Re: Iversen's Guide to Learning Languages (version 3b)
Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2016 1:52 pm
4.4. Copying by hand (scriptorium)
One of the techniques proposed by Alexander Arguelles is the so-called "scriptorium", which he has demonstrated in a video and described as follows on HTLAL:
I have made a short video to demonstrate the proper form for transcribing languages by hand as I do in my “scriptorium” exercise. In order to do this properly, you should:
1. Read a sentence aloud.
2. Say each word aloud again as you write it.
3. Read the sentence aloud as you have written it.
The whole purpose of this exercise is to force yourself to slow down and pay attention to detail. This is the stage at which you should check all unknowns in grammars or dictionaries, although that would have been too tedious to show in the video.
I once commented as follows on this technique and on his shadowing technique in a HTLAL thread called "Language learning series video reviews":
As far as I can see the common factor in both your shadowing and your scriptorium methods is that you transform something that normally is done in a purely passive way into something active, namely listening and reading. In your case it is done in a very active way, cfr. your recommendation of speaking loudly and walk at a brisk pace. When I do similar things I do them silently and sitting in my chair, which suits me better - the basic idea is the same, but there is a distinct difference in style, which probably can be blamed on temperamental factors.
However there is another, more fundamental difference: apparently you have moved from a more conventional way of using dictionaries and grammars to a position where you actually do produce such books yourself, but essentially you assume that the absorption through shadowing and 'lectoriuming' is the main ingredient of language learning. The main difference between your methods and the so called 'natural learning' is that you don't need somebody to speak to because you use preexisting materials, and that you prefer heavily structured learning instead of relying on the hazardous nature of immersive experiences or even chance encounters with suitable natives.
I am convinced that both two methods work, but I have found that shadowing doesn't work for me - I stop listening if I speak - and while I actually do a lot of copying by hand, I do it invariably without vocalization.
Text copying may sound as the final sign of mental madness, but it actually has a purpose: to slow you down and make you notice every detail in the text you have chosen - and which of course has to be shorter than the texts you can rush through when you just read for fun. I always write by hand because I feel it gives me better contact with the words, but younger people may feel more at home with a keyboard. The source can be mono- or bilingual, but because the goal is to catch every meaning of every word and every grammatical quirk I prefer using bilingual texts in my weaker languages - otherwise I would loose too much time on looking things up. I used folded A4 sheets to make them more handy, and I always leave a margin to the right for new words with a preliminary translation. These words (or in some cases short expressions) are supposed to be entered into wordlists later, and there I can check the dubious cases. The result looks like this:
The right column is almost as tailormade to enter a wordlist (cfr. chapter 2.6), but you should be aware that it is more heterogene that the words on a page in a dictionary. In some cases I have just copied the suggestions of a translation, in others I have quoted my own guesses based on the context. I prefer writing the standard form as used in dictionaries (i.e. nominative singular for substantives, the infintive for verbs in most languages - but sometimes the 1.person singular present tense) - but sometimes I make errors. At the end of the day the only cure would be to look all words up in the dictionary, but .. well, it would actually become the end of the day, and it would spoil my 'drive'.
However one good habit with this exercise is to look the unknown words up before you actually start plowing through a sentence or paragraph. Then you will feel that the text is much easier, and you won't loose the thread because you have to look words up all the time. Another tip: If a passage has been particularly bothersome then run through it twice. First time you will be solving a rebus, but at the second passage the text will almost certainly have become comprehensible.
As I said above you ought to make sure that all translations in the column with new words are correct and ready to go into a wordlist, and this may have to wait until you are making that list. But let's face it: checking the words in a dictionary while transferring them to a wordlist can be a chore because the words are spread all over the alphabet (online 'pop up' dictionaries might solve this problem). So once I am advanced enough also to do dictionary based wordlists I permit myself the luxury of skipping the most dubious words among those I collected from the texts. It is better to learn five words from a dictionary and skip one from a text because I would had to look it up first.
There is one reason more: in those cases where you run through the text twice you will automatically be doing a repetition of the unknown words from round one. If you can't understand each and evry word the second time you know you have a problem, and you can do something to memorize the problematic words. So to summarize: when I first started out doing those text copies- cum-study I was adamant about running all unknown words through a wordlist, but I have become more relaxed about it because I know that I have the alternative of doing dictionary based wordlists. Instead I have become more interested in getting a 'flow' in my work with the texts. But this exercise is still an intensive one because the goal is to understand everything and remember as much vocabulary as possible from each text.
With weak languages or with particularly complicated constructions in better known ones I have sometimes added hyperliteral translations, either between the lines or after a paragraph. The text below is taken from the bilingual guidebok "Your key to Korça / Korça çelësi turistik", and it is one of my first sheets with an Albanian text:
My own translation was made on the basis of the English version in the book, but it is (hopefully) closer to the original Albanian text. And it is partly in Danish because I'm Danish, but as you can see there are also single words and passages in English because both my dictionary and the translation in the book are in English. This illustrates clearly that the goal isn't to make a polished translation. The important thing is to fixate your understanding of the text and getting the sentence patterns of of the target language under your skin.
You may also notice that I wrote the Albanian text again (without translation). If you have struggled with the text the first time then it should feel like a breeze to write it once more, and this time you should actually be able to understand it. But of course this only is worth doing when you are new to a language or the text is unusually hard to deal with. I have a rough rule of thumb: if the column with the new words fills up faster than the one with the text then it wouldn't be a bad idea to repeat the text.
But there is also a variant of the repetition layout which works best with fairly strong languages, namely retranslation. This means that you read a sentence in the source and at first just write a literal or hyperliteral translation on the paper, not the original sentence. You are supposed to be able to supply that from your memory or by reconstructing it, but at least in my concept you must end up with exactly the same sentence as in the source. The result will be something like the Ilya Frank format from the preceding chapter.
I tried something like this long ago, but dropped the exercise because the 'reconstructed' sentences rarely became identical with those in the source - and then I felt I just as well could do ordinary translations from a base language into my target language. I took retranslation up again when I heard a video by Luca Lampariello, where he spoke about his own use of retranslation. But in the video he ironically advocates exactly the thing that originally had made me drop the technique, namely doing the retranslation long after you see the source. For me the short interval is important because it has the effect that the original sentence so to say feels like your own creation - and in that way it not only supports your efforts to activate the target language, but it also boosts your selfconfidence.
PS: I have been asked whether I keep my text copies forever. No, I don't. I stash them, but when the piles get too high I throw them out. It is highly unlikely that I return to my own copies, and if I return to the original texts later it is more rewarding to look at them with fresh eyes than it is to waste time on my old errors. I have the same attitude to my wordlists except if they are part of a 'word list campaign', where I might want to do statistics and maybe even belated repetitions. It's much better to start a new wordlist from scratch than it is to wallow in your old scribblings.
One of the techniques proposed by Alexander Arguelles is the so-called "scriptorium", which he has demonstrated in a video and described as follows on HTLAL:
I have made a short video to demonstrate the proper form for transcribing languages by hand as I do in my “scriptorium” exercise. In order to do this properly, you should:
1. Read a sentence aloud.
2. Say each word aloud again as you write it.
3. Read the sentence aloud as you have written it.
The whole purpose of this exercise is to force yourself to slow down and pay attention to detail. This is the stage at which you should check all unknowns in grammars or dictionaries, although that would have been too tedious to show in the video.
I once commented as follows on this technique and on his shadowing technique in a HTLAL thread called "Language learning series video reviews":
As far as I can see the common factor in both your shadowing and your scriptorium methods is that you transform something that normally is done in a purely passive way into something active, namely listening and reading. In your case it is done in a very active way, cfr. your recommendation of speaking loudly and walk at a brisk pace. When I do similar things I do them silently and sitting in my chair, which suits me better - the basic idea is the same, but there is a distinct difference in style, which probably can be blamed on temperamental factors.
However there is another, more fundamental difference: apparently you have moved from a more conventional way of using dictionaries and grammars to a position where you actually do produce such books yourself, but essentially you assume that the absorption through shadowing and 'lectoriuming' is the main ingredient of language learning. The main difference between your methods and the so called 'natural learning' is that you don't need somebody to speak to because you use preexisting materials, and that you prefer heavily structured learning instead of relying on the hazardous nature of immersive experiences or even chance encounters with suitable natives.
I am convinced that both two methods work, but I have found that shadowing doesn't work for me - I stop listening if I speak - and while I actually do a lot of copying by hand, I do it invariably without vocalization.
Text copying may sound as the final sign of mental madness, but it actually has a purpose: to slow you down and make you notice every detail in the text you have chosen - and which of course has to be shorter than the texts you can rush through when you just read for fun. I always write by hand because I feel it gives me better contact with the words, but younger people may feel more at home with a keyboard. The source can be mono- or bilingual, but because the goal is to catch every meaning of every word and every grammatical quirk I prefer using bilingual texts in my weaker languages - otherwise I would loose too much time on looking things up. I used folded A4 sheets to make them more handy, and I always leave a margin to the right for new words with a preliminary translation. These words (or in some cases short expressions) are supposed to be entered into wordlists later, and there I can check the dubious cases. The result looks like this:
The right column is almost as tailormade to enter a wordlist (cfr. chapter 2.6), but you should be aware that it is more heterogene that the words on a page in a dictionary. In some cases I have just copied the suggestions of a translation, in others I have quoted my own guesses based on the context. I prefer writing the standard form as used in dictionaries (i.e. nominative singular for substantives, the infintive for verbs in most languages - but sometimes the 1.person singular present tense) - but sometimes I make errors. At the end of the day the only cure would be to look all words up in the dictionary, but .. well, it would actually become the end of the day, and it would spoil my 'drive'.
However one good habit with this exercise is to look the unknown words up before you actually start plowing through a sentence or paragraph. Then you will feel that the text is much easier, and you won't loose the thread because you have to look words up all the time. Another tip: If a passage has been particularly bothersome then run through it twice. First time you will be solving a rebus, but at the second passage the text will almost certainly have become comprehensible.
As I said above you ought to make sure that all translations in the column with new words are correct and ready to go into a wordlist, and this may have to wait until you are making that list. But let's face it: checking the words in a dictionary while transferring them to a wordlist can be a chore because the words are spread all over the alphabet (online 'pop up' dictionaries might solve this problem). So once I am advanced enough also to do dictionary based wordlists I permit myself the luxury of skipping the most dubious words among those I collected from the texts. It is better to learn five words from a dictionary and skip one from a text because I would had to look it up first.
There is one reason more: in those cases where you run through the text twice you will automatically be doing a repetition of the unknown words from round one. If you can't understand each and evry word the second time you know you have a problem, and you can do something to memorize the problematic words. So to summarize: when I first started out doing those text copies- cum-study I was adamant about running all unknown words through a wordlist, but I have become more relaxed about it because I know that I have the alternative of doing dictionary based wordlists. Instead I have become more interested in getting a 'flow' in my work with the texts. But this exercise is still an intensive one because the goal is to understand everything and remember as much vocabulary as possible from each text.
With weak languages or with particularly complicated constructions in better known ones I have sometimes added hyperliteral translations, either between the lines or after a paragraph. The text below is taken from the bilingual guidebok "Your key to Korça / Korça çelësi turistik", and it is one of my first sheets with an Albanian text:
My own translation was made on the basis of the English version in the book, but it is (hopefully) closer to the original Albanian text. And it is partly in Danish because I'm Danish, but as you can see there are also single words and passages in English because both my dictionary and the translation in the book are in English. This illustrates clearly that the goal isn't to make a polished translation. The important thing is to fixate your understanding of the text and getting the sentence patterns of of the target language under your skin.
You may also notice that I wrote the Albanian text again (without translation). If you have struggled with the text the first time then it should feel like a breeze to write it once more, and this time you should actually be able to understand it. But of course this only is worth doing when you are new to a language or the text is unusually hard to deal with. I have a rough rule of thumb: if the column with the new words fills up faster than the one with the text then it wouldn't be a bad idea to repeat the text.
But there is also a variant of the repetition layout which works best with fairly strong languages, namely retranslation. This means that you read a sentence in the source and at first just write a literal or hyperliteral translation on the paper, not the original sentence. You are supposed to be able to supply that from your memory or by reconstructing it, but at least in my concept you must end up with exactly the same sentence as in the source. The result will be something like the Ilya Frank format from the preceding chapter.
I tried something like this long ago, but dropped the exercise because the 'reconstructed' sentences rarely became identical with those in the source - and then I felt I just as well could do ordinary translations from a base language into my target language. I took retranslation up again when I heard a video by Luca Lampariello, where he spoke about his own use of retranslation. But in the video he ironically advocates exactly the thing that originally had made me drop the technique, namely doing the retranslation long after you see the source. For me the short interval is important because it has the effect that the original sentence so to say feels like your own creation - and in that way it not only supports your efforts to activate the target language, but it also boosts your selfconfidence.
PS: I have been asked whether I keep my text copies forever. No, I don't. I stash them, but when the piles get too high I throw them out. It is highly unlikely that I return to my own copies, and if I return to the original texts later it is more rewarding to look at them with fresh eyes than it is to waste time on my old errors. I have the same attitude to my wordlists except if they are part of a 'word list campaign', where I might want to do statistics and maybe even belated repetitions. It's much better to start a new wordlist from scratch than it is to wallow in your old scribblings.