Learning tasks

Here is the podcast

Many language text books, and language systems to be found on the web, offer a long list of "learning tasks" devised by teachers and authors to help the learner. I find these learning tasks quite unnecessary and always ignore them.

Even though I am learning Russian using the Beta version of The Linguist system, I also buy Russian text books. I have used starter kits, like Assimil and the the Colloquial series, the two best series on the market for beginners. I buy these for the texts and vocabulary lists, not for the explanations of the language and certainly not for their "learning tasks". It is precisely because Assimil and Colloquial are light on explanations and "learning tasks" that I like them.

Recently, while visiting in London, I found an excellent reader for Russian, called "Advanced Russian through History", published by Yale. This book consists of 230 pages of essays on Russian history by well-known Russian writers, in normal Russian, i.e. not learner language. Notes are limited to translations of words and phrases. Of course there are words that I do not understand that are not translated, and translations of words that I understand. But still, the book is fascinating to me, and reading through this material has greatly improved my Russian. Reading on subjects of interest is powerful.

Yet this wonderful book is not without flaws.

First of all the sound CD is not of the material covered in the book. It is additional material. The writers of the book think this is a good thing. I do not agree. Offer a CD of additional content if you want, but also give us the sound files of the texts to reinforce our absorption of this material.

Second, it would be great if the texts were available in e-text so I could look up words that I need and save them to a database. We would love to incorporate this book with The Linguist system. I would still buy the book. There is nothing like reading from a book that you are holding in your hands.

Third, the editors do not provide a glossary at the end for words that I do not understand. The seem to think it is a good thing to force people to use a dictionary????

Fourth, and this is not so much a flaw as an unnecessary part of the book, the authors offer a list of "learning tasks". In fact there are 25 of them. These are divided in Pre-reading tasks. (1-6), Reading tasks (7-20) and Post-reading tasks (20-25).

Such things as "Read guided questions in English to prepare to read the chapter's text", "Read alphabetically sequenced list of connecting words and phrases"' ( Pre-reading tasks.)

"Determine how many clauses are in each of the sentences and identify the predicate and subject in  each clause", "Determine how meaning is influenced by word order in the given sentences" (Reading tasks) etc.

Now maybe it is just me, but these "learning tasks" would destroy my enjoyment of the book. I was thoroughly engrossed in each text, flying over most words that I did not understand, just eating up the content. After a while I got a better grasp of some words that kept on appearing in the text. But always I was looking forward to getting back to the book. Reading the book has greatly improved my Russian and my understanding of Russian history from a Russian perspective. If I were in a class and asked to do the learning tasks, I think I would simply quit the class and continue reading the book on my own. Is it just me?

Comments

[Richard]

You probably know this already. Have you visited Russian TV sites such as NTV http://news.ntv.ru . They have news in Russian in video format with Russian transcript.

[Chris]

I recently tried the Colloquial Series for Norwegian, and it was great. I'll have to get back to it sometime. I've often wondered just exactly what content you do use when beginning a new language. The Assimil series seems pretty good from what I gather.

A very good site for resources, specifically for French, German and Spanish are the About sites. They're loaded with information on the country and culture and have a wealth of audio content, including transcripts, translations and vocabulary lists which are really quite handy.

It might also be worth mentioning, there's a Russian book, audio and video site called http://www.books.ru/. Not sure how reliable it is, but worth a check, I suppose.

[PSM]

You are not the only one who hate the learning tasks, Steve. Me, too!

I have a series of books on Italian culture, which is very good. But the exercise sheet accompanying the books consists of several pre-listening test, listeing test and post-listening test. I find that annoying, too. I would like to have something more straightforward.

And unfortunately, I am the one who is asked to do the learning task in class and I doze off several times during the class!

Lastly, I wonder if Italian is one of the languages offered in the new Linguist system? And does it have a speaking session and writing correction as in the current one?

[Tony]

Steve, I am wondering, how do you review words and phrases? Do you review by looking up the word list, or by repeatedly reading or listening the content? It seems to me that the later one is more natural, but also very time-consuming.

[Sergiu]

Your posts are very interesting ,unfortunately I could be considered an enemy of the Linguist system ,because I don't know what I would do WITHOUT a dictionary.
It's really the only way for me to get the words I need ,and it's actually the "looking up words" part that stimulates my obsession for more vocabulary.
Furthermore I think that most people would agree with this :know the dictionary ,know the language.

[Haris]

Hi Steve,

I found out about your blog about a year ago. I've looked at your blog intermittently since then. I have recently started to learn the Turkish language more proactively. In your blog you mention that you don't like the approach to learning that involves learning grammar. But in a language that has complex yet regular grammar rules I think that it helps to know about them. It probably will not help you speak but to translate written material you have to know the root word being used and what the suffixes mean to figure at what it means.

Turkish language doesn't use words like to, from, at, in, etc. but instead uses noun declension, verb suffixes, and agglutination. For example, to translate the word biliyormusun (Do you know?) you have to know that bilmek means to know, that yor is a present continuous tense suffix (like -ing in English), that mu is a word that turns a sentence or a phrase into a question, and that sun means you. Surely knowing these rules is useful, and that's only the tip of the iceberg as far as Turkish grammar rules go.

I do agree with you that linguistic study of grammar rules is not very useful. I've listed through a couple of university linguistic books on Turkish and it was pretty mind numbing. It would probably discourage new language learners.

I am curious what your is your strategy for learning Russian, another language with fairly complex grammar rules. Did you learn noun declensions like dative, genitive, accusative? What learning material do you use? How do you translate material into English?

Right now I'm mainly using Internet as my resource, for content and online dictionaries. I also go to forums for translations of material. I think the three stages of language learning are:
1. Reading 2. Listening 3. Speaking. I am not sure if they should be done concurrently or one at a time.

I also agree that you have to love the language and have an interest in the culture of the country. It is challenging, but also interesting to learn a new language especially a non-European one.


~ Haris

[Tony]

Hi Haris,

This Tony, one of the big fans of Steve. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think what Steve really meant is that we should try to keep the grammar explanations as simple, as brief as possible. Because grammar rules are just abstract explanations to sentence patterns, memorizing the grammar rules does not help you to correctly speak or write the language spontaneously. If you are exposed to the language enough, those sentence patterns will become part of yourself. Read the grammar rules only when you are completely stuck. That is exactly what I am doing right now when I am doing my Japanese, and it works out perfectly.