretty transparent to me, at least in writing. I'm just learning through repeated exposure. (Again, though, Assimil isn't a traditional textbook. It doesn't have any vocabulary lists. Everything is in context.)

Do you shadow all the audio?
Not exactly. I listen to the audio of each lesson 10+ times. Sometimes I pause and repeat, sometimes I read along, sometimes I try to shadow, but I don't make perfect shadowing a goal. I also have an audio deck on anki, so I keep reviewing the dialogues using spaced repetition.

Do you learn all the dialogues by heart?
No. That said, I break each dialogue text into smaller chunks and put them into anki. I don't "do" anything with those cards - just read them when they pop up. The cards are easy, and chunks of dialogue seep into my memory.

Do you drill all the conjugations?
There are no conjugation drills, which I expect is something that I'll have to supplement at some point.

Do you complete all the exercises?
Yes. There are only five cloze sentences in each lesson. I turn these into cloze cards on anki, so that I'm getting a certain amount of "drill-and-kill". The way that I'm using anki to supplement Assimil is really working well for me. I like that I can constantly review everything from the course (dialogues, audio, exercises) without it becoming difficult or tedious. I haven't yet made it to the active wave of Assimil, but I'm really looking forward to it.

Supplementing the course
I know that you didn't ask about this, but I think that it's important to consider whether a course is used in isolation, or whether it is part of a more varied approach. I do best with a variety of carefully-chosen resources (some for learners, some for native speakers), both because it's more interesting and because seeing the same vocab/structures in various contexts makes it stick much better. That said, too many resources can become a problem, since the learner might spend more time researching resources than actually learning the language.

[NIKOLIĆ]

How much of your courses and textbooks do you learn?

Do you memorise all vocabulary? Both L1>L2 and L2>L1, spelling, pinyin and whatnot?

No, I only try to memorize vocabulary that I consider useful at that time. If a word in a dialogue sounds familiar but I still don't know what it means, I will try to learn it. The very fact that it sounds familiar probably means that I already heard it at least 4-5 times, and that it's a good idea to learn it since it will keep popping up. These are usually words whose meaning(s), for whatever reason, I can't deduce from context.

Do you shadow all the audio?

No, I just listen and try to understand at least 95%.

Do you learn all the dialogues by heart?

No, the only thing I learn by heart are sentences that I might use, often containing a new grammar point. My mom often asks me a question that I don't know how to answer, so instead of answering with "I don't know." and "I don't remember.", I would learn a sentence by heart for next time. E.g. I woke up at 6:45 this morning, and then I had breakfast.

Do you drill all the conjugations?

If it's a new verb, yes. 95% of the time I repeat the conjugations out loud, 5% of the time I write them out (rough estimate). I only do this for the most frequently used tenses/particles.

Do you complete all the exercises?

It depends on the exercise. If I find an exercise too taxing, I probably won't do it.

[Decidida]

Smallwhite,

Thank you for starting this thread and linking to it from another recent thread!

I started college in January, and Spanish 101 is just one of my 5 classes. I don't have time to really write about all that has happened, but Spanish has gotten totally neglected, in class and out. I have just been riding through on what I learned before starting the class and am now going backwards so quickly that I am not even keeping up with the class.

The teacher gives no homework and we don't have a key. Despite buying a $250.00 textbook and website package, the teacher never set up the website so we don't have that even if we want to use it. We are just are supposed to miraculously be able to talk about everything in the textbook and more. The teacher babbles at us in Spanish and I have no idea what she is saying. NONE! I understand enough to know that some of it is not in our textbook and was not provided in hand-outs.

So, PART of what I need to do is learn the textbook content, and am trying to figure out the best way to do that. Our final is a private conversation with the teacher demonstrating our knowledge of the book and more. I'm going to worry more about the text and less about the "more" for right now.

I managed to find an old website account for a previous edition of the textbook and got my hands on a smelly ripped copy of about 3/4 of that book. I am doing the online exercises and copying, copying, copying, stuff from the the website and book. I am rearranging and reorganizing content from the book, as well as copying it the way it is originally organized. I am translating and then translating backwards the next day, anything that I can get my hands on that has any type of key or translation provided.

I managed to break into a junior high class using a textbook by the same publisher that has almost identical lessons and use that for the flashcards and grammar tutorials.

I am paying attention to what the topics are labeled in the textbook and going onto youtube and watching videos with the same titles.

I really need to get creative about using this textbook to its full capacity. By the end of the semester I need to have mastered the content in the first 4 chapters. I ripped those chapters out and put them in a binder.

Talking a tip from someone here or maybe a youtube video, I am not going to try and master every vocabulary word, but instead focus on the most critical ones. I am going to try and be able to recognize them all from Spanish to English, but carefully choose the ones to master from English to Spanish and be able to spell and pronounce correctly and USE.

I hope I didn't break any forum rules posting in this old thread.

[Querneus]

Thank you, smallwhite, for thinking of this thread, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I don't feel like responding to the questions because I'm looking into taking a less laid-back approach to language learning, so my opinions right now might not be the same in the near-future. There's the problem that I do take a lackadaisical approach not only to language learning but to everything else in life though. I've never taken a Big 5 test, but I bet a psychologist would say I "score low in conscientiousness". Success (whatever definition you use) and social admiration aren't really motivators for me, or something I envy in other people at all. However, this also means I dream up all sort of goals, and I start working on them, but rarely do I finish the work to actually reach them. Besides all this, I don't really need or have to learn other languages in my life here in Vancouver. So I'm not sure whether a less laid-back approach will work for me. We'll see.

Chinese teachers come over to England to teach a select group of students in the English school

I love that link! Thank you!

In fact, when I read this forum (and HTLAL), I feel a lot of cultural difference. My school in HK was very British and not too different from my school in Australia. But still, my values (?), mentality (?) and attitude regarding learning and towards teachers are quite different from that of other members here. And it gets really interesting when you look at how intangible core values manifest themselves as actual behaviour and activities. I remember you saying smallwhite was a machine when we talked about Memrise

My girlfriend is a Taiwanese language learner and I think I can see what you mean just looking at how she's learning Spanish. Her approach is quite systematic, following a number of colour-coded, structured patterns for working on textbooks, taking notes and doing reviews. She definitely believes in things like grabbing a list of some type of adverb from a grammar, making sure she has a good interlanguage translation for each adverb and an idea of how they're used, and will probably review that list now and then until she feels familiar enough with it. Whenever we meet and are talking and I mention something about Spanish, writing down one or two examples on my phone, she makes sure I send her what I write. I know for a fact she reviews that stuff, and has a collection of digital small notes (mostly her own notes) classified in some way.

Now contrast that with myself. One day we happened to be talking about colour synonyms and she mentioned Mandarin has 3 synonyms for "brown": 棕色 zong1se4, 褐色 he4se4 (China) he2se4 (Taiwan), 咖啡色 ka1fei1se4 (cf. the Spanish synonyms for "purple" violeta, púrpura and my dialect's morado,a). I didn't worry about taking notes for that, thinking that if they're common then I'll get them reinforced. In fact, I just looked up which pronunciation of 褐 is used in which country for this post, since I didn't remember.

I don't know what her attitude towards teachers is, but I definitely don't have anywhere near that amount of structure in how I learn languages at least.

[Iversen]

Do you memorise all vocabulary? Both L1>L2 and L2>L1, spelling, pinyin and whatnot?
Do you shadow all the audio?
Do you learn all the dialogues by heart?
Do you drill all the conjugations?
Do you complete all the exercises?
Etc.

5 x no

A textbook is for me mainly a place where you may be able to find extremely simple texts with simple wordlists that makes it possible to understand them. But I switch to genuine texts with a translation as soon as possible. Besides most textbooks present the grammar in small doses in a confusing order - and not even all of the morphology, let alone any significant amount of syntax. A textbook may get you through the very first steps, and for that purpose it is usually better than a language guide (except that the grammar section in grammar guides usually is structured in a more logical way), btu apart from that I see no advantage in working your way through a text book.

And the audio? The few times I have heard the audio of a textbook I have developed acute nausea and extreme sleepiness within the first 1,37 second or so. I simply can't stand that slow artificial way of speaking, and with boring texts it becomes insupportable.

[Skynet]

Besides all this, I don't really need or have to learn other languages in my life here in Vancouver. So I'm not sure whether a less laid-back approach will work for me.

I read a great article on Bloomberg Businessweek this morning entitled "The City That Had Too Much Money." I am hopeful that it will change your mind

[patrickwilken]

For German, and now Spanish, I've basically done an A1 course. Not worried too much about grammar (certainly done no exercises), but did try to learn the initial vocabulary from the A1 textbook with Anki as well as simply be intensive/extensive reading.

I prefer reading a simple grammar to get me orientated. As Inversen says the textbooks (and courses) tend to dole out the grammar lessons in tiny pieces which I personally find unhelpful.

I can certainly see why coursebooks might be helpful, but I think I am too lazy too do them. I like just reading and creating my own study strategy.

[SGP]

So, how much of the vocabulary do you memorise?
How much audio do you shadow?
What do you learn by heart?
How else do you automate conjugation?
Which exercises do you do?
Etc.
Why??

For the languages on my learning list (and for those I merely familiarize myself with as well):

Not memorizing anything (even if I did so for some of those in my list in the past, but I entirely quit rote memorization).

Not shadowing anything.

Conjugation: Also not memorizing, but doing some language exposure only. As in "what sticks that sticks and what doesn't that doesn't".

Exercises: None, other than the most real-world-ish ones. I.e. using that language, e.g. for conversational purposes (main focus on reading/writing at least for now, not listening/speaking).