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My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

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Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#101

Post by kmtrowbr »

casey_lang wrote: post #58

I've always wanted to be fluent in a second language and have tried in the past, but I always end up with the same problem. While I recognize that the only way to gain conversational skills is to actually have conversations, they terrify me. Engaging in small talk with strangers in my native language is hard enough. Trying to do it in a second language seems impossible. Even watching the demo video from the link, all…

I speak French and Spanish both fairly well. I learned them both, over the past 20 years. Studied them in college, then lived in Lausanne, Switzerland for a year, then lived in Mexico for a year. It all started off when I had a giant crush on a French exchange student in high school.

> conversations, they terrify me

It is awkward! But that's why you should do it. Because, it doesn't matter. You have to stretch yourself. You have to get comfortable with being bad.

Everyone feels embarrassed and weird when learning a second language. They feel embarrassed that they are bad. But, of course they're bad, they never learned. It doesn't mean you're stupid. In fact, if you can force yourself to do something hard and you can force yourself through the awkwardness in the pursuit of a goal, to me that's a high indicator that you are smarter than average.

For me, learning a second language was so important in terms of the humility (being as a child again, accepting being bad, being the foreigner, being "that one weird guy"), then the recognition that the foreign culture & foreign people are so very similar to my own, and then the ability to see my own culture from another perspective. It's so good for your brain and there are so many fascinating little details, just the poetry of the foreign language and its words ... the way the words echo English in some ways and then in other ways are different.

In a practical sense it would be hard to point to specific things that the foreign language did for me, but in another sense it was one of the deepest, most soul-expanding things I could have done. Gave me courage, a lot of perspective, many friends, and many good times. Anyone who wants more specific advice feel free to write me: good luck, go for it, it's worth it!

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#102

Post by rahimnathwani »

kmatt wrote: post #53
nileshtrivedi wrote: post #3

Personally, I would love to learn a language by watching movies/videos with 3 subtitle tracks: (1) What they are speaking - IN their script (this is called SLS: Same-Language-Subtitling and has been quite successful for literacy programs for one's own language) (2) What they are speaking - IN my script (3) What they MEAN - IN my language (i.e. translation) Data for (1) is easy to find. (2) could theoretically be gene…

I've been working on something similar. Check out Flowlingo (iOS or Android app stores). You watch videos and read books to learn a language. Currently in Spanish only. If you have any feedback, please let me know!

Flowlingo looks awesome. I like how the subtitles show/scroll below the video.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#103

Post by jdeisenberg »

KGIII wrote: post #86
akeck wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. If you were interacting for 16h a day "in country" for 7 weeks, then (16 * 7 * 7) + 150 + 85 = 1019 hours. If State Departments say 400 hours, then this sheds light on why many non-native fluent speakers recommend immersion - there's simply no faster way to meet or exceed 400 hours of practice than daily immersion.

Absolutely... Academically, I've only failed two things. Typing and Spanish. Today, I'm fluent in Spanish - though a bit slower than natives. Why? I spent a whole lot of time with my pidgin Spanish below the border. Eventually, I just learned. I did make an effort to learn a few things every day, but I ended up actually learning more than that and doing so without even realizing it. I can't write Spanish, but I can r…

Not sure about dreams, but I have had (simple) conversations entirely in German with people when in Germany -- but when I remember the content, I "hear" it all in English. This irritates me incredibly.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#104

Post by funkaster »

schacon wrote: post #46
funkaster wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the attitude "this problem is unsolved and no-one seems to be working on it. I'll fix it, even though I'm not an expert in the domain... because coding fix everything". Don't get me wrong, this is a very common problem for engineers (I'm an engineer and I fall into that trap every now and then). But from the post, what's lacking is actually talking and working head-head with teachers and linguists and…

I'm not sure where you get this. I studied linguistics in college and one of my cofounders got her degree in linguistics from Harvard. Another of our employees is a computational linguist from Cambridge. Additionally, all of the curriculum and much of the course methodology itself was designed by teachers who have been teaching languages both online and in the classroom for years. We have additionally consulted activ…

If that's the case, then I'm sorry I got the wrong impression, but it was the tone on your post that led me to that. Before your reply I took a look at the about page on your site and saw the diverse team. You should've give them more credit to them and how you searched for that type of support when building the app. Otherwise it's very easy to reach a similar conclusion to the one I got.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#105

Post by dicemoose »

schacon wrote: post #29
Shank wrote: post #23

I'd love to see more tools go into the space of learning what I consider to be the farthest thing from English. That's like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. There's a lot more that goes into learning these languages due to differences in pronunciation, characters, and sentence structure. I know the demand is often placed on the romance and germanic languages, but they're often easy enough. You can usually bring along…

We will absolutely tackle these languages. We're releasing German for English speakers currently in order to learn better how more customers respond to the methods we're using, and German is more complex grammatically for English speakers than romance languages. Also, I didn't speak any German and I think it's important to use your product yourself. Personally I want very much to return to Japanese myself some day. A…

Is it important to learn the kana and kanji at the same time as learning how to converse in Japanese? I'm a native speaker, but it was a lot easier to learn kana and kanji because I already was able to speak some Japanese.

Also, I hope you try some immersion Japanese again. :D

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#106

Post by gfodor »

pmoriarty wrote: post #25

I'm a fan of a method of language learning called TPR (Total Physical Response).[1][2][3] It is by far the fastest and easiest way I know of learning vocabulary and grammar. In a nutshell, with TPR the teacher gives the student a command in the target language, demonstrates the action the command is asking for, repeats the command and finally the student copies the action. For example, if English was the target langu…

This seems like a great application of VR.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#107

Post by mercer »

andy_wrote wrote: post #26

I've done the Duolingo Spanish tree, and my feeling was the same as the author's regarding "% fluency," which I thought was kind of a joke. Especially for speaking and listening, there's really no substitute for immersion and real-life regular interactions. But I do feel that Duolingo was honestly pretty good about helping me to read and write. In NYC there's a little ambient Spanish everywhere and I went into it not…

I've been doing about 30 XP of Spanish on Duolingo for more than year now. 30 XP is about 10 minutes of practice, so very little.

One day I was watching a show or movie that had many scenes in Spanish, and to my surprise I could actually follow much of what was said! I didn't realize how (relatively) effective even those 10 minutes a day can be.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#108

Post by alphydan »

KGIII wrote: post #99
jerf wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As in, I would prattle on and converse in Spanish - fluently. Except, at the time, I wasn't actually fluent." My dreams frequently claim I am a master composer, and that this tune is wonderful, or that I've written a really clever joke, or that they've told me something important. None of the things I've ever dragged up to the waking world have ever even remotely panned out as the dream promised. (If I may anthropom…

That kind of makes sense, thanks! It has puzzled me for years. It was very convincing dream Spanish, like fluency in technical verbiage and speaking about higher order mathematics - all in Spanish when I still had a hard time asking for a room for the night.

I had a similar experience while doing undergrad physics. I would dream up incredibly elegant solutions to hard calculus problems ... wake up, write them down and go back to bed. In the morning I would find stuff like dx/dx = c or some other trivial or incorrect equation.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#109

Post by inkubus »

kmtrowbr wrote: post #101
casey_lang wrote: post #58

I've always wanted to be fluent in a second language and have tried in the past, but I always end up with the same problem. While I recognize that the only way to gain conversational skills is to actually have conversations, they terrify me. Engaging in small talk with strangers in my native language is hard enough. Trying to do it in a second language seems impossible. Even watching the demo video from the link, all…

I speak French and Spanish both fairly well. I learned them both, over the past 20 years. Studied them in college, then lived in Lausanne, Switzerland for a year, then lived in Mexico for a year. It all started off when I had a giant crush on a French exchange student in high school. > conversations, they terrify me It is awkward! But that's why you should do it. Because, it doesn't matter. You have to stretch yourse…

so true can't upvote more
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