Memorizing texts

[lingohot]

Hello dear language fellas,

I recently came across a post on a German forum about language learning methods at a Chinese university that I wanted to share with you. At this university, the learning method consists to a good extent of memorizing texts, supposedly with great success. The post is very old (2008), but the linked videos of Chinese students giving lectures in a foreign language (Japanese) are still online. Very interesting! I am going to translate the post with DeepL:

As some of you may have noticed, I just spent a year in Beijing. There, among other things, I participated in the Japanese classes at Qinghua University. Since it was a really impressive experience, I would like to try to tell a little bit about the methods there:

At that time, I went to the first lesson of the Chinese students, who had been learning for two years, with a train of overconfidence. There the biggest surprise of my life in Beijing awaited me: the students spoke Japanese. But not just somehow; they spoke for the most part without accent and, above all, grammatically correctly. This was not only my impression - a Japanese guest student was also there that day and assumed all the time that some of the participants were Japanese. It was a black day for my self-confidence.

It looked even blacker when I went to the class of those who had a year of Japanese behind them on Tuesday. The students there speak better Japanese after that time than most of our students do after they graduate.

Now, of course, there are some good reasons you can come up with as to why the students are so good. The most important one is probably that Chinese learn Japanese vocabulary much faster because they know much of it from their own language. But that still didn't explain this proficiency.

Before coming to China, I was firmly convinced that the perfect learning method did not exist and everyone had to find their own way, but apparently this is not just the case. I attended classes continuously for one semester and also talked with Mr. Oikawa for quite some time. The result is as simple as it is amazing, it is: memorization.

Now this is not exactly the most popular hobby in Germany. I myself only did it when I was forced to, and then only to the extent that I remembered it while reciting it. But the students here don't (only) learn by heart for performances, they learn by heart for themselves, namely textbook texts, dialogues, self-written lectures, phrases. Before class, during breaks, and after class, they can be seen reciting texts in the hallways, classrooms, squares, and gardens, and even in Mr. Oikawa's dorm in the evenings, in loud voices, expressively, and with proper accentuation and natural emphasis.

It's really not an exaggeration: the students who have been learning this way for two months speak better than the FU (=Freie Universität in Berlin) students after one year. So you know that I am not exaggerating: Here are two videos from class, here (https://v.youku.com/v_show/id_cz00XMTA0NzQ1Njg=.html) of someone who has been learning for a year and one (https://v.youku.com/v_show/id_cb00XMTA0MzYyMzY=.html ) who has been learning for two years. (She gets tangled up very briefly at the beginning, but after that it's pretty much perfect. She only had 1 week to prepare). These are not recordings of the best of the students there, but videos that I was there to record.


https://www.japanisch-netzwerk.de/Threa ... sit%C3%A4t

[DaveAgain]

Heinrich Schliemann used to memorise books when learning a new language, I think Paul et Virginie was mentioned as his first choice (his life had some parallels with the novel).

I believe forum member Kraut uses memorisation too.

[RyanSmallwood]

I don't think this is too uncommon an activity in various forms, this is kind of the goal of Alexander Arguelles's shadowing technique as he mentions repeating dialogs a number of times until he internalizes them. Numerous drill focused and SRS based approaches involve repeating certain phrases until they're memorized.

Of course, as with any language learning activity, this is only part of the story, of course you also need extensive input and practice speaking spontaneously on a variety of topics. Just memorizing dialogs alone is basically the "youtube polyglot" strategy to convince people you speak more languages than you actually do, where you can recite a monologue about yourself or pull off a brief conversation where you can anticipate the kinds of topics that will be touched on and sound almost perfect, but if asked to talk at length about a random topic it all falls apart. Memorizing can be a helpful way to fine tune details of pronunciation and internalize certain core expressions and sentence patterns, but its also not the only thing you need to do.

[diaconia]

tungemål does a nice job summarizing Shekhtman's language islands, https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... hp?t=13221
That's basically memorizing small dialogues about yourself and linking them, isn't it? It seems like it would be really effective, as long as the islands don't get into too much detail.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Many years ago, there was this hype about a Chinese guy called Jerry Dai who moved to Canada and spoke excellent English. It was said that he'd memorized the first paragraph from the first lesson of "Family album USA" and also listened to it 1000 times.

[Le Baron]

This bit:

...in loud voices, expressively, and with proper accentuation and natural emphasis.

Is most useful I find, in obliterating the obstacles between transferring what you already recognise and know into the actual physical thing. Too often I see people mumbling, almost whispering or just mouthing when reading 'aloud' or mirroring speech. Every language course tells you to 'speak out loud' and fully articulate, but I don't think a majority do this at all, especially self-learners.

I'm more ambivalent about text memorisation. On the one hand I can see how internalising matter (spoken out loud with proper accentuation and natural emphasis) can fix them into your ability produce them; and we know that learning the lines of a play can fix them into your memory and learning songs too. On the other hand the texts would have to be wide ranging and encompassing enough to meet many situations for discussion. Whereas producing a monologue can be perfected, in the way an actor would do this.

Is it 'the perfect method'? You were there so I'd want to ask you: was this tested in free-form discussion of, essentially, topics not immediately related to the memorised texts?

[Axon]

I've never taken classes at a Chinese university, but I've been to my wife's alma mater a few times in China. I once spent an afternoon in the library and as I walked around from floor to floor, I saw dozens of students reading the course books out loud to themselves. Whether that was for memorization or just self-study I can't be sure. I've also spoken with many scores of Chinese students majoring in English and Indonesian, including those who have lived in various foreign countries. As you'd imagine, there's a whole range of people. I didn't feel that the Chinese students of Indonesian were particularly native-like. Some took to the language more than others, and when we were in Indonesia (I did a year-long language program in Indonesia at a university that had many Chinese foreign students) the students who hung out more with Indonesians ran circles around the students that stayed in a Chinese bubble.

I had a coworker once who spent his entire youth in China and ended up getting an advanced degree in the US, then a writing-heavy job using only English. His spoken and written English is the closest to native I've heard (and I have sharp ears) except for a handful of fossilized problem words. I asked him if he did anything special to learn and he just said he kept paying attention to how native speakers talked.

All that to say ... Chinese universities haven't cracked the code for language learning any more than the rest of us have.

[lingohot]

It also reminded me of Professor Argüelles' methods (shadowing, reading aloud, scriptorium). There seems to be something to it.

Is it 'the perfect method'? You were there so I'd want to ask you: was this tested in free-form discussion of, essentially, topics not immediately related to the memorised texts?

I was in the forum, yes (not in China, unfortunately ). Indeed, it was said in the discussion that the students could use the structures learnt by the memorization exercises freely and in other contexts. Their Japanese was really really good, even after one year. But it was also said that the university in question is the elite university of China and the students there are the best of the country, the admission tests are crazy (meaning that the students there are very intelligent and used to memorizing stuff, memorisation being something you have to train over a long time). Nevertheless it's interesting.

[Wayfarer]

I think it comes down to what one means by "memorization". If one means "memorization" in the sense of learning a whole text verbatim like learning lines in a play, I don't think that's helpful. I learn texts (dialogues, readings, whatever) like this:

1. Comprehension. I read through the text and make sure I understand it, looking at the vocabulary list and grammar notes as needed.

2. Repetition. When I understand the text, I repeat it sentence by sentence. I read a sentence until I can repeat it fluently, using back-chaining if necessary. Then I repeat it several times without looking at the book. This is what I consider memorization: when I can scan any sentence in the text for just a moment and then repeat the sentence clearly, deliberately, and with full comprehension without looking at the text.

3. Revision. Revisit texts already studied. Read a sentence aloud, then repeat it several times without looking at the book. Use the sentence as a template and ring in the changes to drill tenses, number, negation, case, vocabulary, etc. Keep doing this, and over time the sentences really start to sink in. The structures become natural modes of expression that you employ (deploy) in the real world with ease.

Of course, adding audio to the mix makes it even better. Most of my language learning has been "traditional" and ineffective. I've been using this text-based approach for Chinese though, and it works a treat. I find that if I learn (over-learn, even) the sentences in the text, and revise them, then they come out quite easily and provide a basis for creating new sentences in conversation. It can be a little boring if done in long sessions, so do short but intense sessions spread throughout the day if possible. This is a great way to internalize grammar and vocabulary, and to prepare for fluent conversation, and it can be done anytime, without a teacher or tutor.

[jackb]

The videos didn't play for me and I don't know a lick of Japanese (or Chinese) so I'm going to go on what was written here. There's a lot left to the imagination as to what else the students had to do other than memorize seemingly large amounts of text. To me, that's the important part. The only other thing I'm sure they did was pronunciation study. Just because you can memorize lectures, doesn't mean you can correctly pronounce the words in them.

The greatest benefit to having large amounts of text/language memorized is that it's already in your head. You can study it any way you want, when you want. When reading a grammar book, you can reference the real examples in your brain rather than the stilted examples from the book. You can manipulate the language, in the language, in your head. There's no way of knowing if the students did any of this, but they could have.