HI Shalmar, I am checking in on my progress in Telugu. I have started with a new teacher who is only doing the sounds and script to start, it feels slow and tortuous but the results are amazing. The new sounds as a native English speaker, I could not even hear the difference when listening to others speak. Having someone explain the sound position in the mouth and throat as well as intensity of breath and the duration of the sound and then listen to your for an hour just try to say the individual sounds and tell you if you are correct is actually amazing. Without this I would not be able to even start hearing the sounds that are not in the English language. Now I am doing this in month 4 of my active Telugu learning journey with other methods tried including one on one lessons, watching movies, apps, videos, including watching lots of movies. I do have a movie that has simpler dialog that I have found easy to pick out words and is super fun - Billa (2009). You can find it on Youtube with Subtitles - the sound is rough.
Excellent! I want to show some of my telugu progress too! Everyday I think about it. It is the most exotic language on my list. 4 months in and your getting some comprehensible input. Amazing! I’m cheering for you.
I doubt that I have seen it. But most movies (indian) i realized are super long. So it sometimes require multiple viewings as finding 3hrs to sit down and watch one movie is just too much time.
Thank you for providing such a structured summary of your recent progress. Reading this was very interesting! Before coming across your article, I had never heard of the concept of priming a language. Since you seem to have been doing it for quite a long time, I was curious to know what aspects you feel are beneficial, but also perhaps some of the downsides or challenges of this approach? :)
Thanks for the question. Keeping in mind that my entire experience is an experiment and my goal is to try to avoid bad accent, and overly relying on studied grammar to be able to speak. So based on the research, I have seen that generally, the longer you have listened to a language, the clearer your accent will be when it's speaking time. So Priming (passive listening) is an idea I came up with after passively listening for Japanese and Spanish for years and picking up words and even super common phrases despite never having studied them. I know as babies, we had to figure out the sounds of the language (which you can gain within 50hrs of active listening of comprehensible input). So i figured I could prime some of the languages i plan to learn eventually so when its time to learn them, listening because easier. Now, have I seen the REAL benefits in Practice? I can only say that for Japanese and somewhat Telugu (In Listening) now that I am trying to learn them actively (though slowly). I am able to match familiar sounds to meaning very early in the Comprehensible Input Process. There is no real downside except if you need to learn the language quickly, then priming isn't necessary in the way that I do it (100hrs before learning actively). I don't have time nor do I want to actively study so many languages at once, but I can listen to a bunch of them and feel zero pressure until its time to tackle one of them actively.
HI Shalmar, I am checking in on my progress in Telugu. I have started with a new teacher who is only doing the sounds and script to start, it feels slow and tortuous but the results are amazing. The new sounds as a native English speaker, I could not even hear the difference when listening to others speak. Having someone explain the sound position in the mouth and throat as well as intensity of breath and the duration of the sound and then listen to your for an hour just try to say the individual sounds and tell you if you are correct is actually amazing. Without this I would not be able to even start hearing the sounds that are not in the English language. Now I am doing this in month 4 of my active Telugu learning journey with other methods tried including one on one lessons, watching movies, apps, videos, including watching lots of movies. I do have a movie that has simpler dialog that I have found easy to pick out words and is super fun - Billa (2009). You can find it on Youtube with Subtitles - the sound is rough.
Excellent! I want to show some of my telugu progress too! Everyday I think about it. It is the most exotic language on my list. 4 months in and your getting some comprehensible input. Amazing! I’m cheering for you.
I haven’t forgotten to send some names of Telugu films. I must ask my sister and an auntie.
Have you seen RRR as yet? It’s 3 hours long. 😅
I doubt that I have seen it. But most movies (indian) i realized are super long. So it sometimes require multiple viewings as finding 3hrs to sit down and watch one movie is just too much time.
My sister watched it like a series hahaha.
Thank you for providing such a structured summary of your recent progress. Reading this was very interesting! Before coming across your article, I had never heard of the concept of priming a language. Since you seem to have been doing it for quite a long time, I was curious to know what aspects you feel are beneficial, but also perhaps some of the downsides or challenges of this approach? :)
Thanks for the question. Keeping in mind that my entire experience is an experiment and my goal is to try to avoid bad accent, and overly relying on studied grammar to be able to speak. So based on the research, I have seen that generally, the longer you have listened to a language, the clearer your accent will be when it's speaking time. So Priming (passive listening) is an idea I came up with after passively listening for Japanese and Spanish for years and picking up words and even super common phrases despite never having studied them. I know as babies, we had to figure out the sounds of the language (which you can gain within 50hrs of active listening of comprehensible input). So i figured I could prime some of the languages i plan to learn eventually so when its time to learn them, listening because easier. Now, have I seen the REAL benefits in Practice? I can only say that for Japanese and somewhat Telugu (In Listening) now that I am trying to learn them actively (though slowly). I am able to match familiar sounds to meaning very early in the Comprehensible Input Process. There is no real downside except if you need to learn the language quickly, then priming isn't necessary in the way that I do it (100hrs before learning actively). I don't have time nor do I want to actively study so many languages at once, but I can listen to a bunch of them and feel zero pressure until its time to tackle one of them actively.