Roadmap to Quick and Dirty Conversational Ability

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Sprachprofi
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Roadmap to Quick and Dirty Conversational Ability

Postby Sprachprofi » Wed Aug 03, 2022 5:56 pm

I just finished my Fluent in 3 Months Challenge for Russian. I had started from scratch on May 1st and I'm reasonably happy with this unplanned conversation I had on Day 90. Obviously I could have gone further if I had managed to put in more than 54 hours, but I still have a full-time job and other projects and 45-65 hours is about par for the course for a 90-day challenge for me.

I'm not a newbie to these challenges - on my channel you can find similar videos I recorded after 90 days of Hebrew, Croatian, Vietnamese, Japanese - so this time I took the time to write down my recipe, for those who are struggling to develop their speaking ability.

In essence, whenever I do these challenges I aim for ca. 50 hours of "hard study" total, which are allocated as follows:
- 10 hours of studying "Teach Yourself Complete <language>" or "Michel Thomas <language>" - not Pimsleur or Duolingo or Rosetta Stone because imho they are too slow and don't focus on the right vocabulary for free conversations.
- 20 hours of conversational lessons with a tutor who doesn't switch to English (except for single-word translations) - I try several teachers until I find one with whom I can "talk for hours" about shared interests. Non-professionals are fine, especially in the 3rd month.
- 20 hours spent on Anki, memorising the vocabulary from the Teach Yourself course and especially the vocabulary and phrases I encounter during conversational lessons. I always require the teachers to write down the words I don't know and then enter them into Anki on the day after my lesson. Obviously I don't do 20 hours of Anki in a rush but spread it out, max 30 minutes of review per day. Same for the Teach Yourself course and the conversational lessons.

I don't do much else but also I don't count it (e.g. listening to the radio in the background or doing some Duolingo) because in my experience it has never had a great effect on the results.

I wrote a blog post with more detailed instructions for those who want to try to copy my approach: https://languagecrush.com/forum/t/3432
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Le Baron
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Re: Roadmap to Quick and Dirty Conversational Ability

Postby Le Baron » Thu Aug 04, 2022 12:36 am

It's great to be able to even listen well after only 3 months, speaking back is a bonus. Can't ever fault someone with the nerve to upload a video doing it too. I think perhaps the study allocation is another thumbs-up for the view that a little grammar and a lot of learning some words and actual talking is the route to conversational ability - that and large dose of confidence! Still I wasn't that good at listening to Russian after 6 months (there was no internet then however, that's my excuse).

I will comment on the Michel Thomas though. I don't think his courses (especially 10 hours worth) are a great improvement on Pimsleur,. It also doesn't teach a lot of what you'd need for talking in that time frame. Too much waffle not in the target language and the teaching method is annoying. That might just be personal to me though.

Well done. Great success.
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Re: Roadmap to Quick and Dirty Conversational Ability

Postby leosmith » Sun Aug 07, 2022 2:43 am

Le Baron wrote:I don't think his courses (especially 10 hours worth) are a great improvement on Pimsleur
I've never studied German, so I don't doubt what you are saying. But Michel Thomas attempts to teach most of a language's main grammar points in a short period of time. Pimsleur, on the other hand, attempts to cover the most common situations a beginner will encounter, that can fit within it's time constraints. There is overlap, but I find that these two approaches compliment each other really well. The exceptions are when Michel Thomas does not attempt to cover most of the grammar. For example, MT Japanese/Mandarin and Korean.
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Re: Roadmap to Quick and Dirty Conversational Ability

Postby Cavesa » Wed Aug 10, 2022 7:37 pm

A practical question: How far in the Teach Yourself book did you get in those 10 hours? The whole thing very fast? Or was it just a part? I often notice that the first half of a good beginner coursebook already covers so much useful stuff. Then did you anki only content from the covered lessons, or the whole TY book?

Had you used TY for the other 3 month challenges before this one?

Oh, and 54 hours with a full time job and all your languages, that's awesome!
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Re: Roadmap to Quick and Dirty Conversational Ability

Postby Sprachprofi » Sun Aug 14, 2022 3:32 pm

Re Pimsleur: I really don't like it. Not just that the American tourist, with whom I'm supposed to identify, often comes across as incredibly creepy and ugh, Pimsleur also only teaches 5 words per 30 minutes, and these words are (in level 1) mostly related to inviting someone to a drink, so not really useful for the conversations I want to have after a 90-day speaking challenge. Michel Thomas teaches words at roughly 3x the speed, and the words are mostly universal ones which can be used in many different conversations. Also a big focus on telling you about cognates, which can be a nice hack for extra vocabulary during these challenges.

I haven't tried any of the original Michel Thomas for German, French or the like and I get that some people don't like them because the teacher has too much of an accent, but the newer Michel Thomas series (like Russian) all have native speaker teachers and they take care to repeat the students' sentences with perfect pronunciation.

Cavesa wrote:A practical question: How far in the Teach Yourself book did you get in those 10 hours? The whole thing very fast? Or was it just a part? I often notice that the first half of a good beginner coursebook already covers so much useful stuff.


In the case of Russian, I only did the first 5 lessons because I realized that Russian was not very phonetic and my ability to sound out words was lacking (despite using the audio with it), so I switched to doing some Michel Thomas. Normally I'm a visual learner, but for a speaking challenge, recognizing the written form of words is optional.

Then did you anki only content from the covered lessons, or the whole TY book?

Only for those lessons, plus language island stuff, but the bulk of my deck is words and collocations that came up during my 1:1 classes. I ask my teachers to write down every word I need during classes, so usually there are 15-30 words / collocations from each session. Memorizing those is the best investment you could possibly make, much better than vocabulary from a textbook, because everything you needed to say once, you'll need to say again. With obvious exceptions like "tarantula" and so on, but there will be a huge amount of useful stuff like "I want to go", "I visited", "in Athens" and so on.

Had you used TY for the other 3 month challenges before this one?

Yes, it's my go-to resource when doing a time-limited speaking challenge. When there is no time limit, I prefer Assimil, because the knowledge assimilates more deeply and with less effort, but you don't learn as much useful stuff as quickly. And when the goal of the challenge is reading or understanding a TV series, I have somewhat different approaches - linked here.

Oh, and 54 hours with a full time job and all your languages, that's awesome!

Thanks!
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Re: Roadmap to Quick and Dirty Conversational Ability

Postby Le Baron » Sun Aug 14, 2022 5:06 pm

Sprachprofi wrote:Re Pimsleur: I really don't like it. Not just that the American tourist, with whom I'm supposed to identify, often comes across as incredibly creepy and ugh, Pimsleur also only teaches 5 words per 30 minutes, and these words are (in level 1) mostly related to inviting someone to a drink, so not really useful for the conversations I want to have after a 90-day speaking challenge.

Fair point. The beginning of Pimsleur is a bit stalker-like and there is an obsession around people being 'on business'. Though a lot of learners seem not to get past the third month of Pimsleur and from what I know if it in German it changes quite radically in 4 and 5.
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golyplot
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Re: Roadmap to Quick and Dirty Conversational Ability

Postby golyplot » Mon Aug 15, 2022 2:41 am

Sprachprofi wrote:I'm not a newbie to these challenges - on my channel you can find similar videos I recorded after 90 days of Hebrew, Croatian, Vietnamese, Japanese - so this time I took the time to write down my recipe, for those who are struggling to develop their speaking ability.


Interesting. I was disappointed that there doesn't appear to be any 90 day video for Japanese on your channel though. I was curious to see what you managed in 90 days, since I've personally been studying Japanese for over two and a half years without even attempting conversation.

Also, I'm confused by the fact that your 90 day Vietnamese video was posted two weeks ago but the 60 day Vietnamese video was posted six years ago.

I also did a double-take when I saw your name on the channel, since I think Noriko has mentioned you on her podcast when talking about internet polyglots.

P.S. I just went to https://learnlangs.com/ and right at the top, I see a big "Video unavailable. This video is private." banner. You may want to fix that.
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Sprachprofi
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Re: Roadmap to Quick and Dirty Conversational Ability

Postby Sprachprofi » Sat Aug 20, 2022 8:26 am

golyplot wrote:Interesting. I was disappointed that there doesn't appear to be any 90 day video for Japanese on your channel though. I was curious to see what you managed in 90 days, since I've personally been studying Japanese for over two and a half years without even attempting conversation.

Try the Day 60 video; it gives you an idea. I then got very sick and couldn't complete the Day 90 in September. However, I went to Japan in October, got a rail pass and used Japanese a lot. One of my favourite memories of the trip is when I talked to a little old Japanese lady who sat next to us on the Shinkansen and who gave us advice on what to see next.

Also, I'm confused by the fact that your 90 day Vietnamese video was posted two weeks ago but the 60 day Vietnamese video was posted six years ago.


I had uploaded the video on Day 90 of that challenge but later made it Private because of the audio issues (the software I used badly mixed my microphone stream and the Skype audio, a lot of times the voices are on top of each other). Then recently people asked me where the Day 90 video is, so I made it public again, but apparently Youtube considers that the publish date now and I cannot put it back into the original order of releases.

I also did a double-take when I saw your name on the channel, since I think Noriko has mentioned you on her podcast when talking about internet polyglots.


I didn't know Noriko had mentioned me! "internet polyglots" has come to mean people who blog or vlog a lot and I don't have the motivation to do so, so I'm not sure I deserve the label. When I upload or write something, it's mostly for myself or for some people who asked me. It's not my career; my career is in web development and in producing language courses.

P.S. I just went to https://learnlangs.com/ and right at the top, I see a big "Video unavailable. This video is private." banner. You may want to fix that.


Thanks, that's super helpful, because I'm the author of the video of course so Youtube shows me my private videos. I could not have noticed the bug without your input. Fixed!
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