Hey I was wondering if anyone here has ever used Unforgettable Languages?
bump
Yes i have just used it but dis-liked it.
It seems all the words are unrelated.
But when you are learning a language you learn the words in sections, like foods or colours.
Ooh, I’d french them good!
I haven’t used it but I took a look at from your link.
While word association is important for learning foreign vocabulary this method is counter productive. Let me illustrate…
The Spanish sample (Latin America)
Bad- Malo
Think of a Bad Marshmallow
Bear- Oso
Think of a bear O! So near you.
The Korean sample
Fruit - Kwa eel or in the Korean alphabet which they don’t show you (과일)
Think of being quite ill after eating fruit
I’ve had enough just with these samples. First of all the pronunciation of “quite ill” and 과일 (kwa eel) are very different. Associating fruit with being ill will lead to bad pronunciation which is difficult to break and maybe even a dislike of fruit.
It is better to learn a foreign language in context. Want to learn Oso? Find a picture of it. Associate the image of Oso with that picture. This will help get you started anyway.
If you are serious about learning, emerge yourself in the language and cut yourself off from using English to understand it as soon as possible.
my $0.02…
How do they teach grammar? It doesn’t seem like word association would be very helpful in this case.
Yeah, that was another thing I was wondering about.
Does anyone have any recommendations for products for learning language (french specifically)?
Rosetta Stone?
Berlitz?
I don’t have a product for learning French to recommend to you, but a little bit of advice.
There are great products for learning a foreign language as an adult/teenager. But no product by itself is even close to being enough. In this day and age the computer can be a tremendous help.
Find sites for listening to and reading your target language. All sorts.
Read children’s books (on and offline)
Find sites where you can participate. ie post in your target language and even throw up sound recordings of yourself speaking. Ever think about starting a thread in a French monocycle forum? Even with limit language abilities it can be fun and helpful.
Watch movies with French soundtracks It is ok if you don’t understand.
First watch with NO Subtitles.
Then watch again… NO subtitles.
Then watch again. With subtitles IN FRENCH. Soundtrack French too.
Then watch again.
and again…
eventually watching without the French subtitles.
And of course the most obvious, find people in your area who speak fluent French with native pronunciation. This will help SO much.
Lots of things you could do in addition to finding a product.
oh… I almost forgot… French speaking buddies on whatever messenger you use.
And as with unicycle riding… rather than a whole bunch of effort in one day and then nothing… a little each day everyday…
You’ll be welcome.
Or you can send PMs to Jjuggle, he learns french (and is quite good at it;) )
ultimate solution: if you have a paypal account, I’ll be glad to answer your questions
…well…forget about the Paypal account… just kidding:D
J’ai faire trois ans classe français!
(i think that’s right… i’m a bit rusty, but i went to france for a month and didn’t starve or die.)
My Hebrew teacher here at UCSD tries to teach that way. After two quarters (20 weeks) or Hebrew class I now have the vocabulary to say absolutely nothing useful unless I actually live in Israel for more than a week or two. She gives us the sentences with the pronunciation and the word in them. They help me for remembering the words for the quiz but they don’t help me at all for spontaneous speech, which is the goal, n’est-ce pas?
The way I’ve learned the words I actually know is by writing them, reading them, and saying them repeatedly.
Grammar is taught every so often in class, but there is no way to associate grammar with anything.
Bottom line: Association is not new and innovative. And while it may work for some, I have not met one person who has taken the class and felt the teaching method helped at all. Though I wouldn’t say it’s counterproductive. I still know more Hebrew than I did.
Let’s clarify. THIS type of word association is not a great method. However, “association” is necessary. That is what language is about.
You see the word “bear” you associate it with a furry animal.
Those who speak Spanish see “oso” and associate it with the same.