[Adrienne]

Originally Posted by chipdouglas

I thought I'd chime in on the language learning topic. I live near Montreal, and am a native speaker of French--although I wish English had been taught to me as a first language, but anyway ths is beside the point.

I've learned to write speak and understand English but integrating TV watching, going to the U.S. building my vocabulary by mainly reading from the web, and emailing people. I find learning a language can be easier of one has a true passion--mine is about overall health, which no doubt is quite an extensive topic. My ultimate goal was (and still is) for my English skills to top that of my mother tongue. It goes without saying that I'm getting there, though some have been telling me that I'm already there. Admittedly, I have very high standard and am known to be failrly demanding to myself and of others as well.

I've looked at language learning sytems like Rosetta Stone, and quite frankly, they're very basic, and I'm not sure how effective it is for most people.

I've been learning how to photoread, which basically means that I'm ready to give this system an honest whack. If it works, and I think it can work if one believes that it can, then THIS would be a superhighway to learning a new language in no time through building up needed vocabulary, idioms and the likes.

Getting back to having a passion : I found it to be easier for me to learn given the passion I've had about overall health. I've read a heck of a lot about it, and MOST ESPECIALLY have built a network of people sharing the very same passion for health, and ever since have exchanged a zillion emails, have posted on various boards and so on. This in turn has allowed me to learn to think in English, which I found to be rather hard at first, but over time paid huge dividends.

Strangely, I wouldn't describe myself as being ''into languages''. For some reason, I'm only into English as a second language, but I've been wanting to get as proficient at it as humanly possible in it. My perspective is : it's best to get a near complete mastery of a single language than learning bits and pieces of many. Having said that, that's only one of the many likely point of views.

Come to think of it, I guess my being HIGHLY inquisitive has played a large part in the learning process as well.

Ok, so that was my two cents

Hope it helps

Thanks for your two cents
I think the next thing i need to go is find a couple good tv shows in french.. actual french tv shows that i can watch.

Originally Posted by Gray Parrot

I've never tried Rosseta Stone, but I've been using a Pimsleur course (free from my local library) for learning Portuguese, and it's pretty good. I wish I had discovered a similar system when I began learning Chinese many years ago.

I just for the Pimsleur course and so far it seems to be pretty good. It teaches alot of vocab and grammer. I think after i get thru a few more lessons, i am going to be able to start trying to have basic (very basic) conversations and watch some french tv which i think will really help.

Originally Posted by Joachim

I had great success learning vocabulary using the Leitner system. It enables you to add new words on a daily basis (from 10 to 250 depending on the effort you put in) while keeping the need for repetition at a minimum. This is achieved by a special method to sort the cards depending on how well you already know them. A typical card index in the Leitner system has 5 different boxes. The specialty of such a card index is however that not all boxes are of the same size. The length of the boxes increases exponentially.

Now to learn a word you write the English word on the front of a card and the translation on the other side. If you have enough cards to fill the first box you can start. If you know a word you can put its card in the next box, else put it at the end of the first box. With time the second box will become full. With the cards from the second box you pretty much do the same thing However there is one important difference! Cards you didn't know won't stay in box 2 they go straight back to box 1. So basically if you know a word its card goes in the next box, elsewise it goes back to box one.

This way you will only be frequently repeating words you don't know well yet, enabling you to learn them better, while repetitions of words you already know very well are kept to a minimum. If for example you learn a word at the first time you see it you will only have to repeat it 4 more times.

You can use the following sizes for the boxes:
1: 1 cm
2: 2 cm
3: 4 cm
4: 8 cm
5: 16 cm

A card index for the Leitner system could look like this:

The Letiner system. I had not heard of that before. that is a great idea to keep reviewing the words. I will look ito this some more. thanks for the link!

adrienne