An experiment in foreign language study
Oct. 20th, 2004 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beige_alertI recently wrote about my lack of success at learning Spanish in school and noted that my total lack of usage of the language outside of class probably didn’t help. Within the classes, although we did practice using the language, we didn’t use it to actually communicate real information that we actually wanted to communicate and would otherwise have communicated in English. It was all very dull made-up practice material, and lacking a strong intrinsic curiosity about languages and without a strong pragmatic need to learn (i.e., if I was planning on traveling to [foreign country] in a year, I’d really want to try to learn [language they speak there]), it was very hard to pay attention to practice text that I knew for sure, in advance, was not going to say anything interesting.
I’m not sure how I could have gotten hold of a Madrid newspaper in Chicago in the eighties, but now the only difference between accessing a Madrid paper and a Chicago paper is a URL ending in “.es” instead of “.com”, so for the past two weeks I’ve been trying to read some Spanish newspapers and other Spanish web sites to see how much I could remember of the language and to see if real text is more interesting than practice text.
The first thing I learned is that I forgot a lot. The second is that, fortunately, it is very, very easy to look up words on the Internet. A few mouse clicks is all it takes to get a Spanish-English dictionary entry up, and this makes the process far less painful than it used to be. I’m sure I would have given up in a hurry if I had to look up unfamiliar words—pretty much all of them, at this point—in a paper dictionary. The third thing is that, sure enough, reading something interesting is far more fun than reading something that is really dull.
It seems awfully obvious that interesting things are more interesting than dull things, but in a way this is a discovery. Spanish classes were always rather painful for me, yet I’ve had fun putting a remarkable amount of time into trying to read abc.es and Madridiario.es. Classes were never fun and it did not seem possible than fun could be associated with learning Spanish.
The dull, synthetic text approach to language instruction makes logical sense, of course. The idea is to introduce grammar and vocabulary in an organized way, which sounds like a good plan. Unfortunately, it’s only efficient if the student stays awake. Certainly some dull examples are going to be a part of learning a language, but I’m getting the strong impression that it’s a lot easier to stay interested and put in a lot of time practicing if as much of the practice material as possible is interesting in any language.
I’m not an expert, your mileage may vary, and I’ve only been at this two weeks, but since clearly much of my skill with the English language has come from reading a great deal of English, it seems reasonable to suppose that reading Spanish will help with that language. Newspapers seem to be good for this purpose, since there’s an endless supply of fresh, interesting material and newspaper writing tends to be reasonably straightforward. I’ve already relearned a lot and am just starting to reach the point that I don’t feel at a total loss when presented with a screen-full of Spanish text.
Time will tell what becomes of this. Now that I’ve told everyone that I’m doing this I suppose I have that much more incentive to keep at it. I have promised myself a trip to Spain if I ever do become skillful at the language. I should have a few years to save my money. That map of Spain I just bought is just to better understand the place names in the newspapers. I’m not already dreaming of wandering Madrid or a visit to the Guggenheim in Bilbao or anything like that. Not me.
I’m not sure how I could have gotten hold of a Madrid newspaper in Chicago in the eighties, but now the only difference between accessing a Madrid paper and a Chicago paper is a URL ending in “.es” instead of “.com”, so for the past two weeks I’ve been trying to read some Spanish newspapers and other Spanish web sites to see how much I could remember of the language and to see if real text is more interesting than practice text.
The first thing I learned is that I forgot a lot. The second is that, fortunately, it is very, very easy to look up words on the Internet. A few mouse clicks is all it takes to get a Spanish-English dictionary entry up, and this makes the process far less painful than it used to be. I’m sure I would have given up in a hurry if I had to look up unfamiliar words—pretty much all of them, at this point—in a paper dictionary. The third thing is that, sure enough, reading something interesting is far more fun than reading something that is really dull.
It seems awfully obvious that interesting things are more interesting than dull things, but in a way this is a discovery. Spanish classes were always rather painful for me, yet I’ve had fun putting a remarkable amount of time into trying to read abc.es and Madridiario.es. Classes were never fun and it did not seem possible than fun could be associated with learning Spanish.
The dull, synthetic text approach to language instruction makes logical sense, of course. The idea is to introduce grammar and vocabulary in an organized way, which sounds like a good plan. Unfortunately, it’s only efficient if the student stays awake. Certainly some dull examples are going to be a part of learning a language, but I’m getting the strong impression that it’s a lot easier to stay interested and put in a lot of time practicing if as much of the practice material as possible is interesting in any language.
I’m not an expert, your mileage may vary, and I’ve only been at this two weeks, but since clearly much of my skill with the English language has come from reading a great deal of English, it seems reasonable to suppose that reading Spanish will help with that language. Newspapers seem to be good for this purpose, since there’s an endless supply of fresh, interesting material and newspaper writing tends to be reasonably straightforward. I’ve already relearned a lot and am just starting to reach the point that I don’t feel at a total loss when presented with a screen-full of Spanish text.
Time will tell what becomes of this. Now that I’ve told everyone that I’m doing this I suppose I have that much more incentive to keep at it. I have promised myself a trip to Spain if I ever do become skillful at the language. I should have a few years to save my money. That map of Spain I just bought is just to better understand the place names in the newspapers. I’m not already dreaming of wandering Madrid or a visit to the Guggenheim in Bilbao or anything like that. Not me.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-21 01:33 pm (UTC)or you could shop at walmart...
hasta la vista, baby....
no subject
Date: 2004-10-22 07:59 pm (UTC)I had some spanish lessons in 3rd grade, then again all 4 years in HS and 2 quarters in college (no, i can NOT hold a conversation now). The best parts that i remember are from 3rd grade & college...some of that is due to better retention when your younger, but a lot is also due to the FUN we had. Learning the alphabet in 3rd grade included a couple songs, vowels were reinforced with a cheesy joke, etc....in college we had interesting conversations, & our prof shared her favorite short-story collections and brought in popular, undubbed movies (with subtitles covered if needed) rather than boring instructional videos we had in HS. All of it made a huge difference in retention as well as interest. The best-remembered HS bits are the ones that were reinforced at my friend's house (her dad made me sit in the evenings and watch spanish soaps for 'living examples').
Continued success with your project!