Learning a foreign Language

An intersting article on how to learn foreign words:

http://www.happychild.org.uk/acc/tpr/mem/0299lang.htm

Learning Style Quiz:

http://homeworktips.about.com/od/homeworkhelp/a/lstyleqz.htm

Apparently there are 3 main types of learning:

Kinesthetic, Visual and Auditory.

Thanks for the repsonses,

@Alex R

• the difficult Sacndanavian accents sound an interesting challenge. Sweedish maybe.
• the idea of 'structure' being a basis for learning makes sense
• that research I mentioned would mean that meaning and probably therefore structure would play an important roie in learning a language as opposed to mechanical or rote learning.

@spektral

• Rosetta Stone is probably out of my budget at the moment but it does look a very interactive and thoughtful approach (from the quick look I had). What would you say was the main learning style implemented?
• Japanese certainley would be a challenge, but I would really like to achieve a fairly steady learning curve to help improve my self-confidence. Although I have a friend in Japan I would be much more likely to visit France or Sweeden. It sounds an amazing language to learn, write and use. The culture too..have you visited there?
• Learning from picture cards is interesting. Did you just look through them until something clicked? I have heard about people putting words on the relevant objects around the house. There seems to be quite a distinction between written and spoken words? How does that work out for Japanese? i am unfamiiar with carachters and therefore don't see a pattern.

@Imp of the Perverse

• Thanks for your long post. Its interesting that you 'memorize hundreds of words in a day but find listening-skills really difficult'. I suppose that points towards a learning style based around the visual? What are your thoughts on 'structure', I guess I mean the grammar system of verbs etc?
• Watching a foreign program or film (repeatedly) sounds like a good idea. I also thought of just playing a 'learning a foreign language' CD in the background whilst doing something else would be helpful. Just to try and get my head around the sound. As I have said I really like doing 'accents'.
• Your ideas about visual learning sounded great. Are the images always somehow connected to both the foreign and the native word? How does that process actually work in practise I wonder. For example you are in a shop in france and want to buy and egg, which is something you know you want to do because you want scrammbled egg. So, do you think of the english word then the French (via a connecting image) or do you think of the image connected with egg and then the French word? I hope this makes sense as I am still trying to pin point the processes myself.
• Frequency dictionaries....... that does make sense.....along with a 'little everyday', which would maybe tie in with playing a foreign language Cd in the back ground..

Finally I wonder if anyone knows if there are any online resources/tests that help identify your 'learning style'. I think this is an interesting area I could explore. By learning a Foreign Language, it could help identify how a person might learn most efficiently. I am not sure if this is something that is really explored in school.

Thanks again

I haven't been diagnosed yet but I have found language-learning both easy and hard because I can memorize hundreds of words in a day but find listening-skills really difficult. I can read French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese (obviously there are a lot of common areas here) and some German, which is the one I really need for my studies.

I have tried Danish but as Alex R says it is very unusual (read the Wikipedia entry why this is so) but the verbs are simple as can be: much more like English ones but even less variation...no I am, you are, he is..just Jeg er, Du er, Han er (from memory). I have heard Swedish is similarly easy but that it has changed a lot after World War II: it is much less formal and the tonal variation has been really toned down because the younger generations were getting embarrassed by the way they were being caricatured (for example I think the chef on the Muppets is Swedish). Having found Danish very 'mumbly', since watching The Killing it is making much more sense. If you can find a show in a foreign language that bears a lot of repeated watching then this would be a good way to go. You won't have to learn redundant phrases like the apocryphal 'my postillion has been struck by lightning' etc. but catchy common phrases everyday people use.

However, having tried so many langauges I have to say, for me anyway, getting a big vocab quickly takes alot of the dictionary drudgery away. There are some really good word frequency vocab books out there but also if you need to try a structurally sophisticated language, like German for example, buy Reading German by Waltraud Coles and Bill Dodd. It is brilliant on the structure of German sentences. Hopefully there are other good ones on languages like Arabic, Russian etc.

Back to the vocab business though. If you are a very visual thinker, there are a few language learning strategies that tie words into images to create stories that make memorising easy. The best I heard was to pick a town you know well and fill it full of images and stories but tie them memorably to your foreign language. So if it's French you are learning you might turn the verb 'aller' into an alley down which you are 'going' and this becomes a way into building a huge memorable vocab. Now 'going' is quite abstract but if you tend to use 'go' quite a lot to say I am 'going' to the shops, then you go down your alley to buy a magazine at the shop and hey presto!, from magazine, you get the word for shop 'magasin'. This can actually be a good deal of fun and a place to daydream in.

Is this making sense? I hope so because I can memorize hundreds of words this way and if I were to keep visiting my new Frenchified town a lot of these images stick quickly and so I am quickly learning my new language through learning a lot of vocab of everyday items.

Lastly I have a brilliant Russian Frequency dictionary and like many of these books, it makes the point that most language uses very small amounts of vocab. 200 basic words covers 50% of everyday conversation. If you have a 5000 word vocab and can use it fluently, then you can understand almost everything, though some idioms might be confusing. Yet Barrons do books on this subject as well....so it's all out there to get going and as every linguist says...doing a little every day is the best way. Language learning is all about reinforcing things you have learned already.

Sorry for such a long post but this is a topic I have obsessed about for years.

Although it is expensive, Rosetta Stone is great. I am currently learning Japanese  

It throws you into listening to full sentances right from the start, but your focus is only identifying one word. For example in the first few lessons you had to work out if they were talking about boys or girls, then men and woman.

Within a few lessons I had written a word in Japanese, it was really amazing.

If your anything like me though, it is a slow process. My partner seems to learn it so much quicker than me.

I tried other methods like learning individual words from picture cards and found that didnt really work that well.

Hi there,

Posting as an individual, and not as a moderator...

I think that research looks very interesting. In my experience, Scandinavian languages are structurally quite easy, but the accents are hard. For example, Swedish uses tone more than English-speakers are used to, and Danish is very guttural, with many endings barely pronounced. But Swedish is a very regular, orderly language, so in that respect it's easy to learn.

Many schools these days teach languages with a great emphasis on conversation. While this can be useful in some ways, it has led to a neglect of structure. In French, and even more so in German or Latin, knowing the structure can really help. Words follow well-defined patterns, and someone's ability to use a new word depends on knowing the patterns that it uses. Some people on the spectrum certainly find the more structured approach easier, although I'm no expert and I can't say it's universal.

I'd be keen to hear others' thoughts on this, too.

Alex