Learning Tips

Posts0Likes0Joined5/6/2018LocationLapu-lapu / PH
Native
Cebuano, Tagalog
Other English

Hi everyone! What do you think of these learning tips?


Charlyn Amoin

Edited 
1
#1
Posts1630Likes1092Joined18/3/2018LocationBellingham / US
Native
English
Learning German
Other Chinese - Mandarin, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Thai

There's a lot of good advice in there, mixed with some not-so-good advice and a few strange comments. Also, I found her English accent very unusual. Very American with occasional extremely British pronunciations. But I suppose that isn't important.

1. Get a dedicated notebook - good advice

2. Listen to Music - it depends. It's a big mistake to try to model your pronunciation after music, particularly if you are studying tonal languages. So beginners are best off avoiding too much music. but it's a great help to more advanced students, as are all forms of native content.

3. Watch movies & TV series with subtitles - good advice, provided the subtitles are in the target language

4. Read children's books - not good advice for many people; I find children's books to be boring and contain lots of strange vocabulary. However, she goes on to advise reading books you've already read in English, which is good advice.

5. Follow social media personalities - good advice, although it's not my thing

6. Take advantage of free language learning apps - it depends on the app. LT free tools are excellent, for example. But Duolingo, which she recommends, doesn't do much of anything but waste your time imo.

7. Find a buddy - good advice, although I think "converse regularly" is better general advice


Her closing comments were a little strange. She said that this is how she learned the language without much effort. So doing all this stuff doesn't require much effort in her opinion, but it would in the opinion of many other people. Then she goes on to say the more effort you put into in the better your progress will be. I find her closing comments confusing; I think she want to encourage people by telling them that learning a language doesn't have to take much effort, but this is always hard to do because it just isn't true.



In Thailand now. Next up Tanzania and Philippines.

Posted 
2
#2
    Feedback