For the past 2 years, I’ve been “learning” English. Well, in my case, learning English is not something I planned to do at first. I don’t even know I was “learning”. I just watched a bunch of youtube videos, and the next thing I know I can speak a little English. But now that I have a little bit knowledge of the English language, I want to actually learn it. Not just by watching random YouTube videos. I have watched and tried different ways to learn like for example flashcards, watch movies, read books, speaking to myself, etc. But I feel like I am not improving. When I speak to other people in English, I feel like I’m not as good as I think I would. So, now I’m frustrated, thinking about how to learn and ACTUALLY improve.
What are your thoughts about this?
What @kimjong_ill@lemmy.ml says is spot on, regarding how you should be consuming (reading, hearing, ‘watching’) stuff that is comprehensible for the most part. The bits that you don’t know will gradually settle or you might find compelled to search it (e.g. “What does “indoctrination” mean? I’ve been seeing this word again and again in this series but I still don’t get it”).
That covers the part of internalizing the language. At least in an intuitive sense. Studying grammar will make it sturdier [edit: only after having internalized the language intuitively!]. I don’t really have resources for this though… I think I remember Oxford University Press having some grammar lesson books? I’d generally trust that…
But there’s still the part of speaking. The finding and stringing of words shouldn’t be the issue, if you’ve internalized the language enough by consuming it. Rather, pronunciation becomes the bottleneck. Here you can grab a small fragment of a video of an actor you like or a character you like and copy the mouth movements as well as the mouth sounds. Be aware of accent differences. Choose an accent you’re interested in learning to speak in.
I will cite this tomorrow, when I’m back in my desk.
Edit: @dessalines@lemmy.ml’s reference is exactly it :)
Spot on. I forget which lemmer showed me this, but this video by stephen krashen really changed the way I think about language learning, and made me alter my study plan going forward with mandarin.
The main points are that ppl only learn languages one way, through comprehensible input ( and there are now lots of different methods geared toward this, even on youtube ), and progress most rapidly through consuming lots of easy, interesting content for them in that language, whether its books, movies, TV shows, news, etc. Also that listening is far more important than speaking or practice, esp in the early stages. You don’t learn languages through grammer and study content, but through easy messages you can understand, on topics interesting to you.
Great video. It sounds like a lot more work for teachers though. There’s nothing easier for a lazy teacher than going through a standardised textbook, giving standardised questions, handing out standardised tests. It’s so easy that much of the process can be automated.
It’s easy to see why schooling systems would converge on that technique - it suits themselves, not their students.
The idea sounds like a parallel to Montessori’s methods. Teaching via free undirected play, and the rest. Maybe there’s a combination of the two ideas that could be ideal.
Got it. So I just have to find the right resources then. Resources that fit my level. Not too easy, not too hard. Oh no, that’s another problem. Finding the right resources is not easy 😅.