agentzero

Ah, sorry then, didn't pay attention.

I don't think this would work for me. I'm pretty much a visual learner and I don't I could learn a language completely based off audio. Not even little snippets. Maybe if there was some additional video material, or even just text, but not only from audio.

I would respectfully disagree there. I think that during human evolution people naturally started producing certain sounds and relating them to objects. I don't think someone who has trouble holding on to rational thoughts stopped and made a dictionary. My opinion is that at one point someone noticed that the language we're using has certain rules and decided to sit down and write down those definitions therefore officially "defining" them.

I'll definitely seek out moving to Spain, at least temporarily. I'm starting a course in March though so that might be a while. Still, a prospect of living in another country is very exciting to me.

Some good examples guys! I really wanted to include the semi-colon in my writing but have struggled to find a way how. I think it's because I always found an argument for a colon or a period to be put in instead. Do you have any examples where it's best possible option to use a semi-colon?

I wouldn't say there's a rule of thumb for these sorts of things. It's kinda hard to understand this study as there aren't proper group sizes in the sample. They don't say what the size of a group was, but I doubt it was in the 1000s or even 100s. However, immersion is something I always advise people when learning a new language. Hearing the language while understand the rules of it could be even more helpful than just pure immersion though and I think anyone should at least know some basics before getting into the whole immersion thing.

Hi and welcome to the forum! Is it rude if I ask you to share a little bit about your experience of teaching English in South Korea? I'm finishing my studies next year and I really wanted to explore the option of teaching abroad, but there are so many factors to consider when even thinking about that. Mainly teaching somebody whose language you don't even speak, that's just scary to even think about.

Whaaaaat??? That's amazeballs. And kinda terrifying. Man, I'm getting a real sci-fi vibe right about now.

Can we make human-like androids though? I haven't heard of those. I don't know how the wizards of programming function and how they create their programs so I don't think I can add anything of use here, but I still feel like you can cut them some slack.

I agree with this. It's a subtle way to tell someone they're wrong and allow them to see the mistake and correct them on their own. No one likes being told they're wrong so correcting someone's pronunciation can be a difficult situation to navigate.

What do you expect? It's Bing. I think this is more of a programming issue though. There are a lot of idioms that need to be translated in a lot of languages and there are even words that don't exist in every language so I think that can be hard to figure out. I know it would be hard for me to figure it out

'They' is a pretty good term for gender neutral stuff since I've heard a lot of people getting offended is you misgender them. I'm not really sure if that's a thing, but you can't go around being a jerk without at least taking into consideration that stuff. If a sex of a person isn't previously declared, I tend to use 'they'.

Wait, what? Really? You're addicted to learning languages? Not that I'm denying that's real, but that's the first time I heard about such a thing. When I was at the beginning of my studies I was really into learning as much as I could and studying really hard, but I don't think I would have ever studied so much if I hadn't had to.

I've heard that this is the method Rosetta Stone uses and although I think it's useful, I feel like it's much more aimed at smaller children who don't have that big of a vocabulary of their own language yet. Also, I don't think mnemonics are useful when learning a new language. That method feels really mechanical to me and I think it can be useful when you can't remember a certain complicated rule or an exception to a rule, but being able to 'conquer' the language on a whole would be difficult in my opinion.

@3rdeyeguy I see. I actually watched a Spanish TV show for a while and it was nice to see my progress in terms of understanding them so I can say that this method works for me as well. I'm not sure I could watch telenovelas though haha. Rosetta Stone feels like they can provide a good ability to learn to speak as well and that's invaluable.

How is Rosetta Stone for Spanish? I remember think about getting it for when I wanted to learn Spanish, but I was put off by a lot of people saying that it can help you understand the language but not actually speak it.

Yeah, absolutely. I've spoken already about this before somewhere in this forum, but I found my passion for English by watching English language movies and TV shows and that has helped me a lot on an internal level so to speak to understand how the language works and all that stuff. I always recommend to people to watch movies or shows in language they're trying to learn.

I don't know about this. I mean, don't get me wrong, I first got in touch and started learning English exactly through the TV, except it was just watching movies and TV shows in English language and I instinctively picked it up, but this feels like a money grab to me and not a really effective way of learning. That being said though, there are plenty of ways people can learn a language and if this is one of them, then all power to them. I just never heard of such a method and I have to wonder if it's really effective.

Are there a lot of languages like this? Not having a set word or at least a phrase for "yes" and "no" is just beyond comprehension for me. I don't think I'd know how to learn a language like that, let alone speak it.

Hm, I can't get Google Translate to work. Little help, Lady Tyrell? Anyway, I did a similar test to this recently and I've got the result that I'm a listener which I don't really agree with and feel like I learn best when reading text combined with graphs and stuff like that. I wouldn't mind checking this one as well.

This is very important and a lot of teachers can get this very wrong which is a shame. First thing that came to my mind was to say it's lack of empathy, but I think a teacher who's unwilling to do his/her best to teach a student the way the student can learn the best, is just not motivated enough to teach. And that can be really harmful to the student.

Yeah, sure it would be great. Heck, the whole site can function as a language learning device, but that takes a whole lot of programming and I assume that sort of software (is it called software if it's on the internet?) is very expensive. Also, if you have to get a programmer to custom build it for you, that can get extremely expensive. I once toyed with an idea like that, but I quickly backed off when I figured out the price.

I agree with you @Wanda Kaishin, a step by step process is always a good option when learning anything new, pronunciation included. I can't be really of an assistance when it comes to Japanese or Spanish, but I know what you said can be useful for English.

It has definitely helped me gain a new perspective on language learning. As far as English goes, I'd say I'm at a pretty decent level, but I mainly came here to learn how to teach and see how different people react to different methods. I'm still far from actually becoming a teacher, but this forum has been rather useful. It has also been inspirational as I've decided to take a Spanish course in the spring. I've already tried learning on my own, but getting an "official" education will be better for me.

I don't really know how short term travel can help to be honest. I know that if I don't have a good base, I would have a lot of trouble. Case and point, my trip to Spain. I studied Spanish for three months before the trip in order to enjoy it more and I wouldn't say I was great at it, but I could understand quite a lot. My problem was I went to Barcelona and everybody spoke Catalan. I even got a few nasty looks when trying out my Spanish. My ex-girlfriend studies French and she was able to go France and she had a much better experience. Although, she did have a much stronger base and has stayed in France a lot longer (a couple of months).