New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

General discussion about learning languages
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einzelne
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby einzelne » Mon Dec 20, 2021 4:37 pm

luke wrote:I hear these ideas for combatting the intermediate plateau.


Thank you for your summary! I'd love to see them for other videos as well.
Last edited by einzelne on Mon Dec 20, 2021 7:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby RyanSmallwood » Mon Dec 20, 2021 6:45 pm

bolaobo wrote:In several videos, the professor has suggested using multiple beginner resources simultaneously, sometimes up to 5!

How many of you have really found this necessary? After an Assimil course, provided I did at least some outside work on the language, I don't find I need to go through a whole new textbook before moving on to more advanced material. Using a whole pile of beginner textbooks just seems excessive to me.

I suppose it depends on how often you thoroughly you review the material. I have a tendency to "overstudy" the Assimil books and I also do outside work or immersion via media.


Afaik, he over-studies his beginner courses as well, a few times he's mentioned using a course for a full year until you've completely internalized the contents. It makes sense to me as a thing you can do, not 100% sure about the exact numbers, but from what I remember an Assimil course teaches a few thousand word families, and certain studies suggest you need 8,000+ word families to get to unassisted extensive reading, so since there will be some overlap between the vocab from the courses, it seems like you could complete 5 beginner courses and still have some ways to go. In my experience with more distant languages, I've also found that many Assimil and similar courses don't repeat the simple sentence patterns enough for things to sink in, so more beginner input can be more essential with some languages than others.

I don't think I've ever heard him go through an example of all the resources he uses to take 1 language from 0 to extensive reading. He has lots of videos on different intermediate activities he uses, but I don't think I've heard him say for example, if he feels 5 beginner courses are necessary before the intermediate materials/activities, or if he just thinks 5 beginner courses are just more efficient, and how different it is for different languages depending on their distance and the materials available.

In my personal experience I don't find multiple beginner courses necessary for more closely related languages, but I've found them helpful at times, though I don't usually over-study them. For more distant languages I definitely think multiple courses can help a lot depending on what's available. My personal preferred route is a more extensive beginner course like FSI, a big easy sentence deck with audio in Anki for more vocab and more examples of sentence patterns, and Listening-Reading to make learning from books possible at a much earlier level.
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby RyanSmallwood » Mon Dec 20, 2021 6:53 pm

Beli Tsar wrote:
bolaobo wrote:In several videos, the professor has suggested using multiple beginner resources simultaneously, sometimes up to 5!

How many of you have really found this necessary? After an Assimil course, provided I did at least some outside work on the language, I don't find I need to go through a whole new textbook before moving on to more advanced material. Using a whole pile of beginner textbooks just seems excessive to me.


Just a reflection rather than an answer, but is this partly because he tends to study in order to read serious literature, often in classical languages, in which there is very little available at the Harry Potter level or lower (despite recent videos!)? If the jump to unadapted texts is harder, it might make more sense to do multiple courses?


I don't think this is the case, because he also recommends using multiple beginner courses in his Spanish French Italian German video.
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby Vordhosbn » Tue Dec 21, 2021 8:56 pm

einzelne wrote:I sincerely hope that I will never reach the Harry Potter stage in any of my languages...


Ha, I certainly understand the lack of enthusiasm for all things Harry Potter. :lol: A commenter provided a list of alternative series one might use:

  • Game of Thrones
  • James Bond
  • Stephen King
  • Lord of the Rings
  • Discworld by Terry Pratchett
  • John Grisham
  • Sherlock Holmes
  • Charles Dickens
  • Agatha Christie
  • Rick Riordan

The professor's reply, with my emphasis:

Alexander Arguelles wrote:Certainly one can maintain multiple languages doing something similar to this, using any of the authors from the list that you mention, and if you cannot stand Harry Potter you should use these even for this transitional stage. However, for your first venture away from textbooks and into the territory of authentic native materials, this series does offer something unique in that it is progressive. The first book is aimed at a preteen audience and is about 250 pages long, while the 7th book is aimed at 17 year-olds and is 700 pages long. This increasing complexity should hopefully match your increasing mastery of the language so that when you are done with this, you can now read real native literature, not translations of popular English books. Speaking as the father of two teenagers whom I have seen go through the whole gamut of series for young readers, it really does seem to me that all other authors write pretty much all the books in their series at the same level, so you can only get this progression with HP.
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby Vordhosbn » Wed Dec 22, 2021 12:48 am



A reminder that I really need to read Mortimer Adler's book at some point...
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby reineke » Wed Dec 22, 2021 8:10 pm

Harry...Potter. Oh my.
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby RyanSmallwood » Thu Dec 23, 2021 3:59 pm

He mentions at the end of the most recent video opening up his "Virtual Academy" in the spring. It will be interesting to see what form it takes, if its going to be a continuation of his youtube series and discussion circles, or in another format. I think I've mentioned before, I'm more curious to hear him talk specifically about reading literature and language learning, as I already have a general idea of his approach to language learning from past videos/posts.
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sat Dec 25, 2021 5:44 pm

Dickens Christmas Carol in Latin – Carmen ad Festum Nativtatis:
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby David1917 » Sun Dec 26, 2021 6:26 pm

What's good about the Dickens one is you can see the bilingual Latin & English on the screen. One could theoretically "shadow" this in waves first looking at English, then glancing over at Latin, until fully reading the Latin. Probably not the best introductory material, but sort of the process he suggests at the intermediate stage.
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Re: New Prof Argüelles Youtube Series

Postby David1917 » Wed Dec 29, 2021 8:03 pm

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