Gustav Aschenbach wrote:
Interesting, why so many beginner's courses if you want to make the best out of one year/of 1000 hours? Given that you already have a basis in Norwegian and that it is a Germanic language just like English, I would finish Assimil and then plunge into native material while studying grammar (which is easy because English and Norwegian grammar are so similar). Learning how to say "my name is", "the dog is outside" again and again isn't the most sensible approach imo. The focus should rather be on advanced courses, since going from intermediate to advanced takes much, much more time than from zero to intermediate. But you only list a handful of intermediate/advanced courses and just so many beginner's courses.
To me, building a language from the ground up requires some pretty solid foundations and I don't argue that others who study/learn differently are not building decent foundations but the courses are my way of doing that. Norwegian, much like French I have found, requires a lot of focus on pronunciation, and as iguanamon notes this is something I put a lot of time into with my study methods. The beginner's courses assist me with that careful process. Of course pronunciation is not the only focus, so I use courses to build the language structurally as well, as many a language learner does. But why so many? As Cavesa points out, the advanced courses are hard to find for Norwegian. In fact, I will add more advanced courses later as I discover them, as again as Cavesa points out, I may not be aware of their titles yet. The courses on my list are the ones I know at this stage, I'm likely to discover more advanced ones later, and there's no point looking for them just yet as it would be wasting my time.
It's similar for native content. This whole mission is to build a very solid foundation. I don't like beginning with native content. In fact one of my biggest regrets with my massive French mission was listening to too many other people and introducing native content a little early. I should've stuck to the courses solely in my dedicated study time (could've did whatever I liked outside of the strict study time) for longer to get more of them out of the way before moving more and more towards native content and finally exclusively. Not having done that has left me with a feeling of always wanting to go back to the courses.
However, I definitely could've ditched a few beginner's courses for a few more advanced ones. It was a learning process, to learn how I needed to learn. So I guess it's likely normal to look back and see what could've been done better. And by saying that I should've stayed with the French courses only for longer, I don't mean that I should've ditched native content. The outcome possibly would've been that I would've reached native content
sooner because I would've stuck to my method and not got distracted and introduced native content when I was ready. So although I regret not having done the courses for longer i also regret not having got to native content quicker! I ended up in a no-mans land for too long using a mixture of both not knowing when to let go of courses and when to fully go native. It's not anyone else's fault and I received a lot of awesome advice here. In fact everything they were telling me was right, but I just wasn't ready for it as soon as others would be. And it's no great loss, I still managed to pass B2 and go beyond that considerably.
Therefore, this time around, it's courses all the way until I'm ready to transition. I'll know when that is. Like iguanamon mentioned, I didn't complete all the courses on my French list (but it was a MUCH bigger list), and this might happen with Norwegian. Still, for now, I'm more determined than ever to work with the courses and knock every last one of them off that list. Will I actually do that? I don't know.
In doing several beginner's courses you are not going to go through each course at the same pace. Every time I come across grammatical concepts or vocabulary I've already covered in another course, there's these things to consider:
1. If I have struggled with something (perhaps grammar rule) in the language before it is very useful to see it presented again in a different fashion in another course.
2. if I'm absolutely comfortable I know a word or a grammatical rule, I'm not going to waste much time when I come across it again in another course, I'll realise I know this already and move on.
3. Revision of already learned grammar and vocabulary is highly valuable.
4. If I'm not about to pick up native content, I need more time with the language from courses.
5. Multiple courses provide more vocabulary, have different teaching methods, different audio etc - all this does not hinder, it helps.
6. I'll know if I've covered enough and need to move on from beginner courses.
Gustav Aschenbach wrote:Deinonysus wrote:The way PM is choosing to study is not exactly the way I would do it, but he has not asked for my opinion and I will not be indulging in LLORG's favorite pastime, the "give PM unsolicited advice" game.
Ah, so you're saying that my above comment was unsolicited advice? Peter, do you agree?
It is unsolicited advice, in a way, yes. But it is welcome and as Cavesa indicates, the logs allow for advice from others. It is through exchanging ideas and opinions on this forum that we learn how others learn, how we might improve on things etc. And we follow that advice at times, but as I said, I regret not having remained with the courses alone for longer in French, so no amount of people telling me I'm doing too many courses of any type is going to change my objectives here. I now have a lot of experience from learning French and part of that experience tells me that I'm going to stick to my guns here and not waiver from beginner's courses until I'm ready. Thus, were Deinonysus to give me some advice, I'd likely not take it
However -
Deinonysus wrote:Just Assimil is not enough IMO.
I absolutely agree.
Cavesa wrote:I have no doubts PM will later add tons of input too.Tons of coursebooks and tons of input are not mutually exclusive.
Yep. This plan with all the courses is a mission to get me to using all the native content down the track. I also will engage with content that is actually native content (news for example) outside of my desk study time. However, I'll not do too much, as I feel it's a waste of time to a certain extent when i can't understand anything yet, but not a waste of time to simply get used to the patterns of speech and so forth and eventually pick up words, then sentences etc.
Cavesa wrote:And in the good LLORG tradition of unsollicited opinions, I'll add mine: I'd personally not settle for Assimil even for an "easy" language, I would probably reduce the list to Assimil+The Mystery of Nils+one classroom aimed course. Perhaps one more course, something heavy in exercises on top of that.
Cavesa wrote:I am looking forward to reading of PMs Norwegian adventure. And the reviews of the resources will be extremely useful to our community for decades to come!
Now I'll definitely have to finish all the courses!
Cavesa wrote:Gustav Aschenbach wrote:The focus should rather be on advanced courses, since going from intermediate to advanced takes much, much more time than from zero to intermediate. But you only list a handful of intermediate/advanced courses and just so many beginner's courses.
I would partially agree. I did suggest more focus on intermediate and advanced French resources myself at various moments, rather than overkilling the beginner ones. However, I am not sure there are actually that many of them for the Norwegian learners. If there are, I'm sure PM will discover them and inform us. As they're likely to be monolingual, he cannot discover them that easily now. And at least he'll later profit from solid basics.
And I tend to agree too. I need more advanced courses, but there aren't that many. As already explained, I'll likely find them later, as you suggested, Cavesa. And you were dead on (as were many others) that I could've got rid of a few French beginner's courses in exchange for more advanced ones.
Cavesa wrote:What I find more tricky (based on my past considerations of learning a scandinavian language myself, with tons of research of the resources) is the access to the media for the natives. Everything in these countries seems to be geoblocked, either forbidden to foreigners or at least damn expensive. You can get several comparable German books for the price of one Swedish book (and another German book for the Swedish delivery fee
).
Yes I'm yet to discover the full extent of these issues. If anyone read my recent thread regarding the Dutch bookseller bol.com no longer exporting outside the Netherlands or Belgium, well you'd know I understand these frustrations and limitations. I resorted to ordering a staggering amount of books so that I'll have years of Dutch content to read to my children, since I teach them Dutch in part with stories. Fortunately I have a very close friend who lives in Norway and has offered to send things to me in Australia if I post them to her address. The cost will be the difficult part, I guess.