Hello expat list. This is George Dole formerly from LA (The land of Angeles) and NYC (The land of Hell's Kitchen).
I came-across (discovered) this New York Times article about how to quickly learn any second language. I receive all NYTimes articles about Russia, Moscow or St. Petersburg. The article is from January but I received it only 2 weeks ago. It can help those of us get-to (achieve) the "next level" of knowing Russian and who were not lucky enough to learn Russian as our mother-tongue. To paraphrase the article about the 395 page PhD thesis of Dr. Sulzberger in a nutshell (succinctly), humans can not spell without knowing the written alphabet and we can not hear not speak any language correctly until we generally know the "phonetic alphabet" of any language. I did not read the thesis yet but I will happily email it to anyone who wants a copy. I compiled the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) Excel comparison of Russian and English sounds and found 19 common sounds, 41 unique Russian and 32 unique English phonetic sounds (phonemes). Dr Sulzberger's email is at the bottom and would love to hear from anyone on our Expat list. Two short stories. Because I am a consumer market researcher I teach GMAT to Russians and accidentally got hyper sensitive to all phrasal verbs, idioms, fragment phrases, and all other "pre-processed" English. Also, a friend of mine in graduate school who was a language major told me the story that because she knew Spanish and Italian when she visited Rio de Janiero she "immediately understood Portuguese" without ever having taken one class in it. It seems that Portuguese contains all the phonemes in either Spanish or Italian. My friend could not speak Portuguese but understood almost everything she heard. With these two stories in mind there is no impediment that exists to learning any foreign language if you know the fundamental phonetic alphabet and do enough drilling of basic vocabulary to start. I compiled the English, French, Spanish, and Italian IPA lists from Wikipedia already. They don't have Portuguese so I need to get that list from the IPA homepage to confirm my friends story. Can anyone else confirm the Italian+Spanish=Portuguese phenomenon? Any additional tips or URL links about learning Russian ASAP would be greatly appreciated. The full article and link follows which is not long. Enjoy ! Revolutionary approach to learning languages NYT Published 27 January 2009 http://www.victoria.ac.nz/home/about/newspubs/news/ViewNews.aspx?id=2455&newslabel= The teaching of languages could be revolutionized following ground-breaking research by Victoria University PhD graduate Paul Sulzberger. Dr Sulzberger has found that the best way to learn a language is through frequent exposure to its sound patterns—even if you haven't a clue what it all means. "However crazy it might sound, just listening to the language, even though you don't understand it, is critical. A lot of language teachers may not accept that," he says. "Our ability to learn new words is directly related to how often we have been exposed to the particular combinations of the sounds which make up the words. If you want to learn Spanish, for example, frequently listening to a Spanish language radio station on the internet will dramatically boost your ability to pick up the language and learn new words." Dr Sulzberger's research challenges existing language learning theory. His main hypothesis is that simply listening to a new language sets up the structures in the brain required to learn the words. "Neural tissue required to learn and understand a new language will develop automatically from simple exposure to the language—which is how babies learn their first language," Dr Sulzberger says. He was prompted to undertake the research after spending seven years teaching Russian to New Zealand students and observing drop-out patterns. "I was very conscious of the huge difficulties students have when they tackle another language, especially at the beginning. Many drop out because they feel they are not making progress." Dr Sulzberger says he was interested in what makes it so difficult to learn foreign words when we are constantly learning new ones in our native language. He found the answer in the way the brain develops neural structures when hearing new combinations of sounds. "When we are trying to learn new foreign words we are faced with sounds for which we may have absolutely no neural representation. A student trying to learn a foreign language may have few pre-existing neural structures to build on in order to remember the words." Dr Sulzberger looked for ways people could develop these structures to make the learning process easier. His finding was simple: extensive exposure to the language, something made easier by globalization and new technology. "It is easier to learn languages these days because they are so accessible now. You can go home and watch the news in French on the internet." He says people trying to learn a foreign language in their home country are at a disadvantage compared to those who travel to another country and immerse themselves in its sounds and culture. For the same reason, he says, we need to rethink the way languages are taught. "Teachers should recognize the importance of extensive aural exposure to a language. One hour a day of studying French text in a classroom is not enough—but an extra hour listening to it on the iPod would make a huge difference," Dr Sulzberger says. "Language is a skill. It's not like learning a fact. If you want to be a weight lifter, you've got to develop the muscle - you can't learn weightlifting from a book. To learn a language you have to grow the appropriate brain tissue, and you do this by lots of listening—songs and movies are great!" Paul Sulzberger [email protected] The Acquisition of Phonological Form in Second Language Learning (PhD research). This research considers the hypothesis that th e acquisition of vocabulary in a second language is (inter alia) dependent on the acquisition of a knowledge of the phonotactic structure of the second language. The observation that children acquire considerable knowledge of the phonotactic structure of their native language before they begin to speak, coupled with the finding that phonological memory in both children and adults is correlated with native language "wordlikeness", suggests that implicit knowledge of the phonotactic structure of the native language is implicated in vocabulary development - in particular the ability to rapidly acquire ("fast-mapping") the form of novel, native (but typically not foreign) words. This thesis considers the argument that the lack of such experientially-derived, implicit phonotactic knowledge can explain many of the difficulties experienced by second language learners in the acquisition of vocabulary in the early stages. Email Paul. <[email protected]> [email protected] Best Regards, George Dole (m) 8-926-813-78-47 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Please see my webpage at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/georgewilliamdole. "Luck occurs when preparation meets opportunity". -Seneca
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