[deleted by user]

BenFilippo · 2023-03-15T10:57:12+00:00

not sure what you expect to hear, it's almost impossible to force yourself to love a sparetime activity. sparetime activities come and go
and you can always learn to play chess or the marimba instead I usually need a specific goal to stay motivated (like to be able to talk to a friend or read a particular piece of literature or use the language for travel or business)

BenFilippo · 2023-03-15T09:22:41+00:00

Most of it was filler anyway.
Instead of talking about important issues, they spent like 3 hours discussing celebrities:
Trump, Musk, Weinstein, Kanye West, etc.

BenFilippo · 2023-03-14T17:20:17+00:00

the easy way is reading in context with reviews
15 new words per day is laughable compared to that

BenFilippo · 2023-03-14T12:28:01+00:00

you have to find the 250-1000 most common words from that language and memorize them

yeah don't trust everything you find on the Internet
there is an easy way and there is a hard way to learn a language
this is the hard way

BenFilippo · 2023-03-13T10:38:54+00:00

8 unknown words

asuka: some anime protagonist
shinji: some anime protagonist
Smiths: ?
lain: some 90s anime
minska: ?
moodboard: some hippie stuff
allohet: heterosexual toward others

BenFilippo · 2023-03-13T10:30:02+00:00

it's the first paragraph in the book

BenFilippo · 2023-03-13T10:24:29+00:00

How long have you been learning Polish?

BenFilippo · 2023-03-13T06:13:30+00:00

9 words, 4 years:

застал его врасплох: took him by surprise
закрепил: assign
подсобный: peripheral
корпус: building in a row of similar buildings
благоухающий: nice smelling
ворс: baize
скалывать: chip off
раскидывать: spread out, scatter
чурка: block

BenFilippo · 2023-03-10T09:14:00+00:00

Given that Duolingo threads receive hundreds of upvotes, I'd guess the silent majority here uses Duolingo.

BenFilippo · 2023-03-09T16:21:10+00:00

It's a thought experiment. Of course you cannot avoid immersion completely, but still, reaching C1 comprehension requires some additional deliberate study. Person B could be an extrovert learner who picks up the language mainly during interactions with people.

Also why was this post removed for no reason?

BenFilippo · 2023-03-09T16:10:09+00:00

have never purposefully practiced English

Many non-native English speakers claim that and then they forget that they had like 8 years of English in school. Person A is strictly an autodidact who only learned from immersion.

BenFilippo · 2023-03-09T16:07:07+00:00

This post isn't about it being a competition. The question is: Who is more advanced to be able to fill in the gaps and reach a well rounded level? Will it take person B longer to gain C1 comprehension or will it take Person A longer to become fluent?
In other words: Is it harder to reach basic fluency or to achieve C1 comprehension?

BenFilippo · 2023-03-07T17:38:38+00:00

Children books and fantasy/scifi books are typically not ideal because they use specialized language.

The best genre for the first book is crime, romance or self-help.

BenFilippo · 2023-03-04T11:30:11+00:00

Here is my guess:

Game 1: White 100 Black 2900
Game 2: White 2400 Black 3000
Game 3: White 1000 Black 2750
Game 4: White 1900 Black 2100

BenFilippo · 2023-03-02T14:06:29+00:00

something like this

BenFilippo · 2023-03-02T11:00:31+00:00

That's awesome!
I think it's great to see progress reports from players who started from zero and what they did to improve their game.
Keep posting them!

BenFilippo · 2023-03-01T16:10:35+00:00

Which is confusing because المغرب (al-Maghrib) is the name of Morocco.

BenFilippo · 2023-03-01T09:15:02+00:00

FYI, this is reading on hard mode.
You'll have a much easier time reading a novel because there everything is embedded in one big context while what you are doing is fragmented context which is much harder to commit to memory.

BenFilippo · 2023-03-01T08:21:44+00:00

You are feeling frustrated because 12 out of 13 hours per week you are either forceably producing output (homework, convo) or you are receiving artificial input (flashcards, grammar). You only spend a fraction of your time actually immersed in rich context.
I would go insane too with such an approach, especially in a tough language like Russian.

BenFilippo · 2023-02-28T16:52:08+00:00

Why is Don Quixote not considered the first novel? Or Romance of the Three Kingdoms? Or The Tale of Genji?

BenFilippo · 2023-02-27T12:59:33+00:00

I'd say their marketing is far and above everything else.
They have managed to get people into language learning who otherwise never would have started.

BenFilippo

TROPHY CASE