Re:I used the internet to painlessly relearn a foreign language
by opsunit on Wednesday September 30, 2020 @05:00AM
(#24636829)
I had both experiences and found neither valuable. I am in awe of anybody who can learn a foreign language full-stop.
My French teacher fully explained the grammar most of which passed me by since, certainly in my case, one doesn't really rationalise their own language in terms of technicalities.
My German teacher just pitched up on day one and spoke nothing but German. Two years later I was absolutely none the wiser. I could quite honestly have been listening to white noise.
That anybody "picks up" a language is something I am amazed by.
Re:I used the internet to painlessly relearn a foreign language
by vidarh on Wednesday September 30, 2020 @05:40AM
(#24636989)
Immersion requires you to speak, not just listen, and that was key with my second French teacher. Everyone spoke words, and soon sentences in French from day one, even if at first it was badly broken and little more than parroting things back. She kept track - nobody got away without participating. Every lesson. Towards the end of a year of that we went to Paris for a week and spent 5-6 hours every day going out and stopping strangers to have conversations with them about various subjects.
The structure meant both that we were forced to try and that the teacher knew at any point how we were doing.
Re:I used the internet to painlessly relearn a foreign language
by kwhitefoot on Wednesday September 30, 2020 @11:56AM
(#24640104)
> the teacher knew at any point how we were doing
She is an exceptional teacher. If only every teacher were that good, that dedicated.
It may well differ between schools, though.
Though having learned French from two very different teachers, I'll say I'm not at all convinced that focusing on the grammar is helpful until people have reached a relatively advanced level.
My first teacher was very formal and went through the grammar in detail from the start. My second, in an intensive course at university, focused on immersion instead - she started speaking French to us almost exclusively from the very first lesson (which included people who had never had French before), and the focus was on speaking, with an insistence that everyone in class participated every lesson. The second course brought those who had never spoken French previously to a conversational level much faster.