FumblngTowardFluency wrote:Hi Le Baron, I meant expose the brain to language to allow it to connect observable actions on the screen to words that are being spoken.
Yeah, it seems like that
should work. But I know of a couple of people who have tried, including someone who watched a massive amount of Mandarin children's TV. And it's
ridiculously inefficient. It's like 10x more hours than Assimil for worse results.
Actual children hear 3-13 million spoken words per year from birth. And a lot of that is extremely repetitive and interactive. TV shows are much less helpful. (However, you can actually lean a ton by listening to a parent speak to a toddler, though.)
For me, "learning by binge-watching TV series" started working when I had about 40% comprehension.
Assimil provides far less input than kids get, but it will reliably get people holding very basic conversations. And after Assimil, I then went on to read 2.5-3.5 million words of French, just random books and stuff. After doing that, I could read pretty much anything in French at 40 pages/hour. (I'm skipping a couple of steps, but mostly it was all just muddling through.)
So trying to imitate how kids learn by watching incomprehensible TV is just not efficient. There's just not enough context relative to the complexity of the language, I think.
FumblngTowardFluency wrote:To aggregate the replies, I'm going to try the following:
1. One day with Essential Portuguese Grammar
2. A relaxed evening lesson with DLI or Assimil + Anki for many months, eventually Pimsleur
3. If I'm too wiped out for a structured lesson, I'll chill with Language Reactor or Bossa Nova
Yup, any reasonable version of that plan will work. Try out the different courses and pick whichever feels most comfortable. Pimsleur is nice because it's hands-free. Assimil tends to sneak up on you—you're not sure if it's working, then you look back 30 lessons and everything seems incredibly obvious. DLI is typically nice for people who like rigorous practice. All of these courses are proven hundreds of times over on just this forum. So pick whatever mix you like best.
Assimil + Anki trick. If you go for the Assimil + Anki combo, there's a nice trick. Anki is fantastic, but creating cards is usually a time sink. However! Many of the Assimil MP3 CDs include a timed "lyrics" track in their MP3 files. You may be able to find a script that extracts the lyrics track and turns the entire Assimil course into Anki audio cards all at once. Imagine something like this:
anki-cropped-small.png
Audio goes on the front of the card, bilingual text on the back. Mark the card as "Good" if you understand at least 80% of the audio. Don't try to learn more than 10 new cards per day for the first month. And if a card makes you say "Ugh," just delete it. Following these rules will make Anki painless and low stress.
Sync the deck to your phone, buy some AirPods, and you can casually crank out 5 minutes of listening practice while standing in line at the grocery store. (I also remember Khatzumoto, who did flashcards while brushing his teeth. He was a little extreme.)
But honestly, given your time constraints, I'd probably only use Anki in the beginning if I could create cards in bulk. Anki's great, but manual card creation requires extra time and your hands on a keyboard.
Anyway, you've got this—any version of your revised plan is good. Good luck!
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