An American in Norway

[dubendorf]

Currently reviewing lesson 30 and studying lesson 31 of the Linguaphone Norsk Kurs. When I first started this course, now one month ago, I decided to follow Arguelles' approach to course materials such as this by using a combination of shadowing and text analysis. He recommends, in that video, starting out with 15 minute sessions once per day and, as the lessons get longer, splitting them into multiple 15 minute sessions to better maintain focus. When I heard this, I thought, "I'm motivated, I'm a scholar, I can focus for longer than 15 minutes at a time," and boldly preceded to do the entire lesson in 15 and then 30 and then 40 and then 45 minute sessions. This quickly became untenable and I realized I had overestimated myself. I am particularly aware of this this week as I have an overdue manuscript that I am working on so between language learning, recreational reading, professional writing, and attending seminars and symposia, I am living a really intense scholarly life at the moment. (Which, to be clear, is wonderful, but also exhausting.)

I have come to several realizations in that time. First, I think what constitutes a "lesson" in Arguelles' Assimil video is quite different from what constitutes a lesson in the Linguaphone book. For example, in that video, I believe he is doing lesson 29/100, which has around 50-60 seconds of audio. By comparison, the Linguaphone lesson I shadowed today has a full 2 minutes and 45 seconds of audio with minimal pauses. Most of the Linguaphone lessons have been around 2 minutes in length. Therefore, assuming the 100 lessons of the Assimil book and 50 lessons of the Linguaphone book cover roughly the same territory, I am actually proceeding at twice the rate of the "15 minutes a day" video.

Second, I think I have overestimated how quickly one will internalize one of these books. I had been living under the assumption that in 50 days I would close the back cover and move on to the next book. However, it is quite difficult to get 100% comprehension of a given lesson using the notes and word list. There are many words not in the word list that I haven't internalized yet. And when I review a lesson the following day, I don't get quite all of it the first time shadowing. And once I have completed a lesson and reviewed it, there's still usually at least one sentence that I have nearly zero comprehension on. This made me realize that there was a whole other section to Arguelles' video that I had ignored, which explains that you will go through the entire book at least three times. Once through studying it like this, at least once shadowing it, and then finally going through it once more using scriptorium.

Putting it all together, I am beginning to find much more enjoyment by breaking it up into 15 minute sessions throughout my day and by allowing myself to take a little bit more time on a lesson if I have to, for example, studying it over two days. Right now, this means roughly one 15 minute session of pure shadowing and one or two more sessions of no shadowing, but just straight textual analysis. These sessions include both studying the new lesson and reviewing the previous.

I am also thinking about finally signing up for an in-person course, inspired by some advice I've received on this forum and also because my fellow expat co-workers are starting courses themselves. There are many options in Oslo: the university, the folkeuniversitetet, and private companies, like Berlitz and other local businesses. I have heard the university classes are fairly intense. Folkeuniversitetet are also supposedly good. I have no idea about the private companies. Overall, it sounds like quality varies widely with who your instructor is. There's also a bit of a price variance; Folkeuniversitetet and private companies seem to be cheaper at around 130 NOK/hr (roughly 13 euros), so you get more hours per dollar. But, based on the stated "levels" of their course, and the number of hours to complete the series, they progress through material much slower than the university course. By contrast, the university courses are more expensive (maybe 180 NOK/hr), but if you complete the entire series, you will have paid less total. I have no idea how to judge quality versus volume, but I am biased towards taking university courses and I'd rather spend less total money to get through several shorter, more intense courses, than save a couple of bucks per hour to go through a much slower course, even if it has more "volume." Another variable is the schedule. Many of the folkeuniversitetet courses are 3 hours per day, 5 days per week, which I just don't have time for. University courses and private courses are a more manageable 2-3 hours twice per week. It sounds like my colleagues have chosen the cheaper private company route. I also have yet to hear back from my employer on whether they will cover some of the course tuition; it is alleged that they will pay for one or two levels, but I can't tell if that is vaporware.

[dubendorf]

Update

I finally received my physical copies of The Mystery of Nils and, its follow-up, Mysteriet om Nils. I think I will switch from Linguaphone to Nils since using the digital copy of Linguaphone is kind of a drag. I will start it up again perhaps after I finish Nils. Even though I have already completed probably 50% of Nils, I am going through it from the beginning. I am pleased to see that I can basically just read the Norwegian text straight through with 100% comprehension (for the parts I have already read before). That means I can shadow a chapter and read the grammar explanations in about 5 minutes and so can do at least 3 chapters in a session. I will continue doing this in 15 minute chunks as long as I can and return back to my pace of 1 chapter per day once I get back to where I left off. I also got some of the earlier Pimsleur lessons on hold from the library, so I have completed close to 25/30 of Norwegian 1.

I have had some amusing interactions in Norwegian recently. A postal worker was asking me for directions and I understood completely and we continued the entire conversation in Norwegian. Success! However, after we parted ways, I realized I had misremembered my address and so gave him completely wrong directions. Whoops! I guess knowledge of Norwegian can't fix a terrible sense of direction. I was talking to another postal worker (not sure why I am interacting with the post so much) and they said "navn" and I completely did not understand what they were saying/asking and had to switch to English. Turns out they were asking for my name, which, "navn" is a word I have seen and heard probably a hundred times, but no one has ever said it to me so I didn't understand right away. Haven't quite figured out how to get over that hurdle of comprehension. The terror of in-person dialogue tends to make my brain shut off and I instinctively switch to English. Perhaps I need to practice thinking in Norwegian more to get in that headspace.

[Tumlare]

Update

I have had some amusing interactions in Norwegian recently. A postal worker was asking me for directions and I understood completely and we continued the entire conversation in Norwegian. Success! However, after we parted ways, I realized I had misremembered my address and so gave him completely wrong directions. Whoops! I guess knowledge of Norwegian can't fix a terrible sense of direction. I was talking to another postal worker (not sure why I am interacting with the post so much) and they said "navn" and I completely did not understand what they were saying/asking and had to switch to English. Turns out they were asking for my name, which, "navn" is a word I have seen and heard probably a hundred times, but no one has ever said it to me so I didn't understand right away. Haven't quite figured out how to get over that hurdle of comprehension. The terror of in-person dialogue tends to make my brain shut off and I instinctively switch to English. Perhaps I need to practice thinking in Norwegian more to get in that headspace.

I've had those moments of freezing with in-person communication so many times and it's always frustrating! I think this is just one of those stages that a learner has to get through. I've found it happening much less often as I've gotten more listening and conversation practice in.

[jeff_lindqvist]

I've had those moments of freezing with in-person communication so many times and it's always frustrating! I think this is just one of those stages that a learner has to get through. I've found it happening much less often as I've gotten more listening and conversation practice in.

I agree totally.

No textbook or audio course in the world will prepare us enough for "real language".

I once met a person from Germany who mentioned that they once "was in New York and couldn't understand anything". And that was English (which in our part of the world is everywhere).

[dubendorf]

Thanks for the kind words! It makes sense that overcoming fear just takes time and practice with listening and speaking IRL.

Update:

I am progressing through the chapters of TMON. I think I finished chapter 5 this morning. I am doing all of the reading and exercises and shadowing the actual story a few times. I have about 98-100% comprehension of the chapter text and most of the grammar content is review at this point. It is amazing how different 98% comprehension feels than 50% or even 80%. Also, doing roughly 1 Pimsleur lesson per day. Got an update from Ayan that my paper copy of Linguaphone Norks Kurs should be on its way soon so looking forward to that. Working through a paper textbook is just so much more pleasant than using a PDF on my laptop. Being able to flip to the alphabetical word list in the back, keep bookmarks, being able to run a finger under the words, etc.

[dubendorf]

Update

I completed TMON Chapter 6 and Pimsleur 14 (going out of order) this morning.

My small success of the day was that I ordered coffee in Norwegian, and they asked me a bunch of follow up questions (For here or to go? Will you have anything to eat? Would you like this coffee or this coffee?) and neither I nor the cashier ever switched to English! And she understood everything so I guess I didn't mess up the pronunciation. At one point, I even had trouble hearing what she was asking and asked for clarification in Norwegian. It feels small, but normally what happens is after I order and they ask one follow-up question, my brain short circuits and I switch to English and say "I'm sorry?"

[dubendorf]

Update.

Completed TMON Chapter 8 today.

I want to figure out a suitable review cycle. While going through the Linguaphone course, I was reviewing yesterday's lesson after completing today's lesson, but I had no formalized way of reviewing older lessons. (In fact, often my "review" of yesterday's lesson felt like learning a whole new lesson from scratch and took me just as much time as completing today's lesson.) However, I think reviewing older lessons would be helpful since there were many words and phrases that I saw once and never learned, but then saw repeated again in later lessons but had no idea what they meant. On the other hand, I think the point of completing one's first course is just to get through the course; it's not super important to understand 100% after the first time through.

Right now, I am going through The Mystery of Nils and not really doing any review at the moment. I spend probably 30 minutes on each chapter shadowing the text and going through the exercises. Although, since I have completed the first 50% of this book about a month ago, in a sense I am reviewing right now on a monthly cycle. I don't feel like I am learning a ton from this process, though perhaps I am learning 5-6 words a day that I missed during my first cycle through the book. Most of the vocab and grammar is familiar.

In his 15 minutes a day video, Arguelles recommends doing in one's first auto-didactic manual what I have been doing with Linguaphone, which is completing today's lesson and reviewing yesterday's lesson. In his 30 minutes a day video, while completing one's second auto-didactic manual, he recommends a somewhat different cycle. It is slightly confusing, but I guess he breaks the book up into 7-day chunks and reviews one lesson per chunk per day cycling from week to week. So, for example, he would review lesson 1, lesson 7, lesson 14, and then lesson 2, lesson 8, and lesson 15 on six consecutive days in that order.

Then, on the more macro-cycle, once he completed the book he would go through it again doing shadowing or scriptorium. So there's kind of a micro-cycle (review yesterday's lesson), a meso-cycle (review weekly lessons), and a macro-cycle (go through the whole book multiple times in succession).

I don't know what the answer is, just pondering different possibilities. In the meantime, I will keep plugging along.

[dubendorf]

Update

Completed Pimsleur 26 and I'm on TMON chapter 9.

As the lessons are getting longer, I think I will start splitting them up into 15-minute chunks like I had been doing with Linguaphone. So, shadowing for 15 minutes and then, in a separate session, going through the grammar exercises for 15 minutes. I am playing around with Arguelles' "two-thumb" shadowing method, in which he recommends following along with the text in one hand and the translation in the other to directly compare the two. I am doing something similar using the text in one hand and the word list in the other hand (since there's no translation). So, I first blind shadow, and then I shadow the text while following along in the word list so that I can "look-up" any words I don't know. I am doing this instead of the "textual analysis" I was doing before where I would carefully read without shadowing and look up each word. So far, I think it works well.

This got me curious about the decision, in many language manuals, not to include English translations of the target language text. Perhaps this wasn't a conscious "decision" in the sense of someone sitting down and deciding between two alternatives; perhaps it was just done so without much thought. On the other hand, it seems like many manuals (e.g., The Nature Method and friends) make this choice intentionally while others, the obvious example being Assimil, choose to include line-by-line translations of the target text. There seems to me an obvious benefit to including the translation, which is that understanding today's text is not wholly dependent on having internalized all of the text from the previous lessons (since the word lists in Linguaphone and TMON only include the new words, none of the previous words) and it provides useful context for any new words introduced or for old words used in a new context.

I suppose the argument, from a pedagogical perspective, for not including the translation is that it forces you to read and understand the target language text rather than just relying on the translation. And, thus, to help you think in the target language. This is the whole premise behind the Nature Method, I suppose. (A less pedagogical and more practical reason might be that it saves on costs in paying translators and printing larger texts.) I am not sure that I have a strong opinion of which is better, but I think I will start my next language (probably Spanish or Italian) using an Assimil manual to see how I like that approach by comparison.

I am quite surprised at the change I feel in my Norwegian comprehension. Even though I have been studying Norwegian off-and-on for almost two years, I feel I have only been studying intensively (and effectively) for about two months. But even in only two months, I suddenly find myself able to think in full sentences and discuss those sentences with my wife (who doesn't speaking Norwegian) by observing differences between Norwegian and English or explaining things that I struggle with. Of course, I still feel terrified and embarrassed every time I try to speak in Norwegian to my Norwegian colleagues, but the more comfortable I get with words and phrases, the more casually and confidently I find I can slip them into conversation. I find the best person to talk to is my German friend who speaks Norwegian because he is able to match my level, but also explain generally why something is this case. When I ask the Nords, "How do you know to say x in situation y?" they mostly just give me a blank stare and say "I dunno." I think someone who had to learn Norwegian as a second language better understand the rules than someone who just does it because that is the way it is done.

[jeff_lindqvist]

I think someone who had to learn Norwegian as a second language better understand the rules than someone who just does it because that is the way it is done.

Indeed. Someone I know had a non-native Swedish speaker in their class. That person outscored everyone else on grammar tests.

[Zerrez]

When I ask the Nords, "How do you know to say x in situation y?" they mostly just give me a blank stare and say "I dunno." I think someone who had to learn Norwegian as a second language better understand the rules than someone who just does it because that is the way it is done.

Absolutely. Off the top of your head, and imagine if you've never thought about grammar before, can you tell me why we say, "I am what I am" and not "I am what I'm being" ? I'm a native English teacher and even I don't know unless I think about it really hard. My immediate reaction is that "I am what I'm being" would just sound weird. Non-native teachers and conversation partners are usually better to learn from/with because they know their grammar on an analytical level.

Also, about language material without translation - I'm sure immersion/natural method has something to do with it, but also it works for people with any native language. For a lot of languages, Assimil can only be used by French speakers. If they designed their courses to be without translation, they'd be accessible to anyone. On the other hand, in my opinion, Assimil has some of the best language learning material out there. Whatever method they've designed works the best for me - and it's with translation.