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Re: Tips for language learners

Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 8:34 pm
by Le Baron
MollyJanet wrote:If you find a word difficult to memorize, use it as a password to your mobile, email, etc...


Isn't that the best way to forget your password?

Re: Tips for language learners

Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 10:09 pm
by Cavesa
No offense meant, but while I totally respect this as your personal choices, I don't think such advice should be too widely spread, it will not lead most learners to much success. And it is rather bold to just give people advice in your first post, without presenting yourself and your previous successes this advice is based on.

Duolingo and Memrise are known to be good supplemental exercise (especially the user made courses on Memrise), but not too good as the main resource. Just googling random grammar points isn't that great for overall progress either (I can definitely see the point of such an approach done by some experienced learners, who know perfectly well what to not forget to look up, but not majority of learners).

MollyJanet wrote:
The important things for every single laguage learner are:

Set your languages to the tongue you are currently learning (reddit, mobile, facebook, youtube, email...)

If you find a word difficult to memorize, use it as a password to your mobile, email, etc...


No. Such things can surely be a tiny part of a routine of some learners, but they are extremely far from necessary, let alone for "every single learner".

I like having posters at home with grammar I struggle to learn (irregular verbs...) - just get an A3 paper and write whatever you like on it (the more colorful and inventive it is, the easier to learn)


This one is good, I'd add that you should put it on places, where you look a lot. A place on the wall or door to the bathroom (sitting eye level) is ideal :-D (not kidding, the most successful Latin learner I know had smaller or bigger overviews of grammar and vocab everywhere. On the kitchen cupboards, on the bathroom door, various exposed places in her room)

The rest is not too bad, it is just nothing too new, and nothing that will really save you without some serious work.

Please try to learn every day, even if it was just for 10 minutes.


There is a new and interesting Study Time Calculator, which nicely illustrates that those 10 minutes a day won't lead too far, unless they are just 10 minutes on the off days, with hours on other days regularly.

Why do you use "please"? Most people around here are already learning or have learnt some languages, we haven't waited for someone to beg :-)

Re: Tips for language learners

Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 10:10 pm
by Cavesa
Le Baron wrote:
MollyJanet wrote:If you find a word difficult to memorize, use it as a password to your mobile, email, etc...


Isn't that the best way to forget your password?


Nah, it's the second best. The best way is to leave a foreign keyboard switched on and forget about that. :-D

Re: Tips for language learners

Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:59 pm
by lusan
Le Baron wrote:
MollyJanet wrote:If you find a word difficult to memorize, use it as a password to your mobile, email, etc...


Isn't that the best way to forget your password?


Nice, however I have so mannny.... that my passwords will not be enough....!

Re: Tips for language learners

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 12:05 am
by Cavesa
lusan wrote:
Le Baron wrote:
MollyJanet wrote:If you find a word difficult to memorize, use it as a password to your mobile, email, etc...


Isn't that the best way to forget your password?


Nice, however I have so mannny.... that my passwords will not be enough....!


That's what the mandatory frequent password changes are for.

Re: Tips for language learners

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 8:00 am
by rdearman
I got rid of mandatory password changes when I used to be an IT administrator because it is just a bad idea. Here are some password examples for a company with a mandatory password change monthly.

January1#
February1#

Note the capital, number, and special character. Means all the rules, secure as a wet paper bag.

Re: Tips for language learners

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 9:13 am
by garyb
This is clearly a spam post, why are people posting serious replies?

Re: Tips for language learners

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 10:32 am
by kanewai
garyb wrote:This is clearly a spam post, why are people posting serious replies?

But it’s such an odd spam post. There’s no links to anything, no obvious Internet personality or product behind it - it’s just spam, falling out of the ether.

Though the signature line looks like one of those internet-thingy codes.

Re: Tips for language learners

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 11:05 am
by Deinonysus
Hi MollyJanet, welcome to the forum! I think that is good advice for beginners. Unfortunately most of the regulars here are not beginners, hence your rather icy reception. But I'm sure many lurkers who may be new to the forum will find it helpful.

To those who might call this spam or suspect some ulterior motive, I don't think so. I see posts like this all the time on r/languagelearning and they are often get heavily upvoted. Here, unlike Reddit, a user's post-count is highly visible and it's a small community so you see familiar names over and over, which encourages a culture of heavy skepticism against "uppity" new users. But I don't think that's necessary here. The suggestions are basic but I don't think they'll do any harm to anyone, and they might help motivate new language learners that are passing through.

Re: Tips for language learners

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 12:38 pm
by rdearman
OK, I couldn't work out how to put this message at the top of the thread, (Think it is time constrained)

Anyway. MollyJanet was a SPAMMER SCUMBAG who put their spams in their signature block and posted some stupid trivial post in order for the links to get processed by the Google bot which rates our forum near the top of the results. So I deleted the spammer scumbags account, then spent a couple of hours pouring over the documentation to get rid of that little signature link exploit.

So screw you MollyJanet, spammer scum, that trick will not work here any more! I have removed that loophole now too. :)

Deinonysus wrote:To those who might call this spam or suspect some ulterior motive, I don't think so. I see posts like this all the time on r/languagelearning and they are often get heavily upvoted. Here, unlike Reddit, a user's post-count is highly visible and it's a small community so you see familiar names over and over, which encourages a culture of heavy skepticism against "uppity" new users. But I don't think that's necessary here. The suggestions are basic but I don't think they'll do any harm to anyone, and they might help motivate new language learners that are passing through.

Yes, I agree we need to answer the questions of legitimate beginners. I would have actually kept the post by the spammer since there wasn't actually anything harmful in the post itself, but when I deleted the account all the messages (and signature) went with it.

Also thank you to all the members who reported the spam links in the signature block. If you see spam in posts please report it so that I can try to keep on top of the exploits and remove them as quickly as possible.