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Outline guide for the practical study of foreign languages
16 pages, Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 1942
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 3, 2018
This booklet sets to do precisely what its title says: outline general rules for the study of languages. Dated 1942, it’s one of the first of its genre, and offers sound advice to the day, accomplishing to summarize in a few sentences what many other books do in hundreds of pages.
Gold nuggets:
• One can learn to understand and to speak a language only by hearing and imitating speeches of that language.
• Do not expect the if informant [native speaker] to give theoretical notions, as practical command of a language does not imply the knowledge of the history of said language.
• Learning the conventional system of writing is different from learning to speak.
• Textbooks/grammars should not be the predominant mode of instruction.
• Mimic pronunciation/foreign sounds to the best of your ability.
• Tackle the most common words first.
• Find out what the foreign language says and find out the meaning as well as you can, but do not fuss around too much with the English equivalent, and never try to use the English forms or meanings as a guide or measuring-rod.
• Build a large enough stock of phases and raw your own conclusions about the meaning of the foreign forms. Think of them in their own terms.
• Nothing is gained by speculation or by fussing with terminology, when the facts are known, it will be convenient to state them, but meanwhile it is enough of a task simply to collect the facts – that is, to accumulate instances.
• The command of language is a matter of practice.
• It is helpful to know how it works but this knowledge is of no avail until one has practiced the forms over and over again until one can rattle them off without effort. [re: usage of words]
• Language learning is overlearning, anything less is of no use.
• Build a card index / use flashcards
• By careful and thorough work one can discover the machinery so to speak of the language and state it in its simplest terms. In all this work it is important to tackle the language on its own terms and to avoid distorting and confusing the facts by false classification from one’s own language.
• Practice everything until it becomes your second nature.
• The process he suggest: listen > transcribe > read out loud and practice until you can rattle it without hesitation.
Gold nuggets:
• One can learn to understand and to speak a language only by hearing and imitating speeches of that language.
• Do not expect the if informant [native speaker] to give theoretical notions, as practical command of a language does not imply the knowledge of the history of said language.
• Learning the conventional system of writing is different from learning to speak.
• Textbooks/grammars should not be the predominant mode of instruction.
• Mimic pronunciation/foreign sounds to the best of your ability.
• Tackle the most common words first.
• Find out what the foreign language says and find out the meaning as well as you can, but do not fuss around too much with the English equivalent, and never try to use the English forms or meanings as a guide or measuring-rod.
• Build a large enough stock of phases and raw your own conclusions about the meaning of the foreign forms. Think of them in their own terms.
• Nothing is gained by speculation or by fussing with terminology, when the facts are known, it will be convenient to state them, but meanwhile it is enough of a task simply to collect the facts – that is, to accumulate instances.
• The command of language is a matter of practice.
• It is helpful to know how it works but this knowledge is of no avail until one has practiced the forms over and over again until one can rattle them off without effort. [re: usage of words]
• Language learning is overlearning, anything less is of no use.
• Build a card index / use flashcards
• By careful and thorough work one can discover the machinery so to speak of the language and state it in its simplest terms. In all this work it is important to tackle the language on its own terms and to avoid distorting and confusing the facts by false classification from one’s own language.
• Practice everything until it becomes your second nature.
• The process he suggest: listen > transcribe > read out loud and practice until you can rattle it without hesitation.
March 11, 2020
totally changed my attitude towards language learning
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews