How do you learn best?

[lilianachernin]

I know everyone has their own learning style, and I am trying to identify mine. For example, I am a visual learner, and I need to see a word written in order to understand/remember it but I guess other people learn better when listening to the language.
What's your way to learn best, and do you have any tips?

[leosmith]

Imo, learning styles are a myth. For example, seeing words in their written form is going to help most people remember them better; I don't think that means most people are "visual learners".

[galaxyrocker]

Personally, I learn best with structure. I like classroom settings, at least for the beginner/lower intermediate stages of a language. Doubly so if you can pick up immersion settings living with native speakers. And then the need to turn stuff in/do well for a grade also helps keep me motivated, even when I normally wouldn't be. Once I've reached a medium intermediate level, it's just interacting with native material and natives.

[PeterMollenburg]

Imo, learning styles are a myth. For example, seeing words in their written form is going to help most people remember them better; I don't think that means most people are "visual learners".

I actually tend to agree with this. I think humans are able to be moulded or adapt to different modes of learning, rather than are set into separate categories. I'm not a course learner, I've just done so many of them, because I wanted to, that I moulded myself to learning mainly via courses.

[smallwhite]

do you have any tips?

I was brought up to believe that

- being flexible is good
- being fussy is bad
- being dependent on things is bad

so,

I know everyone has their own learning style, and I am trying to identify mine.

instead of trying to identify what external factors I want, I need, I must have and I shall be dependent on, I tend to explore and stretch my flexibility, to explore how to learn well both in a class and by myself, both with courses and without, both with technology and with pen and paper, etc.

How do you learn best?

Nature or nuture, I seem to simply learn best.

[Dragon27]

Don't mean to offend anyone, just some good old fun on the audial/visual learners thing
http://www.theonion.com/article/parents ... curric-396

[Whodathunkitz]

This is a copy of a post on Norwegian how to thread.

I don't know whether to link or include here and I'm on my phone so bit harder.

Anyway I'll post inline and hope it doesn't annoy people....


I'm a beginner at language learning but I have a little experience with an unusual language which has far fewer resources than Norwegian called cebuano. I'm mostly using free resources.

I'm also not very good with self teach written courses. I tend to glaze over when doing them and rely on my learning written forms, possibly because I'm tired when I have free time.

Therefore neglecting pronounciation and listening. I primarily want to talk with people, also pretty sure reading and writing will be easy when I can confidently converse.

I am VERY good at applying myself with 2 kinds of resources.

In addition, you probably need a grammar course too to help join up the dots AFTER a lot of exposure to the language. I use a Mormon guide for cebuano and language transfer audio/YouTube for Spanish. Other people here will know better. I also do prosody, but hoping speaking audio Bible verses may replace. See Ollie Kjellin (spelling?), I make mp3 with simple phrase repeated 50 times usually featuring a difficult to pronounce aspect. I need to be more attentive to do these. Unfortunately I neglect them.

2 kinds of resources that work for me are Phone / tablet apps and listening-reading (with now speaking) an audio Bible.

Phone apps I can spend a lot of time on include
- Duolingo
- Memrise (courses by baas are simple intros)
- 10000 sentences (someone on here?)
Apps are useful while waiting, public transport, baby sitting (half concentrate, break off at any time, kids tv blaring away, kid jumping and shouting, asking me questions, wanting interaction). It's an alternative to L1 tv watching in intensity. But as kid has monopolised the tv I NEED an alternative!

NB. Religious arguments not allowed on board. I'm discussing a learning resource.

Bible. I don't know it, not my religion, but with 1200 languages in audio/text done by dedicated people it is a fantastic resource. When I do know it (I've just started using it for Spanish too), it will save me time in reading in my L1 of English using the same known story.

I use an app called bible.is on android and a hand held English Bible.

I now do 3 books. All have a similar story to aid understanding. Wide vocab. More intense than apps but still doable sometimes with baby sitting. Better done after kid in bed as an alternative to watching L1 tv. Bit more intensive than tv watching, equivalent to reading a novel?

New testament Bible books
- Mark - Spanish took me 3 evenings, 7 hours (no reading out loud). Around 11000 words (original Greek. Not sure in English). 22 pages
- Luke 36/7 pages
- Matthew 36/7 pages

I did 4 books for cebuano in 4 weeks.

3 steps

1) Read English (L1) Bible CHAPTER
2) read a VERSE in L2 out loud. Then listen to the verse, compare to your speaking, try to fix one wrong word/aspect. Do some/all of the whole CHAPTER out loud or switch to silent to save your voice.
3) read L1 English and listen L2 (Spanish) audio CHAPTER


I'm still experimenting with step 2. I managed a 11.5 minute chapter last night ok. Slow but ok. Previously I read a whole chapter silently in L2 which is quicker but I want to practice mouth muscles and so I'll speak out loud and dramatically for at least some of it.

This won't be good for everyone. I think you have to find what works for you. It may not be efficient.

BUT I get a lot done with apps, L-R.

I find the Bible app convenient.

My learning time is often when I'm tired, work done, kid off to bed etc.

I can do these activities even when knackered (tired) whereas a textbook is hard work.

Find your own way. I'm slowly finding mine.

[blaurebell]

Over the years I learned about myself that I have a hard time picking up new information from just listening. I will forget it fast. So, I write everything down when I listen to a lecture. And even then I need to rework the information myself later on and not just mechanically put what I hear into writing. So, I know that learning with audio will not be efficient for me and I simply won't pick up new vocabulary from there most of the time, at least not in any reasonable amount of time.

That doesn't necessarily mean that my learning method will always be the "most efficient" one for language learning. For Spanish I have always relied mostly on watching TV, because my listening comprehension developed earlier than my reading comprehension in this case thanks to immersion. Watching TV seems to be my Spanish comfort zone, but I also know that I won't improve my reading comprehension with it, just my listening comprehension and speaking. In Spanish I find reading uncomfortable and it's actually a problem, because I learn new vocabulary at a very slow rate from TV and audio.

With French I've made very fast progress just by reading a lot early on, before I could understand content extensively. I left the audio trailing behind and only started watching TV and listening to the radio / podcasts after reading 5000 pages. My level of comprehension in both languages is fairly good, but in French it is clearly quite a bit better for reading comprehension and higher register content, lacking still a bit of slang, whereas my Spanish comprehension is pretty solid in everyday use out on the street and slang, but lacks precision in reading comprehension and higher register content. With French I still have a strong preference for reading and just continue with it because it's fun. It won't help me much with listening comprehension, slang or speaking though. In the end, you can't get away with such a preference in your learning methods, because you need all skills to function in a language.

For production my preference is a solid foundation in grammar instead of just speaking a lot early on. I don't like to speak with mistakes and I know from experience that speaking early without correction will create a lot of damage that will require even more grammar torture later on.

The only point where these choices have anything to do with learning styles or the pretty universal human preference for visual information is vocabulary. Early reading is so efficient for me because this is how I pick up vocabulary really fast. My progress with French was much faster than my progress with Spanish because it relied heavily on reading and this fits with my strong preference for visual information. My learning preferences like TV with Spanish or reading with French are actually just habits and if you start a language with one method you will automatically develop some kind of preference, because one of your skills will be much stronger than all the others. It's important not to let yourself be guided blindly by your learning preferences, but actually by your weak points. If you stay within your comfort zone at some point you will stop learning. That doesn't mean that you have to stop doing what you enjoy, just make sure you put as much effort into the other skills.

The question you have to ask yourself is actually what your primary goal is for learning the language. If you want to read, drilling lots of grammar and vocabulary won't necessarily get you to your goal fast and you will get disenchanted. If you want to visit the country and speak with the locals in everyday language, you probably shouldn't focus on a method that forces you to read a lot or to drill the grammar until your thoroughly sick of it before starting to speak for real. And if you need to speak correctly at a very high level you will be better off with a grammar overlearning method like FSI rather than a hand-wavy Speak from day 1 with a phrasebook approach. Identify your goals and pick your method accordingly: Reading - Assimil + intensive reading with a dictionary (LWT, LingQ, Readlang), Watching TV in the TL - Assimil + Subs2SRS + watching TV extensively, Speaking on a non-academic level without any need for speaking 100% correctly - immersion at a language school in the country and Speak from day 1 approach, Academic level speaking and writing - FSI and grammar overlearning combined with massive input (20,000 pages, 1000h TV) and massive output (50,000+ words).

[aaleks]

First of all I have to say that it seems I don’t have a very common for many learners problem with listening. Am I an audial? I don’t know, and I’m not sure if I actually believe in those things. Anyway, I am really able to learn by ear, and usually I remember how a word sounds but not its written form (spelling). I remember that there was a time in the beginning when I was reluctant to read texts in English. But I knew from my previous experience of studying German (unfortunately I lost that language because of lack of usage) that reading would help me to build vocabulary. Besides, I just like to read and don’t like to use any kind of vocabulary lists, apps etc. Actually, I’ve never used them, I just read a lot and listen a lot.
I don’t have any learning style, the only rule I’ve tried to follow during my English learning is - do something in TL every day. Sometimes, when I cannot spare enough time on studying, it might be just listening to 15 min of audio or reading a couple of pages of book. It isn’t really effective from learning language perspective, I guess, but it helps to not fall out of routine.

[zenmonkey]

Imo, learning styles are a myth. For example, seeing words in their written form is going to help most people remember them better; I don't think that means most people are "visual learners".

I actually tend to agree with this. I think humans are able to be moulded or adapt to different modes of learning, rather than are set into separate categories. I'm not a course learner, I've just done so many of them, because I wanted to, that I moulded myself to learning mainly via courses.

That sounds like you have a preferred style of learning.