Quote:
Originally Posted by afv011
In my experience, writing is more important than reading. I used to have pen-pals I communicated with (letters, you know, a piece of paper you write on, put it in an envelope and mail it, none of this electronic nonsense we have nowadays), and it helped me immensely.
Reading is good, but you exercise your brain way better when you have to go fishing for the words and put those sentences together yourself.
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Agreed. There are many ways to learn languages but writing works best for me. I'm learning Dutch, and while writing out sentences I pronounce them in my head and learn more about the structure of language then I do when speaking. I just need to try and write Dutch more often.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kumabjorn
The rule I apply with my students when they tell me they think they have become fluent in Japanese is; "Ok, then please tell me a joke I haven't heard before". The reason being that humor is the one feature in a language that needs to transcend almost all the features that make up a language. If you can create something funny in a foreign language, then, in my book at least, you have arrived.
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Also agreed. Humor is hard in other languages. When you can be consistently funny (for the right reasons, not because you are mis-pronouncing words
) you are pretty much there.