January 31, 2005

learning language

I had a tough time in Polish last week - lots of talking and listening, dictations. I've figured out that my problem is exactly the same as when I was studying French and German years ago: I do not hear when one word stops and the next one starts. Thus I hear a string of sounds that I can't resolve into meaning, even though, if I SAW the words, I would understand immediately. So my dictation exercises are a disaster - a few fragments of real words strung together with my phonetics.

Over the years, this problem has dissipated in French and German. I've had some trips to France, and have gotten more used to the sounds. I try to speak German with my downstairs neighbors and I understand pretty much everything that is said to their 3-year-old. I think (although I can't be sure) that my problems in Polish will eventually resolve themselves by themselves. (I remember a particularly devastating experience in German class as an undergrad, when our professor decided to benchmark us against some standards, and gave us an standardized oral exam, of which I UNDERSTOOD NOTHING. Same deal here with Polish, I'm hoping. Then, when I went to Germany, I found that I could understand educated people just fine, and slangy people if they talked slowly.)

The bottom line is that although I'm a visual person, and I actually have to SEE the words in Polish as I say them, in German and even in French I have eventually, through contact and familiarity, gotten so that I can automatically generate the words, and I don't even think of the written word.

It's regressive, sort of - to the child's level of language. I was thinking today that I don't even remember how to spell some of the German words I know. An odd sort of victory - but it means the language has really been internalized, which is a victory for me.

Posted by otto0114 at January 31, 2005 10:36 PM
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I didn't really have that problem with German but I definately experienced it with Korean and Russian studies. I think it's a lack of listening comprehension practice in my case. When I hear words in Korean individually, the pronunciation is often different than when I hear them in sentences. In Russian also, the pronunciation changes depending on where the stress is and the verb conjugation. The individual words sound different in my head. Also when I memorize words sometimes I don't have the audio and I sound out the words. Korean and Russian both have phonetic alphabets so I can do that, but then I've run into the situation that even though I could read a word, because I memorized it, the sound I hear from a native speaker does not match what I hear in my head as I read it. That's why I really like the Pimsluer method for Russian. It's all learning by hearing. But we need writing, reading and listening proficiency. My goal this year is to spend more time on listening comprehension so I can hear all the forms of the words I know, and memorize the sounds in different context so I know what I'm hearing. I think that will help me for the problem you described. I know in my last Korean class, I spent very little time at listening comprehension and I that's the part I had the most trouble with in class. What are your thoughts on this?

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