Notes on Learning Languages
lukesmith.xyz
Notes on Learning Languages
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Re: Notes on Learning Languages
#2No, vocabulary is the most important part of learning a language if you want to use to it to actually communicate, or consume media in that language. And learning vocabulary takes a lot of time. You can join exactly zero conversations about everyday topics without knowing at least a few hundred, better a few thousand words. You can't even read stories for toddlers without knowing a few hundred words. Grammar won't help you understand sentences if all the meaning you extract is Noun (singular, female) Verb (present tense) Object (plural, neutral).
Learning grammar on the other hand is relatively easy, because there are far fewer rules to remember and you naturally develop a "feeling" for correct sentence structure after you've used the language enough, even passively.
Re: Notes on Learning Languages
#3> mass-memorizing words as if they're an Asian studying for a chemistry test.
Is this appropriate language to use?
Re: Notes on Learning Languages
#4> mass-memorizing words as if they're an Asian studying for a chemistry test. Is this appropriate language to use?
He's offensive as hell in his vids on youtube too, so I think he's just a jerk
Re: Notes on Learning Languages
#5> mass-memorizing words as if they're an Asian studying for a chemistry test. Is this appropriate language to use?
Stereotypical but not inappropriate. Using chemistry in this example is kinda bad, anyone that studied it knows that it's much less memorization and much more understanding that is involved.
Re: Notes on Learning Languages
#6No, vocabulary is the most important part of learning a language if you want to use to it to actually communicate, or consume media in that language. And learning vocabulary takes a lot of time. You can join exactly zero conversations about everyday topics without knowing at least a few hundred, better a few thousand words. You can't even read stories for toddlers without knowing a few hundred words. Grammar won't he…
I agree, vocabulary is the most important part. I emigrated to US when I was 13 and I understand English very little at that time. I remember how difficult it was to read the textbook in high school. It took 3 years to catch up. It is just impossible to understand without know what the words mean.
Re: Notes on Learning Languages
#7I think the bit about imitating a foreign accent in order to sound more like a native in your target language is one of the better pieces of advice in this post; at least, doing so has worked pretty well for me in the languages I’ve tried to study so far.
It’s not always a benefit to quickly pick up the phonology, though. When native speakers hear a foreigner speaking with such a non-foreign accent, they tend to assume that I know the language a lot better than I really do, and I find myself asking people to slow down and repeat quite often...
Re: Notes on Learning Languages
#8The author of this article might have a language learning system that works for him but this article is not helpful for language learner. Learning a foreign language is a complicated process due to different needs of individual learner. The author makes a sweeping statement without detail description of the learning process is not helpful for people who might want to try his way of learning.
Let me give an example what different student background and learning environment will impact the learning process. I know very little English when I emigrated to US when I was 13. I started high school after 6 months in the US. The school had no Chinese speaking teaching staff( Mandarin is my native language). Since I do not know much English to begin with. I don't think anyone can teach me English using what Author proposed. I built up my vocabulary one word at the time until I know enough word to understand young adult novels. Reading many young adult novels helped to increase my vocabulary quickly and I was able to catch up within 3 years and managed to graduate from high school and enter University.
My English deteriorated after I have been back to Asia for 20 years but hopefully I get my point across.
Re: Notes on Learning Languages
#9No, vocabulary is the most important part of learning a language if you want to use to it to actually communicate, or consume media in that language. And learning vocabulary takes a lot of time. You can join exactly zero conversations about everyday topics without knowing at least a few hundred, better a few thousand words. You can't even read stories for toddlers without knowing a few hundred words. Grammar won't he…
I agree, vocabulary is the most important part. I emigrated to US when I was 13 and I understand English very little at that time. I remember how difficult it was to read the textbook in high school. It took 3 years to catch up. It is just impossible to understand without know what the words mean.
If you wish to undertand and to be understood, I agree that vocabulary is very important.
I assume from the class of errors you made (understand instead of understood; know instead of knowing) that your native language doesn’t have verb tense like Chinese. But it doesn’t matter if these small grammatical errors are made, because native speakers can still understand sentences with flawed grammar. However, if you are missing vocabulary you will have a hard time understanding what other people are saying, and when you speak you end up spending a lot of time trying to describe words you don’t know in terms of words you do know.
Re: Notes on Learning Languages
#10Vocabulary is still kind of important. I think that learning the top 3000 words in any language will get you far. Start with 100, then 500, then 1000 etc.