Comments on: A NOT To Do List for Successful Language Learners

By: John

John — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:55:06 +0000

Thank you for your kind feedback, Andrew. Memorizing a small set of basic words can certainly be a good way to jump into a new language, and there are many excellent tools to help one do so more efficiently (spaced repetition, Tony Buzan’s “Master Memory Matrix”, etc.). But in my experience, memorization of explicit information lends itself better to the written word, and does little for the ability to understand or produce the spoken language. WIth this in mind, I prefer to get my ears used to the language first, and then back up my listening tasks with reading.

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By: John

John — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:49:33 +0000

By the way folks, these articles were originally posted years ago and have collected quite a few comments that I am now working to reinstall as I rebuild the site.

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By: John

John — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:47:25 +0000

Thank you for your comment. While some criticism of traditional methods may be a matter of fashion, I think the bulk of it stems from a growing realization that all the time and money spent in classrooms produces very poor results for most learners, while more and more are successfully acquiring languages on their own through intensive, self-guided immersion using readily available online (and offline) tools and an ever growing pool of both learner-specific and authentic content.

I have worked in translation and have nothing but respect for the profession (and the skills required to do it well). But it all comes down to each individual’s goals. Not every foreign language learner wants to become a translator; most just want to use the language as a communication tool at work, with friends, or on the street.

In my experience as both a learner and teacher, translation is one of the major impediments to reaching fluency. On the other hand, once you actually reach an advanced level of oral and written fluency in a language, learning to translate will be that much easier.

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By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:20:14 +0000

I agree with most of these, I think this is a pretty good list that will go a long ways towards getting a beginner on the right track in that it does address common mistakes people tend to make, though I would say that at the VERY beginning it’s useful to just rote memorize like maybe the 200 most common words in a language (“is”, “go”, “person”, “he”, “she”, etc.) prior to doing anything else, if you wanted me to point out an exception.

Cheers,
Andrew

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By: 葛修远

葛修远 — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:10:49 +0000

I do generally agree with these points, but I think there are a lot of caveats to #1. It seems like it’s become quite fashionable on the Web to criticise traditional language learning methods. If you spent 50% of your time memorising and studying grammar (i.e. ‘learning’), and the other 50% actively engaging with the real stuff (‘acquiring’), I think you’d make excellent progress. 95:5 seems a bit extreme.

Also, I’m not sure about downplaying translation in that way. Translation is a real art and takes a lot of practice to become proficient. If you just want to communicate with native speakers then sure, it’s not that necessary. But I think learning foreign languages without studying translation skills is a real wasted opportunity.

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