What's the fastest way to learn a new language without (any) positive transfer?

[drp9341]

Inspired by my last topic, https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6164 I wan't to make a new thread.

The question is: What's the fastest way to learn a new language without (any) positive transfer?
ie: Farsi speaker learning English
ie: English speaker learning Polish
ie: Italian learning Finnish

for the sake of this question, let's presume the following:
1.) You are self studying, not taking any courses.
2.) You are starting from scratch.
3.) You are living in the country where you target language is spoken.
4.) You want to get to a level where you can maintain friendships, and interact with natives as soon as possible.
5.) You have no job.

I used to read Benny Lewis's blog "Fluent in 3 months" very often, but I never bought any of his books. I am a big fan of him and I think he is a great asset to the language learning/polyglot community. However, it seems that his method is, in a nutshell "speak a lot and don't be afraid of making mistakes and ask for corrections." (Benny, if you're reading this and you feel that I am misleading with my statement, then feel free to correct me.)

This is the situation I am in right now in Poland, (I do have a job, but it takes just about 3 hours a day and I work from my computer.)
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5978 that's my language learning log, if anyone cares to look to see what I've been doing.

Right now, I'll write what I've been doing for the past week or so: DISCLAIMER: I change my routine probably every 4 days. I get bored doing the same things over and over again.
1. I use contexto.reverso.net to look for words when I wake up in the morning. (I usually wake up with a few question on how to say certain things.)
I write down useful sentences in my notebook. I kind of just get lost in this site, learning useful expressions and words and writing them down in my notebook.
2. I ask my girlfriend to correct the sentences and tell me if there's a more "colloquial" way to say any of these things.
3. I go through my notebook and write down all the sentences and words I am going to put into Anki.
4. I review some grammar, (lightly!!!!.) for example, I will read about a case, and remember it's basic rules, then try to identify this case and pay attention to it for the next two weeks or so. I simply can't study grammar hardcore without wanting to tear my hair out.
5. I speak to natives and ask them to correct me.
6. At night, I'll review everything in my notebook, then I'll put my words into my Anki deck. By this point, I know them pretty well.
7. I have my girlfriend record all the anki flashcards that contain entire sentences.


Basically, that's my routine. I change it often, however the only thing that changes is where I extract words and sentences from. Sometimes it's from Assimil, sometimes it's from the Polish subtitles on American TV shows, sometimes it's from Babbell, however the notebook->piece of paper->Anki->recording audio has been a staple of my daily routine over the past month.

I should probably start writing a diary or something, that way it forces me to look up words that I use often in regular speech, but I'm lazy and don't like writing. (Even writing this post took me about two hours of procrastination to write and I really am dreading the fact that now that it's nearing it's end I might have to go back and proof-read it.)

So what do you guys think? And what am I doing wrong / what could I be doing better?

[zenmonkey]

Sounds like a pretty good and conscious routine.
I would add perhaps a tandem (in person or on-line via italki.com - free - not the teachers.)

How much time are you spending in an English bubble per day? If you really want to accelerate the language acquisition you can force some of it be removing English from a lot of input - Internet, books, conversation and require that your environment be Polish only.

It's hard and can be emotionally taxing but if you can do that for several long stints you'll see massive improvements.

[leosmith]

1. I use contexto.reverso.net to look for words when I wake up in the morning. (I usually wake up with a few question on how to say certain things.)
I write down useful sentences in my notebook. I kind of just get lost in this site, learning useful expressions and words and writing them down in my notebook.
2. I ask my girlfriend to correct the sentences and tell me if there's a more "colloquial" way to say any of these things.
3. I go through my notebook and write down all the sentences and words I am going to put into Anki.
4. I review some grammar, (lightly!!!!.) for example, I will read about a case, and remember it's basic rules, then try to identify this case and pay attention to it for the next two weeks or so. I simply can't study grammar hardcore without wanting to tear my hair out.
5. I speak to natives and ask them to correct me.
6. At night, I'll review everything in my notebook, then I'll put my words into my Anki deck. By this point, I know them pretty well.
7. I have my girlfriend record all the anki flashcards that contain entire sentences.

I'm no expert.

Everyone is different, but I wouldn't use this method because it seems too haphazard for my tastes. If I want to evaluate it in a more standard way, I need to know if you get enough of the following 7 things: reading, writing, listening, speaking, grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary. It's hard to tell, because you're immersed, so maybe you are getting tons of listening practice that's not on your list for example. What I think is outstanding though is how much your girlfriend is helping you. She's a keeper.

Originally I was going to criticize your method because it seems the main source of input is out of context (contexto.reverso.net). But then I saw you're only looking up stuff that you have questions about, meaning (I think) that you first encountered these things in context somewhere else. I also was going to say it looks like you don't get enough reading, but again, who can tell given what you wrote. Anyway, good luck to you.

[lusan]

My suggestion:

1. Polish assimil
2. Anki
3. Listening
4. Listening
5. Listening

After assimil, take an italki teacher and go through Mowic po polsku.

My polish journey has been very difficult since I am native Spanish speaker. I have been speaking English for 40+ years since I live in USA. No much in common with polish here! I found listening to be the toughest part. The brain resists transferring visual symbols into sounds. It seems that reading does not help much. I guess it is because for a non-slavic, written polish is hard to associate to sound. Grammar? Go ease. After the initial shock, after 2 years, polish's grammar starts making sense.

Since you are in Poland, you will have plenty of opportunities to learn. Good luck.

[drp9341]

Thank you for all the responses guys!

Everyone is different, but I wouldn't use this method because it seems too haphazard for my tastes. If I want to evaluate it in a more standard way, I need to know if you get enough of the following 7 things: reading, writing, listening, speaking, grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary. It's hard to tell, because you're immersed, so maybe you are getting tons of listening practice that's not on your list for example. What I think is outstanding though is how much your girlfriend is helping you. She's a keeper.

Originally I was going to criticize your method because it seems the main source of input is out of context (contexto.reverso.net). But then I saw you're only looking up stuff that you have questions about, meaning (I think) that you first encountered these things in context somewhere else. I also was going to say it looks like you don't get enough reading, but again, who can tell given what you wrote. Anyway, good luck to you.

Thanks for the advice Leosmith. Regarding my girlfriend, she's intent on passing for a native in English, (and she's close aside from her problems with the definite/indefinite articles!) so we spend equal amounts of time helping each other with our respective languages, it's great lol.

I usually read a page of harry potter in Polish every day, and then I'll take what I learn from that page and make flashcards out of it. I agree that my method is very haphazard, but it works for me given the environment I'm in.

My suggestion:

1. Polish assimil
2. Anki
3. Listening
4. Listening
5. Listening

After assimil, take an italki teacher and go through Mowic po polsku.

My polish journey has been very difficult since I am native Spanish speaker. I have been speaking English for 40+ years since I live in USA. No much in common with polish here! I found listening to be the toughest part. The brain resists transferring visual symbols into sounds. It seems that reading does not help much. I guess it is because for a non-slavic, written polish is hard to associate to sound. Grammar? Go ease. After the initial shock, after 2 years, polish's grammar starts making sense.

Since you are in Poland, you will have plenty of opportunities to learn. Good luck.

Thanks for recommending Mowic po polsku. I'll definitely look into it after I'm done with Anki. I don't find listening to be that difficult if I "train" in the morning. What I mean is, when I wake up, I'll spend like half an hour doing Anki and really pay close attention to the rhythm of the sentences, the stress in each individual word, and the differences between all the sibiliants, (all the z and "ch" sounds.) This gets my brain warmed up and it's easier to understand everyone when they speak.

In terms of grammar, I'm actually doing very well, (surprisingly.) I have 90% grasped the genitive, locative and instrumental cases. In the sense that I know how to use them and I do it automatically when I speak, even though I often forget the irregular declensions on certain nouns. As far as the dative and accusative, I'm just memorizing verbs along with which pronoun follows them, and I feel like I'm assimilating it naturally.

As far as using Assimil goes, if I don't have any questions, or any upcoming situations where I need to prepare vocabulary for, I do a lesson or 2 of Assmil. I'm only on lesson 34, but my knowledge of Polish is somewhere around A2-B1, (I know enough to pass a test on paper for B1, however since I haven't been learning it for that long, it's hard to actually perform at this level.) So Assimil is pretty easy. Also, my girlfriend says that the way they speak in the Assimil dialogues is sometimes very weird, regardless, it's still a great resource to use to practice some intensive listening and shadowing.


How learning Polish has been different from other languages: When I want to speak Polish, I have to want to speak Polish. It requires a lot of concentration to pronounce things correctly and understand what people say back to me. My girlfriend says that it's funny because I can "speak to myself" no problem, meaning that I can talk about most topics with decent grammatical accuracy and vocabulary, however when people respond back to me, I often only understand about 40% of what they say, which is usually enough to respond if I know the context. Polish has so many words that I need to learn, and it's very difficult to get my brain to focus and recall all these completely different words, and different sentence structures. I'm fine parroting off sentences I've memorized with Anki, but when I have to create entirely new sentences myself, it makes me tired. With other languages, I could kind of just speak and it would be alright, but with Polish, it's not the case! I wonder how long until Polish starts to feel natural.

Despite how much I've learned and despite how "well" I'm able to communicate, the language is not rooted deep in my brain. If I stopped speaking, hearing, studying, and thinking in Polish for ~6 months, I'd probably forget it all.

[lusan]

however when people respond back to me, I often only understand about 40% of what they say, which is usually enough to respond if I know the context

That's why I give greater weight to listening.

By the way, I am becoming obsessed with polish Clozemaster. Check it out. It has thousands of polish sentences