Category: Learning

Tips, techniques… anything about learning Vietnamese

Categories
Learning

It’s ok to forget words when learning a foreign language

Raw.. what is the word?!

Picture the scene. You’re in Vietnam, sitting down to eat with a friend and having a conversation in Vietnamese. It’s going well, your understanding is high and you’ve asked lots of questions. It’s a great feeling. Your food arrives and you bite into a piece of carrot. It’s still raw in the middle and you want to exclaim your disgust but the word has totally slipped your mind. You’ve been in Vietnam for months, you love the food and talking about food. You know this word well, but right at this moment you simply can’t remember it.

Raw.. what is the word?!
Raw.. why can’t I remember this word?!

It’s a situation we’ve all been in. How did you feel? Frustrated? Angry at yourself? Disappointed with Anki because it’s supposed to help you remember vocabulary? Doubting your ability because you can’t remember a ‘simple’ word that you ‘should’ know?

If you’re anything like me, you experience one (or several) of the above emotions and you’re pretty hard on yourself because it’s something well within your comfort zone, yet you’re drawing blanks. Often it’s not forgetting the word that disrupts the conversation, but the frustration you feel that ties you up in knots. Because actually, when it comes down to it, we forget words mid-conversation all the time. Even in our native language.

Think for a minute about conversations in your native language. How many times in the last month have you had the same pause in a conversation where you’ve had to ask the other person ‘what’s the word when…?’ and a guessing game ensues until one of you figures out what the specific word you were looking for was.

While it doesn’t usually happen on a daily basis, it is no strange occurrence. In fact, it’s common one that we’ve all faced. Remember, we’re talking about your mother tongue here! So if it’s natural to forget words in your own language, it’s more than natural to forget them in Vietnamese. Stop beating yourself up about it and accept it as it is – a natural part of communicating in any language and part of the learning process in another language.

So next time you forget a word, pause, remember it’s natural and ask your conversation partner ‘what’s what word when…?’.

Over to you: How do you react when you forget words while speaking a foreign language? Does it frustrate you or do you take it in your stride?

Photo credit: SteveFE

Categories
Learning

How do I choose materials suitable for my level?

Golden leaves, golden shoes, golden nuggets of information. I do like autumn!
Golden leaves, golden shoes, golden nuggets of information. I do like autumn!
Golden leaves, golden shoes, golden nuggets of information. I do like autumn!

A new type of post on the blog, I’ll periodically be featuring short posts with little golden nuggets of knowledge or advice about language learning.

Thảo ơi, how do I choose reading and listening materials suitable for my level?

A good rule of thumb is to read material that’s a little harder than your level and listen to material that’s a little easier.

This can make a huge difference between being able to understand something and feeling so confused that you give up.

To read easily, you don’t want to be looking up more than a few words per page or article. If you’re studying rather than reading for pleasure, you can increase that figure. But even then, if you find yourself stopping every few words then consider putting that article or story aside for a few weeks and trying again when you’re a bit further along in your studies.

As for listening, even if you’re naturally good at it it’s harder than reading. Ever struggled to understand something and put subtitles on to help? Yeah, that’s it. At that point you’re reading the subtitles rather than listening to the dialogue because you can’t actually do both at the same time. Like the situation with struggling to read an article that’s above your level, if you find yourself needing subtitles then you need to find something easier to practice your listening skills for the time being.

Now you know how to tell if your materials are the right level for you, you’re ready to choose some new ones! Vietnamese learners can start here.

Categories
Learning

How to improve your pronunciation in 10 steps

Skribu kie vi aŭdas spiron kaj xxx.
Record yourself
Record yourself. Credit.

Every language learner wants to, or should want to, improve your pronunciation.

Here’s a technique I picked up while teaching English in Vietnam: how to noticeably improve your pronunciation in just 15 minutes.

What you need

  • A short recording of a native speaker either talking or reading a short text. (I’d recommend 200 words maximum.)
  • A transcription of this recording. I like to have it printed out with double spacing so I have room to make notes, mark pauses etc.
  • A recording device (your computer, phone etc).

10 steps to improve your pronunciation using recordings

  1. Listen to the native recording.

    Listen to how the native is speaking and the rhythm they use.

  2. Record yourself reading the transcript.

    You can read it through a couple of times but there’s no need to practice at this stage.

  3. Listen to and compare the native recording and your recording.

    Listen out for pronunciation differences and make a note of them.

  4. Practice these problem sounds and words.

    Imitate the pronunciation of the native speaker. Practice repeating individual problem sounds. Try techniques such as backchaining for problem words.

  5. Listen to the native recording and mark where the speaker pauses.

    There will be short pauses (eg. to breathe) and long pauses (such as the end of a sentence). Noting this will help you say each sentence with a correct rhythm.

  6. Mark the stress.

    If your language has stressed words within a sentence (like English, Spanish, etc), listen to the native speaker again and mark these stresses. There isn’t an exact science to this, just mark it where you hear it. You probably need to play the native recording twice.

    Annotate your transcript
    Make notes on your transcript to help improve your rhythm and stress.

  7. Practice reading the transcript with these corrections and modifications.

    You may wish to play the recording and mumble along (like when you’re listening to a song and singing under the breath, or when you don’t know all the words) to practice the timing and build up to recording yourself.

  8. Record yourself again.

  9. Listen to the difference in your first and second recordings.

    Congratulate yourself on how much you’ve improved already!

  10. Share your recording

    Share this second recording with a native speaker to get more feedback on what else you need to correct.

To increase the impact, do this again tomorrow with another recording! After all, it only takes 15 minutes.

Want to challenge yourself? Get your materials ready and make a 30 day challenge of it!

Over to you: How do you improve your pronunciation? Are you going to try this method?

Categories
Learning

4 steps to prepare for Summer Recording Challenge

How to prepare for Summer Recording Challenge 2013Yesterday I announced the Summer Recording Challenge. I hope you will join me on a 40 day quest to improve your pronunciation this summer.

I’m not going to rope you into this without any advice on how to do it, though. Today it the first of a two part guide preparing you for the challenge. The second, and most crucial, part covers the technique to improve your pronunciation.

1. Decide what you want to work on

And I mean exactly what you want to work on because ‘pronunciation’, or even ‘tones’, is a bit too general. Likewise, if you’re learning English and want to improve final constant sounds – that’s also quite general. Focus on a particular sound such as the final -s.

When setting your goals for this challenge, you need to be specific and then choose materials that will enable you to meet each of them. Personally I’ve set 4 goals for the challenge – giving me 10 days to focus on them, one at a time. You can set more or less, depending how big each goal is.

For example, I know I need to work on a particular tone. Let’s call it tone X. I’m choosing materials that have several words with tone X in them. From Day 1-10 of the challenge, I will be using recordings that have a lot of tone X. I will start off mastering the sound, then I’ll work on sentences that have tone X in them and phrases with two or three tone X’s in a row. From Day 11-20 I will be working on something else.

2. Prepare your materials

Find native speaker recordings to use as your model. The last thing you want to be doing during the 40 day challenge is scrambling around to find new recordings every day. Find all of them now to allow your focus later to be purely on improving your pronunciation.

Try your course CDs, short monologues from a TV show or a famous speech, poems, nursery rhymes or extracts from a (audio) book. Songs might even work. If you really can’t find some suitable recordings, find short pieces of writing (from single sentences up to about 200 words) and get them recorded either by a friend or via a website like RhinoSpike which allows you to get any foreign language text read aloud for you by a native speaker.

Most of the texts I will be using for Vietnamese are from here, mainly pronunciation drills and these riddles and poems (unfortunately they, like all my textbook CDs, tend to have northern accents whereas I have a southern one so I’m supplementing the recordings where necessary). If you’re an English learner wanting to work on British pronunciation, see here.

You may also want to print out your transcripts so you can take notes… More on this next Monday!

3. Prepare your equipment

Play with your recording software. So far I’ve been using Ubuntu’s default recorder which is perfectly adequate, but I’m going to look into open-source Audacity which has a lot more features that look ideal for language learners.

Once you have your software set up, practice making recordings in your native language. (This is also a perfect chance to help someone out by recording on RhinoSpike!) Doing this allows you to familiarise yourself with the logistics of recording and figure out if you need to change any settings as well as getting a feel for how easy you find it to read from a text – and how long a passage is too long.

It’s this step that causes me to recommend your text is no longer than 200 words or ideally a lot less. When recording English texts, I found I’m much more likely to make mistakes with longer texts and usually have to make 2-3 recordings…and this is in my native language! Remember your focus is not to read aloud perfectly, but to copy a native speaker’s pronunciation.

4. Prepare your feedback

Find someone to review your recordings. After you’ve practised and recorded yourself, you’ll want to have a native speaker listen to your recording and tell you what else you need to work on. You can ask your friends or language exchange partner but if you’ve known them a long time they may be used to your pronunciation and unable to pick out all of your errors. You can try finding someone new through a language website you regularly use or check our participant list.

Further reading

Over to you: How do you prepare for your language goals? Do you have any great pronunciation links to share?

Categories
Learning

When should you quit language classes?

when to quit language classes

when to quit language classesClasses can be a great way of getting good, consistent input in your language learning journey. For many people, myself included, learning stagnates without a push to keep going (and there’s nothing like having paid for classes to make sure you go, and therefore learn). But sometimes the classes are not worth your precious time and hard-earned money.

I’m sure everyone, at some point in their lives, has been in a class that was simply moving too quickly or two slowly. Perhaps you aced biology and didn’t get why the teacher was explaining photosynthesis yet again. Or maybe nothing your biology teacher said made any sense, but when you got home and your mum/brother/cousin explained it to you, it all clicked into place.

Mass education is always going to have a mix like this in a class, even if classes are grouped in levels.

And actually, it’s not always a bad thing. For starters, a good teacher will address this issue when they’re planning their lessons, thinking about ways to help the weak students and push the strong ones. Moreover, being a weak student for that level can be excellent motivation to work hard and catch up with the rest of the class. Stronger students can likewise compete to stay at the top.

However, sometimes the pace is not just a bit out of sync, sometimes it’s so far off that you need to stop attending classes.

If your class is totally above your level, you’re going to spend a lot of time feeling lost or confused. You’ll feel like the language is too hard. It’s not. Anyone can learn a language, but we all progress at different rates. You’ve been thrown in at the deep end of the swimming pool before you’re ready. You need a little more practice at the shallow end and before you know it you’ll be able to move up. That’s it. Just like learning to swim, dropping down a level will make you feel more comfortable, as well as broaden your knowledge on details you felt like you whizzed through before, and ultimately increase your confidence learning and using Vietnamese.

On the flip side, if your class is moving too slowly this is also when you should stop attending. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that these classes are still better than nothing, but if you leave every class frustrated and fed up because classes are moving as slow as the slowest student or you’re staring at the clock waiting for class to finish, it’s time to quit.

A different class, a private class one-on-one with a teacher or taking a new approach like a language exchange could be just what you need to spice things up again and keep moving forward.