Student loans, payment, and credit

[Viq]

If you want hardcore grammar study, Yonsei University books are great. The series "Friendly Korean" made by Pusan National University is a bit more practical, and a little bit easier.

[Kohan]

If you do want to study languages, you don't necessarily need college textbooks to do so. Today, on the Internet, there's a lot you can do for free.

Although this is a good guideline to follow, you do not need to use any of the paid things it mentions:

http://lifehacker.com/5903288/i-lear...ears-heres-how

This has some overlapping examples, but some new and noteworthy ones, too:

http://lifehacker.com/5974670/how-to...uage-this-year

There's also the Pimsleur method, which you can combine with the many free resources out there to effectively learn a new tongue. I'll talk to you more about that later elsewhere.

Before I go, though, I'll cut one thing off at the pass: anyone who suggests using Rosetta Stone has not actually effectively learned another language and/or was forced to do it in the military. Don't bother with it.

[Viq]

This isn't the thread for it, but if you want to have a discussion about learning languages (or anything language related), I would certainly welcome it. As a linguistics major doing my entire degree with my 2nd language, language acquisition is something that I put a lot of thought into on a daily basis.

[Cream Soda]

eh, this is my thread anyways and it's already panned itself out. I can hijack my own thread. Let's do it!

[Aksannyi]

If this thread is going to derail into a language learning thread, I'd certainly be interested. I still struggle with Spanish (though I never took a single class in it, it's all studying and immersion) and I'm trying to learn German because my boyfriend is German, so any pointers would be welcome - I'm checking out those links Kohan posted right now.

[Viq]

Alright. I 100% agree with Kohan that Rosetta Stone is garbage. It's little more than glorified flashcards, and there are so many fantastic flashcard programs out there for free.

The first link that Kohan posted suggested heavy reliance on immersion, and you won't find anyone that argues against that being the best method of language learning. If you're forced to use a foreign language all the time, then obviously your ability to function in that language will increase quite rapidly. The second link also puts a great emphasis on speaking daily in your foreign language of choice, which is effectively your poor-man's version of immersion. Can't live in *insert country here*? Find a native speaker on Skype and chat for an hour a day.

These methods, while undoubtedly fantastic, do little to help someone attempting to learn some basics of a foreign language in their spare time. Most people don't have the freedom (financially, from family/job/school obligations, etc) to go for full on immersion. Finding a reliable, daily Skype buddy can also be a difficult task. So where does that leave us?

I would suggest that anyone interested in learning a foreign language focus initially on two things: 1) Vocab, which I will discuss more later and 2) Universal Grammar and generative grammar.

For those that don't know, Universal Grammar is the centerpiece of modern linguistic theory, developed by Noam Chomsky roughly 60 years ago. To keep it short and only touch on the practical aspects for this discussion, there are an enormous amount of universal traits across human languages, from pronunciations (/p/, /t/, /k/ being the most common stops, /n/ being the most common nasal consonant, the uniformity of vowel spreads regardless of whether a language is based on a 3-vowel, 5-vowel, 7-vowel system, or something like English's wacky 14-vowel system) to the predictability of prepositions or postpositions based upon the order of the object and verb in a sentence. The most important thing to take from UG for a casual foreign language learner is the vowel structure. Vowels are often the most important part of a pronunciation system, so understanding how your tongue moves for each vowel will help immensely in your pronunciation.

Generative grammar is, in my opinion, the most important thing that you can have in your mind before jumping into another language. A full understanding of generative grammar isn't important, but being able to draw a tree diagram based on phrase structure rules for any sentence is invaluable. This is something that you can learn how to do with your native language in probably a couple of hours tops. Here is a decent starting point that covers the most of the main points, though the first page is a little confusing. Basically, the thing to take away from phrase structure rules is that if you can draw a tree diagram, then you can work your way through any sentence in any language. Run into a sentence that you don't understand? Draw out that diagram to figure out what the constituents are, and how they are arranged. Having trouble forming the sentence you want to say or write? Make a diagram to pinpoint your problem.

Now getting back to what I listed as the first point, building a vocabulary in a foreign language is hands-down the most time consuming part of the process of learning a new language. Finding a method that works for you for both learning new words and remembering old words is crucial. One of Kohan's links mentioned Anki, which is a terrific flashcard program that I personally use on a daily basis. The faster and more reliably you can learn new words, the faster your ability to communicate in another language will expand. I'm of the belief that different people have different ways in which they can best approach vocab. In my case, I find the boring method works best for me. I write out new words 7-10 times each, focusing on the pronunciation as I write them. Then I add them to my Anki library, and force them to come up as often as possible over the course of the next couple of days. Other people that I study with are fine with just flashcards, or with just writing words out, or with creating mnemonic devices. Vocab building is one of the spots where I would really suggest trying a few methods, and sticking with what makes the words stick with you.

One last general tip is to read out loud while studying. Everything you read in another language, read it out loud. This will help your reading, listening and pronunciation simultaneously. Calling back to the aforementioned suggestion of having a daily Skype partner, if you have someone to talk to only once or twice a week then reading out loud will help you work on listening and pronunciation on days when you can't speak in your language of choice. This is actually one of the big draws of college textbooks for foreign languages to me. Most of them are filled with sample conversations, and also have native speakers reciting them on the included CDs. Read along with those, give yourself listening tests, check your pronunciation against what you hear on the CD, etc. It's a very practical way to work on multiple aspects of language-learning at one time, even at times when you don't have access to a native speaker.

I could keep going, but I'm a little drunk and pretty sleepy.

[Cream Soda]

Hmm good stuff

What are your thoughts on things like audio tapes? (or mp3s in my case). I'm on my bicycle a minimum of 8 hours a week and up to 12. That's a lot of potential time to get some extra practice in

Kohan, you need to brush up on Korean as well so next time I visit, we can do some immersion!

[Moss]

Kohan/Viq, what do you think of this site: http://www.duolingo.com/

I've been trying to finally master French and pick up Spanish in my spare time, but don't want to continue using that method if there are better ways.

[Viq]

Hmm good stuff

What are your thoughts on things like audio tapes? (or mp3s in my case). I'm on my bicycle a minimum of 8 hours a week and up to 12. That's a lot of potential time to get some extra practice in

Kohan, you need to brush up on Korean as well so next time I visit, we can do some immersion!

Listening to as much as you can is great. Even if you don't understand all what you're hearing, you can naturally develop a sense for the phonological rules of a language. You know how when you hear a language that you aren't familiar with, it doesn't sound like words? Just a long string of jumbled sound. As you become familiar with how words are structured, you will be able to pick out each individual word, even if it's a word you haven't heard before. One last note on this, I would suggest listening to anything that involves conversation or normal speech. Music, while fun to listen to, often has to do some goofy stuff with pronunciation to fit the rhythm. Certainly, listening to music can be helpful too, but I just wouldn't suggest it as the main source of audio material.

@Moss, I don't really know enough about duolingo to offer an opinion. One of my professors raves about it, but that's about all I've got. I'll try to poke around on it later and see what their method is.