How to learn with dialogues?

[iguanamon]

I stand corrected! Well done, neumanc. Apparently, you were not in need of any help at all.

[Sayonaroo]

I’m sorry, but I really do not see the need for a debate here. Dialogues are stilted, artificial, and insufficient for learning a language: and this is supposed to be news? Putting aside the fact that we have yet to clearly define the term “learn a language” at every level in what many of us would admit is a lengthy and uncertain process, my overall reaction is: yes, dialogues are not ideal representations of natural speech, so what? In passing, I have yet to see, anywhere in this discussion thread, the presentation of a truly “practical, efficient, and effective alternative” to dialogues and sentence-pattern exercises for use in a self-instruction situation in the initial stages of language-learning...


So then, I really couldn’t care if dialogues are unnatural, they serve a very useful purpose as models of how language might be used in a given context.

Authentic passages differ from created passages in terms of their orality, a feature that captures factors such as redundancy, disfluencies, and syntactic complexity. Research on orality suggests that more oral passages are easier for L2 listeners to comprehend. Authentic dialogues have also been found to differ from created (textbook) dialogues in terms of information density and length. Though the amount of research addressing how authentic passages differ from created passages is very small, this combined with findings concerning orality suggest that authentic passages may be easier for listeners than created passages. However, other factors likely to be more prevalent in authentic passages, such as unfamiliar speaker accents, varying speech rates, culturally specific information, distortion, and noise, are likely to increase the difficulty of the passage."

Factors affecting second language listening comprehension

In our half century of language education at FSI, we have moved from “teaching the textbook” to “helping the learner to learn,” from a strict diet of sentence-based pattern drills to a range of “communicative activities,” from using predominantly teacher-developed materials to a heavy emphasis on authentic or “found” materials...

Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching

So another of your suggestions would be not to use textbook dialogues but natural speech. This disqualifies most of TV, by the way, because it's scripted. Maybe interviews on YouTube would be usable? But there's no transcript. So back to textbooks it is...

the youtube option may still be viable. you can filter your results to only include videos with subtitles then you'd have to open the video to confirm the subtitle language is your TL. I've been using youtube videos for learning french and Spanish because there are videos with exact/man-made subs as opposed to the automated subtitles. I don't bother with videos that only have the automated subtitle option since I suck at french and spanish.

[neumanc]

I’d love to hear YOUR answers to your own questions because you obviously are good at reflection!

Okay, great. Care to delineate the method? Or will the secret die with you?

I stand corrected! Well done, neumanc. Apparently, you were 7not in need of any help at all.

I am a little bit astonished about the test results myself, because I have the impression that there's still so much to learn for me, especially advanced vocabulary. Assimil La pratique du néerlandais is still waiting for me on my bookshelf. I just looked there again and found out that I also have Assimil Le néerlandais des affaires (however, without audio). How is it even possible to score C2 without having studied these? I really don't know. One aspect which must be partly responsible for this result is that I chose an "easy" language. Dutch and German are closely related, so I can guess a lot.

In the following days, I will be away on business. After that, I hope that I find the time to make a list of the techniques I used for learning with dialogues and let you know about the advantages and disadvantages in my eyes. Until then, I would be happy to read about your experiences with learning from dialogues. Even if I may not need "help" to get off the ground, I would very much like to discuss this matter further. For example, there's more than one kind of shadowing, i.e. blind shadowing, shadowing with eyes on L1, with eyes on L2, with thumbs under the text on both sides of the book, shadowing with (deliberate) delay or on top of the audio, with truncated silence, embedded in other activities like walking outside or using a treadmill, etc. Which one is the most effective? I am certain there's much expertise about this on this forum, even if you could only report something about negative experiences (which I could do a lot).

[Speakeasy]

[quoted a third party] In a fascinating study of three Chinese learners of English ... rote-learning of huge quantities of text ... memorized ... entire coursebooks ... as well as the screenplays of whole films ... gained mastery of many collocations, phrases, sentence patterns and other language points”.

Chinese water torture is a process in which water is slowly dripped onto a person’s forehead, allegedly driving the restrained victim insane.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy grey dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy grey dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy grey dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy grey dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy grey dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy grey dog.

Memorize-Scripts,-Poems,-Verses-Step-17.jpg

[Axon]

I wrote about my experience learning Indonesian with the sentence method a while ago. It really was almost entirely Pimsleur, dictionary sentences, grammar book sentences, Glossika, and dialogues. I don't recall repeating the individual sentences that I mined over and over.

The main thing I remember about studying in this way was that it didn't feel like I was doing a lot of work. I was repeating after the dialogues and copying down the sentences, not doing anything active at all.

Two things stick out about how I felt when I arrived in Indonesia. First, I had a short group conversation with one native speaker and several learners. I understood a lot of what he was saying when he was talking about himself and asking me questions. Several sentences from Glossika and the dialogues popped into my head fully-formed.

Second, I had to write a short composition and have a speaking interview to determine my level for the language class. As I was writing I realized I had not, in eight months, learned the word for "if." Certainly my sentences had included it, but with the minimal effort I was giving to acquiring the language I hadn't internalized it in the way that I had the other sentence patterns. Fortunately it worked out in the end and I was placed into a high level where I could begin learning new vocabulary as fast as I could.

[reineke]

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[neumanc]

Neumanc, can you read newspapers, listen to the radio, and watch tv? How well would you do if you were to watch a dozen random fiction/nonfiction TV programs?

Reading newspapers, listening to radio and watching TV in Dutch is no problem for me. I've read a handful of Dutch books so far. I bought these quite cheaply at https://www.bol.com/nl/. Furthermore, I sometimes read Dutch online news or listen to NPO Radio via Internet. I even subscribed to NPO Start Plus, a paid app (2,95 EUR/month) that let's you watch Dutch Television. However, Flikken Maastricht and Flikken Rotterdam are the only shows that I kind of like so far. The good thing is that you can watch the shows with Dutch subtitels, if you want, but I really don't need this. A free option for Dutch and Belgian TV is the app BVN Live or, if you want to use also the media library, https://www.bvn.tv/. The content, however, is not really exciting. That's one of the reasons why I don't consume too much Dutch media. The other one is lack of time. I only began consuming Dutch media and conversing with a tutor very recently after thoroughly completing two Assimil Dutch courses (Assimil Niederländisch ohne Mühe heute and Assimil Le Néerlandais) and the old Linguaphone Cursus Nederlands from the 50s. So far I have not encountered any comprehension problems. That doesn't mean that I necessarily know all the vocabulary, but I can guess everything from context right away. As I said, I think the relatedness of Dutch to German helps a lot. By the way, I upgraded my level for Dutch to "advanced", I think this is appropriate (or should it be "speaks"?).

[reineke]

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[Axon]

How much time would you estimate you've spent on dialogues and sentences compared to speaking lessons and consuming native media? And how long have you been studying Dutch?

[Beli Tsar]

It's maybe a bit trite and simplistic to say it but I'd also imagine that those most concerned with efficiency aren't the ones posting the most on here, so you'll see more posts from the "dabbling and cookies" types than more serious learners who are probably just getting on with their studies and realise that it's usually more productive to put in the time than to try to find secrets to very marginal gains. Again, I and most of us are probably somewhere between the two extremes here and come here for other reasons than just technical discussion, and I'm not denying that plenty frequent posters are also great learners.

As someone new to the forums and not very experienced in language learning, I'm sure you are right - it's people like me who are obsessed with improving our efficiency.

I think, though, that comes out of the sudden realisation, as you begin to get somewhere with a language, that you did first, in your first struggles with a language, tend to be extraordinarily inefficient and rather ineffective.

Discovering this new world of wiser learners and better techniques is a pretty heady thing!