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3 answers
What types of sentences are easiest for beginners to understand?
What types of sentences are easiest for beginners to understand, presuming that the beginner has already learned the relevant meaning of all of the words contained in the sentence? Presume also that we are talking about sentences that contain no…
Baz
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What are the (dis)advantages of learning thousands of Chinese characters one by one via a frequency list?
If you've used Reddit's r/ChineseLanguage or r/languagelearning, you may have encountered people propose studying Chinese characters one by one in order frequency based on lists such as Jun Da's.
This strikes me as a poor method, for two main…
Rebecca J. Stones
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Having trouble with English vowels
Being Turkish, I think my command of English phonology suffers from L1 transfer.
Consonants seem to be fine, in that I can produce them on command, and can transcribe others' production of them more or less accurately, but vowels are a bit…
murshad
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How can a YouTuber demonstrate that they are actually fluent in a language?
There's a bunch of YouTubers nowadays who claim to speak fluently in some second language. Some can; some can't but pretend to. I've noticed some YouTubers use a lot of techniques to inflate their apparent language skill, such as:
Picking and…
Rebecca J. Stones
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5
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2 answers
Are there any good resources for learning Thai stroke order?
Because I am learning Pāli, I am also trying to learn the different writing systems associated with it. Learning the Thai script, I did not find any good resources on how to write the different characters, which, for me, is an important part of…
Masimatutu
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3 answers
Explain contemporary high-school language teaching to me
I do appreciate the answer to this question varies on where you are in the world but I'm happy to hear of different approaches from different countries. I'd be particularly interested in responses with respect to New Zealand, Australia and the…
glaucon
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Read new language with child
I wish to read English with my children. They are preschool age and have no English. I began by substituting the bedtime story with an English story but they got frustrated by the fact that they didn’t understand and suddenly they disliked the…
Baz
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5
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How to understand nested subordinate clauses quickly in oral English? How to avoid getting lost when you are in the middle of a subordinate one?
I am Chinese, and my native language is not English. I have learned the syntax of English, and I can analyze and understand a sentence in reading. However, this is not the case during listening.
Listening is much harder than reading for me. During…
Suxin Li
5
votes
1 answer
What are some psychological benefits to learning a second language?
Just what it sounds like. It seems like we already have a question on the detrimental effects of learning two or more languages. What are some psychological advantages to learning a second language?
fi12
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What is the term for being able to understand something in only an L2?
I have this little thing with some of my L2 languages that I know that I can understand them in their own language, but not being able to "translate" it over to my L1 and understand it there. Is there a term for being able to understand an L2 and…
SMS von der Tann
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In Mandarin, how can I overcome the problem of knowing all the words, but missing the overall meaning?
This issue arises over and over:
In Mandarin Chinese, I often read a paragraph aloud, concentrating on pronunciation. I've studied all (or almost all) the words, and know what they mean individually. I'll pat myself on the back and think to…
Rebecca J. Stones
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4 answers
How to improve my usage of vocabulary
I have been having trouble recently, related to my vocabulary.
While writing essays or whatever writings in English, I recognized that my sentences were mostly consisting of 'simple' words. Such as 'become better' or 'become longer,' which can be…
asdf
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1 answer
How can I know that I am making progress?
I learn English everyday. I keep on reading, writing, speaking and listening. How can I know that I am making progress? Is there any quantitative standard?
Sepwolves
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Does foreknowledge of Cantonese, rather than Mandarin, assist you more in learning Korean?
This r/korean comment answers my question as "yes", but it contains factual errors like "Cantonese is also much closer to Middle Chinese than Mandarin is". This r/linguistics comment and Quora contend that Korean share more phones (or phonemes —…
user90
5
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2 answers
Vocabulary app for Dutch
I am looking for a mobile app or website that I can create personal vocabulary list for a Dutch. Among my searches in Google Play, I see several apps for language learning, but didn't find a good app for vocabulary learning. Any recommendation?
mahmood
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