Vocabulary acquisition techniques

[SunLight]

in other words you all suggest learning just by immersion and (almost) without studying?

[Springfield-]

I was think about learning german some time ago, and I thought if played in a german et server.. it would be good to learn german since I presume they'd speak only in german in a german server

but.. the ping doesn't help a lot

and  most of them doesn't like to speak.

[Platonic]

in other words you all suggest learning just by immersion and (almost) without studying?

We're gamers, of course we do

Studying has its use, but I think learning by immersion has the great advantage that you learn what you actually need. It's a lot more stimulating and keeps you in 'touch' with the language. I know people who have studied french for years and are still unable to get into a conversation with a Frenchman. This is because over-education makes you worried about the correctness of your speech, rather rather than just relaxing you about it like participation does.

Correctness of language is only a second step. This is how a child learns: it makes mistakes but it's not ashamed of them. People around it have to make it aware of its mistakes to lead it to correctness. This is the very basic of learning in my eyes and is something we need to pay much more attention to in our education system (at least the one in Europe). Learning by doing is the only way to get a flow into it.

 

An illustration: in music school they teach you how to read notes first. When you know all the notes, you learn to read them in different keys. When you've learned how to read them in different keys, you get to learn all the latin terms. If you know them, you get to choose an instrument and finally play the learned notes.

Give the student a bloody guitar, tell him to play it all day in a way that's fun for him. After some time, tell him how he can play more beautifully. He's going to want that, and going to learn in a way that's much, much more satisfying for him. I'm convinced that this will establish a better learning process. But then, that's me. Everyone who believes in our classical education method as the only way to go will contradict me.

[SunLight]

I was think about learning german some time ago, and I thought if played in a german et server.. it would be good to learn german since I presume they'd speak only in german in a german server

In my old clan everyone was German except me, actually the rule said you had to speak German in order to join, but I didn't.

I remember many years ago, we were playing a 3vs3 with only clan members, and I told them 'you don't switch my channel? I will hear all your tactics....' and they told me: 'don't worry, we will speak in some obscure German dialect you won't understand' lol...  I still can't speak it, but at least I understand it enough to be able to listen to audiobooks. All I did was reading some easy novels side-by-side with English, then I switched to audiobooks. I never studied anything. It's amazing how I can understand novels but I can't say even simple sentences.

But I don't think you can learn much by chatting while playing ET, the vocabulary is too limited there...

 

This is the very basic of learning in my eyes and is something we need to pay much more attention to in our education system (at least the one in Europe). Learning by doing is the only way to get a flow into it.

I agree, but I think it depends on which language you want to learn. When it's totally different in every aspect (grammar, writing, words) and totally unrelated to the languages you already know, a bit of drilling is unavoidable. I mean vocabulary, when it comes to grammar I think it's best learned by exposure.

[Springfield-]

I think you should just download some .pdf files to study a little of grammar, verbs (simple past tense etc..)

conjuntion, nouns, adjectives and etc...  and watch lessons on youtube as well.

we need these things to able to build phrases 

try to study these things, use google translater to listen the pronounciation and follow youtubers whom speaks the language you're studying (then you can get ur ears used to the language.

[SunLight]

I think you should just download some .pdf files to study a little of grammar, verbs (simple past tense etc..)

conjuntion, nouns, adjectives and etc...  and watch lessons on youtube as well.

we need these things to able to build phrases 

try to study these things, use google translater to listen the pronounciation and follow youtubers whom speaks the language you're studying (then you can get ur ears used to the language.

The problem is, I'm learning Japanese, which is far from being easy.

 

As regards the pronunciation, being myself Italian, I think japanese pronunciation is quite easy and similar to my native language. So I don't need google translate to pronounce it. English pronunciation is much much harder. And when it comes to pronunciation, I would rather suggest listening to an audiobook while you read the book, or shadowing (if you don't know what shadowing is, google it ).

 

As regards the grammar, it's totally different than european languages, for examples adjectives are a bit like verbs (they have past, negative, etc.) there are tenses we don't have (potential, volitive and the like) but some tenses are missing (future). No articles, no prepositions, nouns have no plural, but there are other things we don't have (particles, etc.). the whole sentence structure is different, word order, everything. Your brain needs to adapt to a totally different stream of words with different order and roles.

 

Obviously I have to learn all that stuff (and I also have to learn how to read and write, since they use chinese characters, and there's thousands of them).

 

But the hardest thing when you learn a language is vocabulary in my opinion. You need thousands and thousands of words, let's say 10-15k. English has a lot of words of French/Latin origin, so in my case (Italian native speaker) I will find a lot of words I already understand. If I learn German then I can take advantage of my English knowledge, e.g. bring = bringen, because there is a lot of germanic words in English. But Japanese? at most it could help if I spoke Korean or Chinese for some words. That's why all the 'standard' methods people use for easy languages fail.

 

It doesn't help to know the grammar if you don't know the words you have to use, so I was wondering if there was a shortcut to memorizing thousands and thousands of items which are totally unrelated to anything familiar. But apparently there isn't... it's probably the good old review review and review. Word lists, and stuff. No shortcuts. There is no way I'm going to remember a word if I don't see it every day.