allenthalben wrote:A lot of what the guy says also isn't particularly ground-breaking nor is it worth paying for IMO. Obviously flashcards with context work better than individual words, because that's how people learn words. There are even parts where he concedes he's making an error but then dismisses it, like when he says listening isn't important "except for prosody, but that's not important" — you can see it's targeted towards a very standardised examination with clear Hochdeutsch.
Time for a logical smack-down. I don't mean for this to be an attack on your character, so please don't accuse me of ad hominem.
So, let me ask you a question; this is for discussion purposes only. What is "obvious" about the idea that people learn words with flashcards, especially using context? There are plenty of people on this forum that have gotten by using dictionaries or for instance,
@Iversen's famous wordlists. I myself just look up words in dictionaries and then write posts using the offending buggers that won't stay in my brain -- until they do! You go on to say later that such things are in vogue... and they are. But that's because they're a relatively recent invention... AND THEY WORK. Learning vocabulary in context works because you learn the meaning of the word. A lot of people don't know how to search in dictionaries for the appropriate meaning or context of a particular word, and if you have a pre-made deck, all that work's done for you. It's especially great if it's done by a native speaker. Cloze-style cards are a godsend. Anki's software is genius for its ability to make highly customizable cards. Add photos, add audio, change the type of cloze. Cloze deletion, cloze addition, cloze subtraction. You name it, my friend.
I believe you're straying toward ad hominem when you say that Bartosz dismisses things quickly. It's just his style of writing. He's being sharp and snappy. What he's basically saying is, "there are more important things other than prosody."
And I say all this being a fan of the content, but without wanting to disparage the man. I think Bartosz is a stand-up guy, and I wouldn't want his character attacked.
Aside from that, it's unfair to go after someone's person in such a way.
I say this with the utmost care and kindness. No sarcasm involved.
That said, he's probably saying prosody isn't important because it
is a standardized exam, but more than that, he wants you to be able to comprehend the language. He wants you to be able to understand it. So you're right about standardization. But Bartosz wants the reader to grasp that this is a step on their journey, and true ability in the language takes time. Most beginners come to his site looking for answers, and he's fending them off with a branch going, "Y'all need to chill, but not too much, because in reality this is all easy. Don't freak out."
He's all about expediency.
One might argue he's the opposite of Benny Lewis. The two are parallel lines. Whereas Benny goes hard in a straightforward manner like a kid in a candy store, Bartosz, our friend, zips across multiple lines a bit haphazardly. The two have different goals. But they both get to the same place.
Language schools vary drastically in how much they vet their teachers, it may even have been a voluntary experience. Since teaching a language is done on the basis of a very strict curriculum and grammar rules, this is also not a particularly hard thing to do providing you have memorised the rules and vocabulary for this specific situation.
This is ad hominem. You are attacking the man's abilities, not the points he makes in his curriculum.
To teach is to learn. It is an acquired skill and very difficult. I'd like to see you teach three different languages at the schools he has. What makes you think he did his job horribly? Did you have a bad experience? And why do you deign to attack the institution of teaching a language? It is incredibly hard! I watched my Spanish teacher teach 30 kids the conjugation for
ir repeatedly, year after year, to no avail. These kids were the brightest stars. They were supposed to carry our generation. And yet they couldn't care less about a conjugation table. So much for cultural diversity! Teachers are our backbone, our flesh and blood. It's really hard. No wonder we have a teaching shortage in the United States.
I had been to Germany three times for only about 20 days in total when I got my C1. It's really not a groundbreaking achievement.
You must have done something differently. The point Bartosz is trying to make at this juncture is that anyone can learn a tongue. Borders are no barriers. Kind of like in the movie
Ratatouille, where they say anyone can cook. It's a common misconception among beginners, and one that doesn't get torn down often. You are an experienced language learner. Most people are not. Therefore, Bartosz is stepping up to the plate and saying what won't be said. Plus, the author says that he rarely travels. You probably travel more than him. My guess is Bartosz is a bookworm and you like to study communicatively. Two varying approaches. Both work. You just learn differently. So we can't tear down his claims based on something that personal. Plus, language learning companies like to make money off the young and foolish. Because you and I know better about how to comprehend, and truly "get" made-for-learner materials, we have a harder time. We're pickier. We know publishers' tricks, right? But most beginners don't. You probably got your C1 because you were astute. On the other hand, Bartosz had to learn the hard way. So did I. A lot of things aren't fair in life. But we're all united in languages and the human condition.
Citation needed, and how exactly are you measuring retention? People are capable of memorising lots of information for very specific purposes e.g. exams, and then frequently forget a large amount once they've sat the exam. We would need to see a detailed study showing people retaining these words consistently over time. If this 'groundbreaking system' is simply 'learn flashcards at increasing intervals in context', then that's not quite so astonishing.
Here he's describing his method. He has confidence in it. He's trying to sell it to you, using experience he's gathered. The method is based on the flashcards and SRS. It would be really nice to get data, but for now we'll just have to take his word for it.
What's not astonishing about it? Have we ever had a deck of 10,000 words
at intervals (increasingly difficult CEFR levels) that use
context? Pretty amazing to me.
I would like to know what he considers a word and 'knowing'. If he is counting wordforms such as sehe, siehst, sieht, sehen, sah, sahst, sahen, gesehen then this feat is way less impressive. The breakdown also isn't provided — if it's 30,000 in English, 20,000 in German, and then 50,000 in the other six, this is a much different picture than knowing 12,500 per language. The total or the mean isn't important here, the mode and the median speak more volumes. There's also the issue of active and passive vocabulary. It is less impressive (still impressive) to know 20,000 passive words than 20,000 active ones.
Were I a betting woman, and I'm not, though I do trust Bartosz, I'd say he's not a liar. He's probably counting the true head-forms of dictionary words. That would make him C2 in all 8 languages he speaks by his own standards, which in my opinion are good. He speaks the bare minimum to get by at the highest level of the CEFR. Impressive. But what would probably be more impressive is knowing more words in a lesser amount of languages, right? I think that's what most people are looking for. That doesn't deny the fact that the man has achieved an amazing feat. I hope to one day be like him.
What do you MEAN /b2, you're one or the other you cannot be graded as 'inbetween', because if you're not passing B2, a fortiori you are B1 or lower.
I think you're being a little too strict with the requirements here. There are plenty of people on the forum that put "~B2" (or something similar) in their signatures or on their profile. It's no different from the author speaking bare-minimum C2. He's holding his students to the same concepts to which he holds himself; standards. There is a range between B1 and B2. It's a grey area, kind of like being in puberty, of being able to comprehend really well, but not knowing many words, or maybe not knowing how to write, and maybe speaking in an advanced way. Awkward and sweaty. But that shouldn't stop learners from the big leagues.
Think about how many people learn Latin, Ancient Greek, Old English, Gothic, Sanskrit, and any other extinct language without ever talking to anyone.
Do they need to? Come on, dude. These languages don't require any speakers, because no speakers remain. You don't see many academics (as nerdy as they can be) speaking in Attic Greek at university. It's all written. All of these languages (for the most part) rely mainly on the written word. Latin is sometimes spoken in church, and Sanskrit is used to study modern Indo-Aryan sort languages. But primarily they're restricted to schools and academia rather than typical speech. My guess, of course, is that Bartosz needed to hear spoken words in order to aid his memorization of the concepts and words he was learning. That's a very difficult task to work with. You can have recordings, and those help, but ultimately speaking is where it's at. That's why his grammar-centric, heavily-academic formula can be pretty appealing. It focuses on all the main concepts -- the bases -- before moving on. That's where I believe you two differ... the mode you use to study. And that's why you fundamentally disagree. It shouldn't be a sticking point, though. Remember Bartosz probably wanted to speak, but he's likely an introvert (a shy one) and circumstances prevented him. In a way, he found an ingenious workaround, hmm?
I utterly regret giving him the clicks and views on his website.
I hope you changed your mind after this. I aimed to have an adult discussion about the guy's methods. These types of things are my passion and I love speaking about them. I hope to find that I didn't offend you in any way, as I specifically wrote my arguments to avoid logical fallacies.