Yes! I stumbled on this idea myself (when trying to learn German) and it works very well. I just read books and listen to audiobooks, starting from a very basic level and then gradually higher level. The talking improves almost automatically, without having to practice it.
> The talking improves almost automatically, without having to practice it.
I absolutely don't doubt your experience, but find it interesting that mine has been the exact opposite.
I listen to a lot of German and read a fair amount. As a result, my listening and reading comprehension got pretty good (at least B2). My writing has also improved significantly (probably also around B2). However, I find that this does not transfer well to speaking, which I need to practise separately in order to see a meaningful improvement. After some targeted lessons I'm just about approaching B1.
Perhaps transferability will improve once I reach a certain level of fluency. I think this might have happened when I was learning English. However, this was so long ago that I no longer remember.
For the next language I might try to overemphasise speaking from day one just to see how the learning trajectory differs.
Curious about any anecdotal evidence about this from people. I have always struggled with languages and have been trying to learn Italian for the past 6 months.
Is this 80% listening, 20% active using a good way to do it?
well anecdotally from studying Japanese for about a year and a half before moving there, it seems right to me, in particular the part about conscious effort not being able to produce spontaneous speech.
I was embarrassed how little I could say after countless hours of flash cards and other methods. I'd literally just comprehend nothing if someone talked to me. But after a few months of just listening it became much easier. I've thrown all the Anki cards away afterwards, it was just a waste of time.
I realised a step up with going to lunch with Japanese friends where the stream of sounds started to become comprehensible as discrete words. When I understood some of them I at least grasped the topic of the conversation, though not the details. It takes time and patience...
It definitely wasn’t a waste of time! I passed JLPT N1 back in 2014 after ~6 years of mostly Anki-based studying. Did Heisig’s RtK first and then mostly played old Japanese console games that I was familiar with. Never opened a JLPT study guide and passed the test on my first attempt.
Could I speak Japanese at that point? No not really… I even had a Japanese spouse! But we spoke mostly English at home. I could read quite well, but conversation was very challenging.
Then we moved to Japan. Despite not having a job that requires me to speak Japanese, I got enough live exposure just from chatting with people at the gym or in social activities that now, a few years later, I’ve backfilled all that conversational fluency that was missing. No special extra effort required, just living in an environment where I used the language reasonably often.
Anyways, the point is that all the time spent in Anki laid a rock-solid foundation that merely needed activation in the right environment for active fluency to emerge. Of course I no longer do my daily flashcard drills (and I’ve forgotten how to write quite a few kanji as a result) but the work paid off.
I have learned a lot of languages, and the method that worked best for me was to read books in which I was interested and to watch movies spoken in that language that were interesting, with the periodic help of a grammar and a dictionary.
Traditional language handbooks or other simplified sources have not been as useful as being exposed to a great amount of non-simplified language, which I reread and rewatched until I understood it perfectly.
It was essential for the books that I read and the movies that I watched to be good enough, so that I really wanted to understand what was written or said.
Even in the beginning, I did not use the grammar and the dictionary very frequently, especially with movies, but I attempted to guess the meaning of the unknown words and move forward with the reading or watching, without interruptions. Only later I confirmed or rejected my guesses with the grammar and dictionary.
15 years in china, with a chinese wife and everyone in my family and my environment speaking chinese with each other did not help me learn more than a few words and phrases of chinese. so just bombardement is not enough, you must be doing some active learning if you want anything to catch on.
Yes, since magit allows a call-out to diff and difftastic can be supplied as a binary, but magit allows you to use ediff, and Emacs allows use of tree-sitter, so I don’t really see the point.
You laugh - but my earlier comment was flagged, presumably because of its comic nature. Which is fair enough, but I don't get why some comic comments are a problem (mine) and others not.
My own attitude is that I can appreciate the humor, but I want top comments to be informative, not comedy. I'll downvote jokes near the top to help bring informative posts up, but I don't downvote when they aren't at the top, or when there are no competing comments.
I would posit the flagging had something to do with this, plus other data intrinsic to the words used.
The above comment isn't just silly, but a reference to an ancient advertising campaign. Anyone over a certain age -old like me- will recognize that campaign.
Large karma pools allow for more 'trust' on HN, and more leeway and access to special features.
Only the Mods/Devs could answer your question succinctly, however.
The only logical explanation I can think of is that either these other comments managed to fly under the radar, or more people found them genuinely funny.
I don't know - I avoid attempts at humour because more often than not people don't find it funny and it doesn't add to the discussion.
I mean, this is my best result this year(7 points):
I think most people here assume that social isolation is the result of things like social media or smart phones. I think it has much more to do with urban planning. The street used to be a place where children play, people "loitered", and people met new people and made memories. Now it is just a place where we sit in traffic because everything is so spread out that we can't walk anywhere. We don't meet our neighbors because we all leave through the garage, surrounded by 2 tons of metal.
Yeah, in Medellín most houses have 2-3 floors [1] and those who live on the street level often have businesses that they run from their house. They have small gardens outside and there's always people in the park, dogs running around, kids playing, music everywhere. It's very cozy and nice compared to Swedish suburbs [2], where you're forced to stay inside 8 months a year because of the climate.
One time a man in Sweden said hello to a neighbor and the neighbor perceived it as harassment and reported him to the police [3]. It's not illegal though, but generally only weirdos and drunks talk to strangers. Maybe it has something to do with the climate.
It’s very true that trying dig out of lonelinesses in average American suburbia is playing on hard mode. Everything about the built environment says keep to yourself. People talk about taking a stroll at Target with a coffee purchased at the Target Starbucks as the closest thing to “being in public”
I was told by my Calc 2 instructor that in the past, people treated dx like a variable, but in modern times, mathematicians have identified some edge cases which make that kind of thing problematic if mathematical rigor is your thing.
Hey I've been playing with your app, I'm very excited about it! But, it seems like the site is pretty buggy, having just tried it on a few different browsers. Specifically, the test review doesn't show relevant information that was available while taking the exam, (i.e. the constants are missing, not even whitespace where they should be). I could share screenshots of what I'm seeing with you if you like. Also, it keeps saying I have 20 tasks for today- I click and it has me take another exam, and afterward, I still have 20 tasks to do.
That said I'm getting a lot out of taking these exams and I'm very excited about this project!
Hey I'm really glad to hear that! I'll look in to why the tasks aren't updating, but I'm having trouble recreating the missing constants in test review. I'd really appreciate it if you can send me a screenshot of what you're seeing! Again, thanks so much for checking it out.
