Language learning advice

Pirate Sandberg's "French for Reading" and work through that, then try reading Houellebecq

>>9446385
Do you have a guide on pirating books? I haven't done it before

>>9446408
just search it up on libgen

>>9446385
>>9446615
Great cheers I'll give that a go

>>9446385
good rec, if you want to learn any other languages use try assimil, teach yourself, or made simple books.

look up polyglots (alexander arguelles [best one], steve kaufmann, timothy doner, etc.), they share their methods and help you out.

the basics of language learning are:

study every day, study a lot, review a lot. you will remember nothing of what you studied if you don't review. it is the most important process in EFFICIENT study. at the end of the day, hard work produces honest progress, and if you work seriously you will get results and get better at language learning simultaneously.

>>9446656
how do you do review?

>>9446686

take some time to look over what you've done the previous day. your goal is to learn the material, so be honest with yourself. if you're reading a book, try reading it again without the help of the vocabulary key or whatever.

if you're going over a grammar book, make sure before you turn the page you're learning the stuff on the page. do the exercises maybe if they don't annoy you. honest work produces progress, so really try to learn the material.

here's a great video detailing this polyglots process, this is alexander arguelles, he has reading knowledge of over 40 languages. reads german, french, arabic, russian, etc. all very fluently (he can read the most advanced literature in these languages), and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kco-8_OyJns

read the description for what he does. you can try something similar with your studies, perhaps. also, please note, i'm not saying you should never ever forget words, just try to not COMPLETELY forget them, as though you've never gone over them before. your goal is RECOGNITION, even if you can't remember the word instantly.

as for some tips, try to recall what you learned after studying sessions, but even as you are studying. what were the last 2 words i just learned? etc etc.

if you go over a wikipedia page in french and learn a new word, write it down maybe. you just don't want to go over stuff and then not remember any of it, its a waste of time. experiment and see what helps you best. maybe look up mnemonics.

>>9446834
>if you're going over a grammar book, make sure before you turn the page you're learning the stuff on the page.

also, this may seem self evident, but it's actually quite hard. if we don't ground ourselves while studying we can do it quite lazily and not get much out of it.

>>9446840
>>9446834
thanks for all this effort, i wasn't expecting you to put that much in. thanks bro

i think i'm lucky in that my first languages other than english were classical languages, so i was taught, without even being able to think otherwise, that learning a language means learning its grammar and syntax like a logic-engine. the only way to do that was to learn rules by rote, learn them until i had an instinctive mental picture of every major conjugation, a mental picture how every variation of every possible clause worked, and so on.

when i started learning french and german afterward, i was surprised by how loose everyone's learning was. they just read shit until it stuck basically. it disturbed me for ages, and then i realised that that method has benefits too, and that i was actually being held back in latin and greek by how stuffy and formalistic i was being, because non-textbook latin and greek are composed more of exceptions than rules. by tackling every sentence or passage like a math problem to be cracked by applying the "correct" formulae to it, i was hobbling myself.

now i feel like i have a good balance. i'm still super rigorous about learning grammar rules and mnemonically memorizing conjugations, to the point of being overly fastidious about it, but with that as my default reflex, i can temper it by going "you know, i can always reread this chapter tomorrow, instead of reading it with painstaking laser precision right now."

>>9446870

yeah, sorry for the messy posts, my thoughts were spilling haphazardly.

i don't have that exact experience myself, but i know i've read some posts by arguelles on a forum where he condemns that method of learning and says it slowed him down, that he was doing "parsing for the sake of parsing".

though it is good that you learned to be rigorous and attentive. reading broadly is a way to go about learning a language i suppose, but it is in no way efficient study. so, i think you're in a great position to learn about how polyglots learn their languages, maybe try some things out yourself, strike a balance between the two while finding your own style (it seems you have, mostly), and you'll be fine. good luck!

i've got to get back to my arabic now! as you study more and more you'll get better at it if you think of it as a skill that you're trying to improve.

>>9446870

you could also try parallel texts, i'm not sure what your rusty level is at.

english on right, french on left, literal translation. no need for dictionary, can underline words and then go and look at them the next day.

https://smile.amazon.com/French-Stories-Fran%C3%A7ais-Dual-Language-English/dp/0486264432/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1493571701&sr=8-2&keywords=dover+french+dual+language

https://smile.amazon.com/Candide-Dual-Language-Language-Guides-French/dp/0486276252/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1493571701&sr=8-3&keywords=dover+french+dual+language

just an idea for what materials are out there

>took 5 years French in highschool
>had decent reading and speaking fluidity, not exactly fluent but capable
>a few years of disuse and I no longer can speak or subvocalize French efficiently
What books should I read to pick the language back up? I guess a French copy of L'Étranger is a good start.

Go to the pirate bay and download the fluent in 3 months handbook. It's probably the best for learning languages. I've learned fluent spanish and conversational german in a bit under 2 years using the techniques. And that was actually pretty slow. ALSO DON'T START WITH GRAMMAR. Start with commonly used phrases that will later help you intuitively understand the grammar behind them.