Grammar-Translation, Translation Drills, Assimil Active Wave, Back-Translation, and Bruce Lee

[StringerBell]

> I'm not saying that I keep coming up with unnatural and weird-sounding answers

Indeed. You said you come up with answers that are beyond you as to their naturalness. They could be natural and they could be unnatural. So much so it is causing you problems. All this when you had studied the original L2 sentence earlier. To me you are working beyond your level.

Things are very simple for me. The original L2 sentence is my correct answer. I’m trying to practise this version of it, not its many variations. When I’m practising “How are you” I don’t practise “How do you do”.

I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying. Either that or we are discussing two different things. My goal is not to memorize everything word for word like a computer, I want to be able to translate ideas. There are usually a variety of ways to translate an idea and I don't want to torture myself for not coming up with the exact same word choice/word order if what I came up with is an equally valid response. Let's agree to disagree here.

I would phrase the L1/English question or add hints so that I’d get the exact known-to-be correct answer that I meant to answer. Something like your translation with the purple font.

I don't want to do this. I've tried it in the past and I found it useless. I ended up relying so much on the "hints" that I never was able to internalize the translation of the idea.

If the idea I want to express is "I couldn't stop thinking about it" I want to know how I'd express that idea in Polish. If I write that idea in L1/English with some bizarre word order to mimic the way it's written in Polish, but then it loses its meaning in English and/or give myself hints that essentially give me the answer, it defeats the purpose of this activity for me. My goal is to be able to translate ideas, not get all my cards in Anki "correct". I don't really care if I come up with something that's different from the card as long as what I came up with is valid. What you are doing is purely memorization. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just not the same thing as what I'm talking about.

[smallwhite]

> My goal is not to memorize everything word for word like a computer,

Mine neither.

> I want to be able to translate ideas.

Me, too.

> There are usually a variety of ways to translate an idea

If your idea is vague and you accept a translation imprecise, I agree.

> and I don't want to torture myself for not coming up with the exact same word choice/word order if what I came up with is an equally valid response.

Now, you said your problem is you can’t tell if your response is equally valid.

> Let's agree to disagree here.

We have the same goals.

> If I write that idea in L1/English with some bizarre word order to mimic the way it's written in Polish, but then it loses its meaning in English

You’re not supposed to.

> and/or give myself hints that essentially give me the answer,

You’re not supposed to.

> it defeats the purpose of this activity for me.

Starting with a new L2 sentence you meant to learn but ending up coming up with and accepting as correct an alternate answer that you already know and don’t need practising defeats the purpose of starting with that new L2 sentence even more.

> I don't really care if I come up with something that's different from the card as long as what I came up with is valid.

And you said you can’t tell if it’s valid.

[StringerBell]

Let's agree to disagree here.

You seem to be purposefully trying argue about something that I'm not even saying, nor do I want to argue about. This is not a good use of our time, so let's move on.

[smallwhite]

Let's agree to disagree here.

You seem to be purposefully trying argue about something that I'm not even saying, nor do I want to argue about. This is not a good use of our time, so let's move on.

I wasn’t arguing. You misunderstood me, thinking I was doing something different from what you are doing, meaning I wasn’t clear, so I tried to explain myself, explaining that we’re doings the same thing.

—

To no one in particular: I like grammar-translation because it’s simple to implement, easy to do and works fast. I translated sentences early in my Italian studies and I spoke quite comfortably from week 1, using more and more grammar and vocabulary as I went. I’ve passed B2 online mock tests but I have about 500 sentences that I still practise a little with once in a while.

I also translated sentences in Spanish, and when I went on an unplanned and unprepared one-month trip to Spain 10 months into my studies, I could chat and do everything in Spanish also quite comfortably. I hadn’t even done self-talk or writing yet at that point.

It was sentence translation that turned my German studies around. I had learnt the grammar then the vocabulary but it would take me 2 minutes to construct a simple sentence. Then, when translating Italian turned out well, I did the same for German, and bam, everything fell into place right away.

It’s easy and fast so I’m a believer.

[Speakeasy]

… I like grammar-translation because it’s simple to implement, easy to do and works fast … It was sentence translation that turned my German studies around. I had learnt the grammar then the vocabulary but it would take me 2 minutes to construct a simple sentence. Then, when translating Italian turned out well, I did the same for German, and bam, everything fell into place right away. It’s easy and fast so I’m a believer.

But, but, the grammar-translation method has been discredited*, just as the audio-lingual method has!

*Well, to be fair, a good student, one who is self-motivated, who just might happen to have an aptitude for learning languages, and who works well in an independent-learning environment, can use just-about-any set of materials and any method and still achieve good, if not above average, results. The converse is also true.

[David1917]

… I like grammar-translation because it’s simple to implement, easy to do and works fast … It was sentence translation that turned my German studies around. I had learnt the grammar then the vocabulary but it would take me 2 minutes to construct a simple sentence. Then, when translating Italian turned out well, I did the same for German, and bam, everything fell into place right away. It’s easy and fast so I’m a believer.

But, but, the grammar-translation method has been discredited*, just as the audio-lingual method has!

*Well, to be fair, a good student, one who is self-motivated, who just might happen to have an aptitude for learning languages, and who works well in an independent-learning environment, can use just-about-any set of materials and any method and still achieve good, if not above average, results. The converse is also true.

G-T could also work well in classroom settings if used in conjunction with conversation. I was incredibly lucky to have a Spanish teacher in high school who had us speaking every class, moving to immersion by the 2nd year, and having us do the GT stuff at home for homework. I wonder if other people who have the horror stories have just sat in classrooms doing translations and taking turns doing sentence patterns.

I think any method could work if used properly, and if the instructor is a benefit rather than a hindrance. I would say some people take to certain methods better than others.

[SGP]

It was sentence translation that turned my German studies around. I had learnt the grammar then the vocabulary but it would take me 2 minutes to construct a simple sentence. Then, when translating Italian turned out well, I did the same for German, and bam, everything fell into place right away.

It’s easy and fast so I’m a believer.

This experience of yours shows to me once again that Chinese isn't difficult. Because if this Sentence Translation Method works one way, it simply works the other way around, too. Nevermind that I personally neither speak it nor read it. And nevermind the tones of Cantonese/Mandarin/isiZulu/etc. They basically exist in English, too.

[Cainntear]

This is an interesting debate/non-debate.

My view on internalising language is that it requires variation and manipulation in the application* of the point under consideration**. If you do the same thing again and again, you risk either memorising examples as fixed, or you internalise a very narrow model of the point.

Repetition was a consequence of the medium (paper, vinyl, tape, CD etc) -- note that Michel Thomas's oral teaching appears to have involved no repetition at all.

I'm disappointed that so many digital products do nothing to take advantage of the loss of that restriction.
Glossika is book of sentences thrown into an SRS program -- you do not manipulate elements if you only ever encounter them in one repeated sentence.
Duolingo should be better, but despite having a sentence database of millions of sentences, Duolingo keeps repeating the same ones (sentences that often aren't clear or natural).

I'd like to compare this to playing a musical instrument. Scales are given excessive focus in many lessons, with the fallacy that it teaches you how to play the notes. However, the physical action of playing a particular note differs radically depending on which note you played previously -- tunes do not consist entirely of single steps up and down. Thus we need to play lots of different tunes to learn to transition to each note from every other note.

Use in variation.

* (yeah, I just wanted another -ation word at this point)
** (yeah, I'm in one of those moods)

[Speakeasy]

The analogy to the practicing of musical scales is interesting. It is true that, as for many other fields of physical or mental activity, languages and music can be learned without resorting to untold hours of repeating fixed patterns, more particularly so when the patterns themselves are drawn from a rather narrow selection of what one might call the standard linguistic or musical repertoire. One might even suggest that this type of practice retards the development of a freer, more natural style of performance.

Nevertheless, I would suggest that what we are discussing here is the usefulness of a number of approaches, used primarily at the beginning stages, which will permit the student to absorb and hopefully master a number of basic concepts (in a self-instruction environment) which are quite simply essential to any level of performance and, here, I am referring to both learning a language and practicing a musical instrument. In this context, I believe that the “rote learning” of multiplication tables, of musical scales, or of a selection of grammatical forms and basic vocabulary, can be of great assistance to the student as, once fully absorbed, the ability to repeat these forms effortlessly will liberate the individual so that he might access more advance forms more easily. No, this type of practice is not absolutely necessary, but it does have significant value when used wisely.

As an aside, I would say that the primary justification for the practicing of musical scales and arpeggios is not the memorisation of where the notes lie on the instrument. It is rather, the development of a sound technique without which a high level of performance would be difficult to attain. Furthermore, it forms only a small part of a musician’s training, most of which will be spent playing progressively more difficult pieces.

EDITED:
Typos.

[sirgregory]

My assumption is that doing translation drills will never be as effective than having thoroughly internalized 3,000 ready-made sentences that can be used and mixed with each other in daily life.

This is something I'm currently thinking about, since I'm halfway through Jak Uczyć Się Języków (How to Learn Languages) by Luca Lampariello. In this book, he explains the methods he uses to learn languages and why he thinks they are efficient and necessary. When he's in the beginning stages of learning a new language, he relies on bi-directional translation to help him focus on the structural patterns of his target language and how it differs from his native language.

According to him, this is a really important way to activate procedural memory (how to assemble the components of the language to speak it) as opposed to solely relying on declarative memory (memorizing individual words). According to him, one of the biggest mistakes that language learners make is to only focus on declarative memory and completely ignore procedural memory, which is why it's really common for people to have hundreds or thousands of words memorized but then not be able to formulate sentences when they want to speak the language.

So far I don't agree with everything in the book, but this idea has gotten me wondering more about the benefits of doing translation, and whether it actually makes a difference compared to just speaking more earlier on. My initial belief was that memorizing a lot of common, ready-to-use phrases was the most efficient way to go, but now I'm not really sure.

Very interesting. I didn't read Luca's book, but I would be interested in hearing about his ideas more in depth. I don't think he's quite clear in his YouTube videos (maybe intentionally, because he has something to sell?). However, speaking of the difference between procedural and declarative memory: I absolutely agree that using your procedural memory is good for you. However, doesn't translating and back-translating sentences rely on declarative memory, i.e. conciously searching for words and consciously applying rules? On the other side, isn't speaking, repeating, and reciting sentences from memory as advocated by Alphonse Chérel something that relies on, and fosters, procedural memory (i.e. knowing how to do something, but not necessarily why)? So maybe Luca advocates in fact memorization (although calling it bi-directional translation)? I would very much like to know more about this subject.

I found a blog post where Luca describes his basic method:

The elementary phase consists of:

Listen to the audio files.
Repeat the audio files.
Read the materials with and without the audio files.
Translate the Thai dialogue into English.
Translate your English translation into Thai (transliteration or script).
When you translate the Thai dialogue (audio, transliteration, or script) into English first, then translate your English version back into Thai (transliteration or script), you come full circle.

The full circle attributes of my method are what makes for a quality outcome.

http://womenlearnthai.com/index.php/an-easy-way-to-learn-foreign-languages-part-two/