Feedback for Study Plan Needed

[Xmmm]

Having made a dog's breakfast of my Russian studies, I'm hoping to get more streamlined and organized for Italian and future languages.

One of reineke's posts led me the blog of Antonio Graceffo, who learned a number of languages using some modified form of ALG. His method, as I understand it, is:

1. Learn 1500 words any way you can (duolingo, frequency list, assimil, whatever)
2. Commence 800 hours of listening. Material has to be more than 50% comprehensible. Can't listen to anything more than once a month, but relistening counts. TL subtitles are allowed.
3. Commence speaking. 200 hours Italki, glossika and fsi as needed.
4. Read 100 books in the TL extensively. Can't read any book more than three times a year, but rereading counts.

For the purpose of this thread, please respond with any feedback you like but include a letter grade for the plan (A through F). Thank you!


Edited some particulars in items #2 and #3 as I found a better description of Graceffo's "ALG home study"
Edited again to correct order of steps (speaking before reading).

[DaveBee]

Having made a dog's breakfast of my Russian studies, I'm hoping to get more streamlined and organized for Italian and future languages.

One of reineke's posts led me the blog of Antonio Graceffo, who learned a number of languages using some modified form of ALG. His method, as I understand it, is:

1. Learn 1500 words any way you can (duolingo, frequency list, assimil, whatever)
2. Commence 800 hours of listening. You can listen to anything two times and it counts. TL subtitles are allowed.
3. Read 100 books in the TL extensively. You can reread any book up to five times and it counts.

it seems (to me, who knows nothing) like you would still need to activate your speaking so my thought would be to tack on:

4. an FSI course at the very tail end (when it's time to start speaking) to clean up any deficiencies and for automaticity. This would be done mostly as a quick run through since presumably it would not be necessary to spend 20 hours on each lesson.
5. glossika afterwards if more automaticity is needed

For the purpose of this thread, please respond with any feedback you like but include a letter grade for the plan (A through F). Thank you!

Grade: B.

I'm currently (for at least the next 20 minutes) convinced you should start with phonology of the target language.

Another one of Reineke's posts led to me a copy of The Principles of Language Study by Harold Palmer.

I'm all confused at the mo, but I think the next time I begin a language I'll follow something like:

1. phonology of language.
2. audio only course, maybe two. Coupled with some audio/video input, audio-books, radio, TV etc (Linguaphone's French All Talk includes a booklet with ~1,400 words)

3? probably a packaged Book/CD course >A2. Start reading too.
4? possibly learn high frequency collocation (phrases) list.
4? verbal drilling (possibly an FSI/DLI course).

------

100 books is a lot of books.

[Xenops]

For people that don't know what ALG is (I didn't), it stands for Automatic Language Growth, and here is a link to learn more about it: https://thaiwithoutstudy.wordpress.com/the-entire-pre-blog-journal/

[smallwhite]

... for Italian and future languages.

3. Read 100 books in the TL extensively. You can reread any book up to five times and it counts.

4. an FSI course at the very tail end (when it's time to start speaking) to clean up any deficiencies and for automaticity. This would be done mostly as a quick run through since presumably it would not be necessary to spend 20 hours on each lesson.

5. glossika afterwards if more automaticity is needed

How long do these 3 items each take, for Italian and for Japanese/Korean/Chinese? (ie. 6 numbers)

[Xmmm]

... for Italian and future languages.

3. Read 100 books in the TL extensively. You can reread any book up to five times and it counts.

4. an FSI course at the very tail end (when it's time to start speaking) to clean up any deficiencies and for automaticity. This would be done mostly as a quick run through since presumably it would not be necessary to spend 20 hours on each lesson.

5. glossika afterwards if more automaticity is needed

How long do these 3 items each take, for Italian and for Japanese/Korean/Chinese? (ie. 6 numbers)

For Italian:

100 books: Assuming every book is 75000 words and you can read 100 words a minute, 125 hours
FSI: Since this would function as a review more than anything and there is only Italian FAST, 100 hours
Glossika: 100 hours (GSR)

For Japanese/Chinese/Korean the Glossika number would stay the same, but I imagine the other numbers would be bigger ... for books a lot bigger. Fortunately re-reading counts so it's not 100 unique books.

[kunsttyv]

100 books: Assuming every book is 75000 words and you can read 100 words a minute, 125 hours

You should go over your math again and maybe add a zero.

Reading one hundred 300 page books is no joke.

[smallwhite]

100 books: Assuming every book is 75000 words and you can read 100 words a minute, 125 hours

1.25 hours per book?

[reineke]

There's only a single Russian book in the list of the longest books of all times but those classic novels can get bulky.

You can't speed read literature

"The celebrated academic Harold Bloom is a lightning fast reader; blink and he's probably turned the page – twice. In his prime he could churn through 1,000 pages an hour, which means he could have digested Jane Eyre during his lunch break and still had time to chew through half of Ulysses before returning to classes. I don't know about you, but that makes me feel like a slow, slack-jawed simian struggling in the frontal-lobe department."

"There is something quite unseemly about the notion of skimming over the literary canon. In some inverted, abstract sense it reminds me of liposuction: you're putting on intellectual weight without acquiring the mental health benefits, and there's always a downside to cutting corners."

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/books ... literature

PS

What languages does harold bloom know?

" Since he is the premier living critic on the western canon, what languages does he know?"

" I mostly started this thread because I was curious if bloom was a polyglot since he's read thousands of books and has a superhuman reading at speed."

"Bloom speaks fluent pompous."

http://www.online-literature.com/forums ... bloom-know

[Xmmm]

100 books: Assuming every book is 75000 words and you can read 100 words a minute, 125 hours

1.25 hours per book?

Wrote a long reply which disappeared.

Short answer: duh, yes. My only excuse is I wrote the post before 7 am local time.

Long answer: well I wrote the long answer, and it's gone. I don't care if 800 hours listening + 1250 reading + time needed to learn starter vocabulary + fsi time + glossika time does add up to 2500 hours, that's fine. I don't want to do 10000 anki cards, and I don't want to flounder around on Italki for hundreds of hours having basic things corrected (or fossilized and uncorrectable).

Again my Russian mistakes:

1. silent reading at too high a level too early (-300 hours)
2. L/R which was really D/L (decipher for 2 hours and listen for 10 minutes) (-200 hours)
3. Watching the Russian movies and TV I did watch when they were at too high a level. I don't think I did too much of this, but I'll call it out anyway (-50 hours)

[DaveBee]

Again my Russian mistakes:

1. silent reading at too high a level too early (-300 hours)

Reading aloud, rather than silently, is something I've been meaning to do too. FROM THIS DAY ON!