What are the nuts and bolts of what you actually do?

[iguanamon]

...People are always saying things on here like... "start using native material" and "work with transcripts"...even after reading many logs and asking many questions, I still have no idea what these phrases ACTUALLY mean.
Maybe someone can shed some light?

People have described it before. I wrote three years ago about how I used a telenovela when I was learning Portuguese in this post. I don't really want to re-write it. Working with a series means exactly that- work. If a learner learns how to listen, listeng helps in acquiring new vocabulary, learning how to say things in a more natural way and internalizing grammar. It's an important and useful skill to have in a living language.

When I first started to train listening in Portuguese I used the NHK broadcasts and would read the transcript first. I'd look up unknown words and try to understand first. Then I'd listen and read. Then I'd listen. Then I'd listen and read again. Then I'd transcribe while listening, and I'd vary the sequence over time. This process won't train listening and broaden vocabulary in a day, it takes weeks... sometimes months. That's working with a transcript. A transcript is the answer sheet... your tutor, if you will, especially if you have a parallel text. All of this is boring and tedious to some people and they just don't want to do all that.

Many learners aren't willing to do the work it takes to train listening and to get better at acquiring vocabulary. It's too hard. It's time consuming. So, there's that and some learners want to ignore some aspects of learning a language. The aspects of a language all work together. Reading informs speaking and writing and listening. Listening helps with reading, speaking and writing... etc. They don't all have to be worked on equally but they do work well together to bring it all together for a learner. Sometimes, if we really want to learn a language like we say we do, we may have to accept that we have to do some things we may not want to do in order to get there.

[StringerBell]

Wow, I am so impressed by the detail and depth of everyone's responses so far. I hope that others contribute because I genuinely love reading about exactly what it is that you all do.

I find it really interesting to see how others are choosing to deal with video. I have an upper-intermediate reading and listening comprehension in Italian. I attribute much of this to the fact that I started watching (i.e. "working with") a lot of native content and videos in my target language with L1 and L2 subtitles.

When I had a low-intermediate listening comprehension, I started watching a few shows that were American shows but with Italian audio on Netflix. After watching a full season of The Punisher, first in English, then in Italian, I eventually started watching "That 70s Show" on Netflix. I'd seen a bunch of episodes when they were originally on TV 15+ years ago, so I was familiar with the general story, but I didn't remember anything specific about it. It was never a show I particularly liked (it was ok), but I chose it specifically because I wanted a light comedy with a lot of conversational banter and colloquial expressions since this is what I wanted to improve. Plus, each episode is only about 22 minutes; I much prefer to deal with a complete episode daily rather than chunks of a longer movie over a period of time.

*For some reason it has proven impossible to find any movie or TV show in Italian (either dubbed or native content) in Italian with accurate subtitles. This has been incredibly frustrating, but I found a way to deal with it as best as I could:

I experimented with a bunch of strategies...finally, I settled on the one that I liked the most. I watch the episode in Italian (L2) with English (L1) subtitles. This allows me to understand what the characters are saying and I associate the English words with the Italian counterparts. This is also useful because I can see how someone chose to translate a particular idea, and when I see a major difference between how something is said in Italian vs. English, I jot down a note to ask someone about it later. Then immediately afterward I rewatch that same episode, but this time in Italian with no subtitles. This way, I'm only concentrating on the Italian with no English distractions. I'm in the last (8th) season of the show, and I think once I'm done, I'm going to cycle through it again from the beginning, but this time with no subtitles, since I will have just watched every episode twice in the past months.

I started out writing down every new word, phrase, or sentence. Then, I'd ask my husband or my language exchange partner about it. Usually, I'd also write down what the counterpart was in English to find out if the translation was literal or whether it was a different way to say that same idea, or if it was something totally unrelated. Every once in a while the translators go off the reservation, so I learned not to take anything for granted. Jotting down questions I had from TV shows was a great thing to do because I could ask about these if my language partner and I had a lull and I wasn't sure what to talk about.

Eventually I stopped taking notes...mostly because there are fewer and fewer things that are new. When something really strikes me, I will write it down. I also ended up with tons and tons of notes, lists of words, etc...and not sure what to do with all of them. I finally decided that the act of writing them down would help me remember some, and I don't stress about the ones I forget. If they're important, they'll resurface at some point. Occasionally, I flip through my notes and remind myself of some cool expressions that I've forgotten, but then I tend to forget them again unless I make myself use them a few times in conversation.

In fact, I've noticed that rather than trying to memorize cards on Anki (which has been a failure for me, hence the question about avoiding 12,000 cards!) if I make an effort to start saying a word or phrase, it seems to stick in my mind. The act of retrieving the information in a meaningful way (during a conversation) works better than any mnemonic I've ever tried. I wonder if others find this to be true, too?

Great question...I am forever pondering this!

People are always saying things on here like... "start using native material" and "work with transcripts"...even after reading many logs and asking many questions, I still have no idea what these phrases ACTUALLY mean.

Maybe someone can shed some light?

Bex, I'm seeing that "using native materials" for example can look like a million different things and every few weeks I ask myself "what else can I be doing with the material I have to work with?" This is why I'm curious to hear about what people are actually doing. I'll write some more posts to explain what I've been doing, maybe you'll find something that you'd like to try...or make a suggestion to me if an idea pops into mind.

I'm now revisiting some of my beginner graded-reader Polish stories (which seem babyish to me now) but I'm using them for shadowing practice. They're not exactly stories, more like a snapshot of daily life with very useful vocab; one for example is about someone looking through a window, seeing that a storm is coming, running out to the car to close all the windows and then coming back inside to watch a weather forecast.

These graded "stories" are 1 minute long; I have them with the accompanying audio, and each story is told from two different points of view (1st person and 3rd person) and then afterward there's a section of "questions and answers" about each line of the story. There are 100 stories in this graded reader pack, and starting with the first one, I re-listen to the story, I read it aloud myself a few times, then I listen to it again, shadowing it. Sometimes I pause the audio after each line and then repeat it outloud myself to make sure my pronunciation is exact. I repeat this shadowing process a few times since the story is so short.

I've only been doing this for about 2 weeks, but I can tell that my pronunciation has gotten dramatically better. I'm also noticing that the more I speak out loud (even if I'm just repeating what I hear or read) the more certain phrases and sentences seem to get lodged in my brain and then pop out spontaneously; I think there is something really beneficial to the memory in saying things outloud as opposed to reading or thinking about them silently.

Since I've done little to no speaking in Polish, now I'm trying to exercise my mouth muscles so that I can say phrases and sentences with ease. When I do start talking more regularly, I want to avoid struggling too much with pronunciation because the cognitive load will be hard enough on it's own without having a mouthful of marbles.

[zenmonkey]

...People are always saying things on here like... "start using native material" and "work with transcripts"...even after reading many logs and asking many questions, I still have no idea what these phrases ACTUALLY mean.
Maybe someone can shed some light?

I'll touch on "start using native material" point because I think this one is relatively easy.
It simply means use material that is not intended as learning material but would be read or listened to by a native for the context. Find content that interest you simply because the subject matter is interesting rather than material that is bland and intended to teach.

The answer is vague on purpose because native material is vast. Use it intensively, extensively or to line your bird cage. It doesn't matter - if you are reading, listening or otherwise interacting with local material then you are entering the area where culture and language meet and you are learning more than words and grammar.

How you use it is also extremely varied. And that how probably only matters a little bit if you are using it often and in a manner where the additional understanding adds value.

It's not about the material itself - it is about the transition.

[StringerBell]

I've recently been thinking about making my TV watching more of an active "production" activity and less of just a passive "receptive" activity since I'm pretty happy with where my listening comprehension is.

So far, the only way I have been able to figure out how to do this is to start summarizing each episode after I watch it. Since I'd like to work on my speaking and writing, I think I'll do some combination of (1) writing down my episode summary, and (2) discussing my summary with a native speaker (husband or language partner). If I can get to a place where this comes easily to me, I can ratchet up the challenge by critiquing characters' decisions or explaining what I would have done instead...basically analyzing instead of describing the episode.

I've tried to do this once before, and it was surprisingly difficult, so of course I never did it again. I think that means it's something that I really need to do, and probably something that will pay off; usually the kinds of activities I avoid because they're tough are the very things I need to do to improve.

Another thing that I've done in the past with Polish is Bi-Translation. It's something that I find to be a tough mental workout, which again, means I should go back to doing it (and also incorporate it into my Italian activities. Basically, you take either a short article or a piece of a longer text in your target language and translate it in to your native language. Then, using the translation you just created, you attempt to translate it back into the target language. There will undoubtedly be some small differences which either might be completely acceptable or might distort the meaning (or just be plain wrong), so it's a good idea to run your final product past a native speaker for feedback. This could be a good thing to do with a language partner, but I've also heard good things about the website Lang8 (though I haven't used it myself), which is a website where you can upload short pieces of writing and native speakers will correct it.

[Serpent]

...People are always saying things on here like... "start using native material" and "work with transcripts"...even after reading many logs and asking many questions, I still have no idea what these phrases ACTUALLY mean.
Maybe someone can shed some light?

I'll touch on "start using native material" point because I think this one is relatively easy.
It simply means use material that is not intended as learning material but would be read or listened to by a native for the context. Find content that interest you simply because the subject matter is interesting rather than material that is bland and intended to teach.

The answer is vague on purpose because native material is vast. Use it intensively, extensively or to line your bird cage. It doesn't matter - if you are reading, listening or otherwise interacting with local material then you are entering the area where culture and language meet and you are learning more than words and grammar.

How you use it is also extremely varied. And that how probably only matters a little bit if you are using it often and in a manner where the additional understanding adds value.

It's not about the material itself - it is about the transition.

Excellent post.

To clarify, native materials also include children's books, music and high quality translations. Basically anything that a native speaker will consume for fun at some point in life.
A more restrictive definition is the AJATT concept of "funbun" (for natives, by natives). Depending on the language it may be impossible to avoid translated materials altogether (and for example the vast majority of Esperanto content was not made my native speakers). The way I see it, using funbun materials is important, but there's no need to obsess over making sure everything you consume is funbun. But if you're losing motivation, it's certainly time to evaluate whether you just need more funbun in your learning.

I'm also a big fan of what I call semi-native materials. This includes stuff that no native will voluntarily read/watch, but which is still fun for the learner in question, and which has some actual content. (some graded readers, video series like French in Action or Destinos, probably some texts on sites like LingQ)
To me semi-native also includes native content enhanced by exercises, comprehension questions etc. This would be stuff like GLOSS or lyricstraining.
More examples here - feel free to add! https://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki ... mmar_study
The title mentions grammar but of course these materials are also great for the vocabulary

[StringerBell]

After writing my last post, I decided to discuss the episode I watched yesterday with my husband in Italian. Surprisingly, it was much easier than I remembered it being, so I'll take that as a sign that all the speaking practice I've been doing lately has actually led to some improvements...who could have imagined that?

Does anyone have any ideas for other ways to use TV episodes?

[StringerBell]

I'm also wondering if anyone has specific suggestions for how to work on improving grammar at the intermediate level. What do you actually do to improve your mastery of grammar?

I'm a firm believer that studying grammar right away as a beginner doesn't make sense, and I've stayed away from it. Now that I'm in an intermediate phase with both my languages, I'm starting to do a little bit of grammar in areas where I know I need to improve or in some way impact my speaking ability.

For example, now I'm starting to pay more attention to the Congiuntivo verb tense in Italian, and in Polish I'm focusing more on case endings, verbs of motion, and aspects. I've been trying a variety of things, but so far I haven't really found an efficient or enjoyable way of dealing with grammar. I attempted to use Anki cards, and that was a failure because I hate doing flash cards for anything language-reflated. I tried creating and translating sentences that involve these grammar points, but that was boring as hell so I didn't stick with it. If that's really the only solution, I'll try to go back to doing it, but I thought maybe someone has come up with an interesting or unusual way of improving grammar that doesn't involved exercises in an instruction book.

[zenmonkey]

I'm also wondering if anyone has specific suggestions for how to work on improving grammar at the intermediate level. What do you actually do to improve your mastery of grammar?

I'm a firm believer that studying grammar right away as a beginner doesn't make sense, and I've stayed away from it. Now that I'm in an intermediate phase with both my languages, I'm starting to do a little bit of grammar in areas where I know I need to improve or in some way impact my speaking ability.

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... how#p25421

See the iguana's answer.

[zenmonkey]

Does anyone have any ideas for other ways to use TV episodes?

If you can get access to subtitles there are a few websites that do syncing an allow back and forth listening. I don't use these so someone else will need to pop in to explain those.

You can also use subs2srs tool to create pretty useful SRS decks from tv or movies. It's a bit labor intensive the first time but I have some very engaging decks for intermediate german thanks to that.

[trui]

I'm also wondering if anyone has specific suggestions for how to work on improving grammar at the intermediate level. What do you actually do to improve your mastery of grammar?

I've been meaning to respond to this thread in general with what I do, but now I have to respond to this! I started trying to master grammar right from the beginning, but it's never too late to start and I wouldn't have changed my methods even if I had started later. While I've basically said a lot of what I did when it comes to grammar in other posts, why not again?

My method when it comes to grammar and vocab has always been to learn a piece of grammar/vocab, try out a sentence or two that uses it, and then get feedback from native speakers. You can do this by writing (online chatrooms are great for immediate feedback) or speaking, it doesn't matter which. I went with the chatroom route. I never got into posting paragraphs and getting natives to review them. I'm sure that'd work too and I'm sure it'd be good for me to do that, but if you want to know what I did and do specifically, it's not that. I never used flashcards for grammar, only some vocab at the start. Again, I'm sure they'd be great for it, but that's not what I did.

The advantage of chatrooms is you've got motivation to get it right. If you mess up on word gender or sentence structure, you get immediate feedback, especially if you explicitly request it. I met someone who laughed at all of my mistakes and it was great motivation! It also ironically let myself not take things too seriously and have fun. Sometimes I chatted in Dutch, trying out new things as I went, and sometimes it was just a question and answer session where I posted a sentence and asked 'is this grammatically correct? is this natural?' etc. If it was wrong or unnatural, I asked why. Often they didn't know specifically (it's hard answering questions about things you know intuitively!) so I tried a bunch of other variations on my sentence or new sentences and asked about those.

I think that I learned a lot from these sessions, and they were all free! When you meet Dutch people online and say you're learning Dutch, I've found them to be amazingly helpful, so I've been super fortunate in that regard. So whether you make friends with people like I did, or do paid sessions, I'd highly recommend some version of these chats I did, where I got immediate feedback on questions I had relating to grammar or vocab and could try stuff out. A small warning though. Don't be that person who befriends people solely for the languages they know! The first person who helped me out was my fiance, and a few others were friends I had already made online due to a mutual interest we had. I only found out that they knew Dutch when I mentioned I was learning it! I also later on found a Dutch chatroom where learners and natives went to ask and answer questions about Dutch, and just have fun. But while my friends, fiance, and the people in the chat were and remain super helpful for my Dutch, a lot of what we talk about has nothing to do with Dutch. And even when it comes to Dutch, we just have fun!

As for my grammar resources, I found something that explained quite a lot of Dutch grammar and I studied that in my spare time and used that to base my questions off of. But really, whatever source works for you and your languages is best. The important thing I want to stress is having immediate feedback, and being at an intermediate level, people won't have to deal with you making super basic sentences at first like they did with me. I think immediate feedback is super useful when it comes to both grammar and vocabulary equally, that is, if you want to sound natural and not like a textbook. If you can't get immediate feedback, then try out as many sentences as you can when it comes to the grammar piece you're working on and post them online for natives to review. Specifically ask if they're natural as well as correct. Yes, this is the 'make some sentences' that you don't find that interesting, but you need to do this in some form or another. Just try and have fun with it! Make silly sentences like you'd maybe find on duolingo, make overtly serious sentences (though remember to tell the people reviewing your attempts that this is what you're trying for), and also make normal sentences that you might want to use in your average conversation. Try everything

The above answers half of the question of 'what are the nuts and bolts of what you actually do'. Hope this helps! But above all, what works for you is best.